Stompe Thomas, Ritter Kristina
Univ.-Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Medizinische Universität Wien, Austria.
Neuropsychiatr. 2011;25(3):118-26.
While suicide is known in all human societies, national suicide rates vary to a high degree. Different interacting social, economic and biological factors may explain a part of the variance. Religions are supposed to have a protective effect against suicidal behavior. It is still unexplained, whether or not this holds true for all religions and whether this has an effect on the national suicide rates. For this purpose it is necessary to illustrate the positions of the single religions towards suicide in the context of their idea of a human being as well as their concepts of death and afterworld.
Our considerations are based upon a research on the religious- and culture-historical literature on this topic.
None of the world religions argues for suicide, however, the degree of refusal is varying. Mosaic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which are based on the idea of a human being as the image of God, have a more pronounced position against suicide than Eastern religions with a concept of transmigration and rebirth. Atheistic positions, which are not attached to transcendent norms, show a broad range of opinions from radical refusal to cautious approval.
The positions of the different religions towards suicide are leading to assumptions of their effect on national suicide rates that have to be tested empirically.
虽然自杀在所有人类社会中都为人所知，但各国的自杀率差异很大。不同的社会、经济和生物学因素相互作用，可能解释了部分差异。宗教被认为对自杀行为有保护作用。对于所有宗教是否都是如此，以及这是否会对国家自杀率产生影响，目前仍不清楚。为此，有必要在各宗教对人的观念以及它们的死亡和来世概念的背景下，阐明各宗教对自杀的立场。
我们的思考基于对关于这一主题的宗教和文化历史文献的研究。
世界上没有一种宗教支持自杀，然而，拒绝的程度各不相同。基于人是上帝形象这一观念的一神教（犹太教、基督教、伊斯兰教），比具有轮回和重生概念的东方宗教对自杀的反对立场更为鲜明。不依附于超验规范的无神论立场，呈现出从激进拒绝到谨慎认可的广泛观点。
不同宗教对自杀的立场引发了关于它们对国家自杀率影响的假设，这些假设必须通过实证检验。
