lmbarre

Let me restate my "argument."

- Ritual sacrifice is an primitive practice
- Christianity teaches that "God" ritually sacrificed his "son" for the sins of the world.

ergo

Christianity is primitive.

lmbarre

The idea of a divine sacrifice is prominent in Pauline and especially Johannine tradition:

16. "For God so loved the world that he gave [through ritual sacrifice] his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

lmbarre

We don't sacrifice to Karma.

lmbarre

We are talking about killing animals and humans to gain divine favor--ritual sacrifice, not just primitive ritual in general. I hardly see that intellectual need to of human beings to attempt to hold on to primitive animal and human sacrifice, even if it is said that "God" made sacrifice to himself.

Clivedurdle

Book of Common Prayer

lmbarre

My argument is very simple, depending on two statments of fact:

- ritual sacrifice is a prmitive ritual
- Christianity teaches that God made sacrifice to himself

Therefore:

Christianity if primitive

I am not sure what you disagree with. It is that ritual sacrifice is primitive or that Christianity's central teaching has God making sacrifice to himself? Saying that Chrisitianity's ritual divine sacrifice is not primitive is like saying that polytheism is not primitive.

"Sin" is a part of the primitive thinking we find in the Christian religion. The wrath it is claimed to evoke is allegedly the reason why "God" did sacrifice.

It is not about "deity worship" but of realizing the primitive nature of Christianity with it primitive idea of ritual sacrifice.

JohnG

I still agree with what you are suggesting, however I think the sacrifice aspect is only a small part of it. DCHindly's post alludes to a disconnection with the primitive meaning of the ritual(s) and the modern cultural significance of performing them.

If I talk to, or read about, or listen to theists discuss their gods, I don't hear much in the way of symbolic ritual, a majority think they are real. If anything, it is the sacrifice itself that has become symbolic (the flesh/sacrement yada yada), but the primitive intent is the same primitive intent.

The intent of a theist this sunday at the corner church taking the holy bread (representing JC's body) is the same intent as a man standing on a plain 8000 years ago slicing the throat of an antelope and covering himself in the blood to appease the animal spirit god.

The thought process is the same.

DCHindley

Myth, as I am using it, is roughly as described by Roland Barthes. One of the myths he uses as an illustration is the French myth of a unified empire.

"I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his soc-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier."

"Before tackling the analysis of each term of the mythical system, one must agree on the terminology. We now know what the signifier can be looked at, in myth, from two points of view: as the final term of the liguistic system, or as the first term of the mythical system. We therefore need two names. On the plane of the language, that is, as the final term of the first system, I shall call tha signifier: meaning (... a Negro is giving the French salute); on the plane of myth, I shall call it: form. In the case of the signified, no ambiguity is possible: we shall retain the name concept. The third term is the correlation of the first two: in the linguistic system, it is the sign; but it is not possible to use this word again without ambiguity, since in myth (and this is the chief peculaiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language. I shall call the third term of myth signification. This word is here all the better justified since myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us."

"The relation which unites the concept of the myth to its meaning is essentially a relation of deformation. The signifier in these examples has two aspects: one full, which is the meaning (... of the Negro soldier), one empty, which is the form (... Negro-French-soldier-saluting-the-tricolour). What the concept distorts is of course what is fill, the meaning: ... the Negro [is] deprived of [his] history, changed into [a] gesture[...]. What ... French imperiality obscures is also a primary language, a factual discourse which was telling me about the salute of a Negro in uniform. But this distortion is not an obliteration: The ... Negro remain[s] here, the concept needs [him]; [he is]half-amputated, [he is] deprived of memory, not of existence: [he is] at once stubborn, silently rooted there, and garulous, a speech wholly at the service of the concept. The concept, literally, deforms, but does not abolish the meaning; a word can perfectly render this contradiction; it alienates it."

"Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts: myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. The principle function of myth is to transform history into nature. ...In a mythical system causality is artificial, false; but it creeps, so to speak, through the back door of Nature. This is why myth is experienced as innocent speech: not because it intentions are hidden - if they were hidden, they could not be efficatious - but because they are naturalized... What allows the reader to consume myth innocently is that he does not see it as a semiological system but as an inductive one. For the myth consumer, signification is taken for a system of facts: myth is read as a factual system, whereas it is but a semiological system."

