Thanks for correcting me Amaranth Rose, I also meant captives too!

I agree FFriend, that we cannot say how we will react in such a situation---I am a pacifist, I do not believe in taking another's life under any circumstances. I have been asked if I would kill someone if they were torturing my mother or harming my child, and the only answer is that maybe I would try to kill or hurt them, preferably very painfully, if I could. But that does not make it right. I would prefer to think that I would be able to avoid an awful thing such as I have described from happening, and I certainly hope I could forgive, even if not forget. But I don't know. Hate is a powerful emotion and an odd thing to be discussing on a rational site like this.

To return to the dilemma. I would like to think that I would help the person under threat, but self-preservation would mean I probably wouldn't. If the beliefs include human sacrifice then I would try to change them as I think that none of us has the right to kill someone else. The tribe would soon discover that life would run extremely smoothly without the sacrifice being necessary. The priests would be upset, but the potential sacrificial victims would have a more relaxed view of the future!

You are right--we have no answer in this situation, but I feel that the bottom line in any such debate has to be that the result should always aim to cause as little harm as possible. For example-- reducing another country to a pile of rubble in the pious hope it will become a beacon for democracy is never going to work.