HUMAN SACRIFICES ACCEPTED BY GOD - Bible and
Human Sacrifice
The religions of old thought that through experimenting with human sacrifice to
God or gods good luck resulted. If people really think that God’s ways are
mysterious they would not rule out the possibility that human sacrifice is a
good thing or can be tested and found to benefit the intended beneficiary. If it
passes the tests you can make a religion about it and keep sacrificing.
The thought of slaughtering a willing or unwilling victim
on an altar to appease or please God or the gods or the Devil horrifies most
people.
Many manifestations of paganism did it in the past. Devil-worshippers are
accused of it today.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam denounce and prohibit human sacrifice. But yet
they can permit a less obvious kind of it or teach doctrines that command it.
Christianity claims that Christ sacrificed himself on the cross for the world.
The Epistle to the Hebrews calls him the High Priest because of that.
So, here we have a religion that says that human sacrifice is wrong even though
it is the very abomination that it is based on.
Christians say that nobody else has the right to sacrifice themselves like Jesus
did. First, because God commanded Jesus alone to die for the world. Second,
because Jesus alone could die to save the world.
God would not have commanded Jesus unless Jesus alone had the power to save. The
first reason depends on the second reason and vice-versa. But any person with a
clear conscience could be the saviour. If God loves the person he loves the
person infinitely for God is infinitely perfect in goodness. Therefore, a person
can offer an infinite price to God by offering her or his life. I am sure I
exist but I am not so sure that Jesus did or that he really was the saviour if
he did. Therefore, I should make my peace with God and kill myself in order to
ensure that the world is saved. So, to believe Christianity that a sinless human
sacrifice was required calls each person to suicide or the sacrificing of your
own life.
And the sacrifice does not need to be sinless at all for a sinner is still
infinitely valuable.
The Christian Church commands its victims to decide to die when offered a choice
between sinning against the faith or denying it and death. This is telling them
to offer themselves as human sacrifices for it is better to insincerely deny the
faith than to die. To die is to deny the faith in a deeper way because then you
cannot do anything to help it.
Judaism follows the Law of Moses which is in the first five books of the unholy
Bible. These books endorse the torture and murder of apostates from God’s
religion, homosexuals and kidnappers to name but a few categories. These
killings are senseless therefore the killings are really about human sacrifice.
Unnecessary killing in the name of God is really human sacrifice no matter if it
is called execution or not.
Pope John Paul II now forbids capital punishment though tradition and the Bible
command it. Catholics say that he is not saying capital punishment is wrong full
stop but only that it is not necessary today and the Bible regulations are only
meant to be carried out if the Church runs the state which it does not. The
capital laws of the Bible were never necessary and God could not object to
Christians using the state to kill people their God wants dead like heretics,
homosexuals and adulterers. For him to object now, would be the same as saying
he was wrong to go so far. If killing those people was right then, then it is
always right. The pope is both condoning the crime of capital punishment and
saying he does not – another crime. The Catholic view that capital punishment
was encouraged by God to protect the state and its members is misleading because
the Bible laws could have done that without commanding the killing of those
people and also because the Bible says these killings are punishment. Now could
they be punishment if you need them to protect others? That would not be
punishment but self-defence. The laws of the Bible had nothing to do with
protecting but about showing the people who was boss, God and about God getting
his own back on those who ignored his law.
In Genesis 22, human sacrifice is declared not to be intrinsically immoral in
the sight of God. God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up Mount Moriah and
offer him up as a burnt offering. A burnt offering is killed first and then
cooked and often eaten in a communion rite. Abraham obeyed God and when he had
drawn out his knife to kill the boy, God’s messenger came to tell him not to do
it for God had not been serious. So God had lied in telling Abraham that he
wanted Abraham to kill the boy. But at the same time his command shows that he
approves of human sacrifice for Genesis regards God as good and therefore unable
to command immorality.
Leviticus 27:27-29 was thought to command human sacrifice.
Verse 27 talks about redeeming, buying things back.
Verse 28 says that nothing devoted to God by the owner, be it man or beast or
field, can be brought back.
