What happens when we die?

friendface

I don't mean this in the religious, spiritual or supernatural sense but literally. As an atheist, when you die do you request that you have a non-religious burial? Has anyone here thought about this? I know its a very morbid topic but I was just thinking about it while I was lying in bed.

So would ye request that yer funeral be strictly non religious (no prayers or anything) or is it left up to the family/mourners?

Again, I'm sorry about the depressing nature of the topic but the thought just came to me and I am interested to hear yer answers.

Doctor DooM

Up to the family. Doesn't matter to me what they do with the body when I am gone and anything I can do to ease their mourning is cool by me.

I DO like the idea I heard of the tetris music being played while the coffin is being lowered, though.

seanybiker

Im just gonna leave it upto whoever is in the pub with me when i die. I be dead i wont care.

Flamed Diving

Cremation.

I don't want my corpse to be a burden on people (coffin, plot, etc).

MrPudding

I actually fancy one of those new fangled buried in a meadow with a tree plonked on top type of deals.

I would expect that the service will depend on when I die. If it is before my mother then I would expect she will be quite upset if there is no religulous service. My personal preference would be for a humanist type service, but given that I will be dead I am not really bothered.

MrP

Mena

Considering that everyone in my family would be classified as "atheist", I guess I'll get burned and chucked into a pot, to be distributed into the sea at some point.

Don't really care either way, so long as there is much merriment at the event, should there be one.

Dades

FYIs - older thread here.

Raiser

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Cremation.

I don't want my corpse to be a burden on people (coffin, plot, etc).

Did you think Cremation means just stuffing you into a the kitchen oven at home in a black plastic bin liner at 220C, setting the timer at max and going down to the Pub?

- Anyway think of the trouble they'll have everytime they knock over your Urn and have to go searching in the Hoover dust-bag for bits of ya !!!

The Mad Hatter

SDooM wrote: »

I DO like the idea I heard of the tetris music being played while the coffin is being lowered, though.

That idea is beyond brilliant:D

Personally, I'll probably insist on no Christian funeral service. And probably cremation, but I'm not certain.

Flamed Diving

Raiser wrote: »

Did you think Cremation means just stuffing you into a the kitchen oven at home in a black plastic bin liner at 220C, setting the timer at max and going down to the Pub?

- Anyway think of the trouble they'll have everytime they knock over your Urn and have to go searching in the Hoover dust-bag for bits of ya !!!

Throw me to the pigs, then.

Disssgruntled

They're too busy shopping for Penthouses in Dubai http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055494975

Goduznt Xzst

my organs will hopefully be still usuable enough that they can go on to help other people live.

That or my body will go on to help further scientific research.

Burning your dead body, or burying it whole is the height of selfishness imo. But that's just me. I can't see why a person would choose to waste or destory something that they no longer have a need for when other people could make use of it.

Mena

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

my organs will hopefully be still usuable enough that they can go on to help other people live.

That or my body will go on to help further scientific research.

Burning your dead body, or burying it whole is the height of selfishness imo. But that's just me. I can't see why a person would choose to waste or destory something that they no longer have a need for when other people could make use of it.

Offered mine to a Uni I used to work for, but will probably be rejected seeing as there will be so little left after the years of abuse :P

Flamed Diving

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

my organs will hopefully be still usuable enough that they can go on to help other people live.

That or my body will go on to help further scientific research.

Burning your dead body, or burying it whole is the height of selfishness imo. But that's just me. I can't see why a person would choose to waste or destory something that they no longer have a need for when other people could make use of it.

Hey! Mines going to feed the little piggies!

The Mad Hatter

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

my organs will hopefully be still usuable enough that they can go on to help other people live.

That or my body will go on to help further scientific research.

Burning your dead body, or burying it whole is the height of selfishness imo. But that's just me. I can't see why a person would choose to waste or destory something that they no longer have a need for when other people could make use of it.

That's a good point, although I think the ritual of doing away with a body in some way does help the family cope - it gives a clear dividing line, and a chance for people to say goodbye, etc.

That said, on reflection I probably would donate most of my organs.

Goduznt Xzst

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Hey! Mines going to feed the little piggies!

Actually I must retract my statement about selfishness. I suppose if someone wanted their body to become fertilizer for the ground then they wouldn't be wasting it per se

I just feel strongly that in death, if our bodies can go on to help the humans of our childrens and grandchildrens generation then so be it.

Galvasean

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

my organs will hopefully be still usuable enough that they can go on to help other people live.

That or my body will go on to help further scientific research.

Burning your dead body, or burying it whole is the height of selfishness imo. But that's just me. I can't see why a person would choose to waste or destory something that they no longer have a need for when other people could make use of it.

I should hope that nothing goes to waste. Any reusable organs to be given to people who need them. Any unusable ones to be put on display in a museum with a plaque saying "This is what happens to your nuts when you sit too close to the TV!". Any left over bits of flesh to be donated to teh zoo to feed the lions. My bones can be sent to China to be ground up as 'medicine' - which will stop them digging up valuable fossils and destroying them.

the_syco

Either scientific research, or put on a small boat, send it out to sea, and ignite it 20 meters from shore with a flaming arrow. Prefer to be fish food than be worm food, with the possibilty of being dug up by Time Team in 200 or so years...

Malari

First of all I don't think it's a morbid topic!

I wouldn't really have a problem donating my body to science (but not my organs...let's just say I know a surgeon who has told me scary stories!), unless my family has a problem with it. You can still have a memorial without a body, so it shouldn't make a difference. And the university will arrange to dispose of the remains for you if you want.

