I think there are two worlds in this univers,one is the world of living things,another of unliving things.The world of living things must be created by a force which is different or independent from the world of unliving things.That is why there are always so many catastrophic things happening to the world of living things.So I think there are two forces in nature,only one of them is struggling to creat life.
???
You divide nature into two forces. One is beneficial to life and one is not? Why do you believe this?
Before you said that nature is beneficial to life, now you say that only part of nature is beneficial to life, whereas it seems obvious to me that nature doesn’t have to be divided into two forces of which one is beneficial (good) and one is catastrophic (bad).
Why? What makes you think this? Why isn’t there just one world? Can’t nature be both beneficial and catastrophic to life? I think it’s an illusion that there is some force in nature that constantly struggles to create life. There is no such beneficial force. Rather the same forces of nature are sometimes beneficial and sometimes not.
The god who created life is not the god who created the univers.The god who created the physical univers went away after the creation and let it go its own way.Life was created after that by another god ,the god of life,and without the awarness of the god who created the univers.That is why since life was created it struggling so hard to servive in this world, and why there are sometimes catastrophic things to life,such as earthquecks,floods,and why there are so many places that are unsuitable for life even on earth,and that is why there is no life been found outside earth, although earth compared to what we see the univers is so small.
If the univers and life were creatde by just one god,why there are so many natural disasters to life.Why there is no life been found in such a vast space outside earth?
We live for the god who created us.May be we are a part of this god.As we now have free will,for the things we do that comply with the will of god we say that doing is natural.If we do things that do not comply with or even counter the will of god who created us,we say this doing is unnatrual or counter-natural,such as suicide,cremation,etc.
God is not good.
Or god is unnatural.
Or there is no god.
Or god is not powerful enough to stop all disasters and bad things.
^These theories explain disasters just as well or better than yours about two gods. So what reason do you have to believe in two gods. What evidence do you have?
We do? Why?
Is natural good? Why?
Is unnatural bad? Why?
My believing in two gods is much better than the four theories you list above.
First,If the univers and life were created by just one god,there would be more life to be found outside of earth,as the space we see outside of earth is so extensive,but up to now,we found no life outside of earth.If the god create the univers and life,he need not to waste so much space outside of earth without life at all.
Second,If the univers and life were created by just one god,he would not made the world with so many disasters that could destroy life that he himself created(as in the case of extinguish of dinosuar).
So,I can be sure there are two gods,one god created the univers,another created life,and the god who created the univers has no interest in life or just is unaware of the god who created life.
We do? Why?.
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If not,you live for what?
Since we were created by nature( or god), natural such as eat,marry and reproduce,are good.Unnatural or count-natural such as suicide,homosexuality,taking drugs and cremation,etc,are bad.
What is good for life is good and natural,what is bad for life is bad and unnatural.For we ourselves are life,of course we judge what is bad or good by wether it is beneficial or harmful to life.
I opt for cremation only for financial reasons. You can be cremated for less than $1,000.00. Burial, with all the trimmings is running about $7, 000.00. If I could afford it, I’d much prefer to be buried in a “green” cemetery. There is one about 25 miles from where I live. Burial there does not include pumping a body full of preservatives or sealing a grave so that it takes at least fifty years for a corpse to return to basic elements.
Although I respect the need for closure a funeral provides, I don’t want a funeral. Last minute closure, for me, is an attempt to justify so many avoidances of good personal contact. Bury me with my harmonica, and it will take longer than me to be a give back to the ecology of energy.
Burial, throughout recorded history, seems to include preparations for an afterlife. Tombs of ancients were loaded down with provisions as if the afterlife would be something like this one. I can’t buy that. Even Jesus claims that the afterlife will be nothing like this one. (The pharisee’s taunts of who is whose wife after death?) So if the afterlife is a sea change, how could I prepare for it?
It’s cheap and hygienic.
Ashes are natural. Whether by decomposition or cremation, the body can be returned to nature. Let the dying decide what nature will not decide for them – that is their right and often a last source of pride and comfort in death. Life is a struggle; persistence earns one the right to choose his own conclusion. To respect that choice is to honor the dead by beginning a legacy (regardless of the nature of that legacy).
=D>
This is an (almost) entirely subjective assertion, and a false and rather ignorant one at that.
The ideas of “benefit” and “harm” are neither absolute nor universal. Therefore, no universal means of evaluation can be applied in this respect.
Also, I think it fairly obvious that morality (in life and/or death) is never quite that simple.
WHAT?! Why? This is just your unsupported opinion.
