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Human sacrifice occurred in the Americas, that is well established. But similar things did happen elsewhere. In Europe, Asia and Asia... at massive scale. What
by partycoder 8y ago
Human sacrifice occurred in the Americas, that is well established. But similar things did happen elsewhere. In Europe, Asia and Asia... at massive scale.
What is the Roman Catholic Inquisition exactly? It can be oversimplified to burning people so God is happy. It is a form of human sacrifice. Up to 300,000 people died that way.
So if we are going to talk about human sacrifice let's apply the term consistently.
- azborder 8y agoAre you saying we shouldn’t discuss an archaeological find because it makes a part of one civilization look bad? That kind of anti-science thinking is dangerous.
- partycoder 8y agoI am saying that the term "human sacrifice" is rarely applied to European rituals of sacrifice involving humans. You can use the term all you want, try to not use it in a biased manner. Often depictions of human sacrifice in the Americas are used to justify the exploitation of the native people of the Americas.
- azborder 8y agoIt sounds like you’re advocating stretching the definition of the term to support your own bias, when it has a pretty clear meaning.
- partycoder 8y agoSo when superstitious Europeans kill their own for religious reasons in a ritual to please their god, that's not human sacrifice? Change my mind.
- mike00632 8y agoI understand what you mean. Christianity can be seen in a different light if we recognized it as being centered around human sacrifice to a monotheistic god. But I think the problem has more to do with too much veneration for Western religion than it does with biased labeling of Native American religious practices.
- TomMarius 8y agoI'm not sure how did you come to this conclusion. The comment says nothing like this...?
- 1123581321 8y agoI would read about the inquisitions first. The Spanish Inquisition killed about 5,000 as an execution of the civil law, not a religious ritual. The law was bad, but the interrogations were in an attempt to only censure or punish the “guilty,” and to the correct degree. It’s quite a different situation. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
- partycoder 8y agoYou are referring to law created by a theocratic form of government during a time when there was no separation between church and state. You can argue there was a law, and different rules, and a bunch of abstract concepts... in the end it is someone being killed for making God angry, and the form of execution is no different than a ritual. For example, if we sent an average Hacker News reader back to the time of the Inquisition, they would start trying to share their scientific knowledge with others, talking about the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. Immediately after, they would be accused of witchcraft (chemistry back then was alchemy, a form of witchcraft) and that person would be tortured and then killed in a bonfire. That system is the one you seem to be defending now.
- dang 8y agoWould you please stop it with the flamewar about human sacrifice?
- partycoder 8y agoIt was not my intention to create a flamewar and I will stop commenting on this. The reason I am defensive when it comes to these articles is because they are actively used by hate groups to validate a perspective of the world where some nations are unworthy of their lives, freedom and right to self determination. Presenting these articles without an accompanying them with the context of the time does not help that situation.
- 1123581321 8y ago