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Comment by celtoid | Hacker News Reader

Child sacrifice was part of Semitic culture. The story of Issac and Jacob (Ishmael and Jacob in the Arab scriptures) teaching against the practice of child sacrifice is pretty good evidence that it was an old practice and that Hebrew and Arab cultures were trying to move on from it. Phoenicians, also Semitic, never moved on from the practice.

I don't understand why it's so controversial.

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I think you do understand why "our ancestors practiced child sacrifice" is controversial when you think about it

I think the most charitable interpretation of OP is that there is no controversy over the fact that pagan Semites practiced ritual human (child) sacrifice.

A simple fact of history being controversial is a function of bias. The worship of Moloch and its attendant ritual of child sacrifice is attested to in many scriptures.

It is, but really human sacrifice was the norm, not the exception, in preclassical ancient societies.

Well, either they did or they didn't. The confusion comes when we try to apply modern outlooks to people from a different civilization, and end up saying "well, I'd never do that, so neither would they," and we end up ignoring evidence that doesn't fit our preconception of the world.

Not really. My ancestors were Norse and practiced human sacrifice. There are also some archeological findings indicating that they also practiced child sacrifice. Doesn't bother me at all, I sm not my ancestors.

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