Why do atheist euthanasia proponents consider nothingness preferable to suffering? [closed]

Question

I have heard some atheists support euthanasia, on the grounds that death is preferable to agony. But I don't understand this; if there is no afterlife, death isn't a relief. It's true nothingness, the deceased won't experience painlessness, they won't experience anything at all. To me, this seems like euthanasia doesn't "put them out of their misery", it just hides their misery from us. It doesn't benefit the dead at all, only the living.

Euthanasia proponents seem to be stating the following:

Agony < Death < Bearable life

Why, if there is no afterlife, isn't the hierarchy this:

Death < Agony < Bearable life

I'm an atheist, and this is the conclusion I reached. I had emergency surgery several years ago. I remember laying in the operating room as they prepped me for surgery. I remember the anesthesia technician hooking up my IV to the drugs that would render me unconscious, and then the next moment (from my point of view anyways), I was in the recovery room. I had no sense that time had passed or any memory from during the surgery. It seemed like one instant I was in the OR, the next I was in the recovery room. I think that is what death is like, except there's no recovery room afterwards. Just infinite nothingness. I can't imagine anything scarier. I say this as someone who has dealt with disability for my whole life, chronic pain for about a decade, and as someone who has watched multiple family members die from horrible diseases.

I think this life is all we get, and I don't see how you could ever want to cut it short, no matter how bad it gets.

Answer 1

I think you have the logic of this backwards. In theism (and some other religious doctrines) life continues after the death of the physical body. They believe euthanasia is a negative act that can impact that ongoing spiritual life in unpleasant ways, so they have a motivation to endure even the worst suffering during their physical lives. Atheists do not believe in life after death, they have no paradigm of ex post mortis salvation, so perpetuating a life in agony would be (to them) a meaningless and perverse act.

Answer 2

I think it's important to note that in cases where this is considered, death is already approaching. It isn't a choice between life and death. It's a choice between dying now or going through a few months of agony and then dying. To most people those months of agony are quite undesirable, where they will be in terrible pain and without hope of recovery. To put it in your terms:

(Agony + Death) < Death < Agony < Bearable life

You may disagree with that conclusion, but the only thing requested by proponents is that the person suffering should be able to chose themselves whether there's any meaning in suffering further. Since atheists have no religious reasons to believe the victim will suffer in some afterlife based on how they die, they'll tend to support giving people freedom of choice over forcing them to live in pain against their will.

Answer 3

I have personally known two friends who, when faced with incurable cancer, elected to end their own lives at a time and in circumstances of their own choosing.

Both made this choice when it was abundantly obvious that death was near and inescapable, and their suffering had become unbearable. In one case, the victim's pain was so great that the sheer quantity of drugs necessary to relieve the pain was sufficient to render him unconscious. His choice was between unconsciousness and unbearable pain. In the other case, the quantity of morphine required to allow him to breathe was shutting down all his other bodily functions. His choice was between drowning slowly in the fluids filling his lungs or having his body simply stop functioning.

Both these people took their own lives to end their suffering and not to hide it from anyone. Until one has witnessed such things first-hand, one is in my opinion unqualified to philosophize on this topic. Why? I furnish the following analogy.

Imagine one has a certain set of views regarding the drag produced during the development of trans-sonic air flow over a body having a certain shape. But in your life, you have never watched that process occurring via Schlieren photography of a body in a trans-sonic wind tunnel, subjected to such an airflow- which is the standard process within the field for visualizing the flow.

Nonetheless, you assert your right to possessing those views, and express them in a forum in which there happen to be professional aircraft designers present. In the resulting exchange of comments, you are criticized for holding your views because they are, to use the jargon, "unphysical" (which translates as "meaningless crap").

Then you defend your right to hold any view you wish to on the topic because that right is in no way dependent on knowing anything in particular about the field of trans-sonic airflow.

But what does that get you?

Answer 4

Where's the illogic in preferring (1) not to exist to (2) existing and suffering in agony? It's true, from an atheist standpoint, that after euthanasia I will not know that that I have ceased to exist and that I am no longer suffering in agony. But again, where's the illogic in preferring (3) not knowing that that I have ceased to exist and that I am no longer suffering in agony to (4) existing and suffering in agony?

