patrick.net

Because it results in more prayers?

"The whole parish is praying for the family. No one has experienced anything like this. ... We're just praying up a storm for them," said the Rev. Piers Lahey, pastor at St. Andrew Catholic Church, where the incident happened just before 9 a.m. Saturday. "The kids, especially. A lot of kids saw this and we are very concerned for them."

Of course the church employees are concerned for the kids: if ever those kids get the idea that life is not controlled by the unseen deity that the church claims to represent, then those kids might not tithe.

Morality results primarily from natural law, not religion. Wolves protect pups. Cardinal Ratzinger got elected Pope after micromanaging an office that concealed priests abusing children. Religions and cults are self-replicating memeplexes; over time they can attach themselves to a moral code and thus perpetuate themselves longer, but they are passengers on a much older train that they did not build.

"The first principle or morality is Harm/care of children. It is highlighted by the trait of compassion."

Historically this moral principle has wavered from one side to the other. At around 800 BC the inhabitants of Canaan and Persia mostly worshiped gods that demanded child sacrifice in return for blessings. Parents were strongly encouraged to make the sacrifice of one child in the temple to ensure fertility of land and people. This was considered a moral choice.

Along came Abraham who had been hearing voices in his head for years but didn't really believe everything he was being told. Time and again he showed that he mistrusted this god who was apparently speaking to him and directing his life. All the while he's been wanting to see his wife get "in a family sorta way" but having no luck with that. A miracle later, Sarah conceives at like 80 years old and they have a son. Some years later this god in Abraham's head tells him to sacrifice the child.

This must have confirmed all of the patriarchs' worst fears, that this new god would be just like the old ones he'd left behind in Persia.
So, he decided to test this god.

He went and built the altar, got the boy on it, raised the knife and was about to strike . . . When God said, "Only kidding, who do you take me for? Oy! There's a sheep, kill it instead! What a shmuck!"

From then on, the morality switched to the deity's blessing of the protection of children, rather than their sacrifice. It was a slow change, and all those cultures of people God was telling Israel to wipe out were child sacrificers. A good example was the city of Jericho, which was full of this cult. The Jews wiped it out, but spared a whore and her family. Fascinating stuff. Read "Pearl in the Sand" by Tessa Afshar for an in depth.

Quigley says

So, he decided to test this god.

Interesting take on it -- that Abraham was testing God and not the other way around. Had not considered that one.

Quigley says

Parents were strongly encouraged to make the sacrifice of one child in the temple to ensure fertility of land and people. This was considered a moral choice.

Exactly. Parents sacrificed their children in the name of religion, which they would never have done otherwise. The basic reason is the hijacking of morality by religion. As Chris Matthews recently observed, a great irony of life is that sacrifice builds loyalty: we feel more loyalty towards those for whom we have made sacrifices than towards those who have sacrificed for us, just as people feel more loyal to their children than to their own parents. This is a function of natural law, essential to the continuation of a successful species. If preachers can fool parents into sacrificing children, then the parents' loyalty transfers to the preachers; the cognitive dissonance of doubting the religion would be too extreme for the parents' brains to tolerate.

Abrahamic faiths did not eliminate child sacrifice, they merely changed it. Muslims kill their daughters ("honor killings") because Islam tells them to. Some Orthodox Jewish families sit shiva for children who leave or defy the religion, literally mourning them as if they were dead, and thereafter have nothing to do with them. Romney's cult does the same. This is child sacrifice, literally in the case of Muslims and metaphorically in the other examples, and it entrenches the religious organization for the same reasons that it did in Canaan 3,000 years ago, because humans remain the same species and have evolved only slightly since then.

Imagine a Muslim father who murdered his own daughter in the name of Islam. Then imagine he is confronted with an infidel, who mocks that sacrifice with a cartoon and says it was all for nothing. Then watch the videos of Muslims rioting against cartoons. Somehow those people are all human, and some process misled them to that extent. Some of them literally tell their children to become suicide bombers. As Machiavelli wrote, technology can advance quickly, but human nature does not.

Islam is a violent religion with few redeeming qualities. Picking on that one is easy as the "truths" so esconced in the Koran are neither true nor timeless, hut rather the mad rumblings of a murdering pedophile. It's a religion for bullies, by bullies, and perpetuated by threats and forced conversion. I'm the last one to defend that abortion of a cult.

Quigley says

Islam is a violent religion with few redeeming qualities. Picking on that one is easy as the "truths" so esconced in the Koran are neither true nor timeless, hut rather the mad rumblings of a murdering pedophile.

There is a lot of evidence to support that view, which may be another reason why so many Muslims react so violently to it. On the other hand I've always thought one of the saddest tragedies of Islam was the voluntary conversion of Cat Stevens, which caused him to quit music for 25 years. (Various religions, including the Catholic church, have banned music at various times. http://www.freemuse.org/sw25826.asp) Islam may be the most conspicuous current example of religious violence, but violence is only one of the reasons why Islam spreads; it also plays on the same strings that other religions played on previously. Members of Romney's cult often admit they had real doubts about the doctrine, until they sacrificed more than a year of their lives on a "mission" to recruit others into it; most admit they persuaded almost no one other than themselves.