Sensationalizing of "human sacrifice"

[micc]

This is exactly my point, whether it is crouched in "definate" religious
ideology, or political ideology, the end result (and psychological
basis) is the same..."WE" (the relgious believers or the
political/ethnic group) are RIGHT, CHOSEN, or BLESSED (as in maifest
destiny???) and therefore have a right to EXTERMIATE the "pagan,
communists, heathens, albanians, gypsies, gays, tlaxcaltecas, tarascans,
Lakota........

Sometimes Linguistic/sociological rigor can he a nice convenient and
antiseptic shile to hide behind when man's "inhumanity" to man is within
our filed of vision....


the only difference I see between mesoamerican sacrifice, and
modernexteminations is that in mesoamerica, at least the victim was told
he or she was dying for the benefit of the universe, where as today's
victims are further tortured by the knowledge that it is soley because
of who or what they are (in essence BAD) that they must die, sometimes a
horribly sadistic death...


"Rudiger V. Busto" wrote:
>
>  Craig Berry wrote:
> "...Again, I insist on greater linguistic/sociological rigor!
> 'State-sponsored killing' and 'warfare' are not the same thing as
> 'sacrifice'.  Sacrifice is 'to make sacred'.  A killing which is a
> sacrifice is conducted for a specific religious reason, as part of a
> ritual in which such killing plays a necessary part.  Killings motivated
> by secular goals (winning a war, ridding society of a troublemaker, and
> the like) are *not* sacrifices.  ..."
>
> But of course, it is arguable that "ethnic cleansing" and genocide are
> motivated by the idea that the nation or sense of peoplehood is in fact
> sacred and thus worthy of protection and purification.   One has only to
> scratch beneath the surface of such actions to find the logic of "sacred
> making" (or defense) in the ideology of nationalisms or ethnocentrisms.
> Anthony D. Smith's work on how myth and ethnic/nationalist senses of the
> sacred eloquently speaks to this point.
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> Rudy V. Busto                   Work:  650.723.0465
> Assistant Professor             Home:  415.552.0257
> Religious Studies                                  rude at leland.stanford.edu
> Stanford University             Fax (work):  650.725.1476
> Stanford, CA 94305-2165
>
>