Verse 29 says that no one who is doomed to death can be ransomed or saved but
must be put to death. The Amplified Bible puts notes in brackets to cover up
what this really says. It would have us believe that the verse is about people
doomed to death because they have committed a capital crime and is saying that
you cannot save a person from it by money in justice.
The verse afterwards says that all that is offered to God is holy.
I believe that Leviticus is really permitting human sacrifice here and does not
intend the meaning alleged by the Amplified Bible and the believers.
The context, the verse before and after, does not mention the death-penalty but
what is offered to God as a sacrifice, not necessarily a dead sacrifice.
Sacrifices can be alive when offered and then killed as blood sacrifices. And it
is certain that the Law sees death as the only suitable fate for such offerings.
The Law makes a difference between the death penalty and sacrifice because the
first is only for those who have been wicked to punish them while sacrifice is
overtly religious .
The context is about holy sacrifices and criminals could hardly be one of these
for not all of them repent.
The sacrifices will be slaves, children and wives who were thought to be a man’s
property.
Ransom means to buy back. How can you buy back a capital criminal for he has not
been sold?
Jesus told the apostles that he gave them a new commandment to love one another
as he loved them (John 13:34-36). This is different then from the Old Testament
commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself” for it was an old commandment.
Jesus accepted the Old Testament command so it seems that he meant we have to
love one another enough to die for one another. The preceding sentence has Jesus
saying he will only be around a little while so that was probably what he had in
mind. The line after also says that Jesus will sacrifice himself to death and
Peter says he will sacrifice himself too. The Law also commanded people to die
for others say in war. So why does Jesus say it’s a new commandment? Could it be
that the gospel is obliquely saying that Jesus wants people to die UNNECESSARILY
for others? That is the only explanation. If the apostles committed suicide by
getting themselves martyred then we cannot rely on them at all. Jesus said that
the whole world would know they are his disciples by their love and obedience to
the new commandment. But the apostles lived obscure lives and died deaths that
are masked in legend. This prophecy proved false. It was only in the second
century that stories of this remarkable suicidal fanatical love of the apostles
appeared which tell us plenty about when this ludicrous gospel was written.
Islam commands unnecessary killing. It wants adulterers and murderers put to
death which is the same as asking that they be sacrificed. God will not be
pleased by the victims but he will be pleased by the act of killing them so a
person does not necessarily have to be wonderful to be a real offering to God.
No true disciple of the Devil would kill anybody as a human sacrifice. We would
all be tempted to murder and suicide if they were the ultimate crimes. The Devil
runs Hell yet he wants us to live to do his will on earth which we cannot do if
we are dead. We can do more evil on earth than in hell. The doctrine that Satan
has a hunger for human sacrifice is a religious calumny. The holy are the most
likely to cause loss of life.
In seventeen century France, the evil hunchbacked priest, Abbe de Guibourg seems
to have slaughtered babies in the house of the witch, La Voisin, during Black
Masses. Eventually, the pair were exposed in the famous affair of the poisons.
Madame de Montespan, the mistress of Louis XIV, was implicated.
The Devil would have preferred the elements in religion that causes suffering to
those silly mercenary charades of religion.
The requirement of Christians that people die for the faith shows a preference of belief over people. People are sacrificed for belief. Martyrs cannot be understood as anything else but human sacrifices to God. Catholicism makes martyrs and heroes of those who die for it. A religion that calls on people to die for its doctrines is a murderer actually and potentially if it is a manmade religion.
The book, Hard Sayings of the Bible, is an up to date Christian volume that states pointedly that as God owns the life he gives us then he has the right to allow or command or force human sacrifice to be offered to him. This is in the context of how God asked Abraham to murder his son Isaac as a human sacrifice and burn the body on an altar.
The notion that there is an all-powerful all-good God
implies that when he makes harmful viruses and bacteria he has a reason for it
that justifies it. This is saying that God has a purpose for human suffering. In
other words, God sacrifices people for his purpose. Believers cannot object to
human sacrifice on principle. Their belief raises the question, "What if God
commands me to kill for him and to offer human sacrifices?" Even if he wouldn't,
you would have to agree to do it if he did.
