Why do you think god demands blood sacrifices and burnt offerings? [Spirituality & Religion]

@SW-User

Yeah but i wonder why god demanded such sacrifices in the first place.

@Pikachu Such sacrifices were common in many early religions so could well have been in the Hebrews' rites before their religion that worships what we call "God" as a proper noun, became more fully developed along the lines Blondie suggests.

Why, though, is probably something we can never know because the origins were both extremely widespread and lost in pre-recorded history.

Because their sins were forgiven with sacrifices.@Pikachu

@ArishMell

Personally i find it very likely that humans did this because it seemed like a potent form of worship to them. It's harder to imagine why a god would need such a thing.

@SW-User

[quote]Because their sins were forgiven with sacrifices[/quote]

But why do you think an all powerful god would want people to take life in order to make amends?

Just the way the God of the bible is. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” At its core, sin is rebellion against God. Our sin separates us from God, the creator and sustainer of life.@Pikachu]

@SW-User Ah, that gives about a cause of death other than old age, illness, accident or murder (e.g., for worshipping the wrong god ,or the right one in the wrong way). Useful for frightening your congregation into toeing the line...

What of sacrifices though? They are [i]not[/i] the sole preserve of the Hebrews and later Christianity, albeit in the latter only as its interpretation of Jesus' execution. (Instead, for centuries, the Western European version of Christianity defended poor God by reserving some of its most barbaric execution techniques for religious "crimes" like heresy.)

The Hebrew/Christian tradition is only one of umpteen known ancient religions around the world; and sacrifices featured in very many of them, even if the surviving faiths no longer habitually and blindly kill animals, prophets or virgins.

So as Pikachu and I ask, WHY sacrifice anyway? is it just blood-lust masquerading as obeisance to that society's "one true god" - if I may usurp that contradiction in terms?

I'm afraid none of the believers here so far have been able to answer that. Biblical quotes merely state ancient beliefs; not explaining their accompanying rites but simply repeating, "'Cos we've always done it this way".

My guess is that the believers [i]genuinely [/i]cannot do better than "always done it this way". It's not mere blind defence of personal belief. Frankly I doubt even the most distinguished anthropologists and social-scientists could look past mere sectarian quotes and [i]explain[/i] why all manner of religions used ritual killing. We can understand only that what [i]we[/i] see now as a cruel, pointless and misguided aspect of ancient human societies, was a sincere religious rite to [i]them[/i].

Only humanity as a species, has not lost its capacity to delude itself into justifying being cruel and misguided.

Actually I am agnostic and was only remembering what I was "forced" to learn growing up. I am probably one of the most anti religious individuals on here. 😏@ArishMell

@SW-User Similarly though I am not anti-[i]religious[/i] as such - I am against [i]enforced[/i] religion. I worded that penultimate paragraph so I was not singling out individuals.

@Pikachu Because religion is a bureaucracy underneath it all, they changed because there's more secularists now than ever. Religion has to be forced to change with the times, if it didn't, it would die out. This is why the church will HAVE to lessen their anti gay stance because the religion will die if they don't. Studies show people are dropping like crazy from Christianity, they will HAVE to adapt or die out, it's that simple.

That's why one minute there's sacrifices and the next, not. It's simply because more people frown upon it, they can change the rules at will.

@SatanBurger

couldn't agree more

@SatanBurger [quote]they will HAVE to adapt or die out[/quote]

So what we need is one wedge issue that sane people will relate to and that will be impossible for churches to accept. Hmm....

@daisymay Hehe 😏

@Pikachu It has been explained to you , but you refuse to listen.

@Silverwings

Has it though? The answer is "because that's what he did".
Maybe you can help me out.
Why does an all powerful being demand that life be taken in his name?

@SatanBurger Nobody has changed any rules, God is the same, yesterday, today and forever, he does not change, but he does change the way he does things, for our good, at his own expense, and his way will never die out, he states clearly that the gates of hell shall never prevail against his church, he is still convicting men of their sins, still saving them, still adding to the numbers of ones that will live with him forever.