A minor caution: it's logically possible for an atheist to believe in survival after death, i.e. an afterlife, and even (not at all the same but an extra condition) immortality. Survival of death may be for a finite time, not so immortality. The only thing an atheist can't logically believe in is the survival of death or immortality courtesy of God or gods. But an atheist might, for example, accept (I don't) the cogency of the first, two-stage argument for immortality in Plato's Phaedo (70C-72E, 72E -77D) which does not rely on the existence of God or the gods. There is also the Buddhist tradition, which posits survival without assuming the divine.

Answer 5

Atheists supporting euthanasia might argue the following:

• Death is inevitable.

  Living simply for the sake of trying to avoid death is illogical.

• Death is timeless / infinite.

  Dying tomorrow instead of today wouldn't "extend" the nothingness after death.

  When you die everything just stops.

• Death is neutral.

  There is no joy or suffering in nothingness.

• At some point life may no longer be worth experiencing.

  Some people just think at some point the rest of the life would no longer be worth experiencing.

  Looking forward at all the likely joy and suffering they may still experience, they came to the conclusion there's too much suffering and not enough joy. So it's ultimately not worth it.

  This may not quite make sense to you, but I don't think this can be explained beyond this. It's simply their opinion.

  Since death is inevitable, timeless and neutral, ending their life isn't choosing death over life, it's choosing less life.

---

Or:

• Death is "the great unknown".

  This still uses the last point above, but instead of considering death to be nothingness, it is considered to be simply unknown.

  Ending their life would now instead be choosing the unknown over suffering.

Answer 6

Death is inevitable.

Dying in indignity and pain is not.

If you have never experienced the indignity of lingering, painful death I understand why you would not see what is wrong with your relative value equation for some people.

If you really want to understand more volunteer to visit a terminal hospice to do good things like read to the people or whatever you feel able to do that is wanted.

You will be making the world better and learning at the same time.

Answer 7

In addition to some excellent answers I would question a fundamental part of your question that assumes there is a hierarchy from the atheistic point of view. Death is not seen ubiquitously as better than suffering but that individuals are granted the choice free from judgement or punishment.

The theistic point of view, in some religions, may state effectively that life is better than death regardless and to reject it is therefore punishable.

The atheistic view maintains choice not a given hierarchy of life, death and agony (I.e., life is agony but you don't have to end it, or you can). The theistic view maintains belief/faith over choice (I.e., life is agony but you must continue it).

Answer 8

These are my neccessary and sufficient conditions for suicide. I'm a two-pronged atheist (Any Holy Books are non-predictive, inconsistent nonsense; the Standard Model is the best description of reality so far - there is no God effect).

Warning: Absolute honesty is required.

1. My life is unacceptably bad.
2. There is insufficient (or No) hope of improvement.
3. I have no responsibilities I'm unwilling to abandon.

YMMV

Beyond this point it's an engineering problem.

Remember what it was like before your parents met? Nonexistence. Death is like that.

Answer 9

Animal Suffering

If you were walking through the forest, and you came upon a wild animal that was seriously injured but might not die for several days, do you think it is ethically superior to euthanize the animal right then and there, or let it live out its last days in agony and terror? What options do you think the animal might prefer, if it could express them?

It might seem that the question above is unanswerable, but it is not. While this is but one example, do you believe it to be an exception, or could you imagine any number of random replacements might exhibit the same behavior?

Human Suffering

I think humans and animals are more alike than different when it comes to their preferences on suffering and death. Where they begin to differ is in the matter of hope. When any creature faces the prospect of indefinite suffering with no relief until death, then hope is extinguished, and just from a utilitarian point of view, death has higher utility (because of the negative value of suffering combined with the absence of any positive-value experiences anticipated). However, humans have a kind of hope which other animals do not: the possibility that science or technology might relieve their suffering in their own lifetime, especially given the increasing pace of progress in our times.

Furthermore, humans have a variety of mechanisms by which to mitigate suffering, which animals do not. I think the combination of these factors explains the difference between your experience, and that of the people described by niels et al. While you have undoubtedly experienced more suffering than the average person, you have not described said suffering as debilitating. The fact that you are asking this question on StackExchange is a testament to your ability to function. If, on the other hand, suffering consumed all of your attention all day long, every day, for months at a time, I think your perspective would be quite different.

Answer 10

I don't know if anyone can really justify their relative level of fear of death and pain.

But since we're looking at this from an atheist viewpoint, we should consider the effect of evolution. There's nothing intrinsically scary about the concept of nothingness, or a big spider, or the roar of a tiger. Whether we find them scary or not is probably based on social cues, on our own life experiences, and on whether people in the past who were prone to fear similar things were able to survive and reproduce.

