An Atheist’s Version of Immortality

You’re about to see why my avatar is a pretty unherdable looking cat. (Okay, not really. I just like cats.)

Anyhow, not me. I’m damned if I’m gonna be recycled (other than rotting into the earth, that is). Hands off my parts, vultures!

No real rational reason. Pure selfish attachment to my own body (so go ahead and say how I then shouldn’t be entitled to anyone else’s recycled body parts, not sure I want them and, no, there’s no way of knowing if I’d have a convenient change of heart is faced with a need). Tough noogies. Only people I’d give a spare part to would be my daughter and grandson.

“The arrangement doesn’t stay with the pieces and it doesn’t go anywhere else.”

Most people won’t think much of that sentence, but it stuck out to me. Makes me think the author is atheistic too. And yes, I’m a registered organ donor too.

I thought this xkcd was absolutely beautiful. It’s a perfect description in the way I see myself, and life in general. And yes, I am an organ donor, I have been since I was old enough to understand what that concept is.

I have a question for organ donors: Are you okay with necrophilia? (Besides the legality issue.) I mean, after all both organ donation and sex with corpses make people who are alive happy (though obviously in different ways). If your body really doesn’t matter to you after you die, are you comfortable with a stranger violating your corpse?

I’m not arguing for one side or the other here; this is an issue I’ve been trying to sort out for myself for a while now. Please convince me!

I’m going to donate my body to science fiction.

I love it when people object on religious grounds. Apparently when the final judgment comes and God resurrects the dead, he won’t have the power to zap all their organs and body parts back into place.

kuoyue: the organs are freely given. The sex can’t be.

I’m not, but it’s as much out of spite than any irrational fear, though there is a little of that. If the medical industry (here in Australia) won’t even consider taking my blood because of the gender of my partner, they can go to hell. Until I can donate blood, until my partner can make medical decisions for me should I be incapable, and until I can legally have children without having sex with a woman, then I choose to control the one thing I actually have the option of controlling.

Besides, by the time it’s my turn to go I plan on having enjoyed my body so much that it wouldn’t be much use to anybody else anyway 😉

I’m an organ donor to, have been since I got my first DL (11 years now). Funny thing is I remember some years later having a conversation about organ donation with my Grandma (who was against it based on her Mormon faith somehow) and she said something like “if you feel that strongly about it, you can get it put on your DL”. She was surprised to find out that it had been on there all along.

No point to this rant really, I guess, other than I’ve always found that story amusing.

Organ donor. I need to talk with my Dr. about donating blood. I’m on meds because of having adult ADD. I don’t want to give blood to someone have have it explode their heart from the chemicals in my blood (I know that won’t ‘actually’ happen; but I don’t want to induce potential complications, like high-blood pressure, in a recipient).

I’m an organ donor. In fact, I can’t wait for the day that my brain gets donated to someone young, healthy, and best of all, still alive!

The latest XKCD offers a beautiful explanation of why most atheists don’t fear death…

Seriously? Death scares the living hell out of me. Am I actually in a minority among atheists for fearing death?

Thankfully, death scares me less than the concept of living forever.

so maybe it’s not all that irrational:

http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Infant-Heart-Transplant-Controversy-Continues-25420-1/

“Three new reports challenge current guidelines on how long after cardiac death doctors must wait before taking a heart from an infant organ donor.”

Cardiac “death” declared and yet the heart is perfectly good enough to be donated? That just doesn’t sound legit to me. Yes, in this particular case, the patients were also brain damaged but it *wasn’t* the brain damage that legally declared them dead (we should legalize euthenasia? Would that fix it?). The current legal climate scares me… so I don’t sign the card, but my family knows what I want.

I plan to live forever. So far, so good.

Sure, I’ve been an organ and blood donor since I was first allowed to make that decision for myself. That’s a good start in the interest of holding life as THE primary value.

Still, as a so-called “atheist”, I feel my real job in every moment and every opportunity available to me is to advance the cause of accurate observation and logically-consistent reason in human culture. I know what the usual primary values are in human cultures around the world and, frankly, many of them are incredibly wrong for the goal of creating, nurturing, preserving and, if possible, improving life – human or otherwise.

Sure, I can donate a little blood here and an organ or two there, but that contribution is minor compared to what I can do to change the values of human culture in general toward values more friendly to ALL life – here or elsewhere. That influence can potentially have more far-reaching consequences. I encourage atheists, but even more, I encourage anyone who reveres a passionate and compassionate human life guided by good reason to write, to speak out, to live a life that serves as a fine example of a human life without mystical delusions.

Blood and organs can save lives, sure, but encouraging better thinking can save more.

Granted organ donation is nice for other humans, but this article explains how other species benefit from the decomposition of our remains. Cremation could be considered being mean to those other species.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?

Um, yeah. I thought I was pretty up front and honest about that.

“Dad, where is Grandpa right now?”

How comforting is the answer “floating around in 20 different people” (okay, how ever many parts the vultures are able to recycle?

