A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.
Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”
The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.” So the rowboat went on.
Then a motorboat came by. “The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”
To this the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the motorboat went on.
Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”
To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the helicopter reluctantly flew away.
Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”
To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”
Rowboats, helicopters etc. in a flood, prima facia, seem to be more in character as a deliverance from a natural disaster. My interpretation of that parable is that this man has a vainglorious hope to be saved via an undeniable miracle of mystical, luminous teleportation so he can point to it and go "Look, see! I was right all along".
Sure. But how we define "abomination" comes down to what we're used to.
Is taking a cheap statin that will improve your length of life subverting God's will?
If we're saying something is resource intensive and you don't give much back to the world in comparison to the resources used to prolong your life, that's an economic / purely utilitarian argument.
If a person believes scripture is only a cultural document and not divine revelation then that would be the definition of abomination. I have to personally disagree with that assessment.
>Is taking a cheap statin that will improve your length of life subverting God's will?
It could be, depending on what it means in the bigger picture. I believe we know very little of God's will in any given moment because of how fallen we are. We benefit from being humble and willing to submit to it, using our provided minds well but never allowing them to be the final authority.
>that's an economic / purely utilitarian argument
I place economics and utilitarianism as a subordinate agent to the higher principles. A utilitarian framework is one of many that can help me see a stronger meaning in letting someone else have the resources, and accepting death if it appears to be the due time for it anyways.
> If a person believes scripture is only a cultural document and not divine revelation then that would be the definition of abomination. I have to personally disagree with that assessment.
That's not what I claimed. But to claim something is "abomination" based on your own personal recoil from it isn't very useful as a moral framework.
> and accepting death if it appears to be the due time for it anyways.
What's the "due time", though? Biblical figures lived for hundreds of years, supposedly. And it takes extraordinary efforts to have as low of an infant mortality rate as we do.
Surely the heroics in the NICU are how we move the time of death from what would happen on its own the most, and some of the more expensive medical care given. Hey, many of those babies will never repay to society the resources they consume.
What you seem to be saying is that it comes down to some mix between a reflexive judgment and cold utilitarianism.
I said that something could possibly be an abomination, that being a human being with pig guts installed in place of their human guts. Is that my own personal recoil? I don't know 100% it seems to me that there's room to discuss how a "chimeric" transplant could symbolically be that. My entire purpose for mentioning it as such was ultimately to point to how a non materialist viewpoint _could_ point away from taking the operation even where strict religious dietary laws are not at play.
>What's the "due time", though?
Determined on a very personal level, not something I can prescribe here and now. I've done my best in these comments to point to the sort of meanings that may help me decide that for myself, but the responders don't seem to be terribly pleased with them.
>What you seem to be saying is that it comes down to some mix between a reflexive judgment and cold utilitarianism.
No, those are just some of the tools I have, the ones accessible to me right now.
Anything that tampers with nature taking its course on its own could be an abomination. Like putting blood from another being into an infant and hooking them up to crazy machines and causing pain to the infant to save their life.
Of course, any failure to save someone's life which is readily saved could also be an abomination.
It all comes down to what one weighs as important.
> even where strict religious dietary laws are not at play.
Most strict dietary laws would allow one to eat the item, or have it put into your body, to survive. The systems with these doctrines largely have exceptions for literally millennia, because we understand that people being able to choose to live trumps artificial restrictions. (Indeed, some reach further to say that extending ones life in violation of these laws is not just permissible, but a duty).
> Determined on a very personal level, not something I can prescribe here and now.
It's fair to say "eh, I've had a good run-- why go further?" I've argued as such here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29432560 One's religious views are even a reasonable way to weigh things.
But I do think that once you reach beyond, to say that readily available care that has become routinely used to extend life (like a pacemaker) might be far outside of God's will and that this is a reasonable reason to reject it in itself-- and we can hardly ask God what He wants-- I think the argument becomes dubious.
That is, dying in infancy was the norm throughout human history. The interventions we have tamper with that outcome more than anything else. And at this point implanting a pacemaker is an outpatient procedure and on the low-scale of the medical intervention ladder.
You've made a good point about how some of the other posters are feeling. I have difficulty coming up with another word I could have used to communicate what I meant that could have had a different effect. Even without using a strong word, people can be eager and are sometimes trained to perceive the slightest denigration against their choices. Given that my faith is generally seen in the present context with a high degree of disdain and contempt, I've grown pretty callous to needing to endure being treated with uncivility, particularly online, in order to speak. The only remedy for it I find is to cultivate a forgiveness of other people for their speech, even if I feel a need to challenge their speech's contents.
>But I do think that once you reach beyond, to say that readily available care that has become routinely used to extend life (like a pacemaker) might be far outside of God's will and that this is a reasonable reason to reject it in itself-- and we can hardly ask God what He wants-- I think the argument becomes dubious.
I believe that monk made the right decision for himself, and for someone else it may be correct to get the pacemaker, maybe they aren't personally ready to go, maybe they have an opportunity to take care of others. Understanding exactly what is and is not God's will in a general way, and also in particular situations requires a level of intense participation I'm not able to just go out and do right here and now. I can see what you mean, to say it seems dubious. If I were saying we could never know, it would be equivalent to saying "we're all blind, and feeling with our hands is wrong, you've got to just do nothing forever or you'll die". I do think an understanding of His will is accessible to us on a step by step basis, where we can see in front of ourselves only a few "meters", and cannot rationally construct entire argument chains that give us a perfect road map for 37 moves into the future.