The pagans sometimes practiced human sacrifice. But the notion of there being many gods and spirits, does not necessarily imply that human sacrifice could be demanded. The gods and spirits unlike God are not all-powerful. Thus we see that belief in God is worse than the pagan system for suggesting that hypothetically, if God requires that people be murdered then he must be obeyed.
God in Leviticus 18:21 says that giving any of your
children in sacrifice to Molech is profaning the name of your God. It is thought
by some that he is saying that Molech is a name for God for it simply means
king. Others think it only condemns sacrificing babies to this god who is
indeed a pagan God. The problem was not the sacrifices but who the
sacrifices were made to.
Deuteronomy 13:12-16 says that if a town worships another god then all who live
in the town must be put to death and the livestock and all! And all must be
piled up and even its riches and possessions. Then the whole lot has to be
turned into a "whole burnt offering to the Lord your God". Moses is said to have
spoken to God face to face unlike anybody else so Moses was in a position to
tell us what God wanted if that is true.
The Old Testament, the Book that Jesus Christ made his CV, is an evil book. Yet
Jesus said it was the word of God.
The destruction of pagan cities and towns by Joshua at God's behest is written
about at times in a ritualised way.
Before Shechem was destroyed, a ceremony of
blessing and cursing took place. The language of devoting those towns to
destruction tells us one thing. It is more than genocide that is going on. The
people were being slaughtered in battle as a sacrifice. Please read the material
in True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism, edited by Tom
Gilson and Sean McDowell. One point made in the book is how Joshua deploys a
"highly ritualised character" in some of the conquests described eg with the
destruction of Jericho. The word herem appears which means "devoted to
destruction". The book concludes, "Joshua itself appears to be full of
ritualistic, stylised, formulaic language." It does not admit that the killings
were meant to be offerings to God. Clearly, the language of genocide
in the book of Joshua where the enemy is "devoted to destruction" implies a
sacred ritualistic sacrifice of the victims.
The book argues that when Joshua speaks of completely killing nations it did not
mean that Joshua targeted civilians though some of them would have died as part
of the collateral damage when fighting the armies. The only grounds the book has
for saying that is that some of the nations that were said to be completely
annihilated are mentioned later in the Bible as still existing. But that is not
evidence that civilians were not targeted. It is evidence that as thorough as
Joshua was there is no such thing as completely wiping out a people. No
battleaxe says that when he wipes out a nation means that he really thinks he
got them all. It is a general statement not a literal one. The Bible merely asks
us to use commonsense. The liquidation statements are said to be rhetoric. They
are not. Rhetoric would mean that Joshua may have ruined their political
structure and use exaggerated language: "I wiped them all out". That does not
make sense. If the author of Joshua was sensible he would not write like that
for in a warring world it would encourage more violence through bad example. To
rhetorically say that if you dispossess a nation of its land that you have
committed genocide against it shows that you wish it was real genocide. The book
admits to only thinking that the genocide statements are rhetorical and
literary. It is speculation and what right have we to take Joshua's side by
pretending that he did not really butcher like Stalin? What about the people who
died?
The Bible at Deuteronomy 7:2 and 20:16-17 demands that Israel must kill
everybody that breathes among the Canaanites. True Reason: Christian Responses
to the Challenge of Atheism says that since other texts demand that they be
driven out that the genocide rule was not meant literally. But the two are
compatible.
Christians resort to imagining the author of any Bible book would not contradict
himself. That is nonsense and considering how hard it was to write and navigate
through scrolls in those days it would be expected.
What about God's command that every man of Midian must be killed in Numbers 31.
Did Moses add in the command sinfully and on his own authority to kill women and
children as well as True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism
alleges? But God in Deuteronomy said not to kill people who were not fighting!
Exodus 22:29 tells us that God commanded the Hebrews to give him their first
fruits and first-born animals and also their first-born sons. Robin Lane Fox
thinks that the first-born sons were not to be offered as child-sacrifices to
God but just given to God in the sense of being given to the priests for serving
them (page 57, The Unauthorized Version). It is hard to believe that God would
be that concerned for the priests who had wives and children and people looking
after them. If he was, clearly then, the Old Testament system benefited the
priests at the expense of the people which shows that it was a greedy scam to
get walking all over the people in the name of God. If a religion existed like
that today we would all know that it was just a racket for money and power.