Face it, kuoyue’s got a point. If the body doesn’t matter after death, raping it doesn’t either. Choice or not. If you’re gone, does against your will matter? Now you’re going to say the surviving love ones. Um, me too. My daughter knows I feel roughly the same way about being raped or having body parts stolen. Either would be against my will were I alive. So it matters about organ donation too if you bring the dearly departed’s loved one into it and, if you don’t, you aren’t respecting anyone, the living or the dead.

Ben and Ed42 make good points that I hadn’t even considered.

What moral person could allow/PREFER a good heart to rot in the ground while someone else who needs it dies?

Um, the sort that realizes there’s already too many freaking people alive on this earth and that we’re dangerously prolonging the life cycle in humans because all too many humans are afraid of dying. The sort that isn’t afraid of death and it accepts it as a natural part of the cycle of life. The sort that thinks we need to grow the fuck up and accept this reality already and stop keeping people alive ever longer and longer at great cost to everyone alive. That sort.

tamarind, I can only speak for myself. I’m not at all scared of death. And one of my favorite quotes is “I can’t live forever and I don’t really want to try.” Eternal life freaks me out. It would get so fucking tedious after a couple of hundred years at the longest. I’m not looking forward to the pain and discomfort of dying but death doesn’t scare me. (Not to be trite but I rather supsect it’ll be like before I was born.) I do, however, hope to live long enough to see the birth of my first great-grandchild (if any). Call me sentimental.

If the US had an opt-out policy with regard to organ donation rather than an opt-in,

And fuck our civil liberties and our say-so over our own bodies, right? Too easy to lose the opt-out paper work in this case and the GD vultures would. (I call them vultures because they prey on the newly dead quite often bothering the dearly beloved survivors with guilt trips about saving others from their grief which is sick beyond belief, every bit as sick, if not moreso, as preachers who use funerals to preach salvation.) It is done correctly now and, frankly, the paperwork won’t be “lost” this way now.

I’m willing to bet you support a woman’s choice and separation of church and state. Please correct me if I’m wrong. But, assuming you do, the whole argument for pro-choice is that it’s a woman’s choice what to do with her own body. Certainly applies here. We are talking about our bodies here. And separation of church and state? There are religious reasons for opting-out.

These rights shouldn’t require expensive lawyers (even if the state pays for those who cannot afford an attorney, there’s a monetary cost) to draw up exacting legal documents to access basic human rights. Bad enough, despite the constitution how often it takes a court decision to do so. Wherever possible, it should be the automatic, not the default.

I can’t believe no one has mentioned this bit from Monty Python And The Meaning of Life. 😉

Organ Donor

The cartoon is awesome, by the way.

Thank you to all of you who have checked the organ donor box.

To the rest of you, I hope you or someone you love never needs a heart, kidney, liver, cornea or any of the myriad of other transplantable tissues donors make possible.

You don’t have to wait until you’re dead to donate! Please consider being a live donor.

My wife donated a kidney to a friend a few years ago. She’s doing great. The guy is doing great. His family is doing great.

I’m so proud of her.

Face it, kuoyue’s got a point. If the body doesn’t matter after death, raping it doesn’t either. Choice or not. If you’re gone, does against your will matter?

Certainly the will of a person matters with regards to what happens to them after they die. This is why the the issue of necrophilia is a total straw man. Organ donar’s body parts are not being stolen because they are freely given. Likewise necrophilia would be morally acceptable (though still disgusting) if the dead had made such arrangements in advance. If organ donation really disgusts you so, you have every right to reject it, but I would encourage you to consider that marking that box could actually save other people’s lives.

there’s already too many freaking people alive on this earth and that we’re dangerously prolonging the life cycle in humans because all too many humans are afraid of dying.

If this is really your view than why not apply this principle to all manner of medical and humanitarian support. The world’s burgeoning population grows most in third world countries, where the medical resources for organ donation are rarely available. Would you be willing to donate your organs if, in exchange, less humanitarian aid went to africa? Or, perhaps, instead of dealing with overpopulation by passive-aggressively trying to kill people, you contributed to planned parenthood and other organizations that provide birth control and education on how to use it. That way you can fight overpopulation and unnecessary suffering at the same time.

And fuck our civil liberties and our say-so over our own bodies, right? Too easy to lose the opt-out paper work in this case and the GD vultures would.

This is not some massive tyrannical government conspiracy to deprive you of your civil rights/organs. We are not even talking about extra paperwork. We are talking about checking a box at the DMV, which results in a symbol being printed on your drivers license. Just like before, except that if you don’t care enough to mark any box, the default is organ donor.

I have a dumb question for all those people who have objections to being an organ donor: Would you accept a donated organ from someone without knowing the origin?

I sure as hell would if I needed it. That’s why I’m a donor.

I’m a regular blood donor (45 units and counting), a registered bone marrow donor (3 close matches but no harvesting yet), and a registered organ donor (for when I die).

