Do we have the right to say what happens to our bodies when we die?

I agree with you, as far as this being an interesting philosophical topic, but not with your take on it. The three things you list as examples of the rules we accept, as members of a society, include two which are strongly questioned-- laws against suicide and, even more legally dubious, against ingesting certain drugs-- and your third example, conscription, is a relic of the past, in the U.S. That is not to say, in the future, there could not be some requirement, or at least an incentive, for national service (which is a far broader thing, than a military draft), but this is hardly commensurate with the giving over of one's corpse to the state, to be used however it deems fit. While I personally agree with the philosophy of providing for others, with one's no longer needed organs, and find the wasting of land on cemetary plots to be sinfully idiotic, nevertheless you ignore the fact that, for many, what happens to their body, impinges upon their religious beliefs, not to mention the desires of the families of the deceased.

You are also less than accurate, in your depiction of one's post life options. While you certainly cannot drop your dead body on someone's doorstep, nor does one have the right, even while still alive, to trespass. Though it would take conforming to health regulations, people certainly can have their bodies preserved, and kept in crypts (or even cryogenic chambers, if one can afford it) on their family's premises; and what might happen with those bodies, would have little practical means, of being regulated. In some societies, the bones of their ancestors are kept, and on display, in their homes.

In short, anticipating humans being completely logical, selflessly unemotional, and pragmatically beneficent towards the rest of society, is not a very realistic expectation.

 

I could care less personally, not like I need it anymore

 

They are my parts. I choose to be an organ donor, but do not want to be a lab rat. Take what is needed to save lives and mix the rest with potting soil and grow a fruit tree. (So people can bite me!)

 

This is a good question.......
I personally AM NOT an organ donor on my driver's license because I am planning on attempting to come back into four dimensional space - time at least once.............

After I make it back after one near death experience.... THEN I may perhaps sign my organ donor card!!!!!

I know that this may sound like strange reasoning.... but I take those near death experience accounts very seriously...... they seem to fit with what I read on Theoretical Physics back in the 1990's.

I did a blog to summarize what I was thinking on this because I got into the topic so often with Atheists or Agnostics.....


www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/