Atheist Funerals?

[xrayman7040]

In my early 40's I have already lost three of my best childhood friends through separate tragedies. None of my friends were religious what so ever, yet their funerals were all the same, more about Gawd and Jesus that the actual person being remembered. The ministers, who are farmed out by the local funeral homes for a quick $100 and a free meal, all act as if the person at the front of the room was a devout member of his church who was a hardcore believer. I find this tradition utterly rediculious. I guess if the preachers were being honest they would say the person in the front of the

room is in a very warm place right now(at least if they believe like a true fundi would). It was very annoying sitting through a half hour church service honoring God when my friends should have been the main attraction of the services.

 

 

Has anyone ever made plans if anything ever happened to them? Has anyone ever been to a funeral with no religion? I was just wondering.

[Checkmate]

Yeah, I'm on the "downside" of life, too, and I've been thinking about my death and funeral off and on. But like a typical human I've only been thinking. No action yet.

 

The thing about funerals is that they are NEVER about the deceased, but about the survivors and THEIR grief. The service is about THEM and dealing with THEIR loss. Which explains why every service becomes a religious festival designed to make THEM feel good.

 

Fuck you. You're dead already. This is about them now.

 

So unless you have some iron clad agreement with both funeral parlor and your family NOT to turn it into a religious service, I can guarantee you that "God" will take center stage at your funeral. You can be the "Most Evil Atheist" to have ever lived, and I just BET that your family will be offering up prayers for your soul and comforting themselves with talk of seeing you in "heaven", because you really were a believer in your heart, or some such drivel. "God knows best".

 

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a gang of armed thugs to attend my funeral. They will be instructed to beat the fuck out of anyone who prays, mentions god or heaven. Repeat offenders will be shot and thrown into the oven with me. (I'm getting burned. Fuck wasting dirt space.)

 

You laugh, but if I can afford it, then it's a done deal. No one is making a mockery of MY last fucking days. Just because I'm dead, don't mean you can fuck me over. "Homey don't play that!"

[♦ nivek ♦]

Old man used to tell me "Yer too young to die, too fucking big to bury"

 

Burn remains, toss my ashes over or in the area where my two favorite mutts are buried, let the cats use the remanants to piss and crap in..

 

Do not want any ceremony past immediate family, and nothing like a suited or robed whore preaching me in to heaven...

 

Family has the instructions to donate any slavagable/usable organs, a DNR order, and no *heroic efforts* when it is my time to go.

 

I rather like idea of remains going back to earth rather than being some chemically stabilized embalmed piece of meat in a box.

 

kL

[Guest Challenger]

For me, no ceremony. Don't need one, don't want one. If someone feels differently, they can surprise me with it.

 

As for whatever's left of me, stuff me into the incinerator, and then put my ashes into Charlize Theron's bicycle seat

[oberon]

I did have arrangements to donate my body to a local Med school after the organ donor scavengers were done with it. It's easy to do and some schools will even pay for it. My partner found it too disturbing to deal with so if I die first I just get cremated. If he goes first it's back to med school for me.

 

Either way I've made arrangements for a bodiless 'happy hour' at my favorite bar. (An envelope with instructions and a nice wad of cash.) I keep threatening to have my ashes sprinkled on the hors d'oeuvre. I'm just weird enough my friends half believe me.

 

If I should ever become insanely rich however; I want to have a huge granite mausoleum. I’ll leave money in a trust so it is garishly decorated every Christmas; light up angels, candy canes, and Santa on the roof trying like hell to get in.

[Amethyst]

It doesn't fucking matter what I WANT. Unless my husband is still around when I go, my family will have some religious service and try to pretend that deep down I was a christian and will be in heaven when they get there. It's one of the few things that really really pisses me off for some reason, because when I die, it'll be as if I wasn't really here and didn't really feel about things how I feel.

 

Someone else will just come along with their revisionist history and edit me out.

 

Yeah, my family is like that too. What I actually want would be meaningless. If something should happen to me before my fundy relatives die off, they'll no doubt have a religious service and bury me next to my mother, who very rarely bothered to show me any love whatsover. Most of the time, she kept telling me about how I wasn't good enough for her. Arrrgh.

 

It pisses me off too, because throughout my whole life it seems like nothing I care about actually matters to most of my relatives. They don't really care about who I am as a person, all they care about is their religious fantasies.

[I Broke Free]

I want the same kind of service both my parent’s had. The both had already pre-paid for their cremations, and once the ashes were delivered my siblings and I put on a BBQ in their backyard for friends, neighbors and family. The following day we spread the ashes in Mojave Desert in the exact spot they had requested.

 

No God was ever mentioned.

[xrayman7040]

I want the same kind of service both my parent’s had. The both had already pre-paid for their cremations, and once the ashes were delivered my siblings and I put on a BBQ in their backyard for friends, neighbors and family. The following day we spread the ashes in Mojave Desert in the exact spot they had requested.

 

No God was ever mentioned.

