What was the original purpose served by the animal sacrifice rituals?
Why doesn't anyone ask what is the real origin of animal sacrifice rituals?
It's likely that these practices predate any religion. They obviously predate anything in the Bible or anything Jewish. The latter just adopted them from the pre-existing culture.
Where did they really originate? Why did humans start doing this?
Jordan Peterson on this exact topic.
"Some modern readers might dismiss the idea of sacrifice as a superstitious practice of primitive savages..."
From Public Discourse June 2018
Our own suffering is undeniable, so what can we do about it? “If you want to make things better in the future,” writes Peterson, “then you make sacrifices in the present.”
But how did the animal sacrifice rituals make things better in the future? Why would the ancient humans believe these made things better?
Human beings project their existence into the future, and so can work now to make their futures better.
But how did those rituals make their futures better? Why would they
believe it made the future better?
“It’s our knowledge of the possibility of tragedy and suffering in the future that motivates us to sacrifice in the present, so that we can reduce the unnecessary anxiety, uncertainty, and pain that awaits us.”
But legitimate "sacrifice in the present" which makes the future better means working, planting, building, etc., which produces practical benefit. But how did the animal sacrifice rituals produce any practical benefit?
Far from exhibiting primitive superstition, “the sacrifices that people were making to God were the dramatic precursors to the psychological idea of sacrifice that we all hold as civilized people in the modern world.”
But this means there had to be a practical benefit produced by the sacrifice rituals.
The legitimate idea of sacrifice means doing something necessary to produce future benefit. What benefit was produced by these rituals?
A sacrifice means paying a price now, like giving up a goat or 2 from the herd, in order to produce a future benefit which would not otherwise happen. So, what was the future benefit produced by killing the goat and burning its carcass.
In some cases they ate the sacrificed animal, but in that case, what was the "sacrifice"? What price were they paying if all they did was eat a goat they were already planning to eat? That's no sacrifice at all, because they're not giving up anything.
For these practices to make any sense, there had to be a practical benefit gained by doing them.
To say their religion taught them it was pleasing to God doesn't explain the origin. What reason did they have to believe this? Why would they put that into their religion?