No. As I already said: God, if there is one, may not be good. God may be malevolent, or disinterested toward life. What do you know about it? You’re not giving facts. You’re speculating.
No. You are very far from surety, certainty, even probability. Anyone can speculate. You may feel sure, but that does not make you RIGHT.
There is no god. Yet I continue to strive and make goals. I live to grow, to develop, to become something, something more, something different. Tell me I’m wrong.
You assume there is a god. No proof. You assume that you know what god approves and disapproves of. No proof. You assume that people ought to act according to what (you think) god approves of. You give no reason why. I do not follow blindly, especially when the thing I am supposed to follow might as well be imaginary or mythical for all I know.
YES. I AGREE WITH THIS. And this ^ doesn’t depend on the existence of god, does it. Whether a god exists or not, we would in either case “judge what is bad or good by wether it is beneficial or harmful to life.” Although I do not think that natural = good and unnatural = bad. I think that is wrong.
I don’t think that cremation burns a man’s body to ashes is natural. Yes,the body been burned can return to nature,but through a very different way that’s far from been buried in earth.
Up to now,unfortunately,all philosophic theories are just speculations.All are trying to understand the world,none of them are entirely right or wrong.I think an idea which explain the world conveniently and with reasonableness is at the least better than no idea at all about the world.
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One of the purposes of philosophy is to let one have the capability to judge right from wrong. As you strive and make goals and develop and to become something and something defferent,keep in mind at the least not to do things that’s harmful to your life or other 's lives,such as suicide,homosexuality,taking drugs,cremation after death,and such kind of things.
Well, I don’t think working in a cubicle for 50 years is natural, but that’s life sister. Death is a part of life as well.
Ashes are natural. A volcanic soil, for example, is enriched by the ashes produced. Ashes, if from a natural source, can be beneficial to the Earth. Now I can’t weigh the benefits of being buried against cremation, due to simple lack of experience. However, I think it safe to say that our organic bodies can become fodder for nature, after death, in any number of ways. Having struggled through life, and suffered death, I think it every man’s right to choose how he wishes to be delivered back to nature.
Even if the benefits weren’t the same, the ritual and respect in themselves speak volumes about humanity. I remember reading something from The Analects (commonly accepted book of Kongzi [Confucius] teachings) in which a disciple asked him why he still insists on sacrificing a lamb as part of a ritual, even though the ritual being practiced was considered out-dated and wasteful. In response, he basically said (and this is a very rough paraphrased version) he regrets the loss of the ritual much like his disciple regrets the loss of the lamb.
Humans are prideful animals. There is honor in antiquity and humanitarianism – we regard one another (ideally) with a sympathetic understanding. So, unless nature is in dire need for more rotting corpses, I don’t think it a problem to honor the wishes of those you love and revere in death.
Is it different? Perhaps. But, what does it matter? Nature is indifferent as it knows all that lives will return to it at some point, one way or another.
Do you not think men have been burned, and rendered to ashes, by sheer act of nature? People get caught in volcanic erruptions, wildfires, etc. Nature receives them all the same. The importance, in my opinion, should not be placed in nature’s reception of what has come and gone – we can expect open arms in this context, regardless of the organic form we choose. The importance is in a reverence for both humanity and nature. As long as we do not harm nature with our rituals, I can see no problem in using said rituals to honor those we care for.
I wont pretend to have read all the back and forth exchanges that went on here, but I am not sure how the original poster can say that burial is more natural. graveyards are not the best camping sites. I think the symbolism of cremation helps the bereaved family in making a clean break in a way, since they see tangibly that the body of the deceased is no more. Also many peoples choice is influenced by their religion. burial implies that the body is important in some way, that each individual will eventually be resurrected at some future time, while cremation comes more from eastern thought, where the body is just dead matter, not worth preserving since the deceased has moved on in some way or reincarnated.
A) Coffins are used (along with the preparations of the dead, at least now) because without the precautions the decaying bodies of millions would more easily spread disease as the corpses rot.
B) Laying 150,000 bodies in the ground daily in exchange for a decay rate of hundreds of years (without a coffin) and around 50 years (with a coffin) is hardly healthy and natural.
C) Burning bodies eliminates the space of the body, the poison threat of the body as it rots, and turns it into ash.
D) Ash is an energy source you can even mix into soil fertilizer for growing plants, trees, and other botanical forms and ash is quickly usable in the soil as a concentrate of potassium.
E) If you want to go all natural, mix the human ash with fecal matter and food waste and use that as your compost for plants.
