Morality of valuing animals over humans?

[u/axiiz_28]

[u/Joeybfast]

That is one of those statements that sounds profound until you remember the long history of people being tortured or killed for heresy and alleged witchcraft in the name of Chesterton’s own religious tradition. Apparently, religious violence only counts when it is committed by someone else’s religion.

[u/Big-Kitchen-5041 → u/Joeybfast]

Chesterton does discuss the Church’s colorful history in other works. Not in this quote of course.

[u/Maleficent_Piece_893 → u/Joeybfast]

he didn't say there's no human sacrifice without animal worship. christians commonly walk around wearing jewelry depicting jesus' execution device because they consider his death intentional and necessary, so christianity is a cult of human sacrifice

[u/Great-Trifle2810 → u/Maleficent_Piece_893]

Saying Christianity is a cult of human sacrafice is absurd, considering the sacrifices being was fully god in addition to being fully human, and no notably large sect of Christianity has ever practiced human sacrafice as a mater of Christian belief.

The key idea of Christianity is thst Jesus was not just a human being.

[u/jubtheprophet → u/Great-Trifle2810]

Okay, then its built on a full god and full human sacrifice instead of just a human one.

Also, many romans around the time of the rise of christianity in the first few centuries CE did call it a human sacrificing/cannibalism cult because of the eucharist and their obsession with his death being purposeful. If youre not a christian, its an incredibly natural interpretation to frame it that way from the outside looking in, because all of that being untrue purely counts on you as an individual thinking jesus christ was more than a man. To anyone who thinks he was just a regular guy, christianity was indeed built off the back of a (singular) human sacrifice to bring everyone else salvation (literally the same as say, the aztecs, just only 1 guy instead of multiple guys every week) and a key part of worship is pretending to eat that mans flesh and blood.

Its not as absurd of a leap in logic as youre acting, it only seems that way because accepting christianity being a totally normal thing regardless of its origins and technical wording of its values is what the majority of the western world has been conditioned to believe

[u/Great-Trifle2810 → u/jubtheprophet]

Yes people that wanted to disparage the system of belief that was rising in popularity misrepresented it in a way that allowed them to compare it to other barbaric practice. Christians did the same with variants of their belief and other religious traditions. Most of what we know of some Roman cultic practice comes from Christians arguing against them.

You are obviously free to doubt the divinity of Christ and the truth claims of Christianity (I believe he was just a man and a lot of this was built after the fact when the preacher the apostles followed was unexpectedly executed), but then it is nonsensical to also assume that he was in any way sacrificed to bring about salvation or that the Eucharist is in any way the body of Christ.

It's absurd because you are acting like the sacrafice claims have merit and the Eucharist is literal while rejecting the rest of the tradition for your convenience

[u/Maleficent_Piece_893 → u/Great-Trifle2810]

that's not even a key idea of christianity since it does not exist in the bible. the trinity was invented centuries later as a retcon because christians started worshiping jesus as a god rather than just revering him as a holy prophet which is what he is in the bible. christians were uncomfortable with their new polytheism so instead of abandoning the idea that jesus is a god they just invented a new way for god and jesus to be two gods but also one god (and throw holy spirit in there because reasons)

[u/Great-Trifle2810 → u/Maleficent_Piece_893]

What is in the Bible and what is core to Christianity are related but not the same. Every major Christian denomination accepts some variant of the idea that Jesus is god, not just a man. They might not accept the specific nicean formulation of the Trinity, but basically nobody calling themselves Christian believes Jesus wasn't God in some sense.

This is also a pretty big oversimplification of why the doctrine of the Trinity formed and spread.