Is it a sin to eat the flesh of another human being? I'm not talking about murdering someone then eating them (because murder is a sin), just eating human flesh in general. For example, people who survive a plane crash had to eat off of human bodies, who were already dead of course, to survive (true story FYI). Another example: somebody wanted their body to be eaten after they die as part of their will.
Not interested in trying it out btw. I know it's a rather strange question but it one to think about nevertheless.
Would the Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the Andes or the Pioneers of the Donner party, snowed in while trying to make their way through the Sierra Nevada, be damned for being religious, Christian, and resorting to cannibalism in order to survive?
Some may argue that the Memorialism exampled in communion is symbolic cannibalism.
Eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ.
And especially when one's faith leads them to an altar where a vested cleric feeds them the Eucharist/flesh and wine/juice/blood of the redeemer that hangs suspended on a cross before them.
Like unto enjoying a prime rib dinner while seated before the picture of a freshly slaughtered steer.
However, I think when humans can deem to eat flesh of lesser animals and give it reason, which is often religious in nature, (i.e. God created all the plants and the animals to sustain human life), then it's a matter of choice as to where carnivorous appetites draw the line.
One thing you might ask yourself (or others) is, if one was in a situation like the Donner party or the Uruguayan rugby team, stranded in the Andes mountains after a plane crash, and believed cannibalism was a sin, would you sin in order to live the life God gave you?
It's all projection and opinion now. However, if it really happened to come to that, that's when one may find where the line is drawn between faith and fact.
Faith cannibalism is a sin.
Fact if you don't eat something you perish of starvation. Irony; that God created the human body's physiology to do just that, without food.
