No Religious Rites for Arthur C. Clarke?

The celebrated sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke died last week. He was best known for co-authoring the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the subsequent book of the same name.

He was a visionary, perhaps the visionary, of our times.

He also had a low estimation of organized religion. He once spoke of religion as "a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species." His personal instruction declared upon his death : "Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral."

The reports emphasized that the funeral, held in Mr. Clarke's adopted home in Sri Lanka, was secular

In my estimation Mr. Clarke's funeral was religious. (Just look at the photo of his body before burial.) All death observance's are religious in nature. Death is the Great Arbiter and must be accounted for in a human life.

I agree with my colleague, Forrest Church, "Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die."

Even the most avowedly secular funeral is a patchwork of religious symbols and practices that I suspect are intuitions and archetypes, hardwired in our psyches.