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Navajo Nation request to delay private mission placing human remains on the moon
- jjgreen 3y agoNot religious myself, but I'd be minded to respect the reasonable wishes of those who are. There's not really much point in putting human samples on the moon (unless I've missed something), so that act itself is quasi-religious.
- prepend 3y agoI agree on respecting reasonable wishes. But the challenge is over what is reasonable. This request doesn’t seem reasonable to me. And seems like a waste of governance to spend resources evaluating these requests to stop putting human samples on the moon. Of course, if a group is offended by the activity I like that they earnestly post their letter noting concern and requesting consideration. It will just be bad, I think, if a single letter from a single group that has just seen a thing would stop some valuable activity. Value as judged by the resources put into funding such a mission, somebody thinks it is worthwhile.
- wiz21c 3y agoLet me drop my feces over your lawn. That's just biodegradable stuff, it will disappear. Completely reasonable. And this is not a "group of people", it's a nation. Just as USA is a nation. And while you're at it, just burn a print of the Quran. After all, that's just some paper and it will bring valuable heat. And the "group of Muslims" will certainly be happy to help. Come on.
- google234123 3y agoNo, if we allowed religion to dictate like this we’d be in a horrible place. This is insanity and fortunately the founders of the US saw this and took steps to restrain the power of religion and give us the freedom of expression. These group of Muslims would also do a lot more if they had unlimited say I’m imagining you blamed the Charlie hebdo staff for being murdered? Would you support Scientologists getting South Park banned? It was very insulting to their religion and core beliefs, right?
- Symbiote 3y agoThe waste of resources is surely the laugh of remains to the moon, rather than the discussion around it.
- emtrw 3y agoWell it's my religious belief that being buried on the moon is the highest honour you could get. What now?
- krapp 3y agoIt isn't, though. There is such a thing as a test of sincere religious belief, and it requires, for one thing, an established religion. There is no established religion that believes in lunar burial. You can't just make some shit up and say "that's my religion." If you could, then everyone would be a part of the church of never paying taxes.
- emtrw 3y agoEveryone is. No religion pays taxes in the US and no misters of religion do either.
- krapp 3y agoNo religious organization, registered and classified as such, pays taxes. You can read more about the methods of classification here[0]. Note that factors like " a distinct religious history, a formal code of doctrine, regular services, a regular congregation" are considered. You, emtrw, cannot claim that you belong to a religion of one that you just made up right now, apply for tax exempt status and expect it to work because "religion." That isn't going to fly. And just because your church is exempt from taxes, you are not. Here is a Reddit thread explaining this further[1]. And to put this into context relative to the thread, you cannot claim that your religion says burial on the moon is your highest honor and expect it to be taken seriously, when no one is taking the religion older than Christianity seriously, and it's obvious your religion doesn't really exist. The real legal world doesn't operate under video game logic where you just need a cheat code to hack the system. [0]https://www.fidelislawfirm.com/how-and-why-religious-organizations-get-tax-exempt-status/ https://www.fidelislawfirm.com/how-and-why-religious-organiz... [1]https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/184get7/can_i_become_tax_exempt_by_making_a_religion/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/184get7/...
- readthenotes1 3y agoYou're being unreasonable. A burden of proving harm should be placed on those who want to restrict other people's activities
- psychlops 3y agoWhy do you want to respect any wishes of people who believe in imaginary things? That seems odd. I'd suggest your save your respect for those who are rational.
- ars 3y agoAnd presumably you are going to be the arbiter of what is and isn't rational?
- triyambakam 3y agoCan you prove that you exist?
- ogab 3y agoThe moon is imaginary?
- pvaldes 3y ago>The moon is imaginary? Only the cheese part; or all the religious interpretations about it (no exceptions).
- Avshalom 3y agoWhich bit of turning the moon into a cemetery strikes you as rational?
- Suzuran 3y agoI said basically this about bitcoin and someone tried to send a swat team to my old apartment.
- itishappy 3y ago> Why do you want to respect any wishes of people who believe in imaginary things? I respect human beings regardless of their beliefs. Having "right thought" be the basis upon which you dole out respect doesn't sound particularly rational to me. I'd actually argue that refusing to respect people due to differing beliefs is the root cause of much of the suffering we so often attribute to "a belief in the imaginary."
- jawns 3y agoEven though no religion owns the moon, there are laws in many places about the disposal of human remains, even on public lands, so I don't see why there couldn't be similar international regulations about the disposal of human remains on the moon. Indeed, I should think that apart from any religious objections, there should be deep concern from a purely scientific standpoint. This is, right now, a pristine space. We should not be leaving a bunch of organic material there for purely commercial reasons.
