As an atheist, how do you feel about dead people, specifically, bluntly, dead bodies, including, ultimately, your own? [View all]

[NNadir]

One of the books I'm reading - I'm way behind on reading in general, there's so much I want to read, so little time - is called "Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas" by Jennifer Raff.

A review of the book by another anthropologist, which is somewhat critical of it, is here: Jennifer Raff’s ‘Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas’—A Review

The introduction, beyond which I haven't gone very far, begins with the tale of the discovery of a human mandible in a cave on Wales Island in Alaska. For page after page, Dr. Raff gives commentary on respect for the dead, the history of anthropologist's disrespect, genocide against native Americans, disrespect for the oral traditions of Native Americans, the role of oral traditions in anthropology and the effort to obtain permission to extract DNA from tribes of modern Native Americans etc., etc., etc., and so on and so on.

Eventually, after much discussion she remarks that ultimately scientists obtained "permission" to analyze the mandible with scientific instrumentation, a "proper burial" for a person whose bones were scattered across the cave by animals who apparently ate his dead body is arranged, this after he is given a name, Shuká Káa, translated from a language he may or may not have spoke or be related to the language he spoke, as "Man ahead of us." Whenever his bones are discussed thereafter, this name is used, as if he were a person who exists. The funeral, probably religious in nature, although there is no discussion of that, indicated "respect" for his bones.

If I sound dismissive of the appalling history of the conquest of the so called "New World" it's not intended; I fully acknowledge that as is very common in all cases where one people's tribe displaces another, whether the "tribe" in question is millions of British, French, or Spanish Europeans, or an Inuit group of a few thousands, genocide is, more often than not, practiced, sometimes explicitly, usually by designating the original inhabitants of the conquered Lebensraum as somehow subhuman, less "human" than the conquerors themselves, "savages" or worse. Hitler intended for all the Slavs in the former Soviet Union to starve to death, and the US government in the 19th century began shooting bison indiscriminately to make Plains Native Americans starve as well. Hitler admired the United States for that history, starving the conquered, as well as its Jim Crow apartheid and before that, human slavery, which he practiced himself. These are facts. They cannot be changed. The people who performed these acts of committing genocide, the actual physical killers, did so in airs of self justification, even positive self regard, no matter how we now detest what they did from our current cultural matrix, some of us at least.

History can not be corrected and made better; it can only be described in ways that are a function, ethically, in the terms of the moral purview, such as moral purviews exist, of the historian's society and not the society of the perpetrators. This is not an excuse for horror; ideally it is part of a path for a culture, all cultures in fits and starts, to rise to a higher level of decency, which I define as respect for the living as opposed to the dead.

A point:

In analytical molecular biology, generally using mass spectrometry, we often need "blanks" of human tissue, usually blood, serum or plasma, but often tissues obtained from cadavers or surgical tissue, presumably all of which has been "ethically" obtained. One of the most difficult blanks to obtain, for the development of treatments for serious eye diseases, is vitreous fluid. I've been there, done that. Presumably these tissues are obtained "ethically," but in all cases they are extremely expensive and hard to get. Dead bodies are valuable in this sense, and the tissues can be instrumental in improving the lives of the living. If this sounds like a form of cannibalism, it cannot be avoided.

Every once in a while my wife and I discuss what she should do with my body after I kick off, which I hope to do before she kicks off, since it would be much harder for me to live without her than for her to live without me. My favorite idea - which might be too expensive - would be composting, since I'm concerned about phosphorous flows, but another is donating my body to a medical school or to a tissue bank. Being a skeleton in a classroom sounds like fun. Having my tissues distributed to labs around the country and the world also seems perfectly reasonable to me. I rather like the idea. All that said, I've worked to inform my wife that it really won't matter to me no matter what she decides since I won't exist in any form other than her memory, the memory of my sons, my friends, my relatives. She should do whatever makes her feel comfortable. Cremation is fine; I won't feel a thing.

When I visited my son some years back to discuss his further graduate school plans, to offer my advice and to discuss the institutions and the faculties therein to which he might (and did) apply, I took him out to dinner, whereupon I got a little emotional: I made sure to discuss with him that I was mortal, and that the only place I will exist after "shuffling off my mortal coil" will be in him, his brother, his mother and a few other people. I told him that therefore, if he wanted to honor me after I'm gone, doing so will involve nothing more than living an honorable life himself, and to give as much to humanity as he can, until he himself, sets off on the road of dying twice.

Here's what I think about dying "twice: "

One dies twice, physiologically, and then a second time when the last person to remember you dies themselves, and afterwards, there are only artifacts for a while, and finally a precious and deserved oblivion. The flesh doesn't matter; there is nothing to "respect" since the flesh is no longer a human being. I say, "do what one will with it," it's a form of matter no different than a piece of driftwood at sea.

I'd be interested in the thoughts of other atheists in this respect.

For fathers here, I wish a happiest of father's days.