You’d have to define “respect”. I don’t think holding the view that people should not impose their religious beliefs on others is disrespectful. If it is, then they are equally disrespectful of my beliefs.
It’s not really as though putting corpse parts on the moon is a traditional practice in any other belief system, either. Nor does it advance science, develop technology, or do any of the other stuff that expensive and resource-intensive moon missions have typically been expected to do.
Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that wasteful and pointless arbitrary whims like putting corpse parts on the moon ought to be illegal. But I agree with you that if a corpse-part launcher is saying to the Navajo “I’m more than happy to continue pursuing my wasteful and pointless arbitrary whim despite its affronting your longstanding culturally important belief”, that’s not coming across as particularly respectful of said belief.
[ETA and long delayed: thanks, Eonwe, good to know!]
You’re on very shaky ground if you think “tradition” should trump anything. Most religious belief systems were far less tolerant as you look back in time, and have been forced into greater tolerance by secular social forces.
But even if it did, at what point in history exactly did Navajo tradition establish its prohibition on placing human remains on the Moon?
What it accomplishes is pointing out the false dichotomy here. The only options are not allow or don’t allow. There are other sacred lands that Navajo believe in, and yet remains are allowed on those. So there’s likely to some way to come to a peaceful agreement, that doesn’t involve all of this hostility towards a group for having a religious belief and expressing it.
Maybe there could be accommodations on where the remains are located.
And I do agree it’s hard for me to get passionate about this in any way, because there’s no real need to let rich people scatter their remains to the moon. I personally would prefer to keep the moon unsullied by capitalism for as long as possible.
Disagreements between religious tradition and the wasteful and pointless arbitrary whims of consumer culture are nothing but very shaky ground. Neither believers in traditional ideas of “sacredness” nor cosmic-woohaha sentimentalists thinking it’s meaningful to spend massive amounts of money and resources to put cremains pinches on the moon have a leg to stand on in terms of objective rational defense of their desires.
How about disagreements with religious tradition that heretics should die or that LGBT people are evil? Tradition is just about the worst metric you could choose for whether something should be respected. Most religions have been dragged grudgingly out of traditional intolerance by secular social forces.
So the real issue here is who is seeking to impose their religious beliefs on others.
I completely agree, but only one of those groups is seeking to impose their intolerant beliefs to constrain the objectively harmless behavior of the other.
Certainly. But in that case, it’s the people I respect, not their beliefs. As long as the beliefs to not contradict my own too badly, I’ll mostly go along with them at whatever event.
“Respect” has a lot of different meanings. It can just mean an acknowledgement of existence, in which case sure, I respect their beliefs. It can mean I think the thing carries legitimate power, like saying I’ll respect a court order. I don’t accept that here. Or it could mean I have deference or even admiration for their beliefs, in which case hell no–I consider them as laughable as any other superstition.
Whether my default position switches from neutral coexistence to mockery and deliberate offense depends on whether they try to impose their beliefs on me. Buu Nygren, at least, is certainly leaning towards being in the latter category.
If someone doesn’t want human remains on the Moon then they shouldn’t send their remains to the moon. That’s simple enough.
That expectation does not extend to others.
No, but putting remains in a prominent place that you can look at to “visit” your dear departed is a traditional Christian practice.
The Navajo don’t want any human remains on the moon.
It ain’t gonna get to the moon anyway. Big failure.
Pretty sure they have time to bring a lawsuit or three, now.
I just wanted to agree with this post. Maybe there’s something to their religion. 
I blame Tklehanoai. We should start a Pit thread.
[ Hah, ninjaed by @puzzlegal ]
Huh? There are in fact objective rational reasons, in a human society that throughout its identifiable history has contained many different religious traditions and naturally occurring minorities of LGBT people, for promoting religious pluralism and equal rights before the law irrespective of religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity. That’s certainly not analogous to promoting the wasteful and pointless placing of corpse parts on the moon.
Perhaps the parties involved could work out a compromise, as BigT suggested? Maybe, for example, the corpse parts could be placed on the moon as planned, and the concomitant alleged desecration of the moon neutralized by burying the cremains under a mound of powdered dogshit.
Mind you, I have no idea whether powdered dogshit is in fact considered a desecration-neutralizing substance in traditional Navajo belief. But if it were, then surely nobody shipping the cremains would have any objection, since the dogshit would be doing zero objective harm either to the cremains or to the moon.
I don’t know this. But I bet the human gunk/ash, whatever is in a sealed container and not actually gonna touch moon dust at all. Just lay there.
Hasn’t anybody watched Star Trek where Spocks coffin soft landed on that unstable planet. The moon is dead, no microbes are gonna turn into ugly bug looking things. And human remains aren’t gonna be brought back to life. Even if a tiny bit of Nimoy is in one of the hermetically sealed tiny capsules.
It’s a long story. The gist of it is:
Four days later the two witnesses who had looked down on the dead twin also died. The people learned that it is dangerous to look at the dead.
That’s what it’s about. The prohibition on looking at the dead. From that some have extrapolated an interpretation that having dead on the Moon would spoil their view of it. Since it wouldn’t be visible, that’s an overly literal extrapolation of their prohibition. Every religion is plagued by those who make overly literal extrapolations of what were originally simple rules.
I have a different view of this matter.
I live in a place where religion, politics and real estate are intractably, often violently intertwined. On a regular basis, one party or another will loudly declare that some site is holy to them, and so no other party can enter there, or pray there, or yes, bury their dead there. It’s an expression of power, not religion, and that leads to tensions, which often leads to bloodshed.
Now, I have nothing but good will toward the Navajo nation, and I certainly don’t believe that they’re intentionally using this incident to stake their exclusive claim to the Moon. But the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I think that giving in to their request would set a very bad precedent. Let’s leave our sectarian conflicts here on Earth, OK?
They would probably welcome them.
Any lunar settlement would probably have a shortage of various useful elements, particularly phosphorous; sending cremains to the Moon would actively help the sustainability of such settlements. Send more, please, in clearly marked and damage-resistant containers.
Eating human remains? That’s horrible, disgusting, and vile! How could you even consider such a thing? Munches on chips made from potatoes grown on Earth, home to 110 billion dead humans.
Do you have any evidence for that?
Oh, I forgot, we are all Postmodernists now.
The New Postmodernist Dictionary defines ‘evidence’ as a synonym for ‘My Opinion’. 
I’m sure that was intended as a joke, but “Alive” and “Dead” are social constructs.
Hence why as our understanding of the human body grew we had to come up with new terms and concepts, like “brain death” or the idea that “you’re not dead until you’re warm and dead”.