Catching up
While the U.S. government might have preferred to cremate Bin Laden’s remains prior to disposal, Muslim tradition forbids cremation because it’s inconsistent with the resurrection of the body.
Um…so is rotting. Is Muslim tradition unaware of this?
But if you don’t see it rot you can pretend it’s still intact! I know several children who’d confirm the value of this logic…
(Is Slate actually right, though? I can’t find a reference for it and the fact that it’s such an odd rationalisation for such a weird act makes me sceptical.)
I really don’t know. It seems daft. But it says the Vatican ruled out cremation for that reason from some time in the 19th c to some time in the 20th. What’s good enough for the Vatican…
I was under the impression that cremation was forbidden not because it’s inconsistent with bodily resurrection but because whatever you do to a corpse is equivalent to doing it to the living person. You know, except for the burying it in the ground part. If you wouldn’t have set him on fire when he was alive, you shouldn’t do it now that he’s dead. Something like that. There are guidelines about how you’re supposed to treat the body while washing it, not too hot, not too cold, etc, which are in line with cremation being counter to treating the body with respect rather than anything about resurrection. I think Slate just has this one wrong.
The Vatican changed to allow cremation as long as it was not done to deny the resurrection! So zombies can be created but no more from dust you are made? Just wondering.
So much for an omnipotent God: can’t even restore a cremated body to it’s former state. A half decent magician can pull a rabbit out of hat. Now that’s what I call power!
Even God is bound by the second law of thermodynamics.
When I was a catholic kid, much younger than some of you are now, cremation was definitely a big no-no. If I remember aright it was banned by Charlemagne on pain of death because it was a pagan custom held to be a denial of the resurrection. So it stopped being a christian practice. Eastern Orthodox Churches still forbid it completely on these tenuous grounds. I believe one major reason RCC Inc started to allow it was because the church graveyards were filling up fast – nice to have a good theological reason for what you do, I guess.
Of course, RCC Inc can’t just allow something they’d banned for years; it has to be a production so they hedged it around with a lot of rules and disapproval – “well if you really must, then (grudging) okay, but……”
My question, as with so many other things RCC Inc changes it’s mind about, is “were they wrong then or are they wrong now?”
Muslims get resurrected, too? Gee, there goes one of Christianity’s big selling points.
What about the virgins? Are they “real” virgins or just “heavenly” virgins? When you’re resurrected, do you get to keep them?
And if you’re in heaven with your virgins, why in the world would you want to be resurrected bodily back onto the Earth?
Doesn’t anybody actually think about the implications of their religion’s dogma?
BTW: I was a good Episcopalian, and we believed in zombies, too. So do most other Protestant sects. You’re not going to heaven — you’re going to be bodily brought back from the dead. After which, you’ll be judged. Then, you live forever (if you made the cut). It’s all laid out quite nicely in the Nicene Creed (“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come”) and the Apostle’s Creed (“the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting”).
Going to be quite a shock to those good Christians who sank with the Titanic to suddenly get reanimated 2000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
Bodily resurrection and the case against cremation wasn’t really viable after WWI, since so many bodies were beyond any hope of burial. The cremation movement (which had started with the gruesome overcrowding of urban graveyards with the dead emerging from shallow graves after heavy rain and previous occupants being hauled out and literally stamped into the mud to make way for the next temporary occupant) took off after that.
But, yeah, god can manage to reconstruct a body decayed over centuries or eaten by critters, but collecting together carbon particles is a bit too tricky.
god just isn’t trying hard enough.
Sailor, that is interesting about the Orthodox, because the Greek Orthodox Church made use of ossuaries (and may still, for all I know). Since the bones and skulls are intermingled, God will have more of a challenge than in Protestant or Catholic graveyards.
We’re all god’s jigsaw puzzle, to keep god entertained on long snowy winter evenings.
Because sometimes being omnipotent just isn’t enough.
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