Human Sacrifice is, generally, meant to propitiate the Gods (may they live forever, all the Gods, even those that be dead). As in the movie 'The Wicker Man' (where to my mind the Ritual was misused and misrepresented) types of life, particularly fecund life like rabbits and hares, were gathered up in a wicker framework having the form of a man, and into which a human offering was placed last, the whole then being burnt to ash and the ashes scattered on the land. This was done on the Longest Night, to draw back the Sun and give life to its mating with the Earth, that would bring back Spring and Summer.
There are similar rituals, some bloodier and some less so, throughout human cultures worldwide. But because of Mel Gibson's recent movie Apocalypto the sacrifices made by peoples such as the Maya and the Aztecs now occupy the popular imagination, so I'm going to talk about them. But bear in mind that this is about how to kill God, not about the benefits or otherwise of human sacrifice.
Incidentally, Apocalypto is a wonderful movie, even better than the Passion and even less open to charges of racism and anti-semitism - every Christian should see it, so that when one of them brags about Sacrifice they'll know what it was their Jesus supposedly took on for them. Most appear to have no idea.
This isn't about Apocalypto, either. Or about the Passion, or whether Gibson is an anti-semite or not. I like the movies. He can hate as many Jews as he wants for any reason he wants - and I don't care what your opinion on that is. So don't be ass enough to try and turn this into something it's not (a screed of your opinions on topics I'm not interested in). If you do, I'll delete whatever off-topic comment you leave behind you, and probably blacklist you as well.
If you're too stupid to follow simple instructions why would I want you on my blog at all?
Anyway... onward, through the fog.
Human Sacrifice is meant to propitiate, to please, the Gods who in return are expected to provide favors. These favors are thought of as a natural consequence of the sacrifice having taken place. It's a quid pro quo ("something for something") That's the thing about human sacrifice. It assumes an equality in the thing offered and the thing sought. If I were God I wouldn't, personally, be so cheaply bought. It assumes that the (seemingly) infinite value placed upon their own lives by individuals, and sometimes the lives of others, must be reflected equally in the value God places on their humanity, and individuality. I can see no compelling reason why that should be so in reality - and why so many Christians hope desperately that it is so.
I'm certain that they'll get what they want, if they keep their faith. Just as I'm certain the Muslims and Hindus and Zoroastrians and Dervishes will - if they keep the faith. Doesn't mean that any of the tinpot idols they believe in are God - or that, because even today there are a plethora of gods great and small - God can't be killed.
You can't kill the reality of God. But you can kill the body of God. The supreme prohibition against murder in Western culture exists, not because of the value of human life, but because the slaughtered body (and for all I know, the soul) bears the Imago Dei and every act of murder is a conscious act of lese majestie ('insulting the monarch').
This is why the State should execute murderers. Not because it brings 'closure' (though for some it might). Not because it denies the 'right to life' because no such right exists and any attempt to create one artificially (as in the 'right' to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) is as much an exercise in futility as it is an act of intellectual dishonesty. Not because such executions serve as warnings to others (though I suppose in some instances that they do) because that makes one individual a scapegoat for all others - who can then think to themselves 'I would never come to such an end because I'm not like him'. When in fact we are just like him - but less desperate, or more intelligent, or more fortunate, or more frightened. If we weren't all just like him, deep down, murder wouldn't be as popular as it is.
No, the State should execute killers for two reasons. Firstly, because the State is the only human agency that, even in theory, is possessed of sufficient resources, and sufficient objectivity, to qualify it to decide who should live or die; and secondly, the State is the only human agency which accurately reflects any aspect of the nature of God and so is in a position to serve as God's proxy in such questions. The State accurately reflects the nature of God in this way: it possess a legitimate monopoly on the exercise of all means of violence.
Murder is an instance of lese majestie in two ways. Primarily, murder is the illicit destruction of those walking bags of meat, human beings, which though otherwise worthless in themselves, are in some incomprehensible sense bearers of the Imago Dei. Secondly, killing is the prerogative of the State, and those acts of unlicensed killing which occur are murder because they are unlicensed and for no other reason.
The notion of a 'right to life' is as ridiculous as the notion that we 'possess' the flesh we walk around in; possess it in the way we own a house, a car, a piece of land. You don't own 'your' body. If you did you'd have a title to it. If you had a title to it you could do anything you wanted with it, including kill it, without restriction. And that's plainly not true. It's illegal to kill yourself. Anyone helping you to kill yourself will serve time in jail. You don't own the flesh you inhabit, and you never have.
