Suicide
From RationalWiki
Suicide is the act of killing oneself. It is most frequently attempted, though not exclusively, as a result of mental ill health and, as such, represents a significant cause of preventable death as those at risk generally respond extremely well to timely intervention and treatment.
Suicide is viewed by various religions as a sin, including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity (despite Jesus Christ basically doing so),[1] usually because of "thou shalt not kill", sanctity of life, God's will, and such stuff. Treating suicide as a mortal sin is almost certainly a retrofit, due to the discovery that preaching eternal happiness in heaven, as the Christian faith does, led to people killing themselves in order to get there faster[citation needed].
Assisted suicide, where an individual is given the means necessary to commit suicide, is a controversial issue, and illegal in many countries.[2]
The Conservapedia overlord considers suicide a bad thing mostly because, as mentioned above, it is a sin (the fact that it ends with the practicioner being dead apparently is just a minor detail) and criticize Wikipedia on its alleged foregrounding of suicide in articles[3], despite Conservapedia not lagging too far behind in suicide-to-article ratio.[4]
[edit] See also
- Useful overview from UK mental health charity Mind.
- Suicide bombing
- Homicide bombing
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ It is thought by some that Jesus' death counts as sacrifice (to forgive humanity's sins), however, this means an omnipotent God sacrificed his son and/or himself in order to forgive.
- ↑ http://www.assistedsuicide.org/suicide_laws.html
- ↑ http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia&oldid=378186 Number 28. Don't ask why does this constitutes bias.
- ↑ As of 24 January 2008, (English) Wikipedia has 2,189,039 articles and 23,235 search results for "suicide" (1.06%) while Conservapedia has about 21,305 articles and 188 search results for suicide (0.88%). RationalWiki lags just behind with 20 search hits for "suicide" out of 2,390 pages that probably contain legitimate content (0.83%). As of 26 January 2008, the French Wikipedia has a 0.62% ratio and the Spanish one blows both out of the water with 0.43%. Figures taken from their respective statistics page and search results.