- dflock 3y agoI have bad news for you about what the Apollo missions did with their bags of poop...
- literalAardvark 3y agoWere they launched tangentially to the surface at a speed much lower than orbital speed?
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoHopefully not at 1 km/s (approximately the orbital velocity).
- literalAardvark 3y agoI don't think it's nearly that high for the moon
- yummypaint 3y agoThere is essentially no carbon on the moon right now, which will be required for eventual greenhouses. Any organic material deposited on the moon may be, pragmaticaly speaking, too valuable to not break down and add to the carbon cycle. I suspect many social norms taken for granted on earth will be forced to adapt by the environment in space.
- 3y ago
- nuc1e0n 3y agoBefore long it seems there'll be people living on the moon. Some of those people will die there also. Where will they be buried?
- londons_explore 3y ago40+ years I'd bet...
- prepend 3y agoPeople living there will also be a desecration. Obviously, all moon activities must be reviewed against every current and historical culture and religion.
- nuc1e0n 3y agoHow do you consider that obvious? It's not like people lived there ancestrally. What if I consider you living in your house as desecration? Would I be justified in throwing you out? It's obvious to me these claims of desecration are spurious.
- chucksmash 3y agoIt's sarcasm
- giraffe_lady 3y agoPeople who have lived and died in a place have a clear claim to be interred there. So far no one has lived or died on the moon, the only claim anyone has to this ritual is that they can afford the cost of it. It's reasonable to deny that claim imo.
- readthenotes1 3y agoNo one has never lived in the ocean and yet plenty of people are interred there
- riwsky 3y ago
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoRidiculous. Deeply unserious stuff Reminds me of the THE WHALES WILL DIE offshore wind suits. No, they won’t- but they will at 3C of warming Hate living in a vetocracy.
- yesco 3y agoI would have appreciated it if the article could have elaborated a bit more on why the Navajo Nation considers this a form of desecration, beyond the vague statement about the moon being a sacred place for them. At face value this seems both completely absurd and arbitrary, so I can't help but wonder if there is some context I'm missing here, because otherwise it just seems like the leadership of the Navajo Nation is trying to deliberately hurt their own credibility. If they make objections in the future about desecration of sacred land, it will be easier to argue their objections are frivolous by using this as an example going forward. An unfortunate outcome for them.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIt is almost always safe to assume no one is setting out to deliberately hurt their own credibility.
- yesco 3y agoObviously I didn't mean that literally
- lolc 3y agoWhile I know nothing of the Navajo, the moon and the sun are revered by many people. They are literally seen as gods by some religions. I have no trouble believing that they see this as desecration without having to actually delve into their beliefs. But yea, would be interesting to know what it is to them. There are many obstacles to living on the moon, but I don't think their belief will bar us from burying people there. Like other religions, believers will have to disconnect their god from the physical moon body.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- emtrw 3y ago[flagged]
- rompic 3y agoReminded me of that old joke: About 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City where the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the Lunar surface. With all the trucks and large vehicles there were two large figures that were dressed in full Lunar spacesuits. Near by a Navajo sheep herder and his son where watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by personnel. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Since the man did not know English, his son asked for him what the strange creatures were and the NASA people told them that they are just men that are getting ready to go to the moon. The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. After the man gave them his message they asked his son to translate. His son would not. Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate, and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate. Finally, with cash in hand someone translated the message: "Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land." Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/native-sun/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/native-sun/
- croes 3y agoIsn't Earth sacred in some religions too?
- haswell 3y agoRecent threads about this: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827569 (6 days, 17 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38899120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38899120 (8 hours, 9 comments) This particular thread is odd since it also shows up as a 2 day old discussion if you search for it, but navigating to it takes you here, a 1 hour old thread. @dang, this thread seems like it time travelled, with 2 day old comments showing up as new.
- juancn 3y agoWe should submit to %0.002 of the world's population magical thinking, stop all moon base projects since people may die on the moon and "desecrate" it! /s Seriously, why do we still have religions?
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago> %0.002 of the world's population magical thinking, Phew, thought you were going somewhere else with this. Close call.
- blindriver 3y ago[flagged]
- adamredwoods 3y ago>> "No one, and no religion, owns the moon, and, were the beliefs of the world's multitude of religions considered, it’s quite likely that no missions would ever be approved," Chafer added. "Simply, we do not and never have let religious beliefs dictate humanity’s space efforts — there is not and should not be a religious test."
- Avshalom 3y agoSticking a corpse on the moon is absolutely a religious effort. So...
