The Pagan Heart
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April 2005 Issue
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Combating Ignorance - child sacrifice?
By Axiom
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
For all our vaunted intellegence, we live in a very ignorant time. I think it's the contrast of vast knowledge and ignorant paranoia that makes it so hard. We have so much knowledge available from so many sources - East and West, and everything in between. Many of us have the freedom to learn about philosophy, metaphysics, great literature, and humanities like never before, and yet is seems that so many decide not to avail themselves of what people have fought and died to attain. Instead, they wallow in ignorant propaganda, gleefully collecting and spreading it about. Take this little gem... "Doug Wilson makes a fascinating point in the 17th sermon of his Deuteronomy series. He says that child sacrifice is INEVITABLE. What he means is that physically killing babies is an inevitable thing for a pagan society to do. Throughout the Bible, God claims the first-born child for himself. The regenerate will always have a substitute for the first-born sacrifice by the perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why child sacrifice is clearly outlawed in the Bible (Deut. 12:31) - it can be outlawed only through Christ's shed blood. Yet pagans do not have this sacrificial substitute, so they, Wilson seems to say, naturally are going to sacrifice children to their god(s). This occurred in numerous occassions in the ancient world, in Carthage and the South American empires, and it occurs in the abortion culture of today."
Leaving aside the whole abortion issue - this is not the venue for that discussion, nor is that the poster's point - this sums up one of the greatest rally-cries used by Christians for millenia. We Pagans, unnatural and nasty as we are, sacrifice children. And that, precisely because we are Pagan, we cannot help it. So, not only do I engage in, or will one day, the murder of children, but I do so because I'm not Christian. That is a huge insult. It proclaims me weak-willed, controlled by blood-thirsty gods, and uncaring of human life - because my god is not the Christian one! Without ever having even met me. Now, I, for one, am offended at such a blanket statement. I have no issue acknowledging that sacrifice - child and adult, human and animal, did indeed form a part of the Pagan rites of various Pagan religions. Not all. There are a number of Meso-Pagan tribes, for example, (among the Australian Aboriginal and Native American tribes, for example) whose ancestors did not engage in sacrifice. There are Celtic tribes that once did, but moved beyond human sacrifice before conversion ever occurred. And the Christians performed animal sacrifice in the early days with the observation of Pesach alone. Every religious group has sacrifice within its history. Every group has all sorts of elements considered nasty and perverted by modern minds. But as society evolves, so to does the form of worship. The understanding of what worship entails - and the meaning of sacrifice - evolves too. Our ancestors offered up what was seen as precious to the gods (black bulls for Hekate, for example), and also what was most highly prized by the worshipper (a son for Jehovah). Thus the gods were honoured. But with the growth of civilisation, we (and the gods) change our understanding of what is valuable and worthy to offer and what is reallt necessary to please the gods. Now, to most, if not all Pagans, the idea of worshipping a deity that demands human sacrifice is beyond repugnant. We seek out gods that are complex and beyond such simple appetites. Our gods still seek sacrifices of great value, but they take a different form - often one more metaphysical than tangible. Many sacrifices revolve around what resides within our brains and hearts. These are people who fear and despise us so greatly that they avoid all possibility of discovering the reality, and instead construct complex lies and deceits to try and raise armies against us. If it wasn't such a threat (considering how many of them exist, and the ease with which their lies and insinuations are made a part of "common knowledge"), it would be laughable. It's bad enough to be accused of offering our children up to our gods as bloody tribute as easily as we pick wild flowers. To add the accusation that we would go so far as to utilise abortion as a means to do this is an abomination that attacks our people, our religion, and our ethical character, as well as the right of women to choose. I still feel ill at this virilent piece of crap. It is a rare, dare I say non-existent, woman indeed who would go to the trouble to get pregnant and then undergo an abortion to offer a legal child sacrifice to her god. The ignorance in this statement is appalling. The scary thing is that this crap is widespread crap. Propaganda with a new twist on an old, old tale. And, as usual, it ignores factual points - such as Christian women get abortions too. The instance of Pagans sacrificing people, let alone children...well, where's the news reports? The public outcry based upon actual deaths? There isn't any. And I'd guess to that the instance of abortion within the Pagan community is probably lower than in the Christian one - simply due to increased sex education and familial acceptance of pregnancy, if nothing else. Yes it riles me. And the gall - these fundie idiots spread lies about us everywhere, appeal to the most basic of instincts (protecting children), and pull up ancient history as justification. Because, after all, if the original Pagans sacrificed people, then clearly Paganism is tainted and evil and I, a modern Pagan, will fall prey to the natural desire to sacrifice children. The refusal to even consider that faith and belief change over time as society alters is annoying - morals and ethics are flexible, and what society once considered "right" (such as Renaissance Christianity's view that women and children were possessions, able to be beaten, raped, abused, etc) it can learn to see as "wrong". Religion, a healthy religion anyway, grows and changes with society. Maybe this is the real problem. So many of the fundies hearken back in time to a more Biblical lifestyle. They try to keep their religion static and unchanging, and as such are unable to see that other faiths are not quite as set in stone. What's that old adage? That which we hate most in others is what we really are... |
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