|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total) |
| |
ChatGPT | |
Total: 916,914 Year: 4,171/9,624 Month: 1,042/974 Week: 1/368 Day: 1/11 Hour: 0/0 |
Thread ▼ Details |
Member (Idle past 3519 days) Posts: 4 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Burials | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member |
Of course people have different impressions, but oddly enough nobody has offered any. Actually, they have offered different impressions. As I noted, the last post of yours was a marked improvement over your original post in which you denigrated the opinions of others. Appreciating that burial versus cremation is a personal idea rather than a statement about someone's character is completely accurate. I was not objecting to that issue, I simply and correctly pointed out that your original post, which was completely different. Now you seem to be pulling back for some reason. Example from first post...
Sad that you're all willing to treat yourselves as trash. Totally uncalled for. Many people who are otherwise claustrophobic don't really worry about having those same problems once they are dead. Others do. For example Dr. Adequate simply remarked that we should make sure he was actually dead before sticking him in a hole. But again, that's just a feeling too. About the worms.
It implies to my mind a sort of reverence that cremation doesn't. That's all. Nothing to do with the realities of worms, it's all a symbolic sort of thing. If worms are actually associated with burial, what sense does this comment about reverence make? How is choosing a method that exposes the body to works show more reverence? What you are doing is simply ignoring the worms. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stile Member Posts: 4295 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: |
Leroy Jenkins writes: ...the Leeroy-Leroy issue. I forgot the "e." It doesn't really matter, but if you want to you can create an alias of the same name but with the extra 'e' and both accounts will be linked and then you can have whatever name you'd like. If someone mouse-hovers over your name, they will then see all your alias accounts (try it on ringo or RAZD in this thread if you want to see what I mean).
Anyway, another thing I wanted to quickly mention was that I'm sorry about the way I worded the OP. I've noticed that I seem to have struck a nerve with some people Heh... don't worry about it. We just like to talk about pretty much everything and anything around here. That sometimes comes with a certain flair for the dramatic. It's nothing personal
Having had that pointed out to me, I've revised my original idea... It is wise to change a position accordingly when new information comes to light.
I'm getting a better picture of why people do go to cemeteries now, but I think that the thing I proposed, a database of every dead person, complete with their autobiography, pictures, and possibly other biographies of them, would be a very good thing to help people remember the dead. I understand that it wouldn't replace actually going to a place where you spent time with them, and I'm not going to pretend that it could. Such a database sounds like a very good alternative to me. Maybe one day it will replace cemeteries... maybe not. But if it's available as an alternative it's then possible to see how viable it can actually be. People's feelings are a strange matter, though. Even if something is replaced with an obvious upgrade... some folks won't want to change simply because they don't like change. The evolution of things generally has to wait for these people to die-off before the transition takes place... but who knows how many people will stand in the way of your idea unless you try it.
...if someone started such an online program to record details about yourself that could be accessed by anyone in any generation... When stated like that, it sounds a lot like Facebook...
By the time the world has been urbanized... This idea seems to imply that urbanization is a good thing and should be desired. Maybe we should take a look to see if we actually want to urbanize everything. Perhaps it would be better to leave some areas non-urbanized and find a way to control our population increase.
I'm actually going to start a Programming Club and a Robotics Club (not sure why I mentioned the second) Most likely just because robots are cool.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
|
Hi again Leeroy
If you go to "Your CP" you can change your login to Leeroy Jenkins (it will keep Leroy as an alias and all your posts will switch to the new name when viewed). Personally I start as an organ donor -- take what may help another person live a better life. Second, I donate the rest to medical science, so interns can practice surgery, and also so that my DNA can be investigated to see if cures for the cancer I have can be found. Third, I would donate the remainder to a "body farm" -- again to further science (forensic). A win for everyone. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
|
It implies to my mind a sort of reverence that cremation doesn't. Well, yes, but the thing is it's your mind. Others might see it differently. Whereas what you seemed to be saying is that others are not being reverent, because they're not doing the thing that you would do if you were being reverent. I think this is a false criticism of them. Everyone is reverent to their dead, but how to do this is an individual or a cultural question. Burial is a long-standing tradition in our culture, but some might see cremation as more reverent in that it protects the body from the rather horrible process of decay. It would be more reverent of them to practice cremation. "We will save the body of the person we love", they might say, "from suffering the fate of common garbage". And in the end, surely the greatest reverence we can show to the dead, in choosing our funerary practices, is to carry out their wishes, not ours. If my wife predeceases me (horrible thought) I shall respect her by doing what she wants done, irrespective of what I would choose for myself. In the end, reverence is in the heart and the head, it is not objective:
Darius [a Persian king] summoned the Hellenes [Greeks] at his court and asked them how much money they would accept for eating the bodies of their dead fathers. They answered that they would not do this for any amount of money. Later, Darius summoned some Indians called Kallatiai, who do eat their dead parents. In the presence of the Hellenes he asked the Indians how much money they would accept to burn the bodies of their dead fathers. They responded with an outcry, ordering him to shut his mouth lest he offend the gods. Well then, that is how people think, and so it seems to me that Pindar was right when he said in his poetry that custom is king of all. --- Herodotus, Histories, Book III, 38 Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 7.0 |
Stile & Leeroy continue:
By the time the world has been urbanized... This idea seems to imply that urbanization is a good thing and should be desired. Maybe we should take a look to see if we actually want to urbanize everything. Perhaps it would be better to leave some areas non-urbanized and find a way to control our population increase. When I was working for the Regional Planning Commission it was instructive to point out how open space needs to be preserved and that Golf Courses and Cemetaries were the biggest forces to do that, outside of state & national forests. We wouldn't want Earth to turn into the planet Trantor of Asimov's Foundation series.- xongsmith, 5.7d
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Omnivorous Member Posts: 3992 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.5 |
Faith, you linked your views to reverence for the body, and linked others' views to atheism and "evolutionism".