One possible attitude to death is, "Just infinite nothingness. I can't imagine anything scarier." Thinking that way is, for the most part, an evolutionary advantage. It prevents you from killing yourself the first time you feel unhappy and have the opportunity.

Another way of looking at death is, "I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it – you've got to go sometime." (Gerry O'Driscoll, on The Dark Side of the Moon) For the most part, this seems like an evolutionary disadvantage. But risking your life (for example, to protect your family) is often rewarded, so excessive fear of death isn't always useful.

I suspect that the most advantageous trait is the ability, based on your situation, to flip between: (a) thinking that death is the worst thing possible, and (b) accepting that death is inevitable so you shouldn't worry about it too much.

If one's life still has value, of course one should want to live as long as possible. But it's not impossible that the situation will change, and death will no longer seem so terrifying.

Ultimately we can't be sure how we'll feel in the future. One person might think, "No amount of pain could ever make me wish I was dead." Then later they could think, "I was wrong! This pain is a worse than I ever imagined was possible. I could never learn to tolerate this." Hopefully this doesn't happen too often...

More commonly, a person will think, "I want the option of a painless death, because if (some bad thing) happened my life would no longer be worth living." And then that bad thing happens, and they usually find out it's not as bad as they thought it would be: "I'm paraplegic, but I just feel lucky to be alive." There's more evolutionary benefit to fear of disability than there is to despair.

People will fear death a little, or a lot. Some people will change their minds, and others won't. We just have to accept that's how they feel, because we have little power to change it.

Answer 11

Your example of anesthesia during surgery is a good one. For most people, the trade off between the suffering incurred during surgery versus giving up a few hours of consciousness is an easy one: they take the anesthetic. This is a rational choice that people are making that non-experience is better than a bad experience. So you could naively continue this train of thought inductively on for infinity if you expected the rest of your existence to be at such a level of suffering.

There are a few objections to this simple argument, but I argue that they are all resolvable.

Objection 1: There are diminishing returns on additional suffering.

I don't entirely disagree with this point, I think people tend to adjust to bad conditions and can learn to be happy even in objectively horrible situations. However, there a few considerations. Many people who choose euthanasia are terminally ill. This leaves little time to adjust to the poor conditions under which they are living, so what might be a relatively brief period of suffering for someone with their whole life ahead of them is actually a life consuming amount of time.

Walking into conjecture territory, I suspect that the diminishing returns for some conditions bottom out at somewhere nonzero. That is to say, even though it gets better it doesn't necessarily get good or even bearable.

Objection 2: This only applies to finite timescales, but death is infinite.

As I understand this objection, a terminal value against permanent nonexistence. As such, it is difficult to argue against without discussing more meta-ethical considerations.

Fortunately for my argument, we all die eventually anyway. Dying now instead of later is still only a finite loss of consciousness similar to going under anesthetic (though generally longer). When the transhumanists achieve immortality or if the theists end up being right about the afterlife, it will become more important to discuss whether it is a good terminal value or not.

Objection 3: There is a moral difference between being unconscious and being dead.

I'm going to unpack this one with care, because this is moral rats nest.

In one sense, this is trivially true. A person who is unconscious will eventually wake up. This has some obvious moral implications, like it being okay to bury a dead person underground but not an unconscious person.

There is also the question of whether they are experientially different. This is true in the case of sleeping, since most people dream. Under anesthetic people rarely remember dreaming. In the end, I do not think this is an important distinction because people would choose anesthetic whether or not they experienced anything (as demonstrated by the apparent lack of sensation)

A relevant question is whether it is acceptable to pull the plug on brain dead individuals. I don't know if I have ever heard anyone say that this is unacceptable, but YMMV.

In the end I don't have an irrefutable counterargument against this, but I fund it unconvincing.

Objection 4: Anesthesia is helps the future, not just the present.

There are two ways to go with this.

One way is the argument that even temporary pain has lasting effects, so preventing pain in the short term enables greater happiness in the future. While this is not a contradiction, I do not think it matches reality. Consider the choice between taking an anesthetic so you experience nothing, and undergoing surgery without anesthetic but taking an amnesiac after so that you forget the experience (for the sake of the thought experiment, assume it works perfectly). It is a rare person who would choose the second one, even though by the assumption of the argument it ought to be strictly better.

The other line of argument is that being under anesthetic makes surgery less likely to go wrong. This is actually actively false for many surgeries, and anesthetic increases the risk of complication (this was especially true in the past). This fails to pass a reality check.

