Funeral Foolishness?
A godless man dies. His Roman Catholic family members honor his life-choices and give him a secular send-off. No flowered wreaths with crucifixes at his funeral. No rosary beads tucked into his still hands in the coffin. No ghosts, holy or otherwise. And, no prayers said over his dead body.
A neighbor of the the man and his family, a devout Roman Catholic, goes to pay her respects at the funeral parlor and is shocked by the absence of religious paraphernalia. She asks his mother about this. His mother says, "This is the way Joey wanted it."
The neighbor goes home, despairing the fact that Joey's coffin contains only Joey's remains, unaccompanied and unadorned by sacred signs and symbols. This lady seriously considers going back to the funeral home and slipping a set of rosary beads, a prayer card,
something with religious meaning, under the satin cover.
Anyone got a problem with this?
Robert Green Ingersol, a Humanist Orator, wrote this for a friend's funeral:
He denied the supernatural — the phantoms and the ghosts that fill the twilight-land of fear. To him and for him there was but one religion — the religion of pure thoughts, of noble words, of self-denying deeds, of honest work for all the world – the religion of Help and Hope.
Facts were the foundation of his faith; history was his prophet; reason his guide; duty his deity; happiness the ends; intelligence the means.
He knew that man must be the providence of man.
He did not believe in Religion and Science, but in the Religion of Science -- that is to say, wisdom glorified by love, the redemption of humanity -- the religion that conquers prejudice and hatred, that drives all superstition from the mind, that ennobles, lengthens and enriches life, that drives from every home the wolves of want, from every heart the fiends of selfishness and fear, and from every brain the monsters of the night.
He lived and labored for his fellow-men. He sided with the weak and poor against the strong and rich. He welcomed light. His face was ever toward the East.
According to his light he lived. The world was his country — to do good (was) his religion. There is no language to express a nobler creed than this; nothing can be grander, more comprehensive, nearer perfect. This was the creed that glorified his life.
Just another "Atheist Thought for the Day"
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