[aniviacat]

> In a democracy, the government is not there to enforce your beliefs, it is there to prevent other people's beliefs from overriding your right to have your own.

That's why I gave the example of forceful suicide prevention. That is the law in my democratic, non-theocratic country.

Tell me how forcing someone not to commit suicide differs from forcing someone not to sin.

In my view it's the same: You are limiting someone else's liberty; forcing them not to do something you consider a grave mistake.

You personally may view personal liberty as more important: If you think people should have the liberty to commit suicide, it would be morally consistent for you to think people should have the liberty to sin.

I do not believe people should have the liberty to commit suicide. So if I was religious, and believed sinning to be a mistake far worse than suicide, it would be morally consistent for me to believe people should not have the liberty to sin.

> Secondly, you make a false assumption that just because a society agrees with you on one thing, you must agree with it on everything else.

> You are making the most retrograde, anti-liberal case possible by saying you would not question the values you were surrounded by.

I don't know where you got this from. I do question the values of society. It is my very own personal opinion that we should legally prevent people from making certain obvious mistakes.

(And yes, I am very anti-liberal in that sense. Not only do I agree with forcing people to wear seatbelts and not to commit suicide, I would even support banning caffeine.)

If I was religious, I would consider sinning to be the most obvious and most serious mistake of all. Hence, I would try to legally prevent people from making this mistake.

I find it very understandable that a religious government makes sinning illegal.

[noduerme]

To be clear, I don't believe the government should prevent people from committing suicide. Or limit any liberties which don't physically hurt someone else. I see a more compelling case for seatbelt laws, only because a flying body can kill a passenger.

If you were to be consistent, then the fact that someone else somewhere thinks you're sinning should be sufficient to ban your own behavior, whatever it is. Whether you're religious or not has nothing to do with it. Since you believe in limiting someone's liberty, you should believe that the most radical form of religion should limit yours.

In such a society, in practice, anything can be forced or banned. And it is. If someone dislikes you, any word you speak can be taken as an insult to religion or an insult to the government, and is punishable. Moreover, such a society might force you to take a drug, or decide to euthanize your disabled family member. Sure, it is "understandable" that a totalitarian government makes sinning illegal, but it's hard to think of anything more odious.

Once such a system is in place, your freedom to "question the values of society" or form your own personal opinion would cease to exist. Your view is only possible in a free society that prizes liberty, although it is essentially dangerous to the survival of the society you're lucky enough to live in.

The only way to avoid a totalitarian outcome is to tolerate other people having the freedom to make what are in your opinion mistakes. Which includes saying things you don't like. And not only to tolerate it, but to elevate it above all other frameworks.

The paradigm of "my opinion / our opinion should be the law" is what leads to totalitarianism.

[wiseowise]

> Tell me how forcing someone not to commit suicide differs from forcing someone not to sin.

Define sin first. Killing yourself results in death. Religious fanatics stretch definition of sin to whatever they don’t like.

Gays? Sin? Woman without hijab? Sin. Abortion? Sin.

> In my view it's the same: You are limiting someone else's liberty; forcing them not to do something you consider a grave mistake.

No, it’s totally not the same. And it’s not necessarily about mistake. Allowing people to commit unrestricted suicide would set a dangerous precedent. And on top of that a lot of inconvenience for people around.

[yawboakye]

your last statement isn't grounded in reality. suicide is available to any determined person, and there are loads of them per year. what do you mean by unrestricted suicide? what's restricted suicide? people who want to commit suicide will, irrespective of what the law says. i'm yet to meet a suicide prevention program that refers to the strength of the law or the terror of the punishment.