Conclusion: If you accept that undergoing anesthesia is a rational decision, it directly follows that euthanasia can also be rational, unless you strongly value existence in a vegetative state.

Answer 12

I think you are wrong that "atheists support euthanasia". (taken as a large general group).

Instead, atheists support the right to self-determination of ones own fate, which includes euthanasia.

The situation is not merely living in agony, it is being forced to live in agony without hope of recovery within ones own body, against ones own will. I don't think I need to present an argument why that is not desirable.

Some atheists (and theists, for that matter) fear their own death enough that they would suffer rather than face oblivion. But not many would force that choice on to others.

If an individual chooses to live in agony to stave off the nothingness of the void, that is their choice.
If a different individual chooses to accept and hasten the inevitable by a final act of self determination, that is their choice.

But the way you describe it, that there are proponents of euthanasia who believe that death is the "right" choice at a pre-determined level of discomfort, just doesn't exist in the real world.

Its about individual self-determination, not death-versus-pain.

Answer 13

The foundation of the basis of euthanasia views is that a patient should have a right to decide on his own medical sustenance or his assisted end of life, if he is incapacitated while suffering an incurable condition which promises them an agonizing or miserable end to their life.

The foundation of the view is not that suffering is better or worse that relinquishing life. It is that the patient who is experiencing the condition be master of their own fate.

Take a 97 year old lady that falls on her head in the bathroom and has serious brain damage and migraines. In 2020, doctors will force feed her to and medecite to make her heart beat for as long as possible. Whether or not it is a religiously "right thing" thing to do is for you to decide. Those are some of the very many scenarios and conditions to which atheists accept euthanasia better than religious people.

Answer 14

This is a situation most pet owners face. Eventually a pet reaches a point where it cannot enjoy its life due to injury or illness, and the choice universally is to euthanise it. Not only is this standard for pet ownership, but failing to euthanise a suffering pet is directly considered animal abuse.

Animals are incapable of long-term thought and abstract concepts. They cannot have a meaningful life in the mind which allows them to find satisfaction regardless of pain or disability. Humans are able to, but the degree to which this is possible will depend on the person and their situation. You and I cannot say that that choice is not correct for the person who takes it.

Life involves actively living. If all you are doing is enduring, unable to do anything else, and waiting for death, for many people that isn't living. If you're able to do some things anyway, then perhaps you don't make that decision. But if you're just trapped in a torture cell of your own flesh, unable to do anything, what is the purpose to continue living and enduring the pain? If we euthanise animals when they're at that point, why is the same logic not acceptable for you with people?

More interestingly though, logically it's clear that your fear of "nothingness" is not based on anything real. I don't doubt it scares you, but it comes from after-the-fact imagination and not anything which actually happened to you. You did not experience "nothingness" under anaesthetic, and you were not scared during it. In fact you had no experiences at all under anaesthetic. Your imagination ran wild when you woke up in an unfamiliar situation, sure - but as you say, after death you aren't waking up. The imaginative view of "infinite nothingness" is only frightening if you think you might be aware of it. But you're dead, so you can't be. (Assuming no afterlife, of course.)

Like people who are afraid of spiders (I'm in the UK, and we have no spiders that can hurt you) it's a very normal fear, but that doesn't make it rational. So your viewpoint is not going to be the same as the majority who don't suffer from that irrational fear. Which is fine, until you say "everyone else is wrong". :)

Answer 15

This is my second answer.

A man is dying and all the higher ups want is philosophy.

I think there should be no philosophical conflict if both sides can come up with medication that puts people to into a coma where they feel no pain. Euthanaisa proponents get to end the pain while they are in coma. Opponents to euthanasia still have their loved ones living until either they die or they get a cure.

This answer is not meant to be a guarantee that we will be able to do this. It is practical philosophy in the service of the Hypocratic Oath.

Answer 16

I think the idea of "infinite nothingness" does not make sense. It's quite reasonable given what we know, to assume that we are algorithms processing information. Despite all the unknowns about what consciousness really is and how the brain gives rise to it, it's reasonable to assume that it's the processing of information that gives rise to all our experiences at any given moment. This then includes our sense of identity.

So, if you are in pain, then the fact that it is you who is feeling this pain is the the result if all the processes that are implemented by your brain. If somehow your brain would by some miracle, process the signals in the way as how my brain would do that if I were suffering from the illness you are suffering from, then this would give rise to me experiencing that pain instead of you. This thought experiment then does raise the side issue of how to deal with two copies of a person, but let's stay clear of that issue here.