- cassianoleal 3y agoIs it? Why? If it’s because of the religion of the deceased, there’s an easy fix: take someone who was an atheist.
- Avshalom 3y agoThey aren't taking human remains up there for scientific purposes, it's not any-ashes-will-do, they're taking specific human remains up there because that's what either the dead person asked for or some alive person wants to do with them, and more precisely because they are being paid to. Nothing's gonna be learned here, it's a vanity project, it's entirely just the idea that "we should do something special" with dead people beyond what is strictly necessary from a public health stand point.
- evilduck 3y agoNone of that supports your prior assertion that it's "absolutely" a religious effort though. Even if it's pure vanity and 100% wasteful, why should any Earthly religion have an overruling say about it?
- zamadatix 3y ago"Some post death action to a body beyond what is strictly necessary from a public health standpoint" is not the definition of religious effort though. It has nothing inherent to do with worship, gods, faith, afterlife, or the supernatural anymore than the "belief" if you pay for shipment of something it'll probably make it that even if you're not around to see it and that sounds fun. After all, not everything people do beyond the bare necessities of public health is about religion.
- ffhhj 3y agoPeople will ask to be buried on the moon for some belief. Other people will oppose because of another belief. That's a moral draw. Now sending corpses to space is a waste of valuable resources. Materialism wins, don't do it. It's interesting how materialism helps reaching an optimal result in this case. Let gravity define the place to rest.
- pvaldes 3y ago> sending corpses to space is a waste of valuable resources A small step for stopping climate change; a big step for the family Johnson earning travel points.
- bigmattystyles 3y agoUnbelievable harm has been done to these people’s ancestors and that harm has lingering impact today. More must be done to make up for it, but this seems like a form of blackmail, it seems to me to be about attention and getting someone to throw them some money rather than actual improvement. Happy to be corrected.
- yakkityyak 3y agoI wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s blackmail. They voiced their concerns peacefully, and requested a review. It will likely be ignored, as it deserves to be.
- almost_usual 3y agoDid they also request a delay for India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission?
- yetanother12345 3y agoI see something that worries me in this article. It seems that any private enterprise can just launch any type of item(s) to the moon without any rules or oversight what so ever?!! How TF did we even get there? And how can we get rules and policing in place really really fast? The article mentions advertising as one example - it would have to be a very large sign to be visible down here, but there are people that stupid, and there are corporations that rich. The thought alone is beyond disgusting to me, and I don't think I'm overly sensitive in that specific regard. As an European it did not escape my attention that these enterprises are American. These private enterprises from one specific country are allowed by that one specific country to desecrate (and that is the proper word) something of immense importance to almost all the world. I guess there's a word for that, and I guess it's Hubris. But then there are many more words, none positive in any way. This should never have started. It has to stop. Immediately. But how? --- Also, after reading the comments, it seems that the concept "sacred" is not really something that my fellow commenters here, uhm... internalize (let alone, understand). Let's just say that if a spokesperson for an Indigenous Nation mentions that something is "sacred" to them, it means that that something is far more important to them than your morning coffee, or the distictions between Vi/Emacs, SPA/MPA, PHP/Rust. Which is something like "extremely important" times infinity. Also, if a spokesperson for an Indigenous Nation says something like that, it will be beyond rude to suggest that he does not state the facts (or that he is somehow lying or pretending something). This is regardless if you are religious, atheist, or whatever. Just FYI. And no, I'm not Navajo.
- akkartik 3y agoI had a similar reaction to your first half. As another concrete example, do we no longer avoid contaminating extraterrestrial objects with microbes as we did during the Apollo era?
- costigan 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection From the article: Category II: Any mission to locations of significant interest for chemical evolution and the origin of life, but only a remote chance that spacecraft-borne contamination could compromise investigations. Examples include the Moon, Venus, and comets. Requires simple documentation only, primarily to outline intended or potential impact targets, and an end of mission report of any inadvertent impact site if such occurred.[16]
- RagnarD 3y agoI guess they're going to be very disappointed after a lunar base is well established and people starting being born - and dying - on the moon.
- sombragris 3y agoI respect the Navajo beliefs but I'm thinking: some day the moon may be colonized. Colonists will die. So what is what they would propose so they wouldn't object? To ship the corpses back to Earth? As I said, it's a belief worthy of respect but I don't think it's going to be future-proof.
- oglop 3y agoIt’s the friggin moon. I’m amazed people are taking this request seriously. You don’t get to just look up and say “that’s sacred” and expect the rest of us to go along with your fantasy. Because there’s way too many other fantasies with way more money behind them that will smother you.