>>> edace at flinthills.com 06/26/00 02:48PM >>>
>
If there's a residual ritualistic/religious component to the death penalty, then these public executions serve to flesh out the unconscious need for human sacrifice.
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One of the few rituals of human sacrifice to survive into modern times was, in part, an explicit attempt to appease very real predator beasts. Until Christian missionaries succeeded in dissuading them from the practice,
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The monster, of course, is God.
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CB: I don't buy the idea of a generalized unconscious human need for human sacrifice, but on this topic what about the central Christian myth of the sacrifice of the "Son of God" to save everybody and the Christian communion ritual in which the believers eat the body and drink the blood of Christ ?