"Myth is dopoliticized speech. It has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal. Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissfull clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves."

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/i...yth_today.html

So, when you are talking about the ritual sacrifice in the Jewish or Christian religion, you are not really talking about a primitive ritual, you are talking about the significance of this ritual in a greater complex of meaning, of which ritual sacrifice is a mere part.

DCH

Clivedurdle

Let me have a go with the Eucharist I posted above.

It starts with a purification ceremony, a confession of sin. That sounds very much like the myth making you describe above - it is denuding life of experience, of colour, of history, of dialect.

It is positing the natural complex messy world as wrong and to be washed away and forgotten.

It then continues in the ceremony with a clear partaking in the sacrifice, and eating the god.

The participant then leaves having their history and experience washed away - born again.

Terrifying!

Hex

Let me see if I've got this right ...

Okay, so, by your definition, sacrifice in a religious context to avert wrath is something you term 'primitive'. Now, we do, later, get the clarification that what you're talking about is:

(bold mine)

So, a sacrifice for your terms, is of the human/animal type AND for the purposes of placating a divine entity, right? Now, why is this a 'primitive' religious view as opposed to the apparently 'modern' non-sacrificial view?

From an anthropological perspective, I might warn you that you're making some dangerous assertions in your argumentation here. Just because you "know of no one who practices ritual sacrifice to influence higher powers" doesn't mean that people don't. Or that they are 'primitive'. Look to the Balinese religion as an exemplary case of such ritual sacrifice in a Hindu-Buddhist-Malayo-Polynesian syncretisn; the Eka Dasa Rudra being the most dramatic instance of animal (and, according to past accounts, human) sacrifice that I know of. It's not to merely avert the wrath of the gods, it's to placate the demonic aspects of the gods so that the creative aspects of the gods can cleanse and balance the entire universe. A noble, altruistic venture, no?

I'm afraid this is an incorrect assertion. A magical worldview is one where one uses the aspects of 'cause and effect' of the natural and supernatural world to gain one's ends. It does not need to have a doctrine, and it need not involve animal or human sacrifice. It doesn't deal with gods, but if it involves entities at all, they are merely spirits. Rituals in a magical worldview are for and guided by individuals for their own aims.

Religions have doctrines, there are protocols to the rituals and these are held to be the same across a wide body of adherents. Again, though, the rituals are different for different religions. And the fact that you don't see them having the 'primitive' sacrifice of your term is usually a sign that they've become less corporate in their focus and more bureaucratic. (Most animal sacrifice is a form of redistribution of food resources for the practitioners/adherents.) And, any religion that doctrinally requires some 'payment' from it's adherents to the organized body of the religious administration is enacting the 'sacrifice' you note above, just that since we are in a money-based economy, people don't often bring a goat to 'church' to 'put in the offering plate'. :Cheeky:

So, then, I wonder if by your argument, Wicca would then be a better, more 'modern' religion? With the simple doctrinal similarities of 'And it harm none, do as thou wilt' and no required sacrifice (of money, animals or humans), this seems to fit, even with the fact that every coven or individual should keep their own set of ritual texts which are personalized to that group or individual. And, since it's roots only lie in ~1940/50, it's definitely more temporally modern at any rate ...

I expect that part of my issue with the argument is your mixing of the primitive/modern terminology within the religion. Your only criteria is on the type of sacrifice and motive. You don't discuss complexities, doctrinal issues, administrative issues, the roles/rights of specialists/adherents, economic or political issues, or the organization of the cosmogeny. All of these are important issues for categorization far beyond sacrifice. You also blur/misrepresent the difference between a 'magical' worldview and a cosmogeny (The alternate 'religious' worldview). While they are both dealing with the structure, organization, and 'rules' governing the mechanics of the supernatural world, they are different.

And Christianity, as far as it goes, is -not- a 'magical worldview'; the only real means of information or cause and effect from the supernatural is via prayer to Jesus/Yahweh, not through a manipulation of oracles or symbolically charged items (herbs, stones, human constructed items such as mirrors).

Thanks, :huh:

- Hex