>Most strict dietary laws would allow one to eat the item, or have it put into your body, to survive. The systems with these doctrines largely have exceptions for literally millennia, because we understand that people being able to choose to live trumps artificial restrictions. (Indeed, some reach further to say that extending ones life in violation of these laws is not just permissible, but a duty).
Yes, other comment chains in this section do a very good job explaining this.
I don't think it's that hard.
"I can agree with the spirit in which the monk made his choice. Personally, going so far as to include parts from another species in a key location in my body: that would make me really strongly consider that my intended lifespan is at its end" --- or whatever thinks you capture the meaning better.
People still might want to argue with you about it, for various reasons. But it lacks that visceral judgment.
In turn, you've received a lot of thoughtful replies and a few pieces of visceral judgment in return (delusional, etc). I don't know if you'd have gotten the harsher judgments if you'd avoided the charged language yourself.
> Given that my faith is generally seen in the present context with a high degree of disdain and contempt, I've grown pretty callous to needing to endure being treated with uncivility, particularly online, in order to speak. The only remedy for it I find is to cultivate a forgiveness of other people for their speech, even if I feel a need to challenge their speech's contents.
I don't believe I've been uncivil-- and I don't see anything too untoward here. Some other people are out of line with the "delusional" comment.
But, you're the one taking the hard moral stance and using language that invalidates other choice.
> where we can see in front of ourselves only a few "meters"
Well, if we can only see in front of ourselves slightly, perhaps it's time to be a little more forgiving that other people may see it completely differently from you.
It may be less difficult for you. I don't think it would be out of line to say you have been an exemplar of the civility the HN rules promote.
"Do as thou wilt" itself is an absolutist codification. Somebody, somewhere, has made an invalid choice at some time in their life. I'd like to be optimistic and say also that at some point, just about every single person out there has said or done something very valid and good, and when they do it acts as a pointer towards what is good and edifies. From my own experience, the sinking feeling of realizing some of my own choices were invalid lead me to some self improvements that I'm really grateful for... So I'm convicted that avoiding the "bad feel" of invalidation would have been an unwise compass.
Still, it's a real hazard to come on too strong. Maybe I'll be able to take what you've said on board to develop a more effective way to communicate perspectives, or maybe it's an inevitable diatribe circus - time will have to tell.
Just to augment my previous response, and clarify this specific thing:
You may not be attempting to apply your morality and your moral judgments to others.
But the second that you claim that medical choices that someone else might reasonably choose to make are an "abomination"-- you're framing things in a way that people will reasonably interpret as judgment and wanting to prohibit-- or at least denigrate-- those choices by others.
Or, viewed another way... If an obvious opportunity at reasonable safety is there, what gives one the right to demand that God show up to perform a dramatic miracle?
Everything has become for me a layered network of symbolic meaning. The diet is about resisting gluttonous impulses and building up my body via natural means towards an ideal intended by the Creator. High blood pressure medicine may be an enactment of an archetype of a good doctor, or not, depending on how the medicine itself interacts with this network of meanings.
Lol...the structure of your body is "contaminated"/changed all the time. You are living in an continuously changing ecosystem. The clothes you've been wearing all this time changed your body structure. You are pretty much a byproduct/result of the ecosystem. I'm sorry to disappoint you but your faith is a "change" as well given by people around you. The key(word )that you've been looking for is "delusional". Find its meaning and it will set you free the way the creator intended
The change brought about in my faith is a divine change given by the Divine Persons from outside this temporal universe who love me! Yes! A salvific change! To those who cannot see this light, it understandably does look like a delusion, and I don't blame them for seeing it that way, that's part of their own personal life.
People are bing killed and tortured today as well for various reasons(i.e "god" doesn't like their orientation or behaviour). See also Rohingya genocide. Do something for these people and I'm sure that your life will be more worthy by any ethical standard than if you don't eat pork or whatever dietary/religious convictions you follow. Maybe you even become a "saint" for them.
You don't need historical events to build a way of life. History is happening right now.
If I've at all discouraged you from treating other people like this in the future at the cost of a few piddly little hacker news upvote points, I take this as a massive victory all around. It's a win for you too cause you might be a little calmer in future.
This logic only seems to work if you believe the pacemaker is more powerful than your god’s will.
If you mean that it is literally too weak to accomplish this, then this doesn’t fit typical conceptions of deities.
If you mean that it’s more of a preference than something he is insisting upon, then if a person chooses to extend their lifespan it isn’t going against your god’s will.
Is there another meaning I’m missing?
So, pretty much everyone who thinks about this and has a faith has to come up with some compromise. E.g. that there is a deity that has permitted humans free will to make their own decisions and that various bad things happen as a result of that free will / those choices.
I'm not simply anti-medicine for the sake of being anti-medicine. Rather, medicine is itself a powerful tool that needs to fit into the teleology of my worldview. One that I could misuse if I am not considerate of what its use does and why I'm using it.
Then I'd want to think about what it symbolizes. Is it really so irrational to just let my body die when my God-given guts fail instead of depending on the hands of man to possibly convert my body into an abomination just to keep me alive here longer?
I read in a book about a monk refusing to get a pacemaker, saying "Imagine, God is calling me up to Heaven because it's my time, and this machine holds me down here on earth!" and while I may not be a monk, his decision seemed fairly wise to me. So I already have an example of a devout faithful man eschewing a life extending operation that involved no replacement of human with animal parts.