Here is my answer.
(1) Is it morally permissible to eat a dead human to save your own life.
Yes. I’ll borrow Thomas Aquinas’ greater good argument here about stealing the bread to feed the family. (not saying he is on board with this) Let us say that our two Donner party victims in our example are brothers and the rest of the family depends on them to survive. Incidentally, this Donner party scenario has actually happened many times. Families or groups have agreed in advance to cannibalism in order to save some of the family/group - “do what you have to and I’ll do the same.” By eating the dead, the survivor(s) are able to preserve their own life and care for those that are dependent on them, family or wider community.
This is arguing fast and loose with Aquinas. Aquinas would argue that it is permissible to steal bread to feed a family because human beings have an inherent right under natural law to the food appropriately required to stay alive. A right exists for a starving man to eat bread to stay alive and a rich man does not have a right to hoard bread he does not need if hoarding that bread directly causes someone else to starve.
Human beings are not food for other human beings. Ergo we have no natural right to treat other human beings as if they are food OR to kill them in order to use them for food.
(2) Is it morally permissible to kill and eat a human to save your own life.
Yes. I’ll use argument (1) and apply it to the same scenario: two brothers are dying from starvation, dehydration and hypothermia. Again, their family depends on them. One brother is in a coma; the other, perhaps not even coherent due to his own degraded state of mind, possibly not even discerning between a coma and death, realizing he is the family’s only hope and that he must fight to survive, cuts off and eats a limb of his brother, thereby killing him. Let’s say he gathers enough strength to wander a mile, meets Indians, is rescued and lives, reconciled to his family.
The other issue is how is it decided when the circumstances are dire enough to warrant killing and eating another human being? Would a mother facing the starvation of her five children be justified in killing one to feed the others? I don’t think so.
I would suggest the proper human answer is to hold to the position that we are all in this together. We all live or we all die. There is something much more proper, decent, moral and human in NOT succumbing to the temptation to regard one another as mere food (or, as you claim, merely animals.) We aren’t.
How will God judge his act?
I suspect God would be more pleased with us if we were willing to die rather than turn one of our number into our next meal. There is something much more honorable in being willing to die by starvation rather than compromise the right of another to life.
I also suspect that God realizes – as we should – that our life on earth is merely a transition to eternal life. Why would we succumb to the temptation that our earthly existence must be preserved at all costs – even to taking the unprecedented step of murdering someone we love merely to preserve our own skin?
This is a horrible situation, no? It has happened to human beings. It was in accordance with God’s will - a God who is rational and merciful. To a human being’s reason, this is irrational, absurd. A much quicker way to make my point would have been to reference Abraham and Isaac. We have a God who asks Abraham to cut the throat of his own son to prove to Him that he is loyal and faithful, that he loves God more than Isaac. Once God realizes that Abraham is faithful, he rewards him by allowing Isaac to live. Oh, and God is also omniscient, which means that he knew before Abraham chose what he would choose. The test, in essence, was not necessary.
I am not sure where you are going with this, but I highly doubt that God’s request of Abraham would lead to making spare ribs of Isaac.
I also doubt that you understand the deeper meaning of this event and request. It wasn’t a proof test to demonstrate Abraham’s loyalty and faithfulness – it was an acknowledgement by Abraham of his guilt for being disobedient and distrustful of God. He knew he deserved to lose Isaac and was forfeiting back to God the greatest blessing that God had given him to that point since Isaac represented everything promised to Abraham by God – making him the father of a great nation through Isaac.
There is much more to this and your using the story to bolster your argument fails.
But I digress. My simpler point here is that man is an animal. He has a capacity for reason, but he is an animal nonetheless. As for his reason, I think you can convincingly argue he usually conducts himself irrationally as opposed to rationally. Unless you can convince me that nuclear war and abortion are rational acts.
No, man is not merely “an animal.” Neither have you shown that killing and eating another human being is “a rational act.”
Just because some human beings abdicate their rationality, humanity and moral agency does not entail that humans are, therefore, animals. It is possible for human beings to make themselves less than they essentially are, but it would be impossible for a lesser being to bootstrap itself into a higher order of being, although the Mormon religion essentially teaches this.
I suggest you read a bit on the differences between vegetative, sentient and rational beings in the following article, appropriately called, “Stop It! You’re Killing Me.”
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/03/stop-it-youre-killing-me.html