Just as long as there's no priest mumbling crap over my dead body I don't really care. It would be a pretty pathetic memorial if my loved ones allowed that to happen as my last remembrance on earth. Anyone who knows me has seen my physical revulsion at even being near a church so I don't think it would happen. :pac:

Zillah

I once saw a very good (atheist) friend be put through the grotesque sham of a Catholic funeral. I almost laughed at my best friend's funeral because it was so ridiculous.

No thanks. Secular service for me.

With Tetris music.


OR, however I died, stab the corpse fifty times and then dump it and five gallons of pigs blood somewhere very public at 05:30 AM for lulz.

Undergod

Viking funeral for sure.

kiffer

Thrown into active volcano.
Or failing that, under a fruit or oak tree. Cardboard coffin, no embalming, non-denominational service for those that expect a service... Helps the grieving process...
Maybe Some words said about the next great adventure...

I'd also like some grave goods... Something to confuse future archeologists... A sword and shield, my compass-clino, flint arrow heads on high tech shafts and an egg whisk, a sextant and an array of different stones and pebbles... A set of stainless steel dice and a little statue of a loyal beast of some sort...

Hmm I better put this in writing somewhere...

Zombrex

SDooM wrote: »

Up to the family.

Seconded. I don't care what happens to me so long as it makes those who survive me happy.

My personal choice is that I dedicate my body to science. But if my wife/kids/grandkids want to stuff me and mount me at the dinner table that is ok too. :pac:

rainbow kirby

Undergod wrote: »

Viking funeral for sure.

+1, with a truckload of booze for everyone who comes to see it.

CDfm

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Personally, I'll probably insist on no Christian funeral service. And probably cremation, but I'm not certain.

Cant decide -have a poll - poison the earth or pollute the atmosphere?

CDfm

Wicknight wrote: »

if my wife/kids/grandkids want to stuff me and mount me at the dinner table that is ok too. :pac:

You are a sick puppy:pac:

dvpower

friendface wrote: »

As an atheist, when you die do you request that you have a non-religious burial?

When I die it'll be too late to request anything ...


... unless there's an afterlife.

Valmont

Why are athiests/agnostics/insert-relevant-ist-here so obsessed with the death, funeral, and burial thing? Just get cremated and have your ashes used to print a copy of The God Delusion.

If I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow the idea that I would have a Catholic funeral and burial doesn't bother me in the slightest. Once the neurons stop firing that's it. Game over.

994

Valmont wrote: »

Why are athiests/agnostics/insert-relevant-ist-here so obsessed with the death, funeral, and burial thing?

Because, whereas religious people have a standard funeral plan, the nonreligious do not? And perhaps they think about death more because they don't swallow comforting stories given by other people who have never actually died?

I'll have a pyramidal funeral pyre, btw

CDfm

Valmont wrote: »

If I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow

Not the 84X I hope

Zillah

Valmont wrote: »

Why are athiests/agnostics/insert-relevant-ist-here so obsessed with the death, funeral, and burial thing? Just get cremated and have your ashes used to print a copy of The God Delusion.

Can't I just get a few of my more adventurous friends to mix me up with some coke and have an interesting night?

theCzar

When I die, the sky will darken and the Natural History Museum will split asunder. Dawkins will speak to the people from amidst a burning bush and all will huddle in confusion about just what the **** that means.

the_syco

As the old saying goes, "I want to die peacefully like my Grandfather in his sleep, not like the passengers screaming in the back seat".

Stercus Accidit

If the believers who knew me felt the need for a mass style thing, to cope, respecting their beliefs, I'd be happy for them too.

The funeral service itself though, should be seperate, a formal ordeal and with respect to the way I lived, however that is implimented, but no prayers etc.

In my case, my family is atheist also, imediate family, so I imagine any funeral will be non-religious.


Hmm, does the church regulate the graveyards? I heard about them trying to prevent suicide burials and "limbo" babies before, but maybe thats just urban legends/what atheist tell their kids to scare them at bedtime/ true.

CDfm

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

Hmm, does the church regulate the graveyards? I heard about them trying to prevent suicide burials and "limbo" babies before, but maybe thats just urban legends/what atheist tell their kids to scare them at bedtime/ true.

Thats interesting -there was a case in Louth around 10 years back I think where a Parish Priest refused permission for a burial of an unbaptised child. I think it was more related to the county council having officially closing the graveyard and not giving permission for it being opened but I could be wrong.

Suicides and babies get buried in Catholic Ceremonies and have done I think since Vatican II circa 1963 -but it was the case that suicides,executed and the insane were not historically.

I have heard that Prince Michael(Neale) of the Saltees I believe had a dispute with the Church in the 1930s I believe overhis own church attendence as a condition to bury a child and built his own Mausoleum -but I dont know if this is true.

robindch

CDfm wrote: »

does the church regulate the graveyards? I heard about them trying to prevent suicide burials and "limbo" babies before, but maybe thats just urban legends/what atheist tell their kids to scare them at bedtime/ true.

Well, atheists can tell their kids this scary story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7588035.stm

Good example of cross-border co-operation all the same though!

Undergod

rainbow kirby wrote: »

+1, with a truckload of booze for everyone who comes to see it.

Hell yeah. The actual ceremony of burning the boat will be the culmination of a three-day party in my memory. Everyone gathers on the beach at dawn to push the boat out and set it alight.

CDfm

Undergod wrote: »

Hell yeah. The actual ceremony of burning the boat will be the culmination of a three-day party in my memory. Everyone gathers on the beach at dawn to push the boat out and set it alight.

The zorastrians in india used top put the bodies out for the vultures to pick the bones clean until chemical poisoning killed the birds off.

I wonder what kind of a job seagulls would do asw we have loads of the feckers

Undergod

Or sharks.