The Resurrection

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, it's hard to talk about these stuff since they never occur. But if you derive this resurrection "science" from the Bible, Christians demand that people bury dead people in the ground so that when the day of resurrection comes, people can resurrect, meaning that they usually don't even allow cremation since they won't be able to assemble. For example, the Catholic church didn't allow cremation until something like 1997, and even now it's murky. But then they also seem to ignore that people decompose to "nothingness" even when they are buried. I guess the whole idea was based on the promise that the end of days will be soon, definitely before people decompose.

I doubt that any kind of thought process like that went into it.  It's far older, much more basic.  Goes back 200k, multiple instances of independent construction all over the world and through time. Based on kinship, affinity, proximity, and dreams. Someone burnt to ash is gone in a meaningful sense that someone buried nearby (preserved or not - customs vary) is not. The preference didn't survive cultural contamination as christianity marched across the map. As you note, as an institution, catholicism only recently "allowed" this or that thing it's constituents have been doing for centuries...some of them unbroken from the pre-christian era in the respective cultures.

The difference between preferences themselves appears to be environmental.