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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 9227724" data-attributes="member: 85555">I think if people see the bodies of the dead as having some special significance or sacred quality, there simply isn't a way to respectfully animate a dead corpse. Just look at the real world. Would anyone ever suggest it is okay to use a person's body for some other purpose? Maybe if they donated it to science? But we just had a big case here in Boston where a medical facility at Harvard was selling body parts on the black market. It was getting used in things like macabre art, who knows what else. I think there is a reason people see this as a serious violation of morality, and it goes beyond merely offending peoples' sensibilities. It gets into the ideas of the soul, of what happens to us after we die, and into respecting the life that was once inhabited by the body. Even when hundreds or thousands of years have passed and we are doing things like excavating tombs of people who believed in gods we long stopped worshipping for research, there is a sense that this could be wrong (and I think you see that play out in things like the idea of a mummies curse). I get one could have a purely material view of humanity and see the body, once it is dead as nothing more than flesh. So I get that an individual might be unfazed by it. but I just don't think the evil here is in daring to offend people. It's in the act itself. I would imagine if you took a poll of all humanity, the response would be one where the idea of animating a corpse (lets say through electric and mechanical means, in order to keep it grounded in the real world) was widely regarded as evil, not just offensive, but evil.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 9227724, member: 85555"] I think if people see the bodies of the dead as having some special significance or sacred quality, there simply isn't a way to respectfully animate a dead corpse. Just look at the real world. Would anyone ever suggest it is okay to use a person's body for some other purpose? Maybe if they donated it to science? But we just had a big case here in Boston where a medical facility at Harvard was selling body parts on the black market. It was getting used in things like macabre art, who knows what else. I think there is a reason people see this as a serious violation of morality, and it goes beyond merely offending peoples' sensibilities. It gets into the ideas of the soul, of what happens to us after we die, and into respecting the life that was once inhabited by the body. Even when hundreds or thousands of years have passed and we are doing things like excavating tombs of people who believed in gods we long stopped worshipping for research, there is a sense that this could be wrong (and I think you see that play out in things like the idea of a mummies curse). I get one could have a purely material view of humanity and see the body, once it is dead as nothing more than flesh. So I get that an individual might be unfazed by it. but I just don't think the evil here is in daring to offend people. It's in the act itself. I would imagine if you took a poll of all humanity, the response would be one where the idea of animating a corpse (lets say through electric and mechanical means, in order to keep it grounded in the real world) was widely regarded as evil, not just offensive, but evil. [/QUOTE]

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