Personal possession of one's body is inextricably linked to the notion of possession of external objects, and both ideas are inextricably bound to the idea of the individual, and of individuality. Individual possessions, individual rights. And all notion of individual property, of rights-holders and property-owners, of contracts and contractors, of legal personality (whether individual or corporate) are inextricably bound to the historical development of capitalism and commodity exchange.
You can't think of any object as being yours, exclusively, of your possessing a legal right to it to do with it as you want, outside of that framework. And that framework is a cultural concept largely alien to anything that preceded it. From all available evidence (evidence found in poetry, legal documents, religious texts, depictions on pottery shards) had you asked someone of the Ancient World who he or she was, that person would have replied by first identifying the community they belonged to, then by occupation (actually family occupation) and then by identifying him or herself at a personal level.
Who are you?
I'm an Athenian, the fisherman Mikos.
This may seem like the least important of changes but it's actually a fundamental shift. From the greater community and family to the individual. And it defines our world. We could not be who we are without having made that change in emphasis. And while we think of ourselves in this way, two things are possible - we can see ourselves as possessed of an inviolable right to the integrity of 'our' bodies and all of their functions; and we can imagine ourselves possessed of an absolute right to determine what shall be done with the products of our bodies.
Out of that particular set of ideas proceeds another. If we as individuals possess absolute ownership and authority over our bodies to do as we see fit with them, then those to whom we cede authority over us, those whom we allow to command and direct us, gain by extension an absolute authority over our bodies and what we do with them. Generally, such transfers of authority are granted on the basis of justifications such as patriotism, self-sacrifice in some greater cause; in other words, they point back to the earlier form of human organization and value (the family, the community) but they maintain the fiction that we own ourselves. And because we own ourselves, others may also own us - if we agree to that ownership. If we don't agree, for whatever reason, then we are rebels - and very likely to be made subject to that monopoly on legitimate violence that I spoke of earlier.
This is why some people will do whatever those thought to be in authority want them to do - no matter how heinous the act in question is 'personally' considered to be. They own me as I own myself. Therefore, just as what I own must do as I tell it, I as a whole being must do as those in authority tell me because they own me.
And this, finally, is why human sacrifice is not what it once was, and how you kill God. Human sacrifice once propitiated the divine Other, an external Superiority, in return for favors. Now, in every act of killing from abortion to car-jacking to home-invasion we propitiate ourselves. We serve those things that flow from within us simply because they flow from within us and we can't think of anything better to do. It's easier, and it's more fun (anything that tells us we're the center of the universe is more fun) and it's more convenient.
Abortion illustrates the issue perfectly since abortion is the ultimately convenient act of self-worship that could be imagined. I don't care if you've been raped. I don't care what justification you comfort yourself with when abortion is considered - whether it's a woman's property-right to the disposition of her body (which doesn't exist, never has existed, and cannot exist except as a useful excuse for killing another human being who happens to be in your way); her right to dispose of the products of 'her' body (which also doesn't exist); or consideration of future consequence - which is nothing less than self-serving cowardice. Abortion is wrong because it is lese majestie nonpareil ('an insult to the Monarch without equal'), denying the primacy of the Imago Dei because the bag of meat that bears that dignity is too self-centered to realise it, and the respect that is its due.
Every time one of us kills another, we commit the crime of lese majestie. If we do so with the sanction of the State we are simply killers, not murderers. Even if we do so with the sanction of the State we are criminals in the sense that we place the requirements of the State before the requirements of the dignity of the Imago Dei - but we are not culpable before human law. But, speaking generally, the State rarely requires the killing of children - though it very frequently allows it, since the day-to-day activities of the State are carried on by humans fool enough to believe they own themselves and can do what they like with themselves. And believe, equally, that others may do the same.
300 000 or so infants are aborted in America every year. If you were to take the corpses of every dead baby killed since Roe v Wade was decided and pile them up around the Empire State Building I imagine you'd have a mountain of dead flesh that reached from the foundations of the building to its apex, and a lake of blood deep enough to drown Times Square.
What's important is not the amount of dead flesh involved (bags of meat die every day, in vast amounts). What's important is the antagonism between two principles. One principle promotes the lie that the universe is only as big as I am. The other principle promotes the lie that the universe is only as big as my religion says it is (every religion conceives the Imago Dei in its own image, just as every believer conceives God to be a larger and more powerful version of himself).
The first lie finds its fulfillment in the abhorrent act of abortion. The second finds its fulfillment in the act of religious warfare. To my mind they are, in essence, the same lie.
And they are both wonderful ways in which to kill God.