I am blown away by this ad from the American Life League, a fanatically Catholic organization dedicated to opposing contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.
Suffering is a grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ. Euthanasia selfishly steals that opportunity.
They do realize that “passion of Jesus Christ” is a euphemism for prolonged torture, right? “Hey, grandma, we love you so much, we’ve decided to hire a couple of thugs to whip you within an inch of your life, and then to strangle you slowly.”
Maybe this would be a good excuse if you had a couple of Catholic relatives who you really, really hated. I don’t know anyone I’d want to “grace” with that kind of opportunity.
The implication being that they gladly worship a god who demands that they suffer a slow, agonising death rather than end their own suffering in relative comfort.
PZ, you’re forgetting to apply free market logic to this bright vision of the future. Hiring thugs to strangle Grandma costs money. It’s so much cheaper just to leave her in a darkened room to starve. God will be gratified by her suffering that much longer. Just imagine the despair He can feed upon!
Everyone knows, the harder you have to work for something, the more valuable it is. Just ask Sam Zell.
I’ve never seen it stated so explicitly before, but it’s a central tenet of all of the Abrahamic cults. You’re supposed to suffer through life, but if you do a good enough job of it, there will be pie in the sky when you die.
Yeah, it’s a real thing. I heard it often enough as a child. Mother Theresa justified her horrendous treatment of the terminally ill on the grace in suffering bullshit. Of course, those who push it the most don’t seem to feel it applies to them, natch.
Well, it fits in with the whole “without the pain of childbirth there will be no bond between mother and child.” This is more of a “without the pain of (fill in the blank for whatever painful disease you are dying from) there will be no bond between you and Jesus.
Hey, if someone CHOOSES to suffer as an act of worship, that is their perogative. A rather foolish choice, in my opinion, but it is theirs to make.
Such people would not, I would imagine, choose euthanasia.
So what does this have to do with voluntary euthanasia anyways?
I had to look up that organization and was surprised not to find Tom Monaghan associated with it.
I don’t know why Pr. Myers asks if it is a real thing. Isn’t that typical catholic?
Oh, holy fucking crap. These people should have taken care of my mother for two years while she died slowly. And while she expressed the wish several times to die quickly.
My mother was not in a position to choose.
That’s despicable.
Most Catholics expect to suffer a stint in purgatory after they die. It’s supposed to cleanse them for heaven. If they’re lucky, their survivors are offering prayers for their speedy discharge. However, if they suffered during their lives, that’s supposed to reduce their purgatorial penalties. Conclusion: Suffering is good!
I swear that this is considered sound Catholic reasoning from someone who was years in the belly of the beast.
damien75:
Yes and no. I’d characterize this particular ad as old school Catholic. Catholicism varies from place to place, in what they emphasize and what they don’t.
On this subject, Terry Pratchett Shaking Hands With Death.
The ALL.org site is truly repugnant. I can’t however, find that image anywhere on their site. Google turns it up in only two places, here and Pintrest. PZ, someone may be setting you up.
Daz @ 14, I cried my eyes out when that first came out and I watched it.
Inaji #16
Aye, me too.
damien75 —
The RCC would certainly like people to think so — it’s part of church doctrine.
I suspect, though, that this might be one of those cases (like contraception, abortion, marriage equality, divorce…) where Catholics seem content to ignore some of the more horrid official doctrines of their church. (And yet they keep their affiliation with the RCC; I can’t say I understand why.)
I thought that the whole point of Jesus’ suffering was that he went through it so WE wouldn’t have to…
Another pack of lies coated with theistic sugar.
As a young Catholic I heard “Offer it up” i.e. offer up your sufferings to Christ as an answer to every problem so suffering is indeed held as a positive good in Catholicism.
Alteredstory:
You’re mixing up various flavours of Christianity with Catholicism. Catholicism is very bound up in the ‘passion of Christ’, the prolonged torture and death of Christ. That’s the reason why Catholic churches all have very large, incredibly gruesome crucifix sculptures, so many depictions of the crucifix, rituals around the crucifixion, etc. Whatever suffering a person may be going through, it’s considered to be just a taste of what Christ went through, and if you accept that suffering with grace, you’ll break through into a transcendence, and of course, it will all be worth it when you die.
tsig:
:Memories: Yep. In my case, this often went hand in hand with “suffer in silence”. Pray about it, yes. Offer it up to Christ, yes. Talk about it? No. Complain? Oh, hell no.
