What were some cruel practices of polytheists?

Answer 1

Idolatry tended to go hand in hand with cruel, licentious and excessive behavior, since the caprices which were narrated concerning the idols were adopted as an excuse to imitate those types of behavior. Many of the ethics that today are taken for granted were as yet unknown to the practitioners of polytheism.

Answer 2

Idolatry tended to go hand in hand with cruel, licentious and excessive behavior, since the caprices which were narrated concerning the idols were adopted as an excuse to imitate those types of behavior. Many of the ethics that today are taken for granted were as yet unknown to the practitioners of polytheism.For example:

1) Classical European nations held that killing one's unwanted young babies is perfectly acceptable.

Link: European infanticide

2) Children had no rights. In Carthage, babies were sacrificed in fire. Roman law (Patrias Potestas) permitted a man to kill his male descendants of any age and for any reason. Professor and former President of the American Historical Association, William L. Langer (in The History of Childhood), writes: "Children, being physically unable to resist aggression, were the victims of forces over which they had no control, and they were abused in almost unimaginable ways."

3) Under Israelite law, "an eye for an eye" has always meant the monetary value placed upon it by the court (Talmud, Bava Kama 83b). Roman law, however, included literal retaliation (Twelve Tables of Roman Law, 7:9).

4) Romans were killed for the crime of slander (Twelve Tables, 7:8).

5) A Roman could be killed for assembling a noisy crowd at night and disturbing the town (Twelve Tables, 9:6).

6) In Roman law, anyone could accuse a man of owing them money and the debtor could be killed (Twelve Tables, 3:10).

7) In Europe, the Druids practiced human sacrifice throughout Gaul and the British isles. Virgins were sacrificed by casting them into wells. Other victims were hung or burned. The Goths, too, offered up human victims. Ibn Fadlan famously describes the sacrifice of a female slave as part of a Viking ship burial which he witnessed in 922 CE. Anglo-Saxon excavations suggest that female servants were sometimes killed and buried with their master who had died, or were buried alive.

8) In Central America, the gods were propitiated by cutting out the hearts of victims.

9) Prostitution was a fixed part of public worship throughout the East.

10) In the Roman cities, the Bacchanalian feasts became so wild that a royal decree was promulgated that they be held outside city limits.

Answer 3

Not all polytheistic religions should be considered cruel, even by today's standards. Remember that all religions, regardless of their faults, sought to provide comfort for the living.

Also not all cruel practices can be attributed specifically to religion, although we can assume that those who performed cruel practices were probably religious. For example, the ancient practice of killing unwanted babies was at its height in Sparta, but this was because Sparta wanted its citizenship to be a killing machine, and no male child who would be unable to contribute was allowed to live; this was not a religiously driven view. Certainly, polytheists from Rome to the Near East and beyond disposed of unwanted babies, but so did the monotheistic Jews prior to the Common Era - in the valley of Gehinnom.

History records much cruelty carried out in the name of religion and it is not profitable to select one religion or one type of religion for condemnation, since all religions have been guilty at one time or another. Hitler was not a polytheist.