Atheist Funeral

I am religious, but not very mystical or ritualistic. So I just plan to to let someone else do whatever they want with my dead body.

I want to be loaded into a torpedo, like Spock, and fired at the closest state capitol that still flies the Confedrate flag.

No point in being dead if you can't enjoy it.

I want to be fired into the sun, but I hear it's pretty expensive.

I wanted to be cremated, untill I learned its not what i thought it meant.
There's no dairy products or chocolate syrup involved at all.

When my dad died we talked about this very thing - he wasn't necessarily an "atheist" but he wasn't religious at all and everyone in the family pretty much agreed that having a preacher there wouldn't be what Daddy would have wanted. We had him cremated and the funeral home pretty much just handled the burial and let us run the service however we saw fit. We played the music we wanted and a few of us just got up there and talked about him.

Now, it may have helped that my best friend since High School was also the funeral director, but I got the impression that that's the sort of passive role they always took.

Now, I will say this, and far be it from me to tell anyone how they handle their own situation, but having the service is pretty important. It gives a lot of people their turn at closure and a chance to grieve. Part of me wanted to skip my Dad's funeral for some reason but I'm glad I went and I'm glad we had it. And when Father's Day this year came around and it was my first without him I was grateful that even though he was cremated that we buried his ashes and marked the site, as it gave me a chance to go have lunch with my Daddy that I might not have had, had we done things differently. That's just my opinion.

My Grandfather was cremated in a Humanist 'ceremony'.
Grandmother in a Church of Scotland ceremony.

I was surprised, as a confirmed atheist, to have enjoyed the latter more and to still think it was the better ceremony. Now that may be because of the two ministers, but it's one person's experience

I agree with what Butler said about having a service of some type. Closure is insanely important, something I didn't realize until I'd missed a few funerals I should have gone to, and went to a few I'd considered avoiding.

Good luck, it always bothers me when people who totally lack faith have "conventional" funerals.

A friend of mine lost his mother in high school. The day of the funeral was on Easter Weekend, and after talking about the actual deceased woman for roughly two sentences, the preacher then went on this long, long, loooong rant about Christ and Easter and how much of an important holiday it was.

I sat there, thinking how disrespectful it all was. I mean, this was HER funeral, we didn't come here to talk about Easter, we came here to remember and honor HER.

Same problem at my sister's wedding too: "God God God God Chist God Christ Christ, oh yeah, you two, you're married now, God God God God God."

These events should be about the people, not the religion. There should be a service of some type, but if all the guy is gonna talk about is God and not me, then please, don't invite a preacher to my funeral.

Closure is extremely important. I found out a friend died in another city months after the fact, and it wasn't a good feeling. Taking up space in the ground is maybe a little wasteful, though maybe it helps for relatives to have somewhere to go. I'd go for cremation, but if I died today I'm afraid my relatives would display my corpse for all to see, which I feel would be invasive.

Saw this the other day. Tibetan sky burial, which is a fancy way of saying inducing vultures to eat you in a field. They make sure to take your brain out so it's eaten and to grind your skull into bits. There's a whole culture for this?

NSFW. Ads and pics are NSFW:
http://dilidoo.com/2009/09/11/burial...61_photos.html

My body will be going to medical science and/or organ donoring (depending on the circumstances of my death).

Like someone above mentioned, if a medical school uses your body, they should hold a funeral where all of the med students that benefited from the bodies attend and all of the families of the donors are encouraged to come. It helps give them a sense of closure and lets them know what a profound impact the donations have had on medical science.

My Nan's funeral this year was the same. Right before Easter so we got the story of Christ reserection thrown in.

I'm willing to donate my organs as long as it's clear they are not to go to Libertarians. I don't care about my funeral because I won't be there.

I'll be donating organs, then getting cremated. I'd like a wake of sorts where friends and family meet, with a television playing an endless loop of Looney Tune cartoons. And I'd like clips of me making comments to people interspersed through-out a la White Goodman in Dodgeball.

