Thursday, February 08, 2024

The Religious Loophole of Suicide by Murder



You've probably heard the term "suicide by cop," in which people deliberately cause a situation in which the police shoot them. They want to commit suicide but can't, so they get someone else to do the deed for them. Wanting to die implies some mental health issue, but it doesn't mean the person is irrational. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some folks rationalized that suicide was a more dangerous sin than murder, since you won't have time to repent, so they committed murder in order to be executed for that murder. Those ideas were even canon in the Lutheran faith. The premeditation of this concept seems to make that loophole moot, but that's what happened. People even planned their crime according to the expected type of execution that was sure to follow. That's one trend we are glad was extinguished by a change in the law. Strangely, the word "suicide" is censored in this video, but "suicidal" isn't.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

> Wanting to die implies some mental health issue

I'm not sure that's true in all cases. One that immediately leaps to mind is when a person is in a position of incurable suffering.

Miss Cellania said...

Incurable suffering would have to do a number on your mental health, but I see what you are saying. That's why I used "implies" instead of "means."

Anonymous said...

Terminal illness, healthcare depleting family finances.

Bicycle Rider said...

"Ecuador’s high court decriminalizes euthanasia, following a lawsuit by a terminally ill patient"

Patient with ALS wanted to "die with dignity."

https://apnews.com/article/ecuador-decriminalizes-euthanasia-terminally-ill-woman-7fff5e69f99ec573e13396a31b037d74

Anonymous said...

Changing the death penalty to hard labor could have been the jailers lobby looking to increase income... always follow the money.
Not only censored the word suicide, blurred out a naked baby twice.