True, you didn't claim scriptural authority--but you did draw distinctions between the burial practices of the reverent and the unbelieving. Still, perhaps I overreacted in my belligerent pagan way. I'm just an excitable boy."If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
When I was working for the Regional Planning Commission it was instructive to point out how open space needs to be preserved and that Golf Courses and Cemetaries were the biggest forces to do that, outside of state & national forests. Though, proportionally ... isn't that like saying that outside of rainfall our biggest source of water is women crying at the end of Titanic?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
The reverence I most had in mind was reverence for humanity as such, and I tried to be clear that I'm not talking about the feelings of individuals in dealing with the death of their own loved ones.
I'm thinking of a cultural attitude in general, and when it's possible for anyone to talk about the human body as fertilizer, even one's own body, I think that's a sign that the culture has undergone a shift in reverence for not just the dead, but human beings, period. Which makes sense if your understanding of the nature of humanity comes from evolution. If we're just bags of meat, as it were, that were accidentally evolved over millions of years, what basis is there in that philosophical point of view for any sort of reverence? Wanting to be fertilizer for trees or a marijuana patch is perfectly consistent with that point of view. It's not only Christianity that shows more reverence, though, which is why I mentioned various other cultures I thought also do so, I think it's a general change in the social attitude, the zeitgeist, from earlier times. Surely you all can see the common rejection of all views that elevate human beings over animals, and that it's due in large part to evolution that teaches that all we are is the material form that evolved, but also in conjunction I suppose with Enlightenment atheism. If you confound it with your own personal feelings about the loss of those you love then you can fail to see what I'm talking about. Reverence for people's personal loss is something else entirely. Being human we all have people we love, so we're going to have powerful feelings in relation to their death and want to see them honored. That's a completely other level from what I'm trying to focus on here, which has nothing to do with individuals or how we choose to remember our own loved ones. I do think the general attitude of the writer of the OP represents this modern point of view, which would not have been possible a couple hundred years ago. But I've said all I care to say about this. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
|
People have exactly the same feelings about other human beings lives and deaths as they always have. The knowledge that we're stardust and to star dust we'll return regardless of how we dispose of our dead bodies makes no difference to our feelings for each other and our reverence for lives well lived.
All you're wailing about as usual is that others are able to think and do things that you personally don't like. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member |
Faith writes: I'm thinking of a cultural attitude in general, and when it's possible for anyone to talk about the human body as fertilizer, even one's own body quote: quote: Leave it to a fundy to find fault with others while getting things completely bollixed up. So typical. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
Thanks for making me Google "humanity qua humanity". But I think when people say they want to be fertilizer or one of those anatomical skeletons, that they are trying to force themselves to accept the denigration of humanity qua humanity that is so popular these days, though it's really psychologically abusive. I don't think it's a "denigration of humanity" at all to think of humanity as part of a greater whole, to think we will go on forever materially no matter what our woo beliefs. I don't have to "force" myself to accept that; it would be hard not to.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
"Going on forever" as just a clod of dirt that is "part of a greater whole" of more dirt, is a pretty denigrated view of humanity and what's weird is that you don't seem to know it. While you're lying there being trod upon or whatever your fate may be as that clod, will you be contemplating your fate as a clod of dirt? I mean that would be more human than contemplating nothing at all.
And I might as well answer the dust to dust nonsense posted above by NN, who manages not to notice that in that theological system we are spirit and body and only the body returns to dust, while in the evolutionist system we are only dust, fertilizer, whatnot, no spirit, no mind, no soul, no consciousness etc.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
"Going on forever" as just a clod of dirt that is "part of a greater whole" of more dirt, is a pretty denigrated view of humanity and what's weird is that you don't seem to know it. It is no more denigrating that telling someone that their poop stinks. While it may be an uncomfortable truth, it is still the truth. Some of us embrace reality and don't feel the need to hide behind made up stories to shield ourselves from these uncomfortable facts.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Faith writes: we are spirit and body and only the body returns to dust, Well yes. That's why it's more than a little puzzling why you think it matters what happens to the body. It matters not whether worms, vultures, fungus or fire turn the body to dust because, as you've said, God can fix it.Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
My focus has been on the psychological effect on the living of how we -- as a culture -- treat the dead, and it seems to me that respect for the body figures in that effect. I haven't been discussing this from a theological point of view. The only reason to note that Christian theology sees us as spirit and body is as a counter to the idea that we can be reduced entirely to material food for worms and vultures, which is the viewpoint I consider to be least respectful of humanity qua humanity. By comparison most cultures up until recently have recognized a soul or spirit, and again, I didn't even mention Christianity as part of my basic argument on this subject.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024