Oldscratch,
Sorry.
Hey no problem Izzy. It’s very easy for what we write on this board to be misinterpreted. Without those facial expresions everyone’s so fond of it can be quite hard to figure out exactly what people mean. You always think you make sense, then someone asks you what the hell you are talking about.
Well I guess that the OP (hi Izzy!) already has a sample of atheist points of view, but I’ll chime in with my opinion anyway. (For the record: I’m an atheist.)
I have signed an organ donor card and I hope to think that someone could use my body for medical research or perhaps organ transplants.
However, if I were told that my body was not suitable for either of those and so someone is going to feed it to the dogs, I really wouldn’t care. If I were buried in the ground, my body would be decomposed by living organisms anyway. If it were revealed to me that the funeral home employee secretly used my dead body for necrophiliac purposes (or insert other disgusting practice here), I wouldn’t care either. Though of course it would be deplorable if my loved ones were to suffer mental anguish from whatever happened to me after I died.
However, if you told me that my body was going to be embalmed after my death, set up in a magnificent edifice, and countless people would come to pay their respects to me as long as the human species still survives, I suppose I would be secretly pleased. But I’m not going to apologize for being vain. 
I’m also an organ donor, btw.
I would be tempted, although my pride would get in the way. I’d want to get at least my value in Grade A American beef, dammnit.
Now if he was going to make me into CAT FOOD, buggrit. Those little bastards can all starve for all I care.
I don’t like the idea of burial, and someone suggested burial at sea, without any coffin.
I do have an organ donor sticker on my driver’s license, so it would be just the scraps anyway.
Let’s be clear: I get the $10 in advance, right? Otherwise I’m indifferent.
This doesn’t seem to be just a question for athiests. Many religious people in the circumstances given in the OP would agree that the corpse is just a piece of meat.
Ask me a similar question where the prospective owner of my corpse is a necrophiliac and you’ll start to push me.
picmr
That’s EXACTLY what I’m doing. In this state you have to be at least one mile offshore to perform a burial at sea.
Which has always puzzled me. Several religious people have told me that it’s a sin to cremate my remains because I’ll need them when Christ resurrects the dead. But a corpse will rot, and eventually crumble away to dust rendering it somewhat unusable (or at least aesthetically unpleasant) on Judgement day anyway.
Guy: when you say “creamate” that gives me an image of you being sprinkled in her coffee after you die.
Yeah and after the corpse rots, it becomes soil. And plants grow out of it. And people will eat the plants, and it will become part of them. (I belive Shakespeare has a good bit about a king in the gut of a beggar.) So are we going to have to fight over molecules on Resurection Day?
This is the danger of taking metaphors too literally.
Speaking of being eaten be sharks and dogs, their is the very religious practice of being eaten be vultures (Buddist sky burial). If fact, now that I think about it, being eaten be anything would be more moral than being embalmed.Being embalmed would be kind of selfish wouldn’t it? Just a random thought.
Right now at SFMOMA there is a really interesting painting. It’s called Vern, and is in fact nothing more than the ashes of a dead artist smeared on canvas. Would you as an atheist be willing to have this happen to your ashes? I would. Or how about as a religous person, I imagine many would too.
10 measely bucks? Wellll… Okay, but only because I don’t like dogs.
I have never understood people who want to leave their bodies “to science”. If you’re dead, Science fucked up!
cher3 wrote:
Dignity, shmignity. We feed the corpses of cows, chickens, fishies, etc., to humans. We also feed them to dogs. Why should feeding a human corpse to a dog be all that different? I understand we taste like pork.
Thanks to all who have responded. I have found this quite interesting, and I hope others did as well.
In case interest is not exhausted by now, I’ll try a follow up. Some posters expressed no objection regarding their own bodies, though acknowledging that relatives would feel hurt. What do such posters with these attitudes feel about their loved one’s bodies? Does everyone still have the sentimental attachment to the bodies of their loved ones, or do some regard the dead bodies of their loved ones, like their own, as a piece of meat. I’m assuming that said loved ones do not object. (In this, the distiction between athiests and religious people is even more blurred, if existant).
Incidently, the Talmud gives, as a reason for the ritually impure status of dead people, the notion that people might otherwise make their parent’s bones into utensils, and their skins into mats.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t feel particularly attached to my loved one’s remains. I wouldn’t want their corpses desecrated, but only out of lingering repsect. I don’t visit the graves of dead relatives and friends. They’re not there . . . only their “shell.” One relative plans to donate their body to science, one plans cremation, one plans burial in a plain, cheap box, wrapped in a shroud, and I plan to donate all of my organs and then be cremated. The mortal remains are not what is important, but the feelings and memories of that person are the part you cherish. The corpse is relatively meaningless.
My feelings towards the remains of my loved ones are more complex. If my (future) wife decided to become an organ donor or to be cremated I wouldn’t care. If I knew for sure she was dead (for example if the body fell down in an inaccessible area in the mountains) and it would be impossible to recover I would not make extraordinary efforts to retrieve the body. If you told me that someone in a case of dire necessity resorted to cannibalism and ate my wife’s dead body (think plane crashed in the Andes) I would not be offended.
However, if someone took my wife’s recent corpse and desecrated it in front of me I would try to stop them because I would feel that they are showing a lack of respect to her memory. So I can’t say that I would view it strictly as a piece of meat (even though I recognize that this is an irrational prejudice on my part.)
$10? hell I’d do it for free
As long as you removed organs useful for transplants first, cause as tasty as the dog would find my eyeballs I reckon it could be better used somewhere else.
But I love dogs and I reckon it’d be better than being cremated or buried, that seems boring really.
I’d still take the $10, probably haggle for more.
After all it’s just a bunch of organic molecules, the crap left over from dead stars, in reality.
Also I know it was a theoretical question but the dog would be dead before me in all likelyness.
My mom and dad were burned, and then buried. I’ve been to the site once in the 2 years since. That spot, and the specific nature of their corporeal remains doesn’t mean much to me. But I think of them many times every day and miss them dearly.
When my wife and kids (and I) die, I assume we’ll be ashified, and then probably sprinkled somewhere that means something to the survivors (No, not Gervase!) or meant something to me. Maybe in a nice garden where I’ll amend the soil. Maybe in connection with planting a tree. Don’t know, and really haven’t lost any sleep over it.
Regarding the OP, you must realize your pup will probably get a good buzz from the ETOH content!
Also, how come no one else has mentioned:
“Looks like we’ve got us an eater!
…
Look, if you’re feeling guilty afterwards, we’ll dig a hole and you can throw up into it.
…
Well, I am feeling a bit peckish.”
Gotta be one of the all time best. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you just don’t know.
To echo Cher3, the most honest, ethical and compasionate person I ever knew was an athiest.
Maybe this aspect should be a new thread!