 

 

What a great idea. I really get pissed off at the "death industry." They kick people when they are down. The rape the shit out of the pockets of the greiving. There is so much mark up in the funeral business it ain't funny.

[Light_of_Reason]

Haven't really given this much thought as it is my wish to have body donated to science or forensic body farm in the hopes that others may learn something useful from my rotting flesh.

 

That said, I don't care if or what kind of service family wants and has performed. Way I figure it, funeral is for the living to get their last hurrahs and goodbyes out to the dead. As I will be the inanimate at own function, and likely will have no consciousness to view spectacle, I see no need in having family go through more pain to fulfill stupid wishes to not have Christian funeral, just so long as they don't bury me where hunk of meat I currently am becomes totally useless.

[Amethyst]

I do have the donor box checked on my license. I figure, it's only way I can really determine what happens to my body short of making out a will.

[Dhampir]

I'm way too lazy, but if I weren't, I'd order a cremation, with all the proper legal arrangements to block my family from altering it. Otherwise, I'd like to be buried un-embalmed in a pine box. I'd rather the cremation, because even though I know that I'd be completely non-compus mentus, there's still something vaguely terrifying about being interred in earth.

 

I mean, what if my wife, feeling chained down in our marriage, and unable to completely commit to her new lover, decides to drug me at a party with a poison that is undetectable, and makes it appear like a heart attack, except the dosage is just short of sufficient, and at the morgue, the embalming machine goes on the fritz, and the orderlies decide to just perform the superficial preservations, and I wake up just before the dirt is poured over my casket, and I have to destroy it and dig my way out of 3 feet of dirt as the workers took a break in about 3 minutes as that would be about all the air I had in my casket, and upon escaping, and subsequently killing and burying the guy who saw me, so that no one would be able to say that I was actually alive, I had to then plot my revenge by trapping my murderous wife and her lover aboard the boat he bought for her, and then sink it, after spending 14 minutes forcing them to try to explain why they did it and beg for their lives, and watching them drown before disappearing to start my new life with the money I forced him to wirelessly wire to my accounts just before sinking the boat?

 

You could understand why I don't like the idea of being buried. A pine box would be much preferrable to a hardened wooden casket if that were to happen.

[spamandham]

I could care less what they do when I'm dead, although it seems best to donate my body to science/medicine. The real question is, how will I handle the death of a loved one!?

 

The answer is easy in my case. If I'm the one organizing it I will organize a religious service, because that's what everyone else wants. The only exception to this would be if I am the primary griever. In that case, I will donate their body to science/medicine.

[greasemonkey]

For those who don't know me, my father is a retired southern baptist minister; both of my brothers are also atheist/agnostic, leaving my oldest sister as the only remaining religious sibling. Remarkably, we all trust the religious members totally in regards to our last wishes.

 

I've never gone to the trouble of making formal or legal arrangements; but my brothers and I (and our spouses) have all discussed funeral plans in depth with each other. My entire family has a concensus about brain-death; generally poor health & the Terry Schiavo incident provoked a "family meeting" of sorts, and we were all in agreement about pulling the plug if the need arose, so that will never be an issue in my family at least. We all are pretty irreverant about death & discuss it very easily with each other. I've heard that can be a difficult subject with many families ...I don't really understand why, but I'm glad that isn't the case with mine.

 

The funeral arrangements are a little bit of a different story. My oldest brother & myself (the youngest) are the highest actual "risk of death" barring accidental death. We've all discussed our wishes with each other, and have pledged to make sure everyone else follows them (and have little to no doubt the rest of the family will go along with it). I'm the straggler with "wills;" I have a copy of my older brothers, but not my oldest (he left it with his kids); I have an extremely old one that needs to be updated (I don't think any of them are actually "legal" but that isn't a big concern; no other family member would dream of contesting anything). Death is really an eclectic thing between a bunch of heathen brothers, because we all took different routes on the subject. My oldest brother wants his body donated to science, I've chose cremation (I haven't filled out the organ donor card, but am considering it), and my next older brother is an organ donor but leaves the fate of his body to the rest of the family. The oldest and myself have stipulated NO RELIGIOUS SERVICES (I threatened to rise from the dead if a preacher said a single word!). I specified a "wake;" I think that is one of the best ideas that ever rose from the quasi-religious sector. I want everyone to spend a last night with my body, get drunk and laugh their asses off over all the stupid and funny crap I've done in my life! In the event my parents were to outlive me, it might give them a release valve & dad can get as religious as he wants with a roomfull of drunks (if it's left with only my sister and/or mother, the need for the religous stuff won't be as big of a big deal with them). I don't really care for the thought of an actual "funeral;" but if they want it, then just keep it secular. My oldest wants a memorial done by his GLTS friends & his chidren. My next older bro just wants whatever; he has no objections to a religious service if it makes the survivors feel better (he just says he'll be dead, he won't give a f**k); his wife has a little harder time dealing with the "death thing" so he's pretty well left it in her hands if she outlives him. If not, he'd prefer no religious service, but doesn't have any philosophical qualms about it like the rest of us.

