Well, as we run out of space for cemeteries ashes seem to be the best option.
The awful funeral circus acts nothing short of idiotic now. Everyone who dies now was a great person & some great hero or some other great. It really is nothing but a circus now.

Onjab, I didn't say anything about ashes blowing in the wind or comment on your post. I think everyone should have whatever funeral they and their family want, and the same applies to disposing of remains. Except they're not ashes but crushed bone and won't blow in the wind. More like gravel.

I too have thrown off the shackles, lifted the veil of ignorance and seen the light. I had spent most of my life not knowing whether there was a god or not. Some of my best friends were priests and still are but they could not help me solve the problem.

It was not until I realised I was asking the wrong question that I found the answer. Instead of “Is there a god or not?”. I finally asked “how did the question of god arise?”. It then became “who had the idea there might be a god?” and “why?”. After that it was all smooth sailing. Everything became clear.

It was not the first time in my life that I realised I had reinvented the wheel, in this instance simply by discovering that “I couldn’t see the solution because I couldn’t see the problem”. I could see I was getting the wrong answers but I could not see that I had been asking the wrong questions. As Jonas Salk (the inventor of the polio vaccine) observed "What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question" .

I take comfort in the thought that "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions" ( Antony Jay).

Having solved the god conundrum has in no way diminished my sense of awe and transcendence in observing the pursuit of perfection in the construction of places of worship and other forms of art and craftmanship such as sacred music, tainted glass, paintings, woven fabrics, sculptures, icons, mosaics etc., inspired by the sense of the divine in human creation and imagination.

In my view, churches, cathedrals, temples, mosques and other superb masterpieces of human craftsmanship and architecture, as well as inspirational sites of nature (such as "The Swagman's Rest" on the bed of the Snowy River, lined with bloodwood trees) are excellent venues for funerals.

My sense of the aesthetic has been comforted and is so much keener now that the veil of ignorance has been lifted.

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Banjo Patterson,

Thanks for an impressive, and certainly sincere, way describing your abandonment of what the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls la première naïveté. You certainly deserve to have your sense of the aesthetic comforted, although a few of us do not stop there, but look for the (intellectually) more rewarding stage Ricoeur calls la deuxième naïveté (c.f. http://www.exploring-spiritual-development.com/Paul-Ricoeur.html).

Thank you George for this beautiful reference!

I think that première naïveté is becoming quite rare in Australia - soon to be declared an endangered species, yet it doesn't stop atheists from attacking all religion indiscriminately.

Yuyutsu,

There is an Eastern parallel to Riceur's naiveté's:

“before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers”

which I sometimes "westernise" as

“before you study philosophy (of science and of religion), the concepts and propositions of your Christian beliefs have absolute validity; while you are studying philosophy (of science and of religion), the concepts and propositions of Christian beliefs are loosing their validity; but once you have had enlightenment through philosophy, they regain their validity as symbols modelling reality underlying your faith”.