Here's something that you can always throw into a conversation if you are bored and want to shake things up a bit - if you were starving would you eat a mermaid? The same can be applied to centaurs, traditional fantasy dwarves/elves, and any other such creatures that in many ways seem human-like but are in fact not actually human. Another way of putting this would be to ask if one would be willing to eat any sapient non-uman creature. Here's my take:
It is natural for man to make use of the things around him to support and sustain himself and his fellows. However, this does not extend to making use of his fellow man in the same way as he would an animal. Yet what is it fundamentally that seperates man from beast? Contrary to the usual claim that it is reason, I would posit that it is in fact the existence of a soul. Animals lack souls, regardless of their capacity for reason (or lack thereof). Therefore, I think it would follow naturally that any creature, no matter its degree of sapiency, could legitimately be treated like any other animal insofar as man making use of it for his support and sustainance. Thus, it would not be morally reprehensible for one to eat a mermaid, an elf, a dwarf, or any other such fantastic entity. However, this hinges on the fact that such creatures are not related to humanity and therefore do not possess souls. Should it be otherwise, then it would indeed be a crime for one to eat such a creature.
On a related subject, what about creatures eating men? In my opinion the fundamental reason why maneaters are so feared and abhored across the world isn't actually because people fear being eaten. Rather, I believe that it is a crime against nature for animals to eat humans (for nature was established with the other way around being the norm). Thus people from nearly every culture of which I am aware consider maneaters to be abominations, and in the more primitive cultures they actually believe them to be demon possessed (of necessity, since untainted animals would never eat men).
Combining these two thought processes leads to an interesting quandary. Is it cannibalism for a man to eat a maneater? If a lion has begun to stalk humans at a bridge construction site, killing and eating them on a regular (and increasingly frequent) basis, then would it be immoral for the hunter that finally tracks down and kills the lion to eat it? After all, you are what you eat, or so the saying goes. Would that make it cannibalism (albeit indirect) for said lion to be served up for dinner at the victory feast celebrating its demise?
The main reason I bring these up at all is because I have found it to be an interesting way to modify the expected behavior patterns of the typical "paladin" style character in a role playing game. Though the paladin would still go out of his way to assist non-human entities in need of help, should they die (or should it be necessary to kill them for food) then the paladin would feel no moral compunctions regarding eating those entities. This can also go hand-in-hand with a sort of xenophobic paladin, one who believes that humans alone are superior to all other creatures. Treated correctly, I think that such a paladin could maintain a code of behavior largely consistent with the typical varieties of such, but with just enough differences to make for an interesting twist on the concept (with plenty of potential for the paladin's attitude to have an impact on the wider story).
I'll try to be a bit more serious in my next post, but for now, have fun pondering these few ideas.
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I don't think the presence or absence of a soul has anything to do with whether or not a thing can legitimately be eaten. Who says that animals don't have souls? We get our word "animal" from the Latin word for soul! Anything that breathes can be considered to be "animated," i.e. it has a soul. And the word for "spirit," in both Latin and Greek, has to do with breath. Same principle! What makes man unique is not the fact that he has a soul but the fact that he was made in the image of God, holy and righteous. It's the holiness of man that makes it unlawful to eat him.
That's why murder is an abomination. Murder involves the slaughter of someone who was created as God's "proxy" in the natural world, someone with inherent dignity. Whether because his first parents were created in God's image or because he retains something of God's image (which I do not believe of unregenerate man), it is because of the image of God that man's life is protected from man.
Also, animals were not originally lawful prey for man. It was only after the Flood that God gave animals into our hands for food, and even then, man is not to eat animal "with the blood, that is, its life" (this is all in Genesis 9, by the way, if I remember right). Man is still to respect animal life. And it is just as much an abomination for an animal to kill a man as it is for a man to kill another man (unless authorized by God as a duly-constituted minister of the sword in government).
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