They are still Christian funerals because of the fact that you have a Christian priest/pastor attending them. Why don't you get a Hindu or Imam to watch over the funeral? Or save the costs and just bury them privately. Why take the coffin in a Christian Church, why not a mosque or a temple? If after all you don't believe in it, why would it bother you?
I think you've convinced yourself that you have a good argument here. I say this because I sometimes think I have good arguments too, but the people who I'm expressing it to don't even understand why I'm bringing it up.
The majority of the funerals I've attended were Christian ones (including an interesting Catholic one where the person had committed suicide), but that's because a majority of the people making decisions regarding the funeral were Christian. When a Hindu or Moslem friend dies, I will attend their funerals too. I don't know of any atheists (including myself) who want to be buried with a Christian funeral rite.
But the style of the funeral doesn't bother me; but here's something for you - when organ donation/transplants were starting to become popular, the major reasons for denying it were 'Christian' arguments. The Christians were worried about defiling the bodies (they thought it was wrong), while the doctors (and patients!) wanted to harvest organs to save lives. Nowadays, though, almost no one would consider NOT using the organs.
If you asked a person do they want to promote depopulation?", they'll agree - because they see a benefit for themselves also. More resources and more wealth for each person, more food and more space. So that is poor logic.
Given that the Christian God actively promoted depopulation (in fact, ordered His followers to kill babies), we can agree that morals can get strange. And, from that, we get the scary scenario where people say it's okay to kill "if God tells you to". Yikes.
As well, your analogy is strong; many people have chosen to team up to 'depopulate' a weaker civilisation, with the hopes of increasing their wealth. And, they've convinced themselves that it was okay to do, too.
However, many people realise that encouraging a system where murder is
wrong is a great idea; it protects your own life! And, while you can get people to agree to a system of depopulation, you can get more people to agree to a system where life is protected. Have you noticed that the majority of your morals protects you? And have you also noticed that most of the societal morals that don't protect you are the most hotly debated? This is because we all easily accept morals that benefit us, while it's tougher to accept morals that don't benefit us.
"Morals evolve to facilitate the survival of the individual and teh survival of the species as a whole. I would have though changing morals would be more of a problem for theists to be honest." - my point was, WHO CREATES THEM? Who says what is right and what is wrong?
Over time, we have naturally adopted a system that works and works well. This is the same reason why capitalism continues to spring up when given the chance; it's the most efficient way of allocating resources without a super-genius in charge. Who decided that capitalism worked best? I'd say 'no one', not even people. It just does.
And the survival of the species? Well sorry. but homos don't reproduce, neither do lesbian women.
They make great uncles and aunts though. A gay uncle can certainly babysit, meaning that there are more caregivers per child. A gay uncle who helps his family is actually good for the family, and helps its survival as a unit.
As I've said, those have fell out of use because they was very clearly absurd. But when Judaism/Christianity and Islam came along it was harder to disprove them or explain them away. So thats why they still exist. So until science disproves God. They'll stick around for along time yet.
It's easy to disprove them, but the theology mutates to continue to survive. 2000 years ago, people believed that miracles would be common among the faithful. 1000 years ago, they believed that only the occassional Christian was faithful 'enough' to perform miracles, but you could still get to Heaven. Nowadays, you have Christian denominations that believe that it's just fine that we never see miracles anymore.
The utter lack of miracles these days would have 'disproved' the Christianity of 2000 years ago and 1000 years ago; miracles were part of the faith. But the religion mutated over time, as people got less and less gullible.
As well, 400 years ago it was "Christian" to believe that God created the Earth in 6 days and "Hindu" to believe that we lived in a cyclical and never-ending cosmology. Every prominent Christian who prayed 'felt' an answer to their prayer that, yes, Genesis 1 was factually correct. I'm of the opinion that saying that Genesis 1 wasn't factual would have been heresy.
However, the faith continues to mutate. Nowadays we have Christians who believe that Genesis 1 was a metaphor, we have Christians who believe that it was an error carried forward, and we have Christians who believe it still to be fact. We've had over a hundred years of science 'disproving' the type of Christianity that believe it to be fact, so the Christian faith will continue to mutate.
Atheists, one question. What if your wrong? What are you going to say to God then?
Well, my Plan A is to not die. It seems to be the easiest solution.
If the Christian God does exist, I would say "Remember the bit where Jesus showed Thomas His wounds, so that Thomas would believe? Well, I would have appreciated something like that. I know that those who believe without proof are more blessed than those who believe with proof, but if You'd known I'd only believe with proof - why didn't you provide it, instead of sending me to eternal damnation?"
If Anubis exists I'll say "I logically proved to myself that acting morally was the best strategy, and did my best"
If I'm reincarnated, then I can tell you that I'm 100% guaranteed to come back as a lab mouse. Probably as one of the control animals for a working therapy in the MPrize; or even AS a successful 'sample' in the MPrize (an immortal mouse! Whee!).
What about you? Do you intend to take a pilgrimage to the Hajj? Do you intend to partake of Ramadan? As far as I can tell, these don't conflict too heavily with Christianity - so why not do them just 'in case' God/Allah really wants you to?