@Pikachu I will repeat what I have already written ; The penalty for our sins is death (Rom 6:23), both physical and spiritual. In order to have atonement (forgiveness) for our sins, and be saved from "death," God has required that a life must be given, and its blood be shed (Heb 9:22). A living creature must forfeit its life, so that another can live.

This shows the awfulness that is sin, and it also points to the one sacrifice that puts an end to all others, Jesus Christ.

God said in (Lev 17:11) that the life of a living creature is found in its blood. Blood represents life. When a life was taken, and its blood shed as a sacrifice, it represented new life for another. It made atonement for their soul (same verse).

Because of what blood represented, God would not allow anyone to eat the blood of an animal (Lev 17:12). Anyone who ate it was to be cut off from among the people (Lev 17:14).

The Bible tells us, however, that the blood of bulls and goats could not actually take away sins (Heb 10:4). The Old Testament sacrificial system, and the High Priest, was simply a picture that pointed forward to Jesus. Only through the blood of Jesus can we actually have remission of, and redemption from our sins (Mt 26:28)(Col 1:14)(Eph 1:7). His blood cleanses us from ALL sin (1 Jn 1:7). Through the offering of Jesus' body, we are sanctified once for all (Heb 10:10). Those in the Old Testament looked forward to this, and today we look back at it.

This is Gods laws, you can choose to ignore them if you choose, but it will be to your own detriment if you do. You can persist in asking why till you are blue in the face or you can accept the gift of God that is eternal life, and enjoy many of the benefits in this life, and many more in the life to come.

@Silverwings Strange as it may seem, the Hebrew/ Judaic/ Christian tradition is only one of many religions that have come, world-wide, and either survived or faded away over human history. Some were destroyed by military, political or religiously-led oppression arrogantly assuming "rightness" over the victims' faith.

[i]Why[/i] though, does[i]any[/i] religion have to be so gruesome, have to so worship violent death of innocents, then evade responsibility by blaming its all too human blood lust on its unfortunate deity/ deities?

Those killed in religious oppression are often seen as their own religion's sacrifices, and some were remarkably courageous in standing up for their beliefs; but their murders are simply more signs of the same gratuitous blood-lust allegedly defending the perpetrators' faith or god. (The same types of people are behind oppression of [i]any[/i] religion by the Communist states, even when not using murder, such as against China's Muslim Uyghur minority. State atheism is a religious belief of a sort, in stating officially there are no gods.)

Despite its unfortunate use of "god" as if meaning the Biblical God, we cannot answer Pikachu's original question by narrowing it to Biblical quotes and, "I am right because it's in the Bible!".

No-one yet has given an objective explanation, though some have pointed out that that Christianity does not demand ritual sacrifices beyond regarding the Crucifixion as such. And that was a political execution, by colonial and local religious authorities fearing an uprising.

@Silverwings

[quote] I will repeat what I have already written [/quote]

Yeah, yeah: because dems da RULES

lol that's not an answer. That's the equivalent of saying "because".
I wasn't asking you to regurgitate the dogma at me. I was asking a question.

@Silverwings [quote]he does not change, but he does change the way he does things, for our good, at his own expense[/quote]

If one day all the priests got together and said "God wants us to go back to the Old Testament laws," how do you know it's god that changed things? You only have people that supposedly translate that written word, how do those people know to change things? Do they hear the voice of God telling them what to specifically write down?

@SatanBurger The Bible was not written. It was assembled from numerous texts written over centuries by authors who were widely separated by time and geography, who did not know each other, and who did not know that their writing would one day be put together in a single work.

@SatanBurger
The Bible is like a small library that contains many books written by many authors. The word "Bible" comes from the Greek word biblia, meaning "books." It took more than 1,100 years for all of these books to be written down, and it was many more years before the list of books now known as the Bible came together in one large book.

@SatanBurger https://www.everystudent.com/features/bible.html

@Silverwings Actually the Bible has a lot of contradictive statements for that reason alone.