The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for it organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honor of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices.
Terry PratchettTags: religion human-sacrifice
You always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.
Terry PratchettTags: human-sacrifice
Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?'
'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.'
'What's the catch?'
'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.
Tags: magic consequences human-sacrifice
Secret ceremonies in which malevolent men and women cloaked in hooded robes, hiding behind painted faces and chanting demonic incantations while inflicting sadistic wounds on innocent children lying on makeshift alters, or tied to inverted crosses, sounds like the stuff of which B-grade horror movies are made. Some think amoral religious cults only populate the world of Rosemary's Baby, but don't exist in real life.
Or, do they? Ask Jenny Hill.
Tags: secret secrets rape crime dissociation cult satanic trauma ritual-abuse multiplicity sadism human-sacrifice sadistic dissociative-identity-disorder trauma-experiences childhood-abuse satanic-ritual-abuse mpd multipple-personality-disorder
In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions.
Laurie MatthewTags: murder death secret secrets rape killing crime torture healing survivors recovery child-abuse ritual-abuse voluntary human-sacrifice mind-control mental-health-professionals survivorship childhood-abuse satanic-ritual-abuse abuse-sexual-abuse childabuse
For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. What they could not deny or disavow, they could distort. They could blame the victims, who deserved to die for fighting or crying or for failing to fight or cry. They found encouragement for such a stance in a general culture accustomed to blaming victims for their misfortunes, and in specific contact with child victims eager to blame themselves. By believing that victims had a choice when there was none, they could see victims as culpable. They could even see the deaths as right and purposeful in the nobility of sacrifice.
Judith SpencerTags: murder evil secrets denial cult ritual-abuse abuse human-sacrifice evil-men mass-murder victim-blaming
The town was more than ready to accept the window dressing that hid the ugly truth of Joe's guilt. Some shared the secrets and kept the silence. Others would not have believed if they had been told. They would not have wanted to know. As those who saw and ignored the smoke from the crematoria of Hitler's Germany, they did not want to know that their world was not as it seemed.
Judith SpencerTags: murder evil secrets rape holocaust hitler cult ritual-abuse abuse pedophilia sexual-assault human-sacrifice evil-men
It’s true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow."
"Ah...quite. You are a man of acute insight."
"That’s not insight. That’s a personal guarantee.
Tags: truth insightful religion miracles failure insight guarantees human-sacrifice guarantee failure-is-not-an-option
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.
Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.
Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.
It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.
And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.
Tags: fear truth love reason morality ethics belief indifference atheism health myth atheist guilt dictatorship responsibility crime totalitarianism intellect evidence homo-sapiens redemption richard-dawkins debate christopher-hitchens hitchens supreme-being wishful-thinking dawkins human-sacrifice eternal-father love-your-neighbor atheist-argument ancient-myth christianity-is-immoral compulsory divine-dictatorship eternal-punishment great-atheist-argument hitchslap immoral-christianity
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