Why blood sacrifice?

[Raven]

I had said: Christianity does not seem like a very healthy mindset on a lot of levels.

Maelstrom wrote: You are correct there. I imagine early Christians as blood thirsty psychopaths, licking their lips over the sadistic fiction they wrote to enslave mankind in gory chains of unquestioning obedience.

Well put. I see it pretty much that way myself. In the interest of being fair, it would not appear to be at all uncommon to be OK with behavior that in this day and age we consider to be hideously barbaric, even sick. And it is not as if horrific things do not occur even now. As an example, there have been reports of people being stoned to death regularly in Iran. So I guess we're not over it yet.

Evenheathen wrote: Hmmm... Methinks you should read up on your ancient pagan religions. After all, they are what Judaism and subsequently christianity stemmed from.

Ancient gods required sacrifices, they weren't as easy going as Jesus' dad.

In fact, it's in the OT that the smell of burnt offerings were pleasing to YWVH. But only the purest and/or fattest of the crop would do to please the insatiable god of the jews. Just like the other gods worshiped beside him in the ancient polytheistic culture that was early judaism before YWVH was adopted as the one "true" god.

Reply: Yes, you are right about that. Some early religions were even, shall we say, messier. Human sacrifice was far from unknown all over the globe.

So yes, in the OT all kinds of things occurred. Blood sacrifice was common, as YWVH was pleased by it, he was even displeased by Cain's offer of produce instead of a live animal sacrifice as Abel had offered him, never mind that Cain was a farmer, not a shepherd. Seemed kind of unfair to me.

I can understand that 2,000 years ago something as far gone as someone going through a long, drawn-out torturous death as a blood sacrifice to atone for humankind's sins would not cause anyone back then to so much as bat an eye. But I'm not someone from 2,000 years ago when the Romans presented people getting killed in their arenas as entertainment. I would hope that we've advanced since then. What it is that bugs me is that the nuns, when I was a kid, taught us this nauseating story as if this is how things should be, for lack of a better way to put it. It gets constantly referred to here by our resident Christians as no big deal. It never seems to occur to any of these people that this is sick. How can it not be? Try and approach it and all you get is an attitude of if Godditit then it must be what was right. Or humanity's sins were that bloody awful, nothing less could atone for them.

Bullshit. If God existed and he is omnimax as claimed all he had to do was make it so, whatever it was that he wanted. But they can't see that. They never even notice the sheer horror of what is supposed to have happened. What kind of God is that? It's as if they are afraid to call him out on that, like you can't even have the thought that perhaps some of what he is supposed to have done is wrong, perhaps even pyschopathic. Maybe it is just me, but this is some seriously sick stuff.