Burials

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... 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. 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.

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). 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 It is wise to change a position accordingly when new information comes to light. 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. When stated like that, it sounds a lot like Facebook... 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. Most likely just because robots are cool.

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.Enjoy

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: Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Stile & Leeroy continue: 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.

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.

Though, proportionally ... isn't that like saying that outside of rainfall our biggest source of water is women crying at the end of Titanic?

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.

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.

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Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

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By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

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Leave it to a fundy to find fault with others while getting things completely bollixed up. So typical.

Thanks for making me Google "humanity qua humanity". 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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.