The priest holds the heart of the victim dripping blood up to the gods as an offering, an appeasement. They believed that this act would bring the rains, make the crops grow, make the land and the people prosperous. Other cultures such as the early Canaanites would offer up their children to their god, burning them on a ritual fire. The Celts favored fire as well, burning criminals in huge constructs called 'wicker men'. The Etrusions, the Minoans, the Gauls, even the Romans believed that the gods could be swayed by the offering of human life. We shake our heads at the barbarity, the cruelty of these acts.

Sometimes we make them into a cliche, a joke... the cartoon of a group of Islanders about to toss a girl into a volcano with a caption "Wait!, I'm NOT a virgin, ask Mobimbo, ask Huwali, ask...." We shake our heads and marvel at the primative and superstitious nature of these murderous beliefs.

Unless of course, we are talking about the human sacrifice that is the root of our most prominent western religion, Christianity. Then it becomes a beautiful and moving act. One that essays, books, even entire careers have been built around, extolling the virtue of a death on a Roman torture device. A favorite of the artist, thousands of paintings have lovingly detailed the blood and gore, the sense of suffering. Millions of little children wear the image of this near naked man hanging in torment, dieing on a torture device, around their necks.

I hear it all the time...

"What keeps you from being a child raping axe murdering drug addict if there is no god?"

Homo Sapien Sapien is a herd animal, tribal and needing to function in groups to survive. Survival depends on certain ingrained principles, the primary of which is to not allow members of the herd to kill each other willy nilly. All the other 'moral' injunctions follow this simple imperative as violating them can lead to violence and killing, thus wrecking the group cohesion.

My ethics and morality derive from the culture in which I was raised and reinforced by the pressure of my peers. As I grew, I incorporated much of what in had been taught into my world view, rationalizing and reasoning out the purpose and place of the various ideas, making them part of my essential character. On top of my personal ethic, we have laws, society's way of codifying a common ethic. Even if one lacks an ethical stance on certain issues, the fear of societal retribution tends to keep most in line.
Morality is mutable, changing with time and custom. I knew several people in my youth who were only a generation removed from slavery. Once slavery wasn't immoral, it was in fact validated by the holy scriptures as right and moral. Once, a wife could not refuse her husbands sexual advances, the concept of marital rape was unimagined. We've changed, we've grown as a people.

Skeptic; Noun (skep-tik)