Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think if someone wants to put holes in their brain, more power to them) thus why it should be forbidden, but I don't find the act in and of itself morally repugnant. Not in all cases, anyway.

Peter Venkmann: Egon, this reminds me of that time you tried to drill a hole in your head.
Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

 

[Ourph]

This implies that what makes this a good or evil act is the intention of the person with the knife. If he believes that his act will save the world, and feels that it is not only his duty, but a sacred trust with all people, it's definitely a good act.

Not true. If I had to kill Steve the Gardener to prevent Cthulhu from entering the world and laying waste to all living things upon the earth, I would recognize that...

1) What I was doing was not only my duty, but a sacred trust with all people.

2) What I was doing was an evil act.

3) Steve the Gardener would have every right to hate me for my evil act.

4) Steve was still going to be dead meat (Die Steve Die!!!), even though I'd feel REALLY REALLY bad about it afterward.

5) One evil act does not necessarily make me an evil person.

Sometimes good people find it necessary to perform evil acts in order to preserve the greater good. That doesn't necessarily mean that their actions aren't evil. Sometimes good must sacrifice its purity on the altar of necessity in order to preserve other good. Again, the world is not a perfect place.

In other words, if a Paladin is willing to sacrifice his life in order to preserve the lives of innocents, he should also be willing to sacrifice his Paladinhood for the same cause. To do less would be a selfish act. Ex-Paladins are not necessarily bad people, sometimes they are good people who were forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Say what now? No it doesn't. You've been watching Temple of Doom too much. It implies that a sacrifice is being made, and that the sacrifice is a human life. I can sacrifice my life for a cause, or to save another, or I can be made sacrifice by someone else, with or without my consent.

Not at all. There is a very large difference between choosing to strive to complete a goal, and possibly dying in the process, and killing someone else to help you meet your goals.

Now, I'll grant you that language is a slippery fish, and the terms "human" and "sacrifice" both have more than one definition. I'll even grant you that by applying a moral judgment (or lack thereof) to one definition of a word, you can trick the unwary into thinking it applies to all definitions of the word.

Luckily for me, though, I started this thread. Since I asked the question, it seems reasonable that I should have the ability to define the question more clearly.

By human, it is meant not only members of the genus and species H. sapiens, but any sentient, self-aware person. Of course, in a D&D setting, this includes elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. Nor does the person have to be literally humanoid; dragons, outsiders, etc., could easily fit into the discussion parameters.

By sacrifice, it is meant as a noun,

1. The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person.

2. A victim offered in this way.

or as a verb,

1. To offer as a sacrifice to a deity.

(Thank you, dictionary.com, for the quick cut-and-paste, as well as for having these as the first definitions of the terms!)

These are almost exlusively the definitions used in the term "human sacrifice" regardless of who is using the term. I repeat, this implies that the sacrifice is being performed by someone other than the victim. And again, I am pretty sure that you know this.

The thing it boils down to is consent. Sex is rape without consent, but with consent it's a wonderful thing.

From the SRD:

“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.​

Regardless of how you may feel about real-world ethics, it is explicit in D&D that good characters make personal sacrifices (Dictionary.com definition 2: Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim) to help others; evil characters kill others out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Given that good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings, it is fairly unlikely that the one requiring human sacrifice is good.

Given that "People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent" it seems unlikely that the one requiring human sacrifices is neutral.

Given that evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others, it seems very likely that the one requiring human sacrifices is evil.

Or, to use your example, sex with consent is a neutral act. Wonderful thing or not, it isn't personal sacrifice. Sex without consent implies hurting and oppressing others, and falls well within the definition of evil in the SRD.

Killing someone, according to the SRD, is not a neutral act. It falls clearly within what is implied by the term "evil." If I am doing the killing, consent is not a factor.

If I help you kill yourself, at best I am performing a neutral act. The neutrality of the act relies upon either (1) the fact that you are going to die anyway (Spock's death at the end of Wrath of Khan; potentially some forms of assisted suicide) or (2) uncertainty that the outcome is your death (defense of Helm's Deep); either one coupled with (3) I cannot simply take your place (I cannot take on your incurable disease; it requires lots of people to defend the helpless), (4) you consent with reasonable knowledge of what you are consenting to, and (5) I do not kill you myself.

