[beaconstudios]

I disagree. What god is capital punishment meant to appease? It's supposedly there for people who are too dangerous to keep alive right? Human sacrifice seems to me like it was meant to bring better harvests or otherwise give the illusion of controlling a chaotic/random natural process.

[pasabagi]

I don't think so. I think it's current justification is typically framed in the form of 'punishment', and its historical justification was purely religious. And, coincidentally, was at least partially about giving the punished person a fair shot at redemption by punishing them while they were still on earth - which is literal god-appeasement.

Regardless, I think equating capital punishment with ritual sacrifice is a fair judgement. No matter how rational our rituals and systems for killing people seem, there's no reason to suggest that the Aztecs did not feel similarly about their rituals and systems. Law is not supposed to be a science, so it's also not free from cultural relativism, even if you're not a cultural relativist generally.

[5DFractalTetris]

I consider all distinguishing characteristics between people or groups of people to be projections utilized by human minds to motivate and bring forth highly-ritualized purifying violence, which ranges in intensity from inconsequential name-calling to full-scale genocide. My best historical example of this from pre-modernity was the 13th Century Cathar Purge, where the War refrain "Kill them all and let God sort them out" originates, and continues forth until this day. Records point to a similar practice within the Aztec regime, with self-sacrifice a common action to sustain the empire.

Given the advanced bureaucratic practices common to empires in precolonial America, it seems the Aztecs simply required regular sacrificial deaths (via suicide or homicide) to maintain their office, in addition to regularly liquifying prisoners or the enslaved. Like a death camp which ran on self-motivated suicide, for reasons of cosmic accounting.

[avn2109]

It's dismaying that user 5DFractalTetris' comments here are so heavily downvoted, since they're clearly civil, literate, grammatical, and made in good faith.

Personally I find 5DFractalTetris' claims to be preposterous and wrong, but IMHO downvotes should be reserved for something other than "I disagree with this comment."

[autokad]

it wouldnt make for a good interface, but I wonder if there is any value to having up/down vote for karma and i agree / disagree to allow users to express their level agreement with the comment.

[sonnyblarney]

"What god is capital punishment meant to appease?"

I have to agree just a shade with the premise.

A lot of punishment is morally oriented, and it's derived from our value system which is headed by 'God', or at least an interpretation of that.

Murderers are executed not just to keep them off the streets, but as a matter of punishment which is fundamentally pleasing to our moral code ... headed by God.

I think old-school capital punishment is at least distantly related to the concept of sacrifice.

Though I wouldn't want to equate the two.

[int_19h]

"Civic religion" is a concept that some people subscribe to. It doesn't have gods per se, but it has abstract concepts (like e.g. justice) that can be similarly worshiped.

[lostlogin]

Framed like that, there are a mass of specific issues that spring to mind. Not that they shall be spoken of however...

[beaconstudios]

Isn't that just polytheism?