Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Human Sacrifice.

Human sacrifice has been practiced in ancient Britain, Meso America, Africa, India and the Middle East.

These cultures were sufficiently isolated from each other as to make it highly unlikely that they copied each other.

Therefore cultures throughout history have independently come to the conclusion that ritually slaughtering someone in order to appease the gods is a good idea.

Therefore humans have an innate tendency to consider human sacrifice to be a good thing.

So human sacrifice is a natural human response to deal with challenging conditions.

With the credit crunch and all that we are enduring challenging conditions.

Therefore we should consider ceremonially killing someone in order to satiate the thirst of an angry god.

Nominate the victim offering in the comments below or speculate as to why the practice has arisen so often in so many different places.

6 comments:

banned said...

Dr. Phil Jones, to be slaughtered on the Altar of public opinion after he is flung to the wolves by the warmist crowd whose High Priest he presumed to be.

As for speculation, Human Life, the ultimate sacrifice; but that would only count for much if you sacrificed yourself or your own family. You are not giving up very much by sacrificing prisoners of war so perhaps that is why the practise didn't last in the long run.

JuliaM said...

Politicians are the easy choice, I suppose, given they are self selected.

But I'll go for Jim Gamble. It's only fair, since 'Operation Ore' sacrificed so many innocents while he has chaired it...

Ross said...

"As for speculation, Human Life, the ultimate sacrifice"

Okay but why was sacrifice a universal ritual in the first place?

TDK said...

You are not giving up very much by sacrificing prisoners of war so perhaps that is why the practise didn't last in the long run.

The Aztec culture involved sacrificing prisoners of war. It's not clear that the culture would have collapsed so quickly if the Spaniards hadn't appeared.

And I don't think we are that much more sophisticated. The last century saw 100M people sacrificed to a god that failed - political ideology. And if that seems equally archaic then asked yourself whether the climate change zealots who want execute skeptics can be trusted with power.

As for who I would nominate - well I decline. It's one thing to lose your temper and swear to kill someone, in the heat of the moment; quite another to ponder on who would go in year zero.

I think the practise arises because leaders do not like to admit they haven't a clue what to do in challenging conditions. Far better to be seen to doing something about it. Ritual is central to this because it imbues dubious acts with the veneer of solemnity and respectability.

Ross said...

"And if that seems equally archaic then asked yourself whether the climate change zealots who want execute skeptics can be trusted with power."

Wow, I hadn't seen that before. TPM is quite a major blog so I'm surprised it didn't make more of an impact back in June.

banned said...

TDK, nice Climatedepot link, duly stolen.