Talibangelical News - Jim Bakker Gets Desperate. Now it's Antichrist Asteroid Apophis

Jim bakker and Thomas Horn. Fruitloops for Jesus and Donald Trump

Tom Horn Says an Asteroid Will Strike Earth in 2029, Unleashing an 'Alien Virus' That Will Give Rise to the Antichrist | Right Wing Watch

Poor Jim Bakker (I use the term 'poor' not in its wealth sense but as a term of concern for his welfare) is becoming more and more desperate in his frantic search for yet more money.

Following on from his inclusion of the wackadoodle conspiracist, Steve Quayle with his 'impending zombie apocalypse' prophesies on his show, he then invited another deranged conspiracist, Tom Horn, to expound on his loopy predictions and wackadoodle claims.

Tom Horn is a leading Trumpanzee cultist who, back in May, 2019 announced that God had chosen Donald Trump, to 'Help build the Third Temple' in Jerusalem in preparation for the return of Jesus