All in all…it’s actually more natural, efficient, and healthier for us to burn each other and reuse ourselves as fuel and food for our surroundings than it is to just throw our bodies into the ground like garbage waist which already pollutes the world enough, or even worse with coffins that really server jack all of a purpose other than making sure there is definitely a hole in that ground and that we’ll be able to run forensic tests on the body if it’s been less than 50 or 60 years since it’s death if we just happen to have the need to dig it back up.
Thanks all the posts above.
Humans were created by nature,not by man himself.It is very recently (compared to the long history of life in nature) that cremation became one of the rituals to dispose human dead bodies,before that no human society and other animals burn their deads to ashes,all of them simply buried the dead in earth.So I think burial is natural and cremation is manmade and unnatural.
humans are the product of nature,during the course of the production,millions of generations of humans born and died, very few were burned to ashes after death.If we have the least sence of trust in nature that created us,should we be cautious to change the way humans and animals dispose their dead for millions of years,as cremation burn the body immediately to ashes is so different from the simple and natural burial.
From a personal perspective,since I don’t know why and how I came into being,I think its safe and prudent to be buried after my death,in the hope that nature may arrange some kind of producing new lives which may have some connection with my precent existence and my body not been burned to ashes by cremation,and which worth to live as my life.
Just as the origin of human life is unknown,the future of human life is unknown too.There are billioms of years to go.No one can refute the infinite posibility of nature,since it had really made us from nearly nihility.
Dear Penken,
This statement cannot be made so boldly -
for thousands of years in the indian subcontinent, the dead have been cremated, this is not something new. and it seems strange that you are claiming to know what people did with their dead so many thousands of years ago. Sure there are old tombs, but there is no way to tell if cremation was there or not at the same time.
For some reason you dislike cremation, and you do a very good job of trying to justify this as “natural”, but what you are saying cannot at all be proven. you say that out of millions of generations “very few were cremated”, but how can you prove this?
As you explain, your personal dislike for cremation springs from the hope that someday, even though you dont believe in god, you will be reborn in some sense, and thus it will be useful to have your body somewhere still intact. I will not bother arguing with this, but i will simply point out that burial in no way preserves the body for a long time. If you have faith in some afterlife, then why not have faith that God (or “the infinite possibility of nature”) has the power to give you a new body? do you think that the existence of your rotting corpse for an extra two centuries will provide security for you after your death?
I dont get it. while we are alive we have hopes for bodily enjoyment, but after death, the material body has no importance. I do believe in an afterlife, but I have faith that just as nature is providing millions of bodies to people born every year, the next life occurs in a new body, not as some sort of skeletal zombie. love your body while you have it, but dont think that the body is what defines you. you can have organ transplants, lose a limb, and become an old shriveled man, but you will still be the same person. the body is simply our vehicle, a highly developed machine to let us (subtle eternal conscious beings) interact with the physical world.
sorry if I went off topic…
This is just not true. Ever heard of a Funeral Pyre? Ancient stuff, sister. Burning the dead is far from a “very recent” idea…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral_pyre
Note: The link above is just for reference. I realize that is is Wikipedia, and not exactly the ‘end-all-be-all’ of information but should give you an idea of the historical significance that you seem to be overlooking.
That is false unfortunately.
Firstly, humans have been burning their dead since around 20,000 years ago at the least. source
Secondly, humans didn’t originally bury their dead either. Originally, humans didn’t do anything with their dead but leave them on the ground in some way or another unburied.
The first burials arrive around 130,000 years ago source.
So if you are going with the logic of what humans did first, then we should just let people rot on top of the Earth as burial is unnatural.
Furthermore…our mere existence at this point is not natural.
Our population and lifespan is achieved largely in unnatural methods.
Therefore, you cannot expect nature to keep pace with our birth rate/death rate when the population is dropping 150,000 people per day.
The Earth simply cannot process that many people quickly enough to not impact other human living conditions.
It is hard for me to prove that in earth burial were much more popular than cremation in the history,but you can find it out if you read more related datas about that. 
Most people choose cremation over burial for financial reasons.But burial can be cheaper and more environmentally-friendly than cremation,such as the kind this picture showed:
To burn the body to ashes discharge carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants into the air,so benefits neither the dead nor the alive and may be harmful to nature’s ecosystem. 
Not true.
If that is your concern, you can burn at over 1200 degrees and at that temperature the carbon monoxide gas itself will burn, which greatly decreases output.
However, I think such a concern is rather low at all.
Also…
Most of the world buries it’s dead; not cremates them.