What if the person died from a disease...or a bacteria...say Anthrax? Besides, what you are saying is against every major religion, and against nearly all major ethical theories.
What if the person died from a disease...or a bacteria...say Anthrax? Besides, what you are saying is against every major religion, and against nearly all major ethical theories.
Ramble on...
1) Most bacteria/virii have a limited lifespan outside of a living host. Also, of course you'd treat it like any other mean, properly prepared. Irradiation will kill most anything. Sure, diseases would be a worry, but they're a worry in any food preparation, and humans wouldn't be any different.
2) It may be against religions, but it is HARDLY against ethical theories. In fact, most if not all ethical theories would permit it, including Kantian, Utilitarian (both Rule- and Act-Utilitarianism), etc.
Plus, it's not even against religions. Judaism/Christianity explicitly permits it, in the Old Testament/Torah (presumably the Jews would have to prepare it Kosher though). The New Testament never forbids it. No religions believe that any soul remains in a body after death, so from a religious point of view, the person is already elsewhere, and whatever they leave behind might as well have some good use.
It would be highly unethical to murder a person for food, but I can't think of any way you could argue that it's unethical to eat a corpse that is already dead. They no longer exist or no longer inhabit that body, depending on your beliefs. Although you could argue that their body, like other possessions of theirs, would go to their next of kin, if the next of kin wanted to eat them, I don't think you should stop them.
A person IS a special and unique creature. But the body that remains after death is nothing more than a rapidly decomposing lump of flesh. Once dead, there's nothing different about a human corpse or a cow corpse besides some cosmetic differences. A corpse is as human as a rock; it deserves no special rights because once it held a person within. Like clothing, once discarded, it is nothing special.
Heck, if I had to choose what happens to my body, I would WANT it to be consumed by some living thing. As that's unlikely to happen (or at the very least, it would be slowed by casket, and embalming), I plan to be cremated. It sure beats being "preserved" by chemicals. Death is natural, and so is life living off of the dead. Every animal lives off of other living things' deaths, and as I have consumed to live, so I want to be consumed when I am dead; kind of a circle of life thing. If my body was not allowed to naturally decompose, it may as well be burned. As carbon dioxide and water, my body would at least provide for the trees, and eventually the atoms of my body would reenter the chain of life. I don't see this body as "mine" -- after all, all of the materials which make it up have come from other living things -- I'm just sort of leasing it for a while. When I'm done with it, I want to give back the stuff I've borrowed.
Honestly, I think embalming is, if not immoral, at least horrifying and unnatural. To attempt to preserve a person's body after they die always seemed to me to be a hideous mockery of life, a denial of what made the person special, and a denial of that person's death.
>scientists have been using
i'd donate all of my organs and anything useful to others...
>It's like giving the person's clothes to goodwill
hmmm, well i wouldn't go so far to say that...
>mmmm mmmm, pass the phill, is there anymore phill.. he is even good cold. Great party, thanks to phill.
hehe...
>What do you think they used before crash test dummies?
ken, you'd make a good one dead or alive... hehe...
>It is simply a discarded remnant left after the person dies
back to the earth from whence we came... trancendentalist belief #1...
hasafraggin shizigishin oppashigger...
Kant was against the means justifying the ends if you recall his theories correctly.
It goes against the dignity of humanity. That we die and are reduced to food.Kant...
whether in relation to self or others
treat every person as an end
and never purely as a mens to an end
Utilitarianism is a terrible theory to use to justify your argument. Under utilitarianism I could kill you if you had something I wanted as long as it served my desire. It is a ridiculous as quoting Nietzche in an argument about Human Rights.
And most religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) are against cannibalism, although it may not be strictly outlined in the Bible or the Koran.
Last edited by EvenFlow; 10-27-2001 at 12:39 AM.
Ramble on...
Christianity is CENTERED on cannibalism! Partaking in the flesh and blood of Christ is central to the masses/services.
And, in the RC church anyway, the Eucharist *is* the body and blood, it is NOT a representation or a reenactment, but is believed to BE the body and blood of Christ, in a physical sense as well as in a spiritual sense.
Re: Kant -- A corpse has no dignity. It's not human. Merely an object in a world of objects. It is not an end in itself, it is nothing more than nothing. Kant was concerned with people, not corpses. A corpse is not alive, it has neither right nor dignity.
And no, you could certainly not kill me under rule utilitarianism, and under act utilitarianism, your benefit from my death would have to exceed my loss, and the loss of anyone who cares about me/benefits from my existence, so you probably would not be allowed to, unless you REALLY benefitted. Murder in act utilitarianism is only allowed if it serves the "greater good" of all of humanity. I.e. it would be morally MANDATED to kill someone like Hitler, because his death would have a net positive effect on humanity as a whole. As most people's murders would have a net negative effect on society, their murder is morally forbidden.
