Again what history books are you reading?
From what I know, the Aztecs sacrificed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of their captives after every large battle. While they were the most civilized in numerous ways, they were very much barbaric in this way.
But as to bringing order to the Aztecs? I have seen estimates of about 11 million Aztecs killed, of their total population of 12 million. That is enough to make even Hitler do a double take. Of course, the conquistadors methods were not quite a bad, instead of torture they just introduced diseases and fought battles where they had technology far greater advanced than their enemies, which basically led to mass slaughterings.
So, yes, they did 'civilize' them, if by that you mean pretty much exterminate them.
Again I dont know what history books you are reading
Well, I think CIC missed the part where if you were a prisoner, you were going to be sacrificed. If you weren't a prisoner, then you would have been safe. So I to do not know where wondering about if you are going to be sacrificed or not comes from. You basically already knew.
And really, is living of fear of being sacrificed (or more so just slaughtered) for God any better?
When Pizzaro managed to take advantage of the recent civil war in the Inca Empire the Incas were dying by the thousands because of the introduction of western diseases like small pox. Pizzaro kidnapped the emperor and held him for ransom. After getting paid off by the Inca people he did the only honorable thing he could, he gave Emperor Atahualpa a choice: the Emperor could be burned to death (the Inca believed that if one burned the body of a dead person their soul would also be consumed and destroyed by the fire
and Pizzaro knew this) or the emperor could be baptized a Christian and killed swiftly. He strangely chose to be sprinkled with water then sacrificed
err
I mean killed. So Pizzaro handed the Emperor over to Friar Vicente de Valverde who dumped water on him and then strangled him.
Sounds like the indigenous peoples of South America had a lot more to fear from their benevolent conquerors than anything else.
Didn't know that. Well, seems there were some sacrifices for God then.
Yet here we all sit and you continue to make claims about this mysterious division of the law into arbitrary subsections and still you cannot provide actual evidence that such divisions exist at all.
The very fact that one needs to study some other source outside of the Bible says something about a book that is supposed to have everything inside.
Anyways, there are some clear distinctions between laws. You have the ones about sex, you have the ones about food, ect. with a few gray ones that match a couple of areas at once. Now, in the NT, the food laws are abbolished, but this is supposed to be symbolic of the abolishment of the special place of the Jews, or more so God knocking Peter on the head and saying "You know that whole veil in the temple that was torn, yeah, that veil. Well, that was the old covenent going away. Bye bye, adios, sayounara. That includes the whole Jews being special thing. So go and preach to the gentiles just as you the Jews." Of course, that is a bit of a paraphrasing/creative interpretation.
Looking at what Jesus said Himself (and if there is one part of the Bible you can't doubt else it all falls apart, what Jesus says has to be it) that not a jot or dash of the law will pass away until it is finished. So either, the full thing is in effect, or 'it' has been finished. I personally take 'it' to be the cruxifiction, and basically Jesus was saying the old covenant would hold until that very moment, even though Jesus was walking around on earth.
This is my own reasoning for not using the OT as a source of moralty. Sometimes a good guide (key word, SOMETIMES), but not a source. But it is at this point you start seeing the fundamental breakdown that gives you all your different flavors of Christianity. Or, at least, it is one of the places you see breakdowns.
