mikester

hi everybody,

i figured i would post this question here, since many of you are very familiar with what kinds of arguments some christians would use to justify their beleifs.

here's the situation: this 35 year old member of the clergy is a non-denominational christian (meaning she's not baptist, or anglican, or whatever, just a christian), and she is arguing her position using her strong beleifs in the bible, god, and whatnot. she is stranded on an atoll with 6 others, 3 of who are unconscious and will soon die.

now, she and the two remaining coherent members are trying to decide whether or not to eat one of the dying ones, let them die and then eat them, or take some other action (such as wait it out for rescue, try to catch some fish, etc.).

my question is this: what kind of argument would this person most likely use to base her position on? im not looking for excerpts from the bible per se, just some examples of what she might say to the others.


And dont just say she'll sit there and pray for rescue or something, i mean, she might be a member of the clergy, but she's not totally void of logic.



thanks!

livius drusus

GRD is best for this one, methinks.

Madkins007

I am an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church (big whoop), so MY answer would be that the clergy person would argue that because people are special and cannibalism is a sin (probably) that we would not eat our fellow castaways.

Fishing, shellfish, bivalves, birds... there has to be SOMETHING to eat around here!

Adrammalech

If the food situation is desperate...eat them, at least after they die. You are either going to get the nutrition or the worms will, either way it all ends up the same in the end.

As for what a clergy would say, I'm not quite sure. I mean if they allegedly had a soul, then what would the harm be in eating the dead body which would be a shell to them anyway?

I wonder if there is a specific verse in the bible that prevents it.

kctan

She just might as being logical doesn't mean she won't do it.

Maybe once she have wasted enough time on praying then she may try something else. Like catching fishes, looking for shells etc... Resorting to human flesh would be something that most of us won't do whether theistic or atheistic as long as other food options remains open.

Don't ask me why but that's just how we will react given such a situation.

rainbow walking

rw: There is a period in Jewish history when Jerusalem is under seige and the bible depicts the hunger is so great that woman are eating their children...or at least contemplating it. This seems to give some sort of tacit approval to the concept indirectly because the bible only makes reference to it as being a horrible situation and doesn't really say, one way or the other, if they should or shouldn't. I'd say if the chips are really that low, she'll grab a snack along with the other survivors.

RRoman

Are you perhaps thinking of 2 Kings 6?

24 And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria.
25 And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.
26 And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king.
27 And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress?
28 And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow.
29 So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.

andy_d

There's not a lot of people who's faith is so strong it would cause them to starve. So i'd say their religious beliefs would be fairly irrelevant, given the extreme situation.

I recently saw a doco interviewing the surviviors from the infamous Andes plane crash (immortalised in the movie "Alive") They all managed to eat their mates, and they were all intensely religious and talked constantly of how god influenced their survivial.

Frankly, I think when it's a matter of life and death, most people would rationalise their god into the position where he gave them the best chance to survive. Scripture and doctrine would probably have very little to do with it

Madkins007

It is also one thing to discuss this in the comfort of our computer stations and quite another to experience it in a real-world sheer desperation survival crisis.

The memoirs of people in hard-core survival situations make for fascinating reading and generally demonstrate the 'you don't know what you can or will do until it happens to you' truism.

andy_d

Very true.