Should an organisation which regards suffering as a positive thing be permitted to run hospitals? There’s a huge conflict there.
Many modern Catholic churches have toned down the sadomasochistic realism of the central crucifix. The nearest Catholic church in the university town where I live in has a serene, robe-draped Christ magically hovering in front of the cross. Old-church Catholics would curl their lips in disdain at it. Where’s the nudity and blood? It’s quite beyond the pale, however, if there’s no Christ figure at all. By definition, a crucifix (as opposed to a cross) is supposed to sport a human figure. Bare crosses are so Protestant!
Moggie:
As far as the RCC is concerned, there’s no conflict. Buying up and running hospitals is one of the ways left to them nowadays to exert control. It’s why women are still dying from an ectopic pregnancy, frinst.
A little while ago, my husband had a very bad ear infection, and out of desperation, he went to the hospital in Dickinson (where he works), which no one will go to unless they are desperate, because it’s Catholic. The doctor there refused to give him anything for pain. So, husband took time off from work and drove 3 hours to the secular hospital in Bismarck, where he was given antibiotics and pain meds.
Zeno:
Wow. That’s…almost unimaginable to me, growing up old school Catholic. My church, St. Anne’s in Santa Ana, Ca., had a highly detailed, life-size sculpture of Christ on the cross, on the wall behind the altar. It was very gory.
It must be my day for linking videos. All this talk of Altar-crosses reminded me of this Dave Allen classic.
They really are vicious, little shits, aren’t they.
If given the choice between suffering and not suffering, I’ll take not suffering every time. As the old saying goes: “That which doesn’t kill us makes us not dead.”
I’m a nurse from the Netherlands and I’m really, REALLY baffled by the things I read here. Also, working in community care, I quite regularly care for people on their deathbeds and their journey towards it: this is such utter callousness one cannot begin to fathom the level of brainrot needed for this kind thoughts to appear rational to a person. It’s beyond me by lightyears. One also wonders how they’re going to live through, say, minor surgery or a dentist appointment for that molar that has to go. Or can they deny Jesus that participation? I mean; the guy died for them, surely they’re not going to bitch and moan about a little pulling of the tooth, right?
As others have pointed out, there is often a large disconnect between church doctrine and the actual practice of the faithful.
A relative of mine recently died in the local Catholic hospital. She had suffered from dementia for years, and had come down with an infection for which she was taken to the ER. After assessing her situation, the physician on duty gently suggested that there was no point in prolonging her suffering with treatment, and recommended palliative care only. The staff was very caring & competent, and she died peacefully that evening, with family at her side, and a little morphine to ease the way.
I have sometimes had qualms about using the facility, because of its association with the Catholic Church, but it is a very good hospital, and I suspect that relatively few of the staff are actually Catholic.
Obviously, the situation may be quite different at other Catholic hospitals.
My country is generally pretending that we’re more Catholic than Vatican, but even we don’t have this kind of shit. Americans really love bringing things to extremes.
Don’t get me wrong, getting all hot and bothered about suffering is still somewhat popular, but not as much as I’m seeing described here. It’s very toned down. You complain about something and priest tells you that ‘it’s your cross to bear’, that kind of thing. But it’s used mostly as an explanation and really bad comfort for a sufferer, not as something desirable (usually).
Lithified Detritus:
I wish I could say that about the Catholic hospitals here. They are a bloody nightmare, and staffed with Catholics who happily put doctrine first. I have limited experience, having done one consult with a neurosurgeon at Saint Alexius, some years back. The neurosurgeon made a prolonged point of how, prior to surgery, he and the surgical team, along with other nurses, would have a prayer circle with me, and he would specifically place his abilities in god’s hands, etc., as if that was supposed to be some sort of comfort. I couldn’t get out of that place soon enough.
@stever
Sorry to tell you your ignorance is on display. But your ignorance is on display, and it’s really obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the subject. Bigotry always chooses the most extreme examples, calls them the norm and reject all evidence which does not conform to its prejudices.