In the related Is Slavery Evil thread, it was pointed out convincingly to me that in order for a good character to be good in the D&D sense of the word, he or she must be able to recognize evil for what it is. Social acceptance and moral relativism do not enter the picture.

Compare with the following from http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/Publications/pub-katz.htm, which is dealing with real world law and ethics:

The philosopher Hans Jonas, in a remarkable essay on human experimentation, comes close to equating human experimentation with the “primeval human sacrifices…that existed in some early societies [for] the solemn execution of a supreme, sacral necessity”; for he suggested that both involved “something sacrificial [in their] abrogation of personal inviolability and the ritualistic exposure to gratuitous risk of health and life, justified by a presumed greater social good.” Whatever the relationship between ancient religious practices of sacrifice as an offering to deity and scientific research practices of sacrifice as an offering to medical progress, the readiness with which human sacrifice for the sake of scientific progress has been embraced by the medical profession is remarkable. As one distinguished surgeon put it: “[Conducting] controlled studies may well sacrifice a generation of women but scientifically they have merit.”

René Girard, in his book, Violence and the Sacred, observes that “n many rituals the sacrificial act assumes two opposing aspects, appearing at times as a sacred obligation to be neglected at great peril, at other times as a sort of criminal activity entailing perils of equal gravity.” The conflict between medicine and law on the permissible limits of human experimentation, to which I shall return repeatedly, reflects these “opposing aspects.” When do such “sacred [scientific] obligations” become a “criminal activity”?

Sacrifice can be voluntary or involuntary. The distinction is crucial. But I shall argue that even voluntary sacrifice can be safeguarded only if investigators learn that seeking voluntary consent is their moral obligation, if they learn to desist from employing the concept of voluntary consent as a deceptive subterfuge to shift moral responsibility for participation in research from themselves to their patient-subjects.

Of course, consent has not always meant what one would normally think consent means.

I believe that the concentration camp experiments, which transgressed the last vestiges of human decency, can be located at one end of a continuum, but I also believe that toward the opposite end, we must confront a question still relevant in today’s world: How much harm can be inflicted on human subjects of research for the sake of medical progress and national survival? Knowledge about hell can make investigators pause and reflect, as it did at times during the days of the Cold War, when a few American physician-scientists, while contemplating experiments much less egregious than those conducted by the Nazi physicians, asked: “Are we beginning to behave as they did?”

<snip>

The initial advances in knowledge that resulted from such scientific investigations, which promised to alleviate human suffering to an extent previously unknown, seemed to justify the means employed. The uncharted moral path led only once to Auschwitz; yet, on many other occasions down the road, human beings would pay a considerable price for the sake of medical progress.

The early fruits of medical research were spectacular. The bacterial etiology of many diseases was proved, resulting in cures never before the lot of mankind. Investigations of the use of X-rays to see the previously invisible revolutionized diagnostic techniques. Experiments with various anesthetic agents led to remarkable advances in surgery.

These experiments were largely conducted in public hospitals with the poor, with children, women, prostitutes, the elderly – that is, with the disadvantaged, the downtrodden.

What is justice, what is injustice? A friend of mine once pointed out to me the repetition of the word justice in Deuteronomy: “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” (Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue). Such a seemingly unnecessary repetition always invites commentary, and the one he heard was this: “justice can never be adequately pursued only as a goal or an idea; it is also reflected in the means employed.”

I personally believe that Mr. Katz's conclusion here is correct, in the real world as well as in D&D. Either way, the SRD seems to define alignment not only by what your goals are, but also -- and quite emphatically so -- by what you are willing to do to achieve them.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, and as for human sacrifice that has to be done to avert a cataclysm: if the victim is unwilling, it's evil. A necessary evil, perhaps, but still an evil. Of course, those people who are unwilling to be sacrificed to begin with are arguably doing an evil act, but killing them anyway for it would leave a moral stain on the priest.

In D&D, being unwilling to be sacrificed is neutral, not evil. Sacrificing others is evil.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not true. If I had to kill Steve the Gardener to prevent Cthulhu from entering the world and laying waste to all living things upon the earth, I would recognize that...

1) What I was doing was not only my duty, but a sacred trust with all people.

2) What I was doing was an evil act.

3) Steve the Gardener would have every right to hate me for my evil act.

