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*IS* there a religious motivation for treating corpses as sacred? I don't recall any Christian doctrine about corpses. The idea of Christianity is that when someone dies their soul leaves their bodies and goes to heaven, so who cares what happens to the corpse? I know some native Americans believed that corpses were sacred, but is there any modern religion with strong beliefs about the treatment of bodies?
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Depends. According to Medieval Catholic interpretation the body could not ascend to heaven if it were not A) Intact, and B) Facing East towards the rising sun on Judgment day.
And the whole immediate spirit journey to heaven is pretty recent. Until fairly recently your spirit still went to hell regardless of how holy you were. If you were just and right, however, the ribcage of Abraham would encase you preventing the torment to which the damned would be subject to.