Judaism, depending on whether you make your cut during Ancient times or more recent ones holds that either:
1) A few people like Enoch and Elijah end up in Heaven. Everyone else just dies and rots in the ground. The Torah says, in essence, make the most of life because it’s all you get. The best you can hope for is to be remembered fondly for a generation or two.
or
2) Everyone ends up in a good place with a few really blatant exceptions.
Suffering needlessly here-and-now doesn’t do jack. Seeking it out and denying yourself legal relief from pain is, well, pretty fucking stupid. Euthanasia isn’t permitted to observant Jews because neither suicide nor murder is legal, but palliative care is darned near a religious duty. The Hemlock Society might not approve, but it still doesn’t fit with your “Abrahamic Death Cult” strawman.
Islam, yes, the Great Bogeyman hiding under your bed ready to chop off your head and set off bombs and slice away little girls’ clits, also forbids suicide and homicide in general. So no assisted suicide. But leaving aside anti-drug crazies like Wahabi-influenced Saudi doctors you find a medical tradition which has always placed a high premium on minimizing needless suffering in patients. Even wine and the meat of forbidden animals was permitted if medically necessary according to many of the schools of jurisprudence. Agony doesn’t get you Brownie points with Allah unless you’re a crazy Persian Shiite commemorating the Battle of Karballa. And even then most Muslims think that’s insane.
Mohammed scolded his followers several times for inflicting pointless suffering on themselves. Even fasting and staying up late to pray more than a couple times a week got one of his best friends a chewing out along the lines of “If you’re suffering at night you can’t do your job during the day. And your wife has been complaining that you don’t pay enough attention to her. Now knock it off.” Doesn’t sound like they glorified unneeded pain and agony as an essential part of religious observance.
But since you make the distinction that it’s an Abrahamic thing let me give a couple examples from further East
Strict Buddhists believe that any sort of medication which dulls the senses is wrong. My wife’s grandmother didn’t use any during the months when she was dying in terrible pain from breast cancer. She had a religious duty to die with a clear mind. Her husband engaged in “active dying” which meant plenty of compassion and warmth from his friends and family but the same non-regimen of analgesics. And, of course, shortening the agony by ending this existence would have been unthinkable.
Plenty of Indian traditions do similar things. Yogic disciplines involving withdrawal of the senses might – not all, but certainly some – instruct you to experience agonizing sensations but (to hideously oversimplify) ignore or turn off the connection to them as a training exercise. Some Saivite traditions require serious adherents to seek out degradation, pain and so on in order to see beyond them to a greater reality and to mortify the body.
Various shamanistic traditions claim that periodic agony – religiously approved of course – including permanent self-mutilation and amputation are required for full spiritual development.
In short, your strawman is just that.
So, wait, Granny is selfishly stealing from herself?
I’m purposely NOT addressing the Christians. I’ve got strong prejudices about Dead Jew Onna Stick religion
Inaji @ 33 –
I have no doubt that some of them are hellholes, and I’m sorry to hear that you are saddled with one.
During the evening, we were visited by a chaplain, who appeared to be a protestant pastor, not a priest. He expressed his sympathy, and offered to pray with us if we wished. We declined, and he did not press the issue.
Part of his job entailed dealing with paperwork after her death, and he did this with kindness, and no mention of religion.
So I guess it is just a matter of the culture of the particular hospital. This is one of two large hospitals located in a good-sized university town, with a very diverse population, and I’m sure that makes a big difference.
Lithified Detritus @ 37, the Catholics have a had a good hold on medical facilities here in ND, but with the recent frenzy on the part of the RCC to buy up hospitals and clinics, it’s gotten worrisome. The one secular hospital/clinic was recently sold, and it was ‘hold your breath’ time until we found out it would still be secular.
I may be looking at spinal surgery very soon, and I really don’t want to be stuck with a surgeon who trusts more in a god than they do their own skill.
Why is there a squeaky in a dog toy? It’s because evolution has gifted a predatory animal to feel the most profound pleasure in the torment of its prey.
Roman Catholicism has confabulated a story to allow them to feel this savage pleasure without guilt by saying that this pleasure is god’s reward for piety.
If they haven’t already, catholic anaesthetists will figure out that it’s only necessary to administer a muscle relaxant without anaesthesia before an operation so that the
victimpatient can feel god’s grace.Then a roofie at the end so that he can’t remember and tell the authorities.
