A recent article on Newsweek online tells of efforts in evangelical schools to win college debate competitions. To these schools, debate is more than just another school sport. It is a part of their mission -- to convert people to their view, and to score points for their cause. They take this sport seriously.

According to the article, many of these participants are preparing to become politicians and lawyers. They want to enter fields in which they can set social policy. In the words of one freshman debater, "I think I can make an impact in the field of law on abortion and gay rights, to get back to Americans' godly heritage."

When I read that quote, I had an image of an Aztec priest-in-training learning the rituals of human sacrifice so that, some day, he could be the man at the top of society's pyramid cutting the beating hearts out of his sacrificial victims. I seasoned my imagination with the thought that there were a few people in that society who were saying, "Perhaps all of this human sacrifice really is not worth it." To fight them, this Aztec priest needed the skills necessary to convince the people to adopt his view. He, too, needed to win the social debate.

I noticed that the student in the article did not express an interest in using his skill to coax others into giving more food and medicine to the poor. He wanted to be better able to coax his listeners into supporting more human sacrifice -- the need to do more harm to more living persons in order to make things right between the community and God, just as the Aztec priest did harm to his victims -- in the name of God.

I am aware of complicating issues with respect to abortion as to what counts as human sacrifice. I would argue that those issues can be answered. I have done so in my blog at "Abortion (and Infanticide)" Part I and Part II. If those arguments are sound, my claims here apply to that issue.

Granted, contemporary evangelicals are not actually cutting the beating hearts out of their victims. However, there is more than one way to harm a person.

For example, take a child from almost any parent and torture or kill the child. The child is not the only one harmed by this action. The parent also suffers harm. We can see this in the fact that most parents would choose to have their heart ripped out of their own chest if it would prevent the suffering or death of their child. This is the lesser of two evils that one can inflict on a concerned parent.

This, then, illustrate the fact that to harm (or sacrifice) a person, one does not need to cut out his heart. One only needs to cut out of his life the objects of his affection. In fact, one can do far more harm to a person by using the second method than by using the first.

I have no doubt that the Aztec priest felt great pride in his actions at the end of the day. Rather than seeing his own life as a loss and a waste, many Aztec priests likely felt happy that they were able to provide their community with a needed service, bring their community in closer harmony with God.

He no doubt told himself that he was protecting his people -- the good people, the 'moral majority' of his age -- from hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, plagues, and other natural disasters. Or he was enticing God into provide a bountiful harvest and to turn aside the evil hand of his nation's enemies. He was a good person. He had a good reason to feel pride in his accomplishments.

Or so he believed.

Nor do I imagine the modern practitioners of human sacrifice hunger for an opportunity to do harm. They see themselves as saving the country from hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, and other components of the 'wrath of God.' Or they think that they are enticing God to provide the country with a prosperous economy and to defend protect the 'moral majority' of our age from its enemies. They have good reason to feel pride in their accomplishments.

Or so they believe.

Though he sought to do good deeds, the Aztec priest actually did great harm, and no good came from his actions. When his work was done, he had a stack of victims that he has sacrificed, and nothing good came of it. Volcanoes erupted and plaques struck as they would have struck. The only difference was that the priest had added the cost of human sacrifice to the sum of the natural disasters that struck.

The human tragedy, then, applies not only to the sacrificial victim but also to the priest. He wanted to do good deeds. He wanted to help his people. He wanted his life to mean something -- to count for something.

If not for the fact of this tragic mistake, he would have likely done good deeds. Instead, got caught up in a ritual of human sacrifice. His quest to do good deeds came to nothing. It came, in fact, to worse than nothing. He is like the parent who, thinking he feeds his child medicine, instead feeds her the poison that kills her.

I want to be clear; this is not a protest against all religion. Not all religious beliefs demand human sacrifice as a way of turning away the wrath of God. Many religions instead require the opposite of human sacrifice. They require followers to provide those in need with food, medicine, shelter, and clothing -- quite the opposite of demanding a human sacrifice.

Of course, if a person grows up in a society and discovers that there are two groups of people -- those who stand at the top of the pyramid with the daggers (whether they be daggers of steel or daggers of law), and those who lay on the altar to be sacrificed - it makes sense for him to strive to be the person holding the dagger. Those options make his choice understandable. It cannot make that choice right.

It is time for this ritual of human sacrifice to end. It's time to put those daggers of steel or daggers of law away.

I know. I know. I hear the claims every time something bad happens. In the days after 9/11 and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I heard that these evils befell us because we gave up the ritual of human sacrifice. I heard that the best way to prevent these rituals in the future was to restore the practice of human sacrifice.

Yet, I think it is time that we gave it a shot.

Besides, it is never the job of those who would be sacrificed to prove that they have a right not to be sacrificed. It is the duty of those who would sacrifice them to prove that it is necessary.