Why is cannibalism a taboo topic? What makes taboo topics?

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Actually, someone won the nobel prize in the 70s for finding out about spongiform encephalopathy! He came up with a theory that makes sense and has some evidence behind it! In the early 18th century, a disease was discovered. It was called SCRAPIE! It affected sheep. The pathogen is a mutant brain cell called a prion. Sheep are too different from humans, and apparantly can't transmit it. Ranchers USED to be coersed into destroying entire flocks if even ONE lamb had scrapie. Apparantly, they aren't anymore, and cattle feed is fortified with protein. COWS are between sheep and humans for all intents and purposes, so THEY can catch the disease from the sheep, and humans can catch it from cows. The COW version of scrapie is BSE or MAD COW. The Human form is CJD or vCJD.

BTW I don't know WHY people come up with MORONIC ideas about "OH, you have to ingest some part of the nervous system! ********BULL********! The Cows catch it by some kind of fluid exchange that has them get those prions. There is NO way that can happen by eating unless it survives the acids, gets into THE BLOODSTREAM, and crosses the blood brain barrier! That means that if you eat a hamburger made from steak from ANY part of the animal, you can get BSE. Since the prion is a modified protein, you can NOT cook the meat enough. It would have to be cooked till it was SO hot that it would become CHARCOAL! The prion is almost like a little cut in a piece of canvas. it will get worse and worse, till things just rip apart.

BTW I LOVE beef, but try to avoid it every chance I get. STILL, BEEF tallow/lard is used in LOTS of things, and cross contamination is RAMPANT! Frankly, I think someone in the meat/food industry should get thrown in jail for 5 years if they fail to take decent precautions. They should be fed ONLY beef the whole time. If they don't like it, TOUGH! Maybe THEN things will be fixed.

Steve

Good points... I think the Mormons actually believe that it is allegorical. I once asked Mormon missionaries if they believed in transsubstantiation or consubstantiation and they had no idea what those two words even meant. The gospels, as translated into English, actually have Jesus saying literally that the bread IS his body and the wine IS his blood, but I am sure that by the time the gospels were actually written and since they have been translated so many times, it's actually a twisted allegory. Personally, I think that our (meaning Catholics' and Christians' - I know you're an atheist Steve and I respect that) understanding of the whole transsubstantiation/consubstantiation issue is incomplete. I see it more as accepting Christ's spirit rather than literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

As for infallibility - let's just be clear that the Pope is infallible only as far as making doctrinal decisions pertaining to the Church. I don't know what to think about it. I never really believed in the whole "limbo" thing for unbaptized babies. If there is God, I would think him to be merciful enough to have a contingency plan for the unbaptized and innocent. But the papacy is a human institution, so I expect that a pope could be subject to human weaknesses. Forgiveness falls right into this problem because it has a history of being abused. Anyway, the interpretation of doctrine by people is always going to be problematic because people are imperfect. I figure that eventually it will all become clear.

Indirectly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spo ... phalopathy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29

Last edited by T-rav20 on 28 Feb 2007, 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, I am AGNOSTIC and only bordering atheist. I KNOW about te Holy Spirit, etc... I have gone to Catholic(irish) and Christian(methodist,baptist, lutheran(even in german!),vinyard, foursquare,etc) churches for a while.

I have **************NEVER************** heard of a Christian(excluding catholic here) church that believed in transsubstantiation! HECK, most use grapejuice instead of wine, and most of the others offer a choice! As for the scope of the popes infallibility, that makes NO difference.

Steve

The reason people refuse to talk about cannibalism is because it's a verry unpleasent topic to most people.

I'l use an example.
Think of something your disgusted with the most and put that into your mind.
That's what comes up in peoples minds when you talk about cannibalism.
So ofcourse noone wil want to talk about this.

I've got this friend who has AS.
And he is always talking trying to talk about horror movies to females.
Even though it's general knowledge that most females don't like horror movies one bit and are scared of watching them.

Find someone who actually likes it is my advice.
Don't talk about it to the average person because 999999 our of 1000000 times people wil be disgusted by the idea.
And even if you bring it up than, do it in a private situation.

Even people who like the most gross horror movies aren't likely to actually want to talk about real life cannibalism though.

On a different note, there was a good artlce in the Smithsonian magazine about this a few months ago. The reporter visited one of the few remaining canibalistic tribes somewhere in Indonesia. It's a huge article so I'm only posting the link here:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/20 ... php?page=1

Basically, their religious belief is that the person they cannibalize is not a person, but a demon (or something to that effect). Even they think that the idea of cannibalism is disgusting, because they don't actually believe that they are eating people. I really found the article quite interesting.

I really liked this article because it handled a normally taboo topic in a very forthright and professional manner and did a good job of explaining these peoples' beliefs and culture. It's worth checking out.

I had a fascinating conversation with some people in the summer: the subject: you are a survivor of a plane crash that killed 90% of the other people on the plane. the plane crashed in a remote part of Alaska. Your chances of being discovered in the next two weeks is slim. You and about 11 other people are the ony survivors. There is only enough prepackaged food to feed everyone for about three days. The question: if it's a survival situation, do you eat the flesh of the dead passengers in order to survive? A woman behind us was laughing and I'm not sure why.

JulieArticuno