Death and Dying The official doctrine of the Church of Reality

Why the Church of Reality is taking a Position

Different religions have different positions on death and dying and in cases where there is a legal dispute often the courts will turn to the person individual religious beliefs to determine the wishes of people who are unable to speak for themselves. So it seems logical that the Church of Reality should have some official guidelines so that if the outside world turns to the individual's religious beliefs we have a response.

When does death occur? Who gets to decide? When do you remove a person from life support? When to you assist a person in terminating life? What are the rolls of the individual, their spouse, their children, their family, their church, and the government? The Church of Reality can not answer these questions but we can create guidelines and principles to come up with these answers. And that is what we choose to do here.

Issues surrounding death and dying can become complex - especially in a society that is in denial. Sometimes a person is trapped in a permanent vegetative state. Sometimes they are still alive and facing a horrible death. Sometimes that are clearly alive but face an uphill battle that they don't want to go through. Science and technology offer new choices and because of that often complicate the situation allowing the body to remain alive long after death would naturally occur. Therefore it is difficult to create hard and fast rules for dying. We therefore will state general principles that the rules can be derived from.

Principles of Decisions Involving Death

• Every Death is Unique - Every death is individual and unique and rules and policies around death should be flexible to accommodate the wishes of the dying and the patient's family.

• Wisdom should Prevail - In complex situations the individuals involved should take the time to think things through and make a determination based on the circumstances rather than just citing policy. Where there is conflict efforts should be made to achieve resolution and new situations should be carefully considered in determining the ethics involved and the rules and policies that preserve the rights and liberties of the patient and their family.

• The Patient has Choice - The wishes of the dying comes first. The Church of Reality supports the right of the patient to choose how and when they are going to die. If the patient wants to be euthanized or wants to be fully awake till the last breath the choice should be honored.

• Suicide and Doctor Assisted Suicide - If a person is terminally ill or is in a hospice program and doctors have determined that they have a short time to live then the individual has the right to determine when and how their life will end. If they decide to end their life then that decision should be honored and they should be allowed to have help in terminating their life from their doctors and their family.

• Who Speaks for the Patient? - If the wishes of the individual are not known and the individual patient can not express them then it is up to family members to express what the individual would have wanted. The wishes of the family take precedent over anyone else except for the individual.

• Living Wills - Members of the Church of Reality should have living wills and they should also make their wishes known to their friends and family so that their wishes are clear.

• A person is dead when - they have lost consciousness with no reasonable chance of recovery. That is the point where your soul ceases to exist in this world. Although one might be declared legally dead later when the body dies, a person's last moment is the last moment that they were conscious.

When Does Death Occur?

We live in a time where the body can be kept alive after the mind has died. Technology can make the line between life and death fuzzy and we are sometimes faced with making tough choices as to if a person is really dead or alive. However - what is it that makes a person a person? Is the person still alive if even a few cells are still alive? Technically - yes - but in reality - no. It is the brain activity - specifically the higher brain functions - that define the line between life and death. In the Church of Reality, when you have lost consciousness with no reasonable chance of recovery - you are dead. To exist as a living corpse in not considered being alive.

In the Church of Reality you are your brain. It is your awareness that makes you who you are and from that you experience life as a person. If you are brain dead but the body is kept alive artificially, then the body isn't really you.

Suicide, Removal of Life Support, and Euthanasia

The term "suicide" is really a bad term to use in ending the life of a dying patient because this kind of deliberate death is far different than an otherwise healthy person who kills themselves out of depression. When one is dying then the only question is how and when. And it is the position of this church that the individual gets to make that choice.

If a person is terminally ill then in the eyes of the Church of Reality making life ending choices is not suicide. The term suicide in this religion refers to an otherwise healthy person taking their own life. For the terminally ill a better term is "self euthanasia" is far more accurate. The Church of Reality fully supports the persons right to euthanasia and self euthanasia. To us this issue is that the dying person has as much choice as possible and as much control of their own life process and we can give them.

Choices surrounding death are always difficult and people often disagree as to what is best. Someone might argue that the dying might make a bad choice, but this church supports the Sacred Principle of Freedom and freedom includes the right to make bad decisions. So even if the dying person is making a bad choice - it's their bad choice to make.

The Church of Reality makes no moral distinction between removing life support and actively euthanizing an individual. It is our view that to remove life support that is keeping a person alive and to give a person a fatal injection to end their life is the same thing. The only difference is that withholding of life support allows one to create the illusion that passive killing is somehow morally different from active killing. We take the position that when the decision is made to end the life of a dying person that it should be done in a way that is most humane and causes the least amount of suffering. Generally a lethal injection is far more humane than death through starvation or suffocation. The Church of Reality does not recognize the illusion and the denial that "natural" deaths or "passive euthanasia" is morally superior to "active euthanasia". In fact - passive euthanasia can be far more cruel.

