Cannibalism and the will to survive

[Avatar]

You'd rather that they died for your beliefs?

Say, what about the thought that communion is symbolic cannibalism? In fact, if you accept transubstantiation, then it's more than merely symbolic.

--A

[dennisrwood]

but that is as Christ commanded. I can't find a passage where he commands us to feast on each other.

[Avatar]

True enough. So it's alright to eat your saviour because he said you could, but nobody else? What if they say you can?

(I'm just pulling your leg now, but you gotta admit that there is a bit of moral relativism there. )

--A

[dennisrwood]

no, I just follow orders well.

[Sheriff Lytton]

Just as a point of pedantry, is there a passage where he commands us not to do it ?

[dennisrwood]

www.rationalchristianity.net/cannibal.html

[Dromond]

www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_abo ... alism.html

[Avatar]

Interesting links folks. Reading through the verses quoted though, I don't see anything explicitly saying that you can't do it. It's almost as though the bible simply acknowledges the fact that it is an unpleasant part of life, that people sometimes eat other people.

in Dromonds link, there were a couple of passages condemning the people who ate the followers of god, but even there, I get the sense that they're been condemned as evil not for eating people, but for eating believers.

And of course, in the verse in John, Jesus pretty much says that anybody who doesn't eat his flesh will not have eternal life.

John 6:53-56

Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

Interesting, that "philosophy", of becoming a part of what eats you is similar to the one of the Griqua I mentioned before (I think it was this thread).

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[Lady Revel]

1. Eat him/her
2. Eat him/her
3. Eat him/her
4. Please survive by eating me.

Has anyone read the book Alive! by Piers Paul Read? Its the one where the rugby team's plane goes down in the Andes. No food anywhere. The soil is 100 feet underneath the snow. However, the bodies of the dead are flash frozen because of the subzero temperatures, so they stay nice and tasty the entire time those poor bastages were stuck there. (Granted, they had to bury them under the snow so the sun wouldn't turn the skin black--I love grossing you guys out!)

Yes, they were cannibals. Yes, I would do the exact same thing. You have no idea what lengths you will go to when you are starving. Has any of you ever gone a full week without eating? Hmmmmm? Well, I have gone 40 days (yeah, I was pretty fat, thank goodness, or else I'd be dead). HUUUUUUUUNGRY. It plays with your mind terribly. Do you really think you would die because of a social taboo? I sure as heck wouldn't. Unfortunately, everyone around me was living. And I couldn't bring myself to kill one of them for food. Nice of me, eh?

I have thought about this, because of the book I read, also because of the time I did not have food, and also because for some reason, I just know I would be one of the living ones faced with this decision, instead of dead and not worrying about it.

The problem with cannibalism, is that usually by the time you get around to thinking about it, its too late and you starve to death anyway. This happened to many folks in the Donner Party. By the time they could bring themselves to eat human flesh, they died anyway. You have to start it before you are weak, when it is still utterly repulsive, in order for it to actually keep you healthy.

By the way, the Pope (jeepers, what do you call what the Pope does?) relieved? the rugby players of any sin in the situation, because apparently, the eating of human flesh for survival (apopophagy or something, it's called), seems to be AOK with the church.

16 of those rugby players are still alive, and they are all heroes in Uruguay. Society backlashed at them a little, but not much, and now most of them are multimillionaires. One of them is the most respected child cardiologist in Uruguay. So the arguement about coming back to civilization and being repulsed by folks isn't much of one as far as I'm concerned.

People admire you when you survive against all odds.

[dennisrwood]

it's still wrong. I would have walked away from that group in the mountains. picked a direction and headed to it.

[Worm of Despite]

What direction? How do you know where you're going, in the middle of nowhere?

[Lady Revel]

You wouldn't have got far. They were in a valley surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the world, and none of them could climb them in their weakened state.

Two finally did climb after weeks of being fed human flesh. Even then it almost defies the imagination that they found a way out. But they could not have made it without the nutrition provided by the dead bodies. Right or wrong, they did it, and survived.

Dennis, they justified themselves by saying that the soul leaves the body when death arrives and that they were just eating what was left. The entire rugby team was VERY, VERY, Catholic, they prayed through the entire horrific affair. They felt it was like Holy Communion. One survivor, Pedro Algorta said, "When Christ died he gave his body to us so that we could have spiritual life. My friend has given us his body so we can have physical life."

All of them participated in the eating of human flesh, but some hated doing it, and one or two eventually stopped doing it and did die of starvation. But the fact remains that some held out longer than others, but ALL of them did it. I don't thing anyone can say what they would do in a situation they have never even closely been in. Its all well and good to burp after eating your big mac and say, "That's disgusting, I'd never do that" and another thing to be stuck in subzero weather with no food, or protection, no hope of rescue and say, "That's disgusting, I'd never do that."

[ChoChiyo]

I read Alive--it was a VERY MOVING testament to the faith and courage of those young boys--they were just boys after all--who survived against all odds.

I saw some of them interviewed once, and the way they appeared was almost saintly. You could tell that these boys had thought A LOT about what they were doing and why they were doing it.

It did indeed become a very spiritual and communion like act for them to eat the dead. They did it with great love and respect and gratitude--and with a lot of praying and soul searching.

I am glad their lives were blessed afterwards. They certainly went through a horrific ordeal.

