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.
We will have to agree to disagree, I'm afraid. I don't care what spin ya put on it, they threw children into fires and murdered people to please their gods. That's psycho. That's evil. Today, if some guy was to kill his children to appease his deity, or someone else's children, cutting them into pieces or throwing them into fires or both, there wouldn't be a whole lot of people who would argue. They'd all agree, that guy was nuts and downright evil.
Here. I'll even pick on Christians since I am one. Inquisition. Evil. Downright sick, twisted, misguided, totally against the true tenets of the faith, and it was flat out evil. They put a righteous spin on it, but that did not in any way make it right.
