Timeline for Is it possible for a developed society to practice human sacrifice as a ritual?
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| Mar 19, 2023 at 22:04 | history | edited | Mary | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 20, 2014 at 13:36 | comment | added | Myles | I don't think the arguement holds water. "If we never have a bad crop again we wouldn't need to sacrifice another virgin to the corn god" would hold as much weight. Ritual is not defined by commonality for example the ritual of bringing in a new pope or monarch. | |
| Oct 17, 2014 at 20:46 | comment | added | Kyle Hale | This may be lawyering, but if no one was ever convicted of the death penalty again, we wouldn't continue putting people to death. I believe this makes it non-ritualistic, or rather not an inherently common practice. | |
| Oct 17, 2014 at 1:16 | comment | added | David Z | @CAgrippa whether I can or can't, how is that relevant to deciding whether the death penalty is inherently, necessarily, ritualistic? In any case it's probably time to make a chat room for this discussion, if we are going to continue. | |
| Oct 17, 2014 at 0:08 | comment | added | CAgrippa | @DavidZ can you think of an actual example of legal execution that does not at all match this minimal definition of ritual? | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 18:28 | comment | added | Myles | @DavidZ A ritual "is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence." - Wikipedia The act of putting them to death is the central activity of the ritual. It's true that the death penalty in some circumstances would lack most or all of the ritual components (being "fired" from the mob or execution of political dissidents) however I think it is implied from my answer that I was suggesting the death penalty as enforced by the government in America. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 17:48 | comment | added | David Z | @Myles okay, but none of those rituals that we associate with putting a criminal to death are inherent to the act itself. In other words, the manner in which we carry out the death penalty may be ritualistic, but that doesn't mean the mere act of putting a convicted criminal to death is a ritual. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 17:02 | comment | added | Myles | @DavidZ Regardless of the reasoning that leads to the event many aspects of the event make it ritualistic. For example if one of these aspects were missing (for example the family of the victim were denied access) there would be a change in how the event would be perceived in spite of the fact that the possibility of future criminal behavior is eliminated. The fact that there are a bunch of specific rules related to the event that have no bearing on whether the goal is achieved point towards the fact that it is ritual. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 16:35 | comment | added | David Z | @CAgrippa I can think of one: the death penalty can be viewed as a purely practical way to irreversibly prevent anyone from having to deal with a person's future criminal behavior. A way that does not place the burden of caring for the person on society, as life imprisonment does. Of course one would wonder whether the judgment about the person's future criminal behavior is accurate, but that's a separate issue from how the death penalty is viewed. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 16:09 | comment | added | CAgrippa | I cannot think of a single reason NOT to read the death penalty, as utilized in the United States, as a ritual act. If human sacrifice is a ritual execution, as specified by the OP, then @Myles' answer neatly closes the question: "yes, e.g., the United States today." | |
| Oct 15, 2014 at 22:07 | review | First posts | |||
| Oct 16, 2014 at 6:37 | |||||
| Oct 15, 2014 at 22:04 | history | answered | Myles | CC BY-SA 3.0 |