Funerals are for the living, not the dead. It's all just to provide closure for the living.

Donate body to science.

Well, it doesn't matter because you won't know, but I think our society has to start thinking about green burials or cremation. What I do like about some cemeteries is that they provide wild space in a city. Also, cemeteries are a source of history. I like to see history preserved. It can simply be record keeping, but we shouldn't forget past events or people. As far as honoring, while the body itself means nothing, we honor the relationship we had with that person and that can be done in many different ways.

My parents are religious and although they find comfort that when they die they will be in heaven they are also concerned that they are laid to rest side by side with markers for the living to visit. I guess even if you're going to be gone you still think of reputation and symbolism.

A funeral is not & never has been for the dead person. It's not really been understood by most people that way, though.
The purpose of the service or ritual for the dead is to allow the living to get over the loss of the friend or loved one who is no longer there. Religious afterlives doubtless started out of the belief or hope that the person was not truly gone, just "elsewhere".

I hope for a Viking funeral, myself. A rowboat, a cord of wood, and ten gallons of kerosene... shove it out onto Lake Superior and set fire to me. I'm sure I have friends who would toss the burning torch.

I like what neil degrasse tyson said about this subject, " I would request that my body be buried and not cremated, so that flora and fauna may dine on me, just as I dinned on flora and fauna throughout my life."

that being said and in the spirit of that Idea, this should not be a memorial type thing, no embalming or caskets, simply a way to return that 'fuel' back to the earth for other creatures to make use of.

I like the idea of cremation with one of those urns that has a tree seed. But I heard a recent Neil deGrasse Tyson interview where he was talking about cremation actually contributing to goal warming (not that it will be my problem at that point) and that instead becoming food for the bugs and worms and such is a more environmentally friendly way to be recycled back into the Earth. So, I'm torn.

When I die, I am to be cremated immediately. There will be no service, funeral or :celebration of life." I am simply asking my wife and daughters to scatter my ashes on a windswept point in a lake where I often fished. If they want anything else, I have suggested the playing of "Ashoken Farewell" -- a sadly beautiful piece of music.

I don't care what they do with my remains when I'm gone- it's not "me" anymore. I am going to self-fund one hell of a wake though.....

You're going to be "food for bugs" like it or not. Even ashes are further decomposed into mulch by micro-organisms. The disposal of human remains is, I believe, a ritual that has reached the heights of absurdity. My mother left instructions for a funeral out of "Imitation of Life" but I honored them reluctantly. I've always said they could dump me off the end of a pier for all I care. Because, being dead, I won't care. Cremation seems the most practical method to me. As for "honoring" the dead, though, this is extremely important, not to the deceased, of course, but to the surviving friends and loved ones If we have a "soul" it is our own self-awareness which is comprised of all the events and people who happen in our lives. When some component of that awareness is ripped out through death or even permanent separation we grieve. And we grieve, each in our own separate ways because the presence of the now departed was experienced in our own separate ways. I think it is important that those suffering such grief commiserate with each other and, yes, honor the contributions that person made to our individual lives as part of the healing process of dealing with death. Some are satisfied to believe, "He is in a better place" or "We will be reunited with her some glorious day." But those of us who eschew the idea of an after life need something else, a validation, remembrance and/or honoring of the life that has ended. That is why we hold "Celebrations of Life" instead of funerals.

unless you have your ducks in a row burying may leave formaldahyde leaching into the earth. I think the hindis have it right. ashes to ashes

I don't see a problem with it. Like Raven said, it's more for those left behind. I don't particularly care for our method for disposal of remains, but if people want to do it that way, more power to them.

I'd never want to be cremated. I WANT to be food for bugs. Return what energy is left in my body back into the "circle of life". When you cremate, your remains don't contribute much, if anything to the soil/biosphere.

Whether you are cremated or buried, and become food for bugs, your component atoms will return to the available pool of building blocks for new life. So, it would seem to me to make very little difference. As for honouring the dead, I think it is more for comforting those left behind that all the ceremonial is all about.

Also cremation is just courtesy as our bodies take up space. Cremation is just so much easier on the environment. Honoring the dead? I think that's about making those left behind feel better. And not necessarily honoring. My family still does religion - but after we all go out to eat. Those meals are the true celebration where stories are exchanged about the person who died. That's what I'd like.