Atheist and Secular Funerals

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. Mark Twain

The Last Hurrah team was founded by a staunch atheist and a softer agnostic, but both Co-founders saw in their former funeral industry lives that many funerals somehow seemed to slip some God into the funerals of decidedly Godless and Happy heathens. These sneaky religious overtones didn’t just go against the beliefs of the person that had died, it often creeped out their crew as well.

That’s why we have made a clear offering for the secular, atheist and humanist quarters of our community. Funerals, farewells, vigils and wakes can happen in a completely personal, heartfelt and authentic way without needing to veer into the spiritual or religious.

WHAT HAPPENS AT A SECULAR FUNERAL?

Non-religious funerals and memorials are completely flexible and can be a casual hang or party, but can also follow a more traditional format with formal eulogies, poems and so on.

Readings or poems from the secular canon are rich and varied drawing on the works of notable astronomers, natural scientists and literary writers.

The only thing that won’t be included is religious or spiritual concepts, lexicon or iconography. That much you can count on.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.' (Epicurus)