Cremations to outnumber burials in 2015

Cremations are expected to outnumber burials in 2015.

The decision to forgo traditional burial was in line with his father’s rejection of religion, Jim Underdown said. “He certainly didn’t want any churchiness surrounding his death.”

Choosing cremation is becoming more common every year in the United States, largely for similar reasons. According to estimates by the funeral industry’s main trade group, 2015 is on track to be the year that cremation surpasses burial for the first time, as a long-standing trend continues. A key factor driving this: decreased religiosity.

How can you not laugh? The incontestable falsity and degrading, death-wish, cult-ish ethics of the Abrahamic faiths has always doomed them — and the daily conniption fits of the culture warriors is undoubtedly hastening their end.

Religiosity is in steep decline in even the Bible Belt.

Prayers said and the closing hymn sung, tea-drinking churchgoers fill Marble City Grill for Sunday lunch. But hard on their heels comes the afternoon crowd: craft beer-drinking, NFL-watching football fans.

Such a scene would have been impossible just months ago because Sunday alcohol sales were long illegal in Sylacauga, hometown of both the actor who played TV’s Gomer Pyle and the white marble used to construct the U.S. Supreme Court building. While the central Alabama city of 12,700 has only one hospital, four public schools and 21 red lights, the chamber of commerce directory lists 78 churches.

Yet few were surprised when residents voted overwhelmingly in September to legalize Sunday alcohol sales. Churches lacked either the heart or influence to stop it.

Good. Religion has nothing to show for itself but Niagaras of bloodshed and tears, and the sooner men grasp that faith — unreasoning belief, belief without evidence, belief in spite of evidence — is a moral evil, and not a virtue, the better off we all will be.

This entry was posted in General. Bookmark the permalink.