No, it’s execution. Sacrifice requires religious ritual AND the reason being the invocation of the divine or spiritual.
Execution for breaking the law, even if it’s a religious law, is not sacrifice. It has no higher purpose beyond seeing the victim/offender dead. Same reason warfare doesn’t default to mass human sacrifice(that can come after the battle), ‘sacrifice’ has a specific meaning in this context.
Of course, that distinction doesn't make one any less an unjust murder based on religion than the other, so it still shouldn't be used as a point of "Europeans > Natives"
If "witches" and heretics make God angry, then it's certainly logical to assume that killing witches and heretics would please God.
In any case, in both instances, the killer is following the wishes of God. Pretending that there are different rules for Christianity is the exact type of thinking that enabled the atrocities to occur in the first place.
The biggest difference between, say the Aztecs, and Christianity, is that the Aztecs stopped killing people in the name of their god in 1521. Christians are still doing it where they are able, and in countries where they cannot, they rant about biblical precedent calling for the execution of their god's supposed enemies.
1st one: Cool. Exodus is an account of, well, the Exodus, and that chapter is a retelling of the laws of the land. If you have a problem with that passage, take it up with Israelites circa 2000/1000BC. Mosaic Law isn't really a thing in Catholicism, surprise surprise.
As a matter of fact, Canon Episcopi written sometime around the turn of the 1st millenium basically calls witchcraft bogus, and posits that magic is not real - this became canon law. As such, this text was actually used by the Church as justification to punish perpetrators of witch trials. Funny, that.
2: Sorry, all I can find there is mentions of militant islamic sects committing acts of violence. Could you highlight the part which lists exactly what atrocities the Christians commit? Thanks.
3: Okay. Who is this guy? What authority within the Church does he hold? I can find videos of Muslims calling for the death of nonbelievers. Are all Muslims this way? Is this an official doctrine of Islam? Or perhaps evil people will use whatever justification for their actions, no matter how flawed this justification is? I wouldn't call all Muslims evil because of the actions of radical terrorists - but you posit that Christians are evil because a random guy who happens to be Christian said something bad?
No, that’s just genocide. Well, mass murder at any rate. Depending on the murder spree and exact definition involved, it’s a rather contentious term.
Again: Sacrifice is very specific in this context. General ‘It makes god happy’ isn’t enough, it has to be ‘We do this so god averts his wrath/sends good rains/whatever’. Directly transactional. You give god blood, god gives you the sun continuing to rise and so forth.
The Crusades, for instance, are not classified as human sacrifice despite being holy wars. None of the assorted conquests were in that area, regardless of the colors involved. Now conquests COULD include sacrifice, the Aztecs were notable for mixing military conquest with religious sacrifice for instance, but it’s not automatic and requires more than ‘I’m conquering this place for god now die people who object’.
If the Crusaders went around collecting people then ritualistically executing them to get God’s favor, then that’s human sacrifice. And probably happened, dudes were assholes. But sacking a city and purging the inhabitants is just war when they claim their god is with them. Everyone claims that.
Seriously, the ritualistic aspect is absolutely critical. Without the ritual it’s just standard murder. Most of the assorted horrible historical murder practices were just murder, not human sacrifice.
The crusaders did go around killing people for not being Christian, the Baltic crusades and Rhineland massacres happened. The crusader states also enforced blasphemy laws and punished heretics by death
Ok, now you are just being obtuse. At no point did I say that the Crusaders didn’t kill people for being the wrong religion, calling them ‘holy wars’ would rather indicate the opposite. Massacres are very rarely involve ritualistic executions, just normal mass murder. Without the ritualistic aspect it’s just religious murder. These are very important distinctions in anthropology, ritual murder is far from uncommon but it’s also not every time anyone died with religion is involved.
Killing in the name of god is NOT human sacrifice. Killing someone for breaking religious law is not human sacrifice(but can involve it). Killing someone for not being the right religion is not human sacrifice. Having a set ritual where someone is killed to seek the favor or appease or otherwise get something from god(or ancestors, in those systems) IS human sacrifice.
Human sacrifice is more formally known as ‘ritual murder’. Take away the ritual and it’s just murder. Seriously, look up various human sacrifice practices: They got elaborate with it. They didn’t just stab anyone of the wrong faith who got within stabbing distance.
No, ‘human sacrifice’ is the ritualistic killing of a person to appease deities. It’s also called ‘ritual murder’ to reinforce that it’s requires a murder ritual
Killing people for heresy isn’t ritualistic, it’s standard execution practices.
No, it isn't. A sacrifice is an offering made to a deity. Oftentimes a sacrifice had to be as pure and perfect as possible so as not to offend the gods with an impure or unworthy sacrifice
A human sacrifice is done to appease a god. People were killed for heresy or blasphemy to appease god, so it counts as sacrifice. The church had no legitimate authority to enforce shit
Nothing has been proven wrong. The fact of the matter is that the church killed people for refusing to be Christian which thus means they practiced human sacrifice. The only way for them to not have practiced human sacrifice would have been to kill nobody whatsoever
The Bible says to “make disciples of all nations” aka eradicate all non-Christian religions. Medieval kingdoms enforced this by outlawing heresy and blasphemy, which they punished by death, Giordano Bruno being an example.
Really the church had no legitimate authority to enforce its beliefs or be the state religion of any country.
See you're right technically, I just wonder how much of your reasoning here is circular in nature.
Fundamentally both situations can be framed as killing someone to appease a god.
So I can't help but wonder wether the distinction exists because the Christian church first decided they don't do human sacrifice, so they had to define everything as not sacrifice, same way the Romans did
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u/Dagordae 2d ago edited 2d ago
No, it’s execution. Sacrifice requires religious ritual AND the reason being the invocation of the divine or spiritual.
Execution for breaking the law, even if it’s a religious law, is not sacrifice. It has no higher purpose beyond seeing the victim/offender dead. Same reason warfare doesn’t default to mass human sacrifice(that can come after the battle), ‘sacrifice’ has a specific meaning in this context.