So, what is really going on when I'm experiencing something, is that there happens to exist a brain that's running an algorithm that processes information in a certain way, consistent with this being me. If I were to decide to euthanize myself because I'm in agony, then this guarantees that there won't be states where I experience existing in a similar state where I also know about having taken the decision to euthanize myself in the past and having gone through the euthanization process.

This programmed self-destruction preventing a physical brain to naturally exists that renders me in such a state, is similar to there not being versions of me or other persons in states whose existence would be inconsistent for any other physical reason. For example, one can imagine brain states rendering a given person to experience living in paradise. This person would experiences eternal well being without having to expend any effort for this.

But unfortunately, it's unlikely that such a person exists in such a state. The reason is then that the way the laws of physics work are unlikely to yield a brain that would render the person in such a state. This unlikeliness is the result of evolutionary path toward such brains being blocked a long time ago in our evolutionary history. For example children born who can't feel pain tend to not live very long.

So, the result of Nature doing its business is not an "eternal nothingness" for things that don't exist, rather it are the things that do exist.

Answer 17

No one who has ever experienced intractable pain could ever ask this question. Beyond a certain point, pain is in fact unbearable. I would never suggest that anyone undergo torture voluntarily or otherwise, but the fact is people experiencing continuous torture will in fact beg for death. The question really has nothing to do with any theist viewpoint. To say, "I don't see how you could ever want to cut it short, no matter how bad it gets", merely suggests you do not know how truly excruciating "bad" can get. At some point, one simply can no longer bear it. You say you have lived with chronic pain, and I have no evidence to suggest I should disbelieve you, but I also live with chronic pain, and if I were not able to alleviate the level of pain to the extent I can, I would no longer be living.

I am an atheist, also, but I am not afraid of dying. You say it scares you. OK. The fact I am not afraid of death does not mean I will choose to die the moment living becomes uncomfortable. Not being afraid of death does not mean I do not want to live. I do. At the point the pain in my life becomes stronger than my will to live, with no means to alleviate it, then I will choose to die. I feel certain that at some point, which I sincerely wish you never reach, the pain in your life could become far stronger than your fear. At that point I stringly suggest you would indeed choose death.

Meanwhile, I hope you can overcome your fear of death. It might possibly have the effect of keeping you alive longer, but living with such a fear will impact the quality of your life, and it will do so more and more the longer you live. The end result is likely to be a truly miserable death filled not only with incredible pain but terror, as well.

Answer 18

This is an utilitarian-rational answer, which might not reflect the truth (actually, I don't agree with it). I just want to point out that under that paradigm, the ordering is "rational".

Assume the current value of an individual' utility of being alive ("happiness"), denoted by U, is given by the sum of the expected value of every period t's happiness, u_t, between now and the time of death. "Expected value" reflects the fact that the individual does not know the future. (for simplicity, let us remove discounting from the problem, which reflects the fact that the value of something now is much greater than the value of the same thing 10 years ahead). So, the value of being alive is:

Let's also assume the individual has a certain threshold level of discomfort below which his/her utility is negative (ut<0). Above it is positive (ut>0). Importantly, this threshold is subjective, and already incorporates moral dimensions, perceived by him/her, about the value of suffering, consequences on loved ones, financial cost of euthanasia treatment, etc.

Importantly, let us assume the person believes there is no after-life with probability 1. Being dead provides him/her with a forever utility of X. This level of utility is subjective. For some is negative, as they very much prefer to be alive, but for others is zero or even positive.

Furthermore, assume the person is legally allowed to terminate his/her life.

Finally, the person is utilitarian, which means s/he wants to maximise happiness (U vs X).

So, what can this model tell us?

First, a healthy person, although might expect some future health problems (or maybe not, given advances in modern medicine), assumes the most likely case which is to remain healthy for the most of life (here is where discounting makes a difference too). In this case, ut is mostly positive. Unless this person really enjoys to be dead (very high X), s/he will not engage in euthanasia. This is, U>X.

Now, consider a healthy person who suddenly has a very bad sickness. The prospects is for u_t to be negative most of the rest of life. So, U is negative, perhaps significantly. Unless this person really dislikes to be dead (X>U), s/he will prefer euthanasia. This is even not believing in after-life (including being an atheist).

Thus, it might be rational for an utilitarian atheist to prefer euthanasia.