"Looking good, Uncle Bill."
"Cousin Shannon! Thanks for coming!"
"There's my niece Suzy! She's a genius!"
"Aunt Jenny! Have you lost weight?"

Brilliant.

Parts of my body will be delivered to certain Chewers.

I'm halfway through Six Feet Under at the moment, starting season 3.
so I've been thinking about this... anyway, I wouldn't mind that zoroastrian funeral,
with the "tower of silence" and vultures, or cremation, or just dumping me somewhere in the woods, to decompose slowly.

Here where I live ( ex-commie block ), it's not advisable to sign up for organ doning, because it most certainly means someone's going to make a lot of money off my organs,
or could potentially even end up dead and de-organed for attracting attention. I might not be religious, or a very traditionally moral person, but I don't want my death to help finance organized crime douchebags.

Actually this is a side point but who has a donor card?

The wife and I both got one as we figured we wont be needing our organs in the afterlife (of course if the ancient Eygptians were right I'm screwed.)

No need for the delivery. Who do you think will be doing the dismembering? TAKE OUT ONLY!

Just Prop Me Up in a Corner

Funerals and memorial services are to honor the dead sure, but it's really for the people left behind. My Dad was not religious, but my grandmother was and it was important for her and others to get those words of encouragement/consolation at his funeral.

(*Raises hand*)

This is a fair point - I mean, yes, it's your body, you can do with it what you want, but there is something to be said for allowing your loved ones to have some kind of closure at the funeral that brings them some peace. I mean, if you're deceased, what does it matter to you if your family's last impressing gives them some kind of closure?

My brother and his family are Unitarian, and we're Catholic. I'm not overly religious, but some members of my family are. My sister-in-law doesn't believe in God, but when my brother died, my mother asked that "Ave Maria" be sung at the funeral, and my sister-in-law agreed. Had my Mom not been religious, I'm sure my SIL wouldn't have done anything like that, but she did that for my Mom's sake, not for anyone else's.

For that matter, we had an open-casket viewing so everyone could see him one last time, and then an in-church (at their Unitarian church) funeral. He was cremated, and my sister-in-law gave a small portion of his ashes to my Mom and some to my Dad. The rest of his ashes are in a beautiful, hand-blown glass urn that a close friend of theirs made for them, and it's on a wall-sized book case in my sister-in-law's home. I like that better, you know? Much like JGButler gets to go have lunch with his dad, I feel I get to see my brother whenever I head over to see my sis-in-law and the kids. I like it better that he's safe and warm in the house he loved and picked out, and that most importantly, he's with his wife and kids, and not laying all alone out in some cemetary, or scattered into the ocean. I'm not knocking anyone who's ever chosen to do that, don't get me wrong, and I know he's gone and he can't feel anything. But it does give me comfort to know that he's where he's loved.

That is AWESOME! I wouldn't mind going out that way at all, why waste my tasty lady flesh when it can be a vulture snack?

My hope is that, around the time I kick it, some enterprising scientist unleashes The Plague so at least my zombified remains can shuffle around in search of brains. That's the way to spend the afterlife!

I would love to be made into a vat of chili and consumed by friends and family, but that's extremely unlikely. Whatever becomes of my mortal remains, I hope my skull is saved and turned into a Magic 8 Ball so I can provide guidance from beyond the grave to my nieces and nephews.

"Should we vacation in Cancun this year?"
"Let's ask Uncle Adam!"
(rattle rattle)
"It says I don't give a shit, I'm dead. Cancun it is!"

sorry, I don't know were you've been!

Damn you for making me want to actually make a skull 8 ball! Where am I going to find a human skull honestly? Maybe a trip to the ruins of New Orleans is in order...

Some occult shops used to sell them, but I don't know if that's still the case. You may be able to obtain one through a medical supply company.

If necessary you can always grab a shovel and a flashlight and scope out your local cemetery. Good aerobic exercise, fresh air, and ill-gotten human remains; what could be better?

For all I care, as long as they harvest every useful organ from my body they might as well drop it in a ditch somewhere. I'll be dead, I won't give a fuck.