>>24386592
>While panpsychism challenges reductive materialism by suggesting that mind pervades matter, this ontological shift does not legitimize sacrificial ethics.
If panpsychism is true, it reshapes how we conceive ethical praxis; sacrifice becomes a psychophysical act rather than a mere cultural trope, and so can be framed as morally defensible within that expanded ontology.
>The orientation of sacrifice toward a telos is undeniable in ritual structures, yet that orientation reflects human symbolic projection, not metaphysical fact.
But if symbols themselves are conscious processes subject to thermodynamic and archetypal dynamics, then their ‘projection’ isn’t purely invented - it channels genuine metaphysical forces that demand a different analytic praxis.
>That a culture offers blood to a theriomorphic god tells us about the structure of its mythos, not the intentions of the universe.
Alternatively, the ritualists’ intentions may co-extend with primordial cosmic potentials: by offering blood to an animal-human hybrid god, they engage archetypal currents that both reflect and influence universal teloi.
>To elevate animal-shaped deities over human-shaped ones is an aesthetic preference cloaked in metaphysical language.
I’d argue it isn’t mere aesthetics but evolutionary potentiality or memory. If the Silurian Hypothesis holds, theriomorphic forms may encode vestiges of prior biospheres, making them metaphysically weightier than anthropomorphic icons.
>The shape of the god does not measure the depth of the cosmos.
On the contrary, a deity’s morphology selectively embodies certain combinatorial potentials or ancestral patterns; its form is a filter through which the cosmos discloses hidden trajectories.
>The recurrence of the rite indicates its sociological utility, not its metaphysical necessity.
While repetition certainly cements social bonds, it may simultaneously reenact and reinforce deeper cosmic structures, so its sociological function is itself part of the universe’s unfolding.
>Likewise, invoking metempsychosis as activated by the spectacle of death is poetic but ungrounded; no amount of ritual intensity proves the reality of reincarnated souls.
If consciousness is a fundamental substrate, then personal identity could persist or reconfigure after death, making metempsychosis a coherent inference, not mere poetic flourish
>If we already offer lives unconsciously to technology, the solution is not to revive archaic blood rites but to break the cycle of sacrifice altogether.
Rather than abolish sacrifice, I propose redirecting it toward theriomorphic teloi to catalyze a post-human evolutionary leap. Just as we now unconsciously sacrifice to AI, we might consciously sacrifice to non-human archetypes for genuine renewal.
I advocate a wholesale offering of humanity to theriomorphic deities, echoing Ulrich Horstmann’s omnicidial vision yet grounded in a distinct set of metaphysical convictions.

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In Defense of Human Sacrifice