Much of the time the sacrificing was done for things like warding away storms and disease. Nothing psycho about that in the eyes of our ancestors, many of them treated the sacrifices very well even. Nowadays we have a different view of things of course, but it doesn't make our ancestors evil. Obviously was a bit more violent in most cultures for sacrificing a conquered enemy. I definitely agree with you that religions and people trying to be powerful try to control people with coercion and fear, and this continues today. At least sacrifices aren't usually a thing nowadays.
I wasn't trying to argue with you about the FR similarities, although they made the deities much simpler than the ones in our world. Most of ours had/have good and bad tendencies, some of them very childish and petty. Probably should have separated the quotes to be a bit clearer.