>>And, in the RC church anyway, the Eucharist *is* the body and blood, it is NOT a representation or a reenactment, but is believed to BE the body and blood of Christ, in a physical sense as well as in a spiritual sense.<<
Yes we are partaking in the body and blood of Christ. But to us Jesus is God and man at once. This isn't canniblism. His flesh was not consumed by the 12 Apostles at the last supper. He didn't carve off a leg and say "hand it round boys!". It is a representation that when you take part in communion, you are at one with God, consuming part of what God is.
>>Kant was concerned with people, not corpses. A corpse is not alive, it has neither right nor dignity.<<
A corpse is the body of a person. A person who once lived and breathed as you do. Kant was a Lutheran and correct me if I'm wrong but most religions bury people. Why? Out of respect to that person. It makes a mockery of that respect to eat someone.
Last edited by EvenFlow; 10-27-2001 at 01:04 AM.
Ramble on...
Ken mentioned it earlier but this is so reminiscient of Soylent Green. If you haven't seen it then you must next time its on.Its a classic!
Free the weed!! Class B to class C is not good enough!!
And the FAQ is here :- http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cgi
Dignity, schmignity. Terminally ill patients donate all their
useful organs so that other can live. If a persons eats you
for lunch, you are helping him survive until dinner. What's so
undignified about that?
Are we human being the only dignified creatures on earth?
What about the cow? The bull? The turkey? What makes human
beings any more dignified than a pack of vultures? They eat
the same animals we do.
rick barclay
No. Wait. Don't hang up!
This is America calling!
Again, let me reiterate my point. If the dead person has it in his will or something that it is okay to recycle his body, then okay!
I know I wouldn't mind giving up some of my body parts to save someone's life, WHEN I'M DEAD! I mean geez, don't be so stingy, you won't even be around after death....It's not like you are going to care after death where your body is...
Think out of the box! Open Source rules!
-Breach23
Okay everybody, here we go:
Would you rather have someone eating your body, and benifiting from it, or would you have your body eaten by worms and bugs and other gross things? It all comes down to this.
Think out of the box! Open Source rules!
-Breach23
I strongly disagree with humans eating humans. See my points earlier on why I feel this way. I can't believe that you, educated people, are seriously suggesting such a barbaric notion.
Ramble on...
Well, it would be nice (of course with the approval of the reciclee), but wouldn't cats or dogs get something like a "Mad kitten disease"?, well, I'm just considering what happened with the cattle
Oskilian
What does education have to do with beliefs? If you belive its morally wrong to eat human flesh then fine, that's no different from a vegetarians argument... but from a completely logical standpoint it makes perfect sense... at least it would if supermarkets weren't so widely available...Originally posted by EvenFlow
I strongly disagree with humans eating humans. See my points earlier on why I feel this way. I can't believe that you, educated people, are seriously suggesting such a barbaric notion.
Sorry for not joining your discussions,
but I totally forgot, that I've sent this message here...
>>Recycling people is just wrong. What made you come up with this crazy idea?
Why wrong? Why crazy? I think it's a pretty good idea. Eating dead bodies isn't so ethical, but say me what's called "the ethics"? It means the thoughts of the most people. (OK, maby I'm not so good in english, but I truely hope, that you understood what I ment). If you're not satisfied with my opinion then you can just forget it. But for the others I say, that the old traditions have to change! Eg. there are hundreds of people dying in hunger, but this would be a good solution for that.
Do you really care what happends to your body after the death.
P.S.
Once more sorry for the misspelling...
Ethics aside, it is impractical. Much better to donate organs and then burry.
Human beings today are so well preserved by the average age of death from the unhealthy food we eat that with organs we decay much slower than Egyptian mummies. (Modern man with Egyptian mummy in same conditions, ie both buried or both in air tight tombs.) This junk makes up such a large proportion of our bodies that we would actually be the most unhealthy pet food available.
Human meat is not designed to be digested by a human body. Colon cancer and malnutrition are the results of cannibalism. Studies that proved this did not even delve into what junk modern man has floating around in him (previous point).
Some animals get a.. taste.. for human flesh. Large pets play with small children. I would not like to risk that.
Most starvation is in India. Most Indians are starving because they are Hindu and will not so much drink milk, let alone eat a hamburger. They will say you will be reincarnated as bacteria if you eat human meat. If we were ethical we would take the vast amount of produce available to most of the world and see that these people get it. I don't know that human beings are cruel so much as lazy to the point of being cruel.
Finally, people are weird. In fact, they are often quite insane. We have enough problems keeping murder down in society given the current common motives. It would suck to have to find a serial killer who hunts because he has aquired a more "refined" taste for human meat. The prey could be anyone.
Humans are recycled. It just takes longer naturally than it does for humans to recycle, say, paper. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Let's worry about recycling non-biodegradable objects first, yes?
Allegro precompiled Installer for Dev-C++, MSVC, and Borland: http://galileo.spaceports.com/~springs/