The Church of Reality joins all other religions in opposing murder. However to kill a dying person as an act of mercy in order to relive the suffering of death is not an act of murder. It is an act of compassion that is a gift that requires great courage and wisdom to give. That is why Dr. Jack Kevorkian is considered a saint in the Church of Reality.

As a society we recognize that when a beloved pet is dying that we take it to the vet to "put the poor suffering animal to sleep" because we don't want it to suffer. Why is it that we can't do the same thing for our poor suffering family members? The reason is that humanity is in denial about death and dying and the denial of euthanasia services is based in a denial of our mortality. But the reality is - we all die. Science might change that some day but of all the people who were born 150 years ago - none of them are still with us today. We take a position that we should apply wisdom to the dying process and allow the dying to have a full range of choices.

Freedom from External Intervention

The Church of Reality takes the position that the life choices of the individual should be protected against external intervention from governments, other religions, and other political opportunists whose would victimize the dying and take away the right to choose from the individuals and their families. We take the position that no other group or political process be able to impose their values to interfere with or override the choices of the individual and the family. Our position is that the role of government is only to protect the individual's rights and choices.

Our religion and our choices are different than those of other religions who sometimes feel they need to impose their values on us. We say to them - stay out! We respect your death choices and we expect our choices to be honored as well.

Quality of Life Issues

There is also a condition that is slightly above brain death where there is some level of consciousness but inability to communicate. Some people might choose to end their lives when they are permanently incapacitated. Many of these people choose to live and to do the best with what they have left. Others might decide that their pain and suffering is more than they can deal with and choose to not continue.

The position of the Church of Reality is that the individual gets to make that choice. If the individual can't make that choice or can't communicate then it is the right of the individual's family to make the choice in behalf of the patient. A severe permanent mental disability might be a fate that is far worse that a permanent vegetative state or death. It is important that we don't put someone in a state of perpetual torture for which there is no escape.

Financial Resources to Save Lives

There is a very complex issue as to how much do we as a society spend in order to prolong life? Some might say that society should spend an unlimited about of money to save a person's life. However, if those same resources were used to pay for medicine for the elderly poor then more lives could be saved. These issues need to be addressed with wisdom and social justice. I have a real problem with the idea that society wastes vast amounts of resources on a hopeless battle to keep some people alive when other's are allowed to starve to death in economically depressed areas when it would only take a small amount of resources to sustain them. I also have a problem with the idea that an insurance company would determine the point where death occurs - or that death occurs when the money runs out.

Suicide in General

Although we want to prevent people from killing themselves out of stress or depression and do everything we can do to take care of each other - the Church of Reality takes the position that a person ultimately has the choice to decide to end one's own life. Suicide is tragic and is often preventable - often easily preventable. However the principle of personal control over one's own destiny is something that this church considers to be a sacred right and the individual get to make the important choices in their lives even if those choices are bad choices.

Having said that - we are one people - one race - and each of us is a part of us all. We live both as individuals and as a community and when an individual has needs it is a problem that we all share. We as members of the Church of Reality have a moral duty to actively reach out and help prevent suicide and give care and compassion for those who are hurting and in need of support.

God, Immortality, and the After Life

There are things we know and things we don't know. However we can make a best guess and take a position based on the information we have available. The Church of Reality has already taken the position that God does not exist, and that we are going to maintain that position until God comes out of hiding into objective reality.

As to the afterlife - all scientific evidence suggests that we are our brains and that when our brain ceases to function we cease to exist. Until someone comes back from the "other side" in a way that objective observers can document we will stick with this position. The belief in life after death is a denial of our mortality.

There is perhaps a way to escape death, but that involves investing in the technologies that could prolong life indefinitely. We might actually be close to reaching that point and for those who want to live forever - you might want to invest in developing the science that can make that possible.

Although a person dies, they still survive in a number of ways. If they have children, then their genes are passed on, cut by 50% in a mix with someone else's genes, which then divides in half with each subsequent generation. Additionally, the moral and cultural values we teach our children - those that are actually learned - are also passed on.

In the Church of Reality we become part of the Tree of Knowledge - the sum total of all human understanding. If we have accomplished something significant in our lives that is worth remembering then our legacy will be passed on to future generations. I believe that the preservation of one's thoughts and ideas represents the best form of immortality because it is what represents you, who you are, how you lived, and what you contributed. As the First one of the Church of Reality I hope that this church will be my legacy. I hope that others will take what I started and build it into something great. And I want others to share in the creation of what I hope will be the religion of the future.