The question seems pretty simple to me. its very easy to not launch rockets with dead people to the moon. we've been doing it for all of human history. why not keep doing it out of respect of other cultures?
"The key concern, and not just for the Navajo Nation, will be how to respect all religious traditions as humans explore and commercialize the Moon."
I cannot tell you how infuriating that is. If there is not a safety aspect to having cremated ashes (some carbon, calcium & minerals) placed on the moon, religion can keep to its own, back with the 'God in the Gaps', and get out of the way of rational, non-mythic people. Religion will kill us all, and now it's telling us where we can be buried when we are dead? I don't have words strong enough. Time for religion to get back in its damned lane, AND STAY THERE.
Deriving moral stricture thru a cosmological myth. When the myth is a illustration of human interaction (such as the Golden Rule), it serves as a conduit for teaching. But to take that cosmology and craft miscellaneous strictures around it, to give them authority (like Prosperity Gospel), is metastasizing a power structure for one's own ends...not illustrative of humanism. In any event, 'belief' in a myth is fraught, if one is not simultaneously acknowledging that myth is an analogy, at best, and sometimes is nothing more than a cute story.
I see. There's a good deal more going on here (& w/ religion in general). A key insight from RS is that “religion” has no singular non-reductive definition, only a family resemblance of features. So can only define religion for the purposes of a given discussion. You take value derived from myth as religion's core here.
What's the most helpful way to think about myths and values?
Myths are stories that fill the world with meaning and value. Humanism has its myths (answers to questions of meaning) too---and some are quite cosmological in scope.
“Values are ideas about what people ought to want.”
@TheConversationUS@philosophy While the whole thing is creepy, no religion has a right to expect others to believe in their religion. Freedom of religion is the right to practice your religion, that's it.
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