The “Passion” of Jesus Christ, to me, is a great argument for euthanasia. If you believe in that crap, of course.
Assuming the accounts in the Gospels are accurate (which of course, being sane, I don’t) his crucifixion was the most merciful on record. Probably because they were only performing the execution at the behest of the Jewish authorities, had nothing against Jesus themselves, and just wanted to get back to barracks before nightfall, the Romans hurried up the process considerably. First they “euthanized” him by breaking his legs, and when the process was still taking too long, they finished the job with a spear.
So if anyone wants to imitate the “passion” of Christ, you’d think euthanasia would be a sacrament.
@15
For what it is worth, the image itself without any message on it is just a stock image from getty:
Srry, I just thought preview was broken:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/an-old-woman-holding-a-younger-womans-hand-high-res-stock-photography/82113326
That’s just pain evil.
Eman Resu is it possible the picture was there but they took it down due to bad PR?
his crucifixion was the most merciful on record
Also, the least permanent. Though I think that part of the record was fudged.
kevinalexander @39
But there’s another side to it. Faith doesn’t always act as a comfort in times of despair. It can actually make it worse, by making one feel like it’s their own fault. If their faith were stronger, they wouldn’t be so depressed.
This pisses me off so much. I remember my terminally ill mother (breast metastasized to bone cancer) moaning in pain when the nurses were changing her sheets in the hospital. This is in spite of being heavily dosed with opiates and not even conscious . Anyone who says suffering is “noble” has never experienced it or seen it with a loved one. And if they have and still have that belief then the are horrible human beings.
I know nothing about the image, but the idea rang a bell. Here’s Wikipedia on “redemptive suffering:
I’m starting to think that the one tattoo I should have is, somewhere conspicuous, “NO CATHOLIC HOSPITALS.”
berylmaclachlan:
Or have it engraved on a medic alert bracelet.
Umm, excuse me, how I choose to go to my demise became your business when how who where?
It really is beyond me that these people think their opinion about how others choose to end their lives is the least bit of their business. The arrogance is galling.
Inaji @ 38 –
This demonstrates a serious problem – access to quality healthcare depends heavily not only on your insurance or lack of same, but on where you live. We need to fix that.
Best wishes for a positive outcome from your surgery.
I expect that the American Life League would suffer terribly if they or, even more so, the Catholic church, lost their tax exempt status. Since suffering is an opportunity to be closer to Jesus, something to be greatly desired per their statements, I think we should all try to bring the end of religious based tax exemptions about. For their own good, of course.
My dad suffering from moderate dementia and pneumonia was admitted to a Catholic hospital. The nurses kept nagging me to let him die. I was surprised and offended by this unwanted advice. They had only seen him when he was really sick. When he recovered a bit from the pneumonia the next day he was sitting up in bed and smiling at all the nurses. He lived another 4 years without another hospitalization. My advice is never leave a vulnerable loved one alone in a hospital. I imagine this hospital’s training manual teaches that those annoying sick people that appear there should be left to die.
They do realize that Jesus also suffered without modern medicine, modern plumbing, air conditioning, books, movies, sex, pork, shrimp, shoes, popes, or elasticated underwear, and that he walked almost everywhere, don’t they?
He possibly also suffered a little less during his crucifixion because the Roman soldiers gave him a drink, which either had vinegar (their electrolyte drink) or maybe an opiate. They definitely hustled him through in an afternoon, rather than spinning it out for days. And, lest we forget, a million or so other people were crucified by the Romans.
My wife just also said the bit about Jesus suffered so that we didn’t have to.
My dad isn’t in much pain, but I would like to end his suffering.
Me, I have a fierce pain in my ass, and God can have it.
In some ways, I’d say this message is progress: it demonstrates the covert agenda overtly. No “saving babies”, no “opposing death panels”, no “saving women from regret”, just flat out acknowledgement that what they want is for people to suffer. I suspect this message will not be as well received as those sending it were hoping.
From that suffering-is-good argument, we conclude that criminals do their victims a great service by making them suffer. So one ought to open up the jails and let criminals commit crimes on us, so that we can suffer.
But, Ipetrich, wouldn’t that be depriving the poor criminals of their well earned suffering? Remember, self-sacrifice is key. I’m sure that’s why Mother Theresa accepted analgesics when she was ill: she didn’t want to hog all the suffering to herself.
