My first career was as a Licensed Embalmer for well over a thousand individuals. I spent considerable time pondering religion as I prepared them for viewing, burial or cremation.
All my pondering never changed my non belief.
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Why embalming when all morticians and morgues now have refrigeration?
dahermit
Level 7
Mar 26, 2019
0
alon:
I worked in the late 50's and early 60's. Embalming was necessary for open casket funerals or if bodies were to be shipped by air or inter state transportation.
@alon "Embalming was necessary for open casket funerals..." According to an old Donohue program which examined funeral practices, embalming is unnecessary except in rare cases. He had experts who disputed routine (including open casket) embalming as just another way of hiking the price since the practice of refrigerating the body, and burying within three days become the norm.
The study of Forensics really needs people with this talent. A valuable contribution, and nothing to do with religion or other people's morals. Thank you for giving that to the rest of us.
MarkiusMahamius
Level 7
Mar 26, 2019
1
embalming has nothing to do with forensics. The forensics are all over with by the time the embalmer does his/her work.
@dahermit I was thinking of dissection and cadaver work. More about education and pathology and research, not so much about crime scenes.
@dahermit also tissue preservation
@MarkiusMahamius "I was thinking of dissection and cadaver work." Embalmers (funeral directors), do not dissect the body. All they do is pump out the blood and replace it with embalming fluid and do the cosmetics.
Welcome to the asylum. Enjoy your stay.
My mother's husband (not my father) was a funeral director.
I watched him work, embalming bodies, a number of times as a teenager.
I was already an atheist, but witnessing the true nature of the funeral business really helped solidify my disdain for society's death rituals and the way religion preys on the bereaved.
KKGator
Level 9
Mar 26, 2019
2
"...the way religion preys on the bereaved." And society's customs also manipulate the bereaved.
@dahermit Religion doesn't prey on anyone that isn't willing to be preyed upon. Long before the first written word - burials were about preventing the corpses of our loved ones from being eaten. Then it morphed into something else. Religions the world over simply found a way to capitalize on the superstitions of the time. And they're still profiting from it because those same silly ass superstitions exist to this day. But if, through whatever means, people didn't buy into the BS - all of that would change. There'd be no profit in it and rather than fleece the bereaved - they'd move onto something else.
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