I am pro-life etc. ...

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I am pro-life and anti-war, but I also support the death penalty (in principle). Ain't that messed up?

Do I believe that suicide is an unforgiveable sin? Kinda. I believe it is indeed a sin, but is it unforgiveable? No human can really know what God deems unforgiveable. Most kinds of religious institution has wrongfully appropriated the final word of the Almighty for themselves.

Can a person reconcile his religious beliefs with secular opinion in this case?

People do it all the time, it really depends how you value the philosophies of each.

Consider it like this:

x*Biblical theology + y*secular humanism + z*opinions = 1

Where x,y, & z are nonnegative.

Why is suicide considered a sin? And especially, why is it deemed selfish and cowardly? I think it must take a lot of guts to end one's life.

It would depend on God's view of time. If it's a series of event and suicide was the last event of your life, etc. If God views time all at once and the person was saved, etc.

That was in the 1500's under Pope Paul 3rd in Italy. I would say that she didn't commit a sin in that case. Suicide can be a sin, but not always. Jesus in a sense committed suicide; He willingly gave up His life as the Sacrifice. But people just willy-nilly deciding to puff out their life, that's wrong.

Sin is such a silly concept, but I digress...

I'm pro-life, and pro-death penalty. Strange, yes, but the babies are innocent. Jeffrey Dahmer is not.

But really, if religion is supposed to be the guiding philosophy of an individual's life, then x >> y or z, and if x >> y or z, then we do not really see reconciliation.

I don't think it's strange to be pro-life and pro-death penalty if you look at what is involved instead of just the words. I don't support the death penalty for murderers because I want to kill them. I support it because I want to protect and save the lives of their next victims. If you think life in prison would work, check out how many kill other inmates and even the prison guards. Therefore, I think supporting the death penalty is part of being pro-life.

Mark 3:28-29, Luke 12:10. The only thing defined in the Bible as an Unforgivable sin is Blasphemy in the name of the Holy Spirit. Calling suicide blasphemy is another belief that the Roman church adopted from the old Bacchus Baal Type Mystery Religions. Its right up there with the Trinitarian doctrine of Athanasius. I'm mildly disappointed that some of the self proclaimed devout true believers are not actually familiar with what Jesus said. Oh, by the way, the term Holy Trinity is NOT in the Bible! I have no problem reconciling the desire that Richard Allen Davis deserves to die with fact that Polly Klaas did not.

God/Jesus said you shouldn't associate, or even socialize, with nonbelievers. (2 Cor 6:14-17)

Were you brought up in a Church Teoka? I was brought up Methodist until I walked out at age 7.

Suicide is deemed a selfish act because it disregards the emotional responses of the living to that persons' death. If I killed myself (and I have considered it) those around me might never recover from such a devestation. What would it do to my poor mother? My suicide would destroy her completely, possibly even causing her death.

Suicide is cowardly because it's a complete giving-up and a capitulation to one's personal weakness. The suffering it causes in others is probably why the Church declared it sinful. But does a suicide go straight to Hell? I do not know and cannot speculate.

Nope, my dad is a staunch atheist, while my mom is agnostic. They were raised going to churches, but they spared me that burden. I just know some good websites, and I've read that poor excuse for a book.

I'm pro-life to an extent, and I'm way for capital punishment. There's no contradiction in my opinion. Criminals are criminals and need to be treated as such. I'm not anti-war though.

Man, none of these morality issues are easy. So many shades of black, white, and gray. IMO the people who view the world in monochromatic terms are the real dullards.

Just as no individual is purely good or purely evil, our tough issues all have more than one right answer. It's like how the answer to any question, in cosmic terms, is always YES and NO.

Not what ought to be, but what is. What trumps what in a person's mind? What is actually valued and what is actually rejected or made subservient in one's mind?

Death penalties have yielded highly mixed returns in the suppression of violent crime. Whether or not you believe this, you have just made yourself obligated to oppose death penalties in light of evidence that they tend to result in higher rates of violent crime. I will not argue with you about the statistics. I have researched the issue myself and formed my own conclusions. However, I cannot think that you are being straightforward with us if you are not actively researching the issue yourself, and I can hardly consider you an ethical person if you have no concern for how effective or uneffective it is in practice.

Conservatives tend to forget one of the most important lessons that behaviorism taught us: learned helplessness.

One of my best friends straightened out his life based upon his experiences with inmates who were serving life sentences. As he explained to me, these men have nothing to lose. After serving a sentence at one of the toughest joints in New York, in which there was no such thing as a death penalty at the time, he reformed his entire outlook on life based partially upon a deep terror that his next mistake could return him to that horrible place or worse.

Handy rationalization. Many who have commited acts of premeditated murder also formed rationalizations for their immoral actions.