Why are you so profoundly steeped in the sentiment that a dead, rotting, bipedal, human-shaped carcass is any different than a dead, rotting, quadrupedal, cow-shaped carcass?

...or for that matter, that a 12-ounce, medium rare, steak shaped piece of red meat is distinguishable from another piece from a different animal?

...or, to continue, that somehow the dead body of your precious Aunt Sally is somehow of more value than the transient who was hit by a train.

Because to put it quite simply, I suffer from the all too human delusion that while we are a certain breed of animal, we are better than animals.

And I don't say that 'Aunt Sally' is more important than someone hit by a train. Whether it be my Aunt or someone I don't know, SOMEONE loves that person and so deserves a certain modicum of respect.

I'm going to put this as bluntly as possible: burying a person is far more respectful than using the person to feed people because, out of respect for humanity, I'd rather not have people pooping out other people. k?

And as for the slavery thing, it wasn't just that it was 'right' at the time; it was the fact that people in question were lowered to nothing more than property. They weren't human you see- they were property. Like farmyard animals. And that's what I'm saying would have to happen if we were to eat people. People would be reduced to nothing more than property. See what I'm getting at? It's a HUGE leap BACKWARD for civil rights, and the rights of a human being, dead OR alive.

Ahh but is it? I guarantee you as a person who would do it. And I would. I am not disillusioned to what is human and what is not. Humans are not property. Notably humans are not what I am eating. I am eating a human corpse. A dead human isn't a human, it is the corpse of a human. Just like how a fossil isn't an animal it is a fossil of an animal. A shadow of memories, but their soul isn't there anymore. Like a statue it only looks like the person, but the thing that made them a human. Life and soul. Is gone.

I will respect the rights of humans alive easily. I love people. People are fun. I am a person. I could be a meal, but only if I were dead. If anyone becomes disillusioned then maybe we should just slaughter them because they obviously lack the psyche to be a real human.

Also, where we poop is only about an inch an a half from where we were made.

THIS is what terrifies me. Obviously Yoshi has respect for the human condition; I see that now. But what about the people that don't? The greedy and the just plain awful of the world...What's to stop them from killing with impunity and justify it with just those words?

I don't know; part of me just feels that this is wrong. I respect your opinions, but I just can't see the world that you do, but I see glimpses and it scares me. Call me a pessimist, but I believe in the evil in a human heart and can see how it would all go wrong. I'm sorry.

The way I see it eating someones flesh takes the domination of that race and it is simply immoral to dominate our own race if there are other dominated races out there whose flesh we can consume. Doing so would simply take away from the pool of minds that we rely on to fuel our race.

Well if we kill them yes. If they are already dead then they are basically big human slabs of meat. I don't know if you particularly dominate the creatures you eat. I still fear the bull when it runs for me. I still get pain from the cock when it pecks me. I still can be totally screwed when an alligator eats me. I have no dominion over these creatures...but someone was able to calm them down long enough to kill them. And in humanity don't we do that to each other already?

This topic is quickly turning into a pointless circular debate. It needs some fresh blood.

I think people are too scared Kinmotsu. lol.

I think society have to much restrictions... I think it could be good... There is too much people suffering to waste meat... But religion told us that it is bad... :sarcasm:

There is a lot to learn from other cultures... Some say that cannibalism is bad because we have an afterlife... But I don't think that we need our body... We give our body to worms... Why not using it ? There is a man who ate a woman in japan. People of japan paid his caution because they agree that eating people is good !

Hmm how about this then? Did you know that cannibalism can be good for the earth? The prime areas of carbon emissions come naturally, from breathing and the rotting dead. Humans are a high population large mass creature that most definitely contributes to the creation of such emissions from being dead. If we conserved these people and ate them then no longer do our dead just rot in the ground but are preserved in freezers waiting to be processed. Even more amusing if we then take the accumulated human wastes and begin to use it for growth of our vegetables and perhaps even to aid in growing recreational plant life will create more food, and more plant life that while giving more water vapor to the air will also reduce carbon from it and due to the differences they have in atmospheric lifetimes it is a worthwhile effect.

Though that is just me speculating comrades. xB

If we're going to go off on a green kick, I'm game.

The methane emissions from cow flatulence creates a substantial amount of greenhouse gases. By eating our dead, we would reduce the need for beef cattle, reduce methane emissions and open up both the grazing land of cattle, and the burial land of cemeteries to other purposes such as farming or low income housing. (or prisons)

I don't know about that. If you mean that, if we view it as "okay" for people to eat the flesh of our dead, we would eventually start eating the living, then I disagree. I like hamburgers, but when I see a live cow I don't automatically think "FOOD!"
It's quite disturbing to think that just eating human flesh can give you a disease that makes you crave more, don't you think?

Humans are wired to not eat others of their species... It's the whole survival of the fittest thing. We're that type of species that has few young and has to put a lot of energy into caring for them, so genetically we're not supposed to be eating our own.

So I suppose the argument comes in when you note that because of the advances humans have made in technology, we have in a sense removed ourselves from the pressure of natural selection and surpassed the idea of survival of the fittest. I still don't think, however, that it's right to consume humans. The disease apparently comes from eating the flesh of those who have the prions (not everyone has them? I don't know how reliable Wikipedia is on this one) so that's not a MAIN concern, but it's still a factor. However, there are enough other animals out there that we don't have to eat people. Sure you can discuss methane issues with cattle, but honestly, you don't need to eat cattle either.

I'm not saying everyone become vegetarian (I'm definitely not, although I have nothing against those that make that choice), but there are other ways. Cannibalism to me just seems so perverse.

Note: In the extreme cases that have been discussed my opinion changes. Cannibalism for survival is a different thing entirely. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive... However cannibalism mainstreamed into society is what tends to make me recoil.

Humans are also hard wired to have sex with the opposite gender to reproduce and keep the species going. More and more prominently, that vestigial wiring is being overridden as well.

Going back farther, humans are hard wired to have sex with as many people as possible to spread the genetic material around and keep the species going. Another archaic piece of our DNA that has been overridden.

What you're classifying as "wiring" is really only a societal mandate that's been given to you from the time you were born, because your parents were given it from the time they were born, etc back through about 100 or so generations.

Overall I think it's a bad road to go down socially. Like most people don't eat dogs put to death at shelters.
They may be dead anyhow, thing is by eating them it's creating a demand for the meat.
Which can lead to other issues. Once we have a society who likes to eat other people, what's to happen when there's no accidental victims available?. How do we sort out murder cases with people eating already dead people legally?. Messy, messy, messy.

Besides that I follow a natural instinct diet of being an herbivore myself so I don't do the voluntary omnivore thing.

I think there was a case of someone eating a dead fetus in Japan which caused a lot of uproar. Fetuses die all in the time abortions whether you agree with them or not so there's another source of already killed people for cannibalism. I bet you are going to want to be a cannibal, a dead fetus would be tasty...Like the newborn lambs some people like to eat.

@Kinmotsu: I think the "wiring" really is there since that sort of thing can be seen in the behavior of other species. However, perhaps this overriding that you mention (and which now that you mention it I sit back and say "huh... Oh yeah...") is just the way that the human race is evolving... Perhaps NOT totally removing ourselves from evolution, then, in a way? Along this same line, I still don't agree with the cannibalism overridden... I can't wrap my mind around something like that the way I can the other things that you mentioned. Perhaps some may say that I'm being influenced by society in that sense... But I suppose when it comes to cannibalism I'm just not there.