I’m excited to announce that I’ve been ordained.
The First Church of Atheism is handing out ordinations like Mars bars on Halloween.
According to the website, FCA Ministers are “…every race, ethnicity, age, and creed. The one thing binding every FCA minister is his or her belief in science, reason, and reality.”
I believe is science!
I believe in reason!
I believe in reality!
So I became “a legally ordained minister for life, without cost, and without question.”
And I am open for business!
An important ministerial function is conducting funeral services.
So…
I’ve diligently crafted an atheist eulogy.
Why are we gathered here today? Because the universe exists. It is not our choice but the mindless workings of the cosmos. It is Science that brings us here!
Scientifically, what do we know about [Name]?
Evidence suggests he is not a living organism. Brain activity ceased. Cardiopulmonary functions stopped. He quit responding to external stimulus. It is reasonable to assume that he will begin decomposing. His corpse will create unfavorable sanitary conditions if left unattended. To protect the health of the living, we will dispose of this decaying mass of tissue.
The vast majority of conscious life is unaffected by [Name]’s death. Indeed, most human beings were unaware that he ever existed. But there are some organisms who ‘feel’ something for [Name]. Maybe you are one of them. Your proximity to [Name] has created illusionary sensations within your own biological system. Love, compassion, friendship. We know these are the products of chemistry but at times like this it is appropriate to assign them significance. Evolution dictates that our species search for purpose.
So, please! Take a few moments and create purpose! Indulge those instincts that are telling you [Name] actually mattered. It is good for the culture! Allow yourself to believe that his life was important. Pretend that the labels ‘Father’, ‘Husband’, ‘Brother’ and ‘Friend’ have meaning.
[ALLOW A FEW MOMENTS OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE]
Now pull yourself together! Emotions are neither reasonable nor scientific. [Name] is gone and the universe grinds on toward extinction. Pretty soon, you’re gonna be dead too.
This is just the first draft.
I’m open to hearing your thoughts on how it might be improved.
19 Responses
Oh, how I enjoy you. Thank you for another wonderful trip down Sarcasm Lane.
Make sure you check out John Z’s “better” eulogy in the comments, Fanci! He was being serious!
Apparently it actually helps some people feel better to meditate on their dead loved one’s molecules…
I read it and sighed a very long sigh once I realized he was serious. Oy and vey.
I really enjoy your writing as well, btw.
How about:
“There ain’t no guy in the sky with a pie, where you fly when you die. If you indulge that weakness, you open up to every other weakness.
Be strong; you’ve no other choice.”
More concise, and concise is right – not so packed with straw.
We can do much, much better than that.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral by Aaron Freeman
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.”
Now, isn’t the truth better than the pantomime?
I gotta admit, that’s a solid piece of satire. Hat tip, John!
Satire?
I guess you were just lying then when you wrote:
Just take the compliment, man.
Compliment?
Ah, now that’s satire. Finally.
This is infinitely less comforting… I also assumed you were going for satire.
Thanks for the beautiful speech, JZ.
A friend of mine is losing his 8-year-old son to Battens Disease right now. (Literally, they expect him to take his last breath any hour.) They’re confident that his spirit will be free and healthy in a metaphysical world as soon as he leaves this one–which comforts them significantly.
But maybe I should go with the Naturalist version of comfort instead. I’ll just explain their precious boy is no more than a bunch of carbon, heat, and electricity… And, since you can’t lose energy, they’re not about to lose anything at all…
The Templeton Foundation (a Christian group with a research fund of over US$3 billion) has spent the better part of US$1.5 billion and nearly 30 years looking for evidence of the spirit/soul. They even have an annual prize (worth £1,100,000), called: The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities
To date, their efforts have returned exactly zero positive results.
I’m sorry, though, to hear about your friend.
Uh… Thanks for that special announcement.
So what?
They are doomed to fail, but not for the reasons you presumably have in mind. Material investigations cannot measure the immaterial any more than a life-long blind person can perceive the difference between blue and orange, just as a thermometer cannot be reasonably expected to measure a vehicle’s velocity.