I thought the movie based on the book did a good job of portraying the spirit of the book. The part where the background music swells with the Ave Maria at the very end of the movie, and the camera pans back to show the huge cross that was erected where they plane crashed in honor of their survival and ;the grace of God, was so moving that I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

[Lady Revel]

Correct me if I am wrong, (and I probably am, we all know my religious knowledge is vastly limited, that is to say, next to nothing) but isn't every Catholic who takes communion technically a cannibal? Are they not eating the body and blood of Christ?

At the end of the book Alive!, when the boys were saved, they wanted to confess, and two separate priests would not let them confess, because they felt that what they did (eating human flesh in order to survive) was NOT a sin.

[matrixman]

I commend you on your thoughtful posts in this thread, Lady Revel. Your perspective is persuasive, I'll admit.

I won't concede defeat that easily, though. If in an extreme situation I do succumb to acts of cannibalism, then I will have failed fundamentally to live--and die--by the most basic principles that I personally adhere to. Not your principles or anybody else's, but my own private irreducible standards of what it means to be a human being. And as I do not follow any official religious code, having a Catholic priest tell me that eating human flesh to survive is okay and not a sin holds no particular value for me. I will have failed to conduct myself according to my personal code, and it would probably haunt me to the end of my days, if I don't prematurely end them myself.

Anyway, uh, I've decided to cancel my seat on the KW sight-seeing tour over the Andes...

[Avatar]

Damn! And I was so looking forward to...Uh, never mind.

I'm interested in those irreducible standards though. Obviously, eating other people is one of them. (And equally clearly, I think, is that it's not the notion of "sin" which puts you off.)

What other "irreducible" standards do you apply to yourself?

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[Lady Revel]

Maxtrixman said:

Anyway, uh, I've decided to cancel my seat on the KW sight-seeing tour over the Andes...

Please, please! Strike me from that trip also!!!!

Please understand, its not like I am looking for a situation where I can get ahold of some dead bodies and eat them. It revolts me at many levels, also. However, in the comfort of my living room, it just doesn't revolt me enough to die instead of doing it. I would never resort to it unless there was no other possible option for survival. Obviously, I hope I am never in such a situation, so I never have to find out whether I REALLY would do it, or not. For who knows, maybe even though I said I would, if such a situation occurred, I may find that I cannot, and others who said that they wouldn't might find that indeed, they can.

And I admire you, I truly do, and all the others with similar sentiments for having a belief that is so deeply ingrained that you would actually die before breaking it. That really says a lot about a person. And I suppose it may say a few things about me, because I am not sure I have very many beliefs that are that strong.

You see, I want to live. And I will do most anything within my means to do so. I would like to emphasize that I would never kill someone for food, in such a situation, I would starve to death alongside everyone else. (Perhaps I should add that I would never commit murder for any reason, intentionally).

Referring back to those Rugby players, a parent of one of the boys who died (and whose child was possibly eaten!) said something along the lines of: I am glad that some boys died first, for this allowed sixteen boys to come home. If all 45 had survived the plane crash, all 45 would have died. We are happy that some boys were able to triumph over a very difficult situation, and come home.

I was very impressed by that attitude, for it must be a certain horror to imagine your child being eaten by others to survive. Not all of the dead bodies were eaten, and I think the survivors never said who they did and did not eat, at least allowing the parents to hope that their child had not been cannibalized.

I should also say that I am an agnostic, so I explained the church angle for those who were religious, and not familiar with this story, not as a justification for my choice. Even if the Church thought it was abominable, it wouldn't change my general opinion of the situation.

[dennisrwood]

lady Revel: I'd rather die trying to find a way out than to eat human flesh. and I don't eat Big Macs.
but at some point you have to sit back and think, "I ate another person!" I can find no justification for that. some things are so deep ingrained that they should never be brought to light. I would die somewhere in the snow ready to meet my maker. and I wouldn't have to justify my actions. and no, we Catholics are not cannibals...
www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm

and to further the point, if a gun were pointed at me and I was told to renounce my faith...I wouldn't do it. how could I deny and then face judgement?

[matrixman]

Obviously, I hope I am never in such a situation, so I never have to find out whether I REALLY would do it, or not. For who knows, maybe even though I said I would, if such a situation occurred, I may find that I cannot, and others who said that they wouldn't might find that indeed, they can.

Yes, that's my attitude as well. This topic makes for an interesting intellectual exercise (like everything else in this forum), but in reality the odds that I would actually find myself facing the dilemma of cannibalism are so low that it feels mildly silly even talking about it. Here I am, an urbanite with easy access to grocery stores 10 minutes in every direction, and I'm agonizing over human flesh? Nope, not gonna lose sleep on that. There are far more immediate problems for me to worry about on a daily basis.

I certainly don't think I'm somehow better than those rugby players, that somehow my will to reject cannibalism would prove greater than their will to survive. I can only hope and trust that my will would prove to be equal in that situation. Those guys would probably have a good laugh and shake their heads at folks like me who will never truly understand what they went through.

What other "irreducible" standards do you apply to yourself?

Working on your KW crew psychology report? Heh, nice try. I came here to say my thoughts on cannibalism, that's all--and to dance a number with the Lady Revel, so quit cuttin' in! There are other ravishing ladies on the dance floor you can discuss cannibalistic cuisine with, ya know.

This is a thread that just won't die. Maybe we need to switch gears. We should discuss Cannonballism instead: actual cannonballs, or the Cannonball Run movies. Ooh, this gives me an idea. Thanks, I'm outta here.

[Avatar]

Remind me to stay out of the Movie forum for a while.

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