[SilentLoner]

I plan to be cremated after donating my organs. I don't know about the med school body donation, but it sounds interesting.

I dont have that many family members that i'm close to and dont plan to have kids, so I guess it will be up to my younger bro or my future husband (if I marry) to plan the funeral.

 

Better start writing my will.

[Guest Penny]

Forget burning or burying... I want to be stuffed and hung on the wall!

 

 

I would want whatever is cheapest for my family. Christian or not, who cares as long as they get a good deal.

[chefranden]

I prefer being left out in a ditch like we do deer hereabouts.

 

I don't see much use in taking the body out of the food chain. I've eaten plenty of animals, let some eat me.

 

Today is my turn to eat; tomorrow is my turn to be eaten.

 

I would like my family to get my skull when it is picked clean and make it into a lamp or an ashtray or something useful. Then since I will no longer be a part of the conversation, I can be the object of the conversation.

[Thackerie]

In my early 40's I have already lost three of my best childhood friends through separate tragedies. None of my friends were religious what so ever, yet their funerals were all the same, more about Gawd and Jesus that the actual person being remembered. The ministers, who are farmed out by the local funeral homes for a quick $100 and a free meal, all act as if the person at the front of the room was a devout member of his church who was a hardcore believer. I find this tradition utterly rediculious. I guess if the preachers were being honest they would say the person in the front of the

room is in a very warm place right now(at least if they believe like a true fundi would). It was very annoying sitting through a half hour church service honoring God when my friends should have been the main attraction of the services.

 

 

Has anyone ever made plans if anything ever happened to them? Has anyone ever been to a funeral with no religion? I was just wondering.

 

Yep. I've been to funerals with no religious crap attached; we call them memorial services. John Lennon's "Imagine" is a favorite song for these types of events, and I hope my loved ones will play it at mine if they choose to hold one. (I also hope there will be plenty of smles and laughter and a generous amount of reefer passed around.) Howsomever, if my friends and families decide not to have any type of event at all, that's OK, too. I'll be dead and won't notice.

[Guest JP]

I will have a funeral. I'm not sure what I will have done at it though, besides them playing the song "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve.

[fallenleaf]

Yeah, I'm on the "downside" of life, too, and I've been thinking about my death and funeral off and on. But like a typical human I've only been thinking. No action yet.

 

The thing about funerals is that they are NEVER about the deceased, but about the survivors and THEIR grief. The service is about THEM and dealing with THEIR loss. Which explains why every service becomes a religious festival designed to make THEM feel good.

 

Fuck you. You're dead already. This is about them now.

 

This is a common opinion (it seems) but one which disturbs me and I have to reject.

 

See, while I agree that the funeral (memorial) is for the people of the deceased... it is about the deceased and the survivor's memory of the deceased. They are there to remember the person who is dead and to come to terms with that person's death.

 

Imagine if you would a person standing up at your funeral and telling all your relatives, "He's raping babies in heaven now." This statement, which (hopefully) is completely against your character, sullies the memory of you (the deceased).

 

And while it may be comforting for people to hear that their loved ones are in heaven with Jesus, it is an insult to the memory of that person if it goes against everything they stood for. It's like the Beef industry giving the eulogy for the founder of PETA (she's an asshole and deserves it but that's not the point). To take the memory of a person who lived their life openly and clearly based on their belief that Christianity was not true and sully it with a ceremony which contradicts that is just disgusting.

 

Now, it's not like we should be defining ourselves based on our lack of belief but for such rejected beliefs to be usurped on us after death for a comforting (albeit false) feeling in those who loved us... well it doesn't sit right with me.

 

When my father (an openly irreligious and non-Christian man) dies it would be harmful for my memory of him if the last formal ceremony regarding him was infused with the very thing he detested. Sure, if he changes his mind -- as Christians wish -- then fine, he can have a ceremony which reflects his beliefs at the time of his death. But when he doesn't, and I speak from experience that he won't, it is massively disrespectful to insult his memory in those of us who loved him for what he was and not because he believed in a particular fairy tale.

 

I have the same issue with pretend psychics (is there any other kind?) who claim to talk to the dead and just confuse the memory of the departed for those who are dealing with the loss.

 

My funeral is about how I wish to be remembered. Just as much as it is a time for people to deal with their loss.

 

--

As for how I would like my ceremony to be... more tomorrow in the afternoon. I need to get to bed now.

[Libertus]

Ya know, I am sort of torn in thinking about a funeral for myself.

 

I am married and have two children. My wife is still a christian and my children seem to be travelling down that road for the long haul. When I die, I believe that I will no longer exist, so does my desire for my own funeral really matter? Shouldn't I just let my wife and children do whatever it is that will help them cope with my death. It will make no difference to me if they yank my empty body into a church and talk about their hope that gawd accepted me back into "his" arms or whatever.

 

Then again, there is the desire to have myself accurately represented when I die. As long as I do things right, I will leave some sort of impression that will allow those to whom it will matter to know who I really am.

 

I just don't don't know.

 

Libertus