Why the firstborn? The firstborn was regarded as the most important child
culturally and legally and religiously. Now this has no relevance to the needs
of the priests. They wouldn’t care what kind of child they were given. God
cares. This supports the idea that God means child-sacrifice. The
first-born was given to the priests as a slave or to be offered as a human
sacrifice – more probably the latter.
I disagree with Lane Fox for the context is about sacrifice for animals were
offered and fruits were offered in sacrifice so it must be the same for the
babies. Moreover, the Law condemns sacrifices of children made to pagan gods but
never the killing of firstborn male infants for God. Ezekiel 20:26 is thought to
refer to this law but it says that God gave the Jews bad laws because they
defiled his Sabbaths and even told them to pass their children through the fire
– burn them to death as a sacrifice. But the Law never commanded burning babies
to death and it says its laws are good and intended by God and it was later that
the Jews began to desecrate Sabbaths. The bad laws were given by God through the
false prophets. Ezekiel has the Jews of his own time in mind not the ones who
received the Law. The law then in Exodus still stands.
Abraham was praised in Genesis 22 for being willing to murder his son Isaac as a
human sacrifice. God commanded him to do it. In fairness, he was stopped by an
angel just as he was about to slay Isaac but that is not the point. The point is
that God praises unconditional obedience and the willingness to kill if God
commands you or if you THINK God commands you. The fact remains that the text
still says that God commanding human sacrifice is not fine but holy and virtuous
and its holy to be willing to do it for him. If God comes first and has
the right to take life it is not very far wrong if you kill for him because you
wrongly think he wants you to. Condemnations of child sacrifice only talk about
it in the context of making offerings to other gods. There is nothing stopping
us from assuming that human sacrifice to God was acceptable. It is said that
Genesis 22 is not as bad as it appears for Abraham sensed God would save Isaac
from death or if he killed him God would resurrect him. There is no hint of
either of these in the text. There is nothing in Genesis that indicates the
possibility of resurrection. And how could Abraham sense that God would save
Isaac from sacrifice after telling him to sacrifice him? The text is about
glorifying obedience to God. Abraham is praised for being willing to kill his
son at God's behest even if it meant God contradicting his own promise to make a
great nation of Isaac. Abraham was praised for unthinking obedience.
The story says Abraham lied to people so that he could take his son up Moriah to
sacrifice him to God. Not only have we a story praising God for commanding
murder and a man praised for obeying God, but it is a man who was prone to
lying. If I were a liar, I would not like to be sure that revelations from God
really were from God especially ones that command me to kill. It is an insult to
be expected to trust the account which supposedly came from Abraham.
Page 166 of Why I Became an Atheist (John Loftus, Prometheus Books, New York,
2008) reveals that the archaeological evidence and the testimony of history is
that the worshippers of God in Israel were performing child sacrifice. The Bible
needs to be read in the light of the kind of society that produced it. And that
was a child-sacrificing one! So it must be read as advocating child sacrifice.
God did not need to command Israel to murder adulterers or gay people by stoning
them. Surely God ordering you to kill unnecessarily must want the bloodshed for
blood pleases him. The early Mormons argued that these rules fit the rule of
love your neighbour. They said they were about loving your neighbour enough to
kill him so that his blood would atone for his sins. Some Christians say that
Jesus alone atones but it is polite to offer your own blood nevertheless. It
shows you would atone if you could. It shows you are not dumping it all on Jesus
so that you can get away with it. It is like somebody gratuitously paying a fine
for you and you giving them money in return.
The book of Hebrews praises Abraham and a man called Jephthah. The latter killed and dismembered his daughter as a human sacrifice for God. Hebrews actually commends Jephthah as a good man. Christians like to say the original story never actually says God agreed with what Jephthah did. But it is obvious they have the author of Hebrews against them for the author knew only of the gruesome Bible story of him.
The thought that all creatures already belong to God so killing them to make sacrifice to him makes no sense is a popular one. It sadly has not stopped man-made religion's love of sacrifice. Even Jesus has been seen as a self-immolated sacrifice for sins.