The restrictions on gay blood donors need to be challenged. They are based on risk factors to do with lifestyle that are just wrong. Anything that applies to gay men applies to straight men and women when it comes to infectious diseases carried in the blood. Perhaps there is statistic reason for the restriction but I would like to see the figures before I make a sweeping judgment to refuse blood from gay men. Without facts it is simply a matter of hearsay.

I’d be interested to know what proportion of believers and unbelievers are blood, marrow and organ donors? It is a pretty altruistic act even if we do have a thought in the backs of our minds that someone else might be generous enough to donate if we were in need. In a point scoring competition for who can do the most good I think we unbelievers would win. If theists want to prove me wrong by becoming donors then I’m sure someone would “win”.

I admit it. I’m paranoid. I keep picturing myself in the ICU and a doctor thinking about a wonderful child whose life he’d like to save if only he could find a donor. A little indetectable patient neglect and voila!

I don’t trust the medical community. I’ve heard too many horror stories from my father about what goes on in surgery. It’s an ENDLESS list.
After I’m REALLY dead per the EEG, I can have my surviving family members give the OK for donation. But, I’m not letting the doctors know up front.

My uncle’s life was saved by a man whose family knew his wishes and donated his organs when he died. My uncle received his heart and it gave him five more beautiful years of life before he passed away in 2007 from complications from the transplant. Unfortunately organ transplants are still very complex and risky, but the science is getting better.

My license says that I’m a donor, but I want to remind everyone that the license is not always enough. Make sure that your family knows that you would like your organs to be donated when you die. It will probably be their decision, in the end, or they will play a part in it, so make sure that they know know. Needless to say, everyone in my family is willing to donate; it is the least we can do, thanks to the legacy of the donor who gave my uncle more years of life.

As far as conspiracy theories that hospitals will let you die when they could have saved you because they want your organs, I don’t buy it, and I say to anyone that asserts that, put up or shut up. Show evidence that that has ever happened in the USA.

Oh, and the opt-out bullshit is just that, bullshit.

Funny how you recognize that when it’s something like prayer in school but not when it’s something you’re all for.

Opt-out is a pathetic attempt to force those of us who choose not to be organ donors to give up our organs because you have a vague fear you might need one of them someday.

Well, fuck you, you can’t have mine.

And, actually, ethanol, I do contribute to Planned Parenthood. I do not and will not give to feed the children because I think birth control will do more to prevent the number of children who starve to death every day.

And, no, I haven’t yet given to Doctors Without Borders because I have mixed emotions about them. This is why I do. They do good work bringing medical care where necessary but I have a fear they’ll go too far as we do hear and there will be still more Terry Schiavo’s not taken off life support.

And, no, if I have a heart attack, I don’t want the transplant to draw out my agony for five more lousy stinking years only to die of complications from said transplant. Keep it.

Hey, christian here and an organ donor. When my very devout mother passed, we got an interesting card from the eye bank. The person who harvested her corneas knew her from taking classes with her, and so kindly wrote that two people had benefited from her gift. It was the most meaningful condolence I received, bar none.

Any god that relies on my corporeal body being whole is a pretty small god.

I get why some might feel uncomfortable with donating. I personally freak at the idea of being buried, so I opt for cremation. For me, being burned to a cinder is less scary than being put underground. Go figure.

Why am I suddenly a crazy whackadoodle the second I don’t want be an organ donor?

You aren’t allowed to disagree. Unless you march in lock-step with every self-righteouss, feel-good fatwa policy set forth by the Atheist Moral Minority, you should expect to be reviled as “no better than” a religio-nut, bigot, anti-humanist, climate-destroying piece of scum.

What the fuck, muggle, Polly? When did anyone call you anything like any of these things? All that’s happened so far as I can tell is people have asked you questions and respectfully but forcefully disagreed with you. Nobody’s insulted you, or threatened to ban you, or anything like that.

My comment to muggle on the subject of organ donation and population control was certainly unkind but I must still defend it. Muggle defended her opposition of organ donation on the grounds of excess human population. If explicitly not supporting medical treatment as a form of population control isn’t passive aggressive I don’t know what is. Glad to hear that you contribute to planned parenthood though.

Even after kuoyue stated this:

I’m not arguing for one side or the other here; this is an issue I’ve been trying to sort out for myself for a while now. Please convince me!

The AMYABLE ATHEIST (that’s a laugh) responds with derision.

Interesting you would take this, and leave out the bulk of Kuoyue’s proposal: that organ donors should also find necrophilia acceptable. You’ve taken a bit of a rather inciting argument and twisted it to sound like it was discussing another topic- that of organ donation in general.

Either argue your point or don’t. Personally, I don’t care whether you donate your organs any more than whether you donate money, time or care to others. It’s a decision between you and your ethics and no one else should force theirs upon you.
But the trolling and then claiming persecution gets old. Can’t we keep a debate free of it for once?