Animal Sacrifices are Atonement, but Christianity uses a Human Sacrifice Instead

Local 5 News

The sacrifices of the Bible were offered not only to atone for sins but also as free will offerings to celebrate some joyous event, and as holiday offerings for the three biblical pilgrim festivals of Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles). Each of these three holidays was called, in Hebrew, a hag. The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca called the Haj takes it name from this word.
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Some theologians consider such animal sacrifices spiritually primitive and in general, I, along with every single animal, agree with them. Although animal sacrifice is arguably the oldest religious ritual on earth, it's based upon a very dubious belief--that the death of an animal can correct your own moral failings.
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The rabbis introduced a daring change in Jewish worship - replacing every sacrifice with a prayer from a newly created prayer book. The prayer times were the same times as the sacrifice times, but no blood was spilled.
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This change was made necessary by historical events but had enormous impact on Judaism and the newly emerging religion of Christianity. Surrogate atonement through animal sacrifice was basically abandoned in favor of the direct and ethically superior command of confession and personal apology to anyone you had hurt. Sins were human acts that needed to be fixed by human actions, inspired, of course, by God's commands to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Contributed by Gandolf