The Golden Compass

[Tripe]

Hmm I wonder if that could all be because humans are venal and make their gods in their own image?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Could be, but it doesn't disprove my "gods are violent buggers" hypothesis.

I mean, some humans are pacifistic. There are whole societies based on a total respect for all life, lots of tibetan monestaries and whatnot. You'd think some of these people would concieve a diety that chooses to follow their own Thou Shalt Not commandment. 

[Tripe]

Well the benefits of being a deity is that your an focus for all the things your followers wish they could do but are too afraid to.

Theres a reason the Olympians are so randy...

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

So what does that say about Zardoz and Cthulhu?

[Tripe]

Well Zardox is an obvious creation of Arthur Frayn while Cthulhu is something that is only described as a God due to the lack of a coherent English word.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'm pretty sure a few nerds have taken to worshipping Cthulhu and the like in earnest.

[Tripe]

Isn't that a bit like rabbits worshiping a fox, a big inter-dimensional all consuming fox?

[BBQ Platypus]

Well, you see, the rationale is that Cthulhu's triumph is inevitable.  Worshipping Cthulhu will mean only finite pain, whereas NOT worshipping Cthulhu leads to infinite pain.  If Cthulhu does not exist, well...you've kind of wasted your life via self-mutilation and demon worship, but let's face it, anyone insane enough to worship Cthulhu wasn't going to have a very good life anyway.

Cthulhu's wager:

            C(E)   |    C(N)
C(W)      - 1  |    -infinity
C(N)         0  |        0

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Isn't that a bit like rabbits worshiping a fox, a big inter-dimensional all consuming fox?

The same could be said of many other religions. It didn't stop the merchants of baal hamon from sacrificing their firstborn sons.

[Tripe]

You've used that a couple of times now. Ba'al-hamon was a place name (it where Solomon kept his vineyards). You might be thinking of Hadad the storm god  who was sometimes giving the honorific Ba'al but child sacrifice wasn't really part of his worship, ritual prostitution yes, child sacrifice no.  Maybe Amun the (momentarily) supreme Egyptian god but again no child sacrifice

Are you thinking of Molech? Molech probably wasn't really a god at all but rather a mistranslated passage identifying a priest king which was misread to mean a god.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

No, I recall it was some bugger worshiped by (I think) Corinthians. It wasn't Molech, it was some type of diety. The people who worshipped him sacrificed every first-born son. The god in question had a wife god who was of equal theological status, and aside from the child-slaughtering they were very peaceful folk, who prefered trade and barter to slaughter. I think they didn't make ware on anyone.

[Tripe]

Well divine couples are pretty common, Carthage perhaps?

Tanit used to have child Sacrifice (perhaps) and she was the patron goddess of Carthage. Plus thge trade and the like sounds like the Cartthaginians, you know until Hannibal.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah, Carthage.

[Tripe]

Well there you may be right, though there is still debate about that.

From the wiki article on Child Sacrifice:

Greek, Roman and Israelite writers refer to Phoenecian child sacrifice. However, some historians have disputed this interpretation, suggesting instead that these were resting places for children miscarried or who died in infancy.[citation needed] It has been argued that evidence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is incomplete, and that it is far more likely to have been Roman blood libel against the Carthaginians to justify their conquest and destruction. The debate is ongoing among modern archeologists and historians. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally[citation needed]. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead". The few Carthaginian texts which have survived make absolutely no mention of child sacrifice, though most of them pertain to matters entirely unrelated to religion, such as the practice of agriculture.

Consensus among scholars is that Carthaginian children were sacrificed by their parents, who would make a vow to kill the next child if the gods would grant them a favor: for instance that their shipment of goods were to arrive safely in a foreign port. They placed their children alive in the arms of a bronze statue of:
"    the lady Tanit ... . The hands of the statue extended over a brazier into which the child fell once the flames had caused the limbs to contract and its mouth to open ... . The child was alive and conscious when burned ... Philo specified that the sacrificed child was best-loved.

Controversy

In some cases, archaeologists have found evidence that suggests that the prevalence of child sacrifice may have been far less than commonly believed[citation needed]. In the case of Carthage, the only reports of child sacrifice come from Roman sources. Revisionist historians claim that, being mortal enemies of the Carthaginians, the classic historians may have engaged in blood libel. This has not been accepted by most historians. In other cases, archaeological evidence has confirmed the written sources, and even added new information that keeps the debate open.

[BBQ Platypus]

I have a friend who works on Carthaginian Tophet-sites, and he did agree that it seems like there were child sacrifices which happened periodically.

Awesome!  Now, who wants to go burn some toddlers?