dclayh comments on The Threat of Cryonics - Less Wrong

36 Post author: lsparrish 03 August 2010 07:57PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (212)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: dclayh 03 August 2010 09:08:08PM 3 points [-]

and used obscene displays of corpses to punish their dead

Perhaps the most prominent example.

Comment author: NihilCredo 06 August 2010 01:02:15AM *  0 points [-]

No, that's a bad example. In Catholicism, the bodies of martyrs and saints were (are) exhumed and displayed all the time for the purpose of being exalted and venerated. Indeed, often pieces of their bodies are treated with awe, even ones as unseemly as a severed tongue.

The Cadaver Synod was a humiliation because Formosus's helpless corpse was subjected to a nasty show trial, and because after the trial it did get stripped, 'tortured', and thrown in the water. But the exhumation and display of his corpse in and of themselves weren't the point.