4) Steve was still going to be dead meat (Die Steve Die!!!), even though I'd feel REALLY REALLY bad about it afterward.

5) One evil act does not necessarily make me an evil person.

Sometimes good people find it necessary to perform evil acts in order to preserve the greater good. That doesn't necessarily mean that their actions aren't evil. Sometimes good must sacrifice its purity on the altar of necessity in order to preserve other good. Again, the world is not a perfect place.

In other words, if a Paladin is willing to sacrifice his life in order to preserve the lives of innocents, he should also be willing to sacrifice his Paladinhood for the same cause. To do less would be a selfish act. Ex-Paladins are not necessarily bad people, sometimes they are good people who were forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Exactly.


RC

 

[fusangite]

In other words, it had to be done, but it wasn't a "good" act. Volunteering (and thus saving everyone else) was a good act. Taking the training to perform the ritual so that everyone else could survive was probably a neutral act -- it wasn't selfless; there were a lot of benefits. Plunging the obsidian knife in was necessary, but evil. And the priest, probably LN in D&D terms, knew it.

When, then, is killing not an evil act in D&D? Surely you cannot argue that killing someone against their will is less evil than killing someone who is asking you to. And if killing is always evil, aren't paladins a problematic class? In your scheme, a paladin's purpose would essentially be to do evil for good.

I don't see anywhere in the alignment rules a statement that killing is inherently evil. While clearly we need to play fast and loose with those rules for the purposes of this thread, why would a GM modify the alignment rules to make all killing evil? Isn't the function (as opposed to purpose) of every adventuring party, then, to do evil?

 

[The_Universe]

Have done so. Have determined that nothing is evil. Hope that helps.

Which standards and mores? The ones you agree with? Or the ones that guy over there agrees with? What's that? You can't tell which ones that guy agrees with because even if he tells you, there's no way to know he isn't lying or mistaken? In fact, it's not even possible for you to know which ones YOU agree with yourself, since you're capable of lying to yourself or even being mistaken about your own internal state? So it's entirely possible that you and that guy have 100% different standards and mores? So there's no way for me to decide between such standards and mores as YOU think are universal, and such as he does?

Huh.

Sorry, carry on. Human sacrifice? Evil. Cannibalism? Evil. Any other questions.

They exist outside of me, outside of that guy over there. They exist, independent of what I think of them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be universal.

It's an unwinnable argument for both of us, Barsoomcore. I said in my original post that I didn't want to get lambasted for not believing in the gospel of moral relativism. However, I am glad you think that both of the things are evil. In that, we agree. One might make the argument for *necessary* in cannibalism on occaison, but there's a reason the phrase "necessary evil" so often enters the common lexicon.

 

[The_Universe]

I think your first instinct was correct. This is an evil act. It may, in fact, be necessary (even desirable) to commit this evil act, but it remains evil.

It's why someone coined the phrase "a necessary evil".

Sometimes good people have to make choices between two evils. That's what living in an imperfect world gets ya!

I can agree with that.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When, then, is killing not an evil act in D&D? Surely you cannot argue that killing someone against their will is less evil than killing someone who is asking you to. And if killing is always evil, aren't paladins a problematic class? In your scheme, a paladin's purpose would essentially be to do evil for good.

Claiming that X is less evil than Y does not evidence that X is not evil.

I don't see anywhere in the alignment rules a statement that killing is inherently evil. While clearly we need to play fast and loose with those rules for the purposes of this thread, why would a GM modify the alignment rules to make all killing evil? Isn't the function (as opposed to purpose) of every adventuring party, then, to do evil?

The SRD claims that "Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others" and that even "People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent."

It seems clear that killing others is often necessary in D&D worlds, and that killing -- so long as it is not of the innocent, so long as it is to protect the innocent, and so long as there is no other way -- is acceptable to paladins as a neutral act.

“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Killing is never a good act in D&D. Good creatures will choose another course, if possible.


RC

 

[barsoomcore]

They exist outside of me, outside of that guy over there. They exist, independent of what I think of them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be universal.

But of course they don't, so they aren't. Or at any rate, you can't prove that they are, which for us poor limited-in-ability-to-comprehend humans, amounts to the same thing. I understand that you BELIEVE they are, but you are unable to PROVE that they are.

Which is good, because if you could, this would be a much less interesting world we live in.