Ethics
As ethical systems, polytheistic religions like those of the Maya are difficult to compare with the monotheistic world religions. However, the idea of 'covenants' between deities and human beings is common to both. Fulfilling the ritual requirements of the 'covenants' should ideally lead to a state of harmony. The archaic practice of human sacrifice should first of all be viewed within this framework.
Read more about this topic: Maya Religion
Famous quotes containing the word ethics:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)