Since religion is the source of many death rituals, often we invoke belief to denigrate the practices of others. As recently as 1965, James W. Fraser wrote in Cremation: Is It Christian? (spoiler: no) that to cremate was “a barbarous act” and “an aid to crime.” To a decent Christian, it is “repulsive to think of the body of a friend being treated like a beef roast in the oven, with all its running fats and sizzling tissues.” I have come to believe that the merits of a death custom are not based on mathematics (e.g., 36.7 percent a “barbarous act”), but on emotions, a belief in the unique
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