Don’t know if some-one above said something similar, but I always thought that the point of Jesus dying for our sins was so that we wouldn’t have to. “Sharing His passion” really seems to defeat the purpose.
Um, thanks for the offer but, um… no, thanks.
====
I saw that image somewhere yesterday. Somehow in context I assumed it was satire. I think maybe someone on “Christians for Michele Bachman FB page posted it in a comment so I assumed like the rest of C4MB posts it was satire. But I guess maybe it was sincere. … or not. I dunno.
Another ex-Catholic here. I can confirm this is very, very real. Catholicism in general is a huge, ugly sadomasochistic cult…and yes, the church I went to had a near-naked, strung-out, 10-foot, scarred Jesus hanging like a giant stick of God-jerky behind the altar.
The long history of torture and slow, horrible deaths confirms it. And I knew way too many people who were gleeful and prurient over what the martyrs (supposedly; much of that is fiction) suffered. And one of the charismatic Catholics who ran my CCD program took great delight in explaining in near-Furniss-level detail just what was waiting for us in Hell and how we would never, ever, ever get out. I am still completely messed up because of that, even though I know better.
I got the “offer it up” excuse too, though as a matter of getting other souls out of Purgatory. More and more, looking back on it, the whole thing sounds like prototypical Warhammer 40K fanfiction, complete with endless dimension of endless suffering.
I really have to wonder if Yahweh, if he existed, wouldn’t actually be some eldritch abomination that feeds on human suffering.
I’m sorry death cultists, but your precious nonexistent Jeebus’s “suffering” was a cakewalk compared to what a terminal cancer patient goes through in their final months of life. So please, shut the fuck up.
Anybody who genuinely does believe that suffering is a good thing ‘cuz of “sharing in Jesus’s passion” really needs a nice, warm, heaping bowlful of Luke 6:31: And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Why did the Church back every fascist dictatorship in the west in the twentieth century? During the military dictatorship in Argentina the current pope heard the confessions of the men who tortured and disappeared countless thousands of human beings and then he absolved them . The military were holy men, delivering god’s precious gift of suffering.
.
The Roman Empire never ended. The people who munched popcorn in the stands of the Colosseum while human lives were being hacked apart below are still with us.
Wow. That advert really, genuinely made me angry. What a bunch of callous, self-righteous fucking tosspots.
@Daz #28
Lol :) thank you for that; it’s absolutely hilarious. I am getting some strange looks off my colleagues because I spent the last five minutes giggling to myself.
Curious choice of image. It seems intended to illicit sympathy for an elderly person. I don’t understand why a Catholic would choose such an image. But it makes perfect sense if chosen by a satirist. And given Eman Resu at #15…
So they think what Jesus did wasn’t good enough? And they can do better? Whoa.
Valorizing suffering is actually fascist:
“Fascist aesthetics include but go far beyond the rather special celebration of the primitive to be found in The Last of the Nuba. More generally, they flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, “virile” posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.”
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm
I cannot say I am surprised. Maybe it is just me, but I have spent my whole life wading in catholicism and nothing in it is more blatant than the heartfelt, nagging unease of suspecting that other people may not be suffering enough, apart, of course, from the automatic hostility towards those who refuse to suffer. Perhaps some of You are familiar with Mother Theresa’s declarations of delight at the sight of human misery (last words: “Suffering is a gift from God”).
Can someone translate “Misery loves company” in Latin, please?
Thumper #64
You’re welcome. So many well-made points, in such a short time, and he makes it freakin’ hilarious to boot. Chap was a genius.
A long time ago, mrmagnificent and I went to some training given for group leaders in a Catholic lay organisation. (How an atheist like me finished up as a leader of such a group is a far too looooong story – involves a couple of very sad deaths.) One of the senior nuns who run the biggest local Catholic hospice came to give us some background info because we’d need it when dealing with some of the problems that people brought to us.
Their approach with patients coming into the facility was that everyone was offered the choice of “oblivion” rather than suffering. If they so chose, the hospice would ensure that they were given enough morphine and other necessary medications – constantly – to ensure that they never felt any pain and never woke up once they’d made that choice. The staff would care for them, and for their family, until they died. Very civilised and a very humane way to avoid the issue of euthanasia ever being raised. I expect that the doses of morphine they are obliged to use would hasten the deaths of many such patients but – even though we never discussed it – I’m pretty sure they’d run ye olde “double effect” justification for that if ever they were challenged on it.
Anyone else note the incredibly conspicuous marriage ring on the elderly person’s hand?
If all those John 3:16 waving football fans have taught us nothing else, and they haven’t, it’s that god gave his son a 120th trimester abortion. Planned Parenthood and Pontius Pilate share the same initials. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
As I always say: this kind of bizarro morality makes God look less like an all-loving ball of light and more like a cross between Azathoth and Morgoth.
@vaiyt:
Not quite.
I do hope that the next series of posters use the original John Byrne art.
Does this remind anyone else of Rip Torn screaming, “Arr wants your children!” in Beastmaster?
I was livid when I saw this. My BH (who has just observed 10 years with ALS – some of you may remember when I threw his wake a couple years ago), had the electrical systems in his heart fail a few weeks ago and his choice was death (he has been dead twice already and it’s no big deal, according to him), or a pacemaker. He was reluctant to have the pacemaker, as he knew it would give him a constant heartbeat, but gave the go ahead when promised by his doctors that when he felt his quality of life was insufficient to want him to continue, he could give the order to turn it off. Just hold a phone to his heart, and the programmer would shut it down. He can choose to go peacefully, and he can decide the hour of his going. This gave him great peace of mind, as suffering is not on his agenda. Since then, he has been septic, spent a month in rehab, then had his metbolism go crazy. He has been stabilized and is due to come home tomorrow, feeling actually pretty good. I don’t know how he does it. But he is in control, and that is a good thing. Catholics are monsters.
@45
It could be that they took it down because of PR…although with all the despicable things on that site I can’t imagine bad PR would bother them. In the end, I’m just paranoid enough to think the cracker crowd might feed PZ something that they could later try to use against him.
No one’s mentioned Mother Teresa yet?
In the US, it seems the only people who have the right to decide when to end people’s lives are cops and the CEOs of HMOs. As with abortion, the far right is obsessed with controlling other people’s lives and bodies, especially when it’s profitable to do so, whether financially or politically.
——————–
Dutch politician Els Borst has died of (as yet) unknown causes. Borst was the one who fought for the legal right to euthanasia, for self-determination of when life ends.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26133523
——————–
DanDare (#79) –
Are you referring to the “Stop kissing!” story? I quoted it in Ophelia Benson’s post on this item.
The religious are also against prenatal testing and selective abortions of defective fetuses that will die soon after birth because it is too easy. They want the mother to suffer through child birth and the family to suffer while the baby dies, http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/30/604631/fatal-fetal-defect-counselors-brace-for-influx-of-families-after-arizonas-abortion-ban/
From the link:
FFS the law was not intended to do good, it was meant to hurt people the lawmakers don’t like.
The clearest proof that god is imaginary is that he conforms to the emotional needs of the person who imagines him so if the believer is a sadistic moral retard, so is his god.
Monitor note:
Please remember that ableist insults are not appropriate on Pharyngula:
The Rules.
This is a a serious question. I am an older fellow and sometimes use inappropriate language. Is there somewhere a list of words that I am not to use?
‘Tis pretty straightforward, kevinalexander. Any word that is an insult based upon the idea that a particular class of people (women, LGBT people, people of a specific race, fat people, etc etc etc) are bad/lesser so that the insult is that the insultee is akin to them is taboo here.
For example, calling a man a “pussy” is taboo because “pussy” is a slang term for “vulva,” and also carries a connotation of “weak,” which therefore equates vulvas (and, by extension, people with vulvas) and weakness.
OK, I get it and I apologize. I’ve been thinking about it today and I realize the mistake that I made. I was using the word in the literal sense and it didn’t occur to me right away that it was also used to hurt people.
Let me restate my point.
The clearest proof that god is imaginary is that he conforms to the emotional needs of the person who imagines him so if the believer is sadistically morally undeveloped then so is his god.
I honestly couldn’t figure out what the motive was for anti-choicers to oppose euthanasia. I mean, it doesn’t even have anything to do with punishing women for sex, which is clearly the basis for most of their stances. But now it’s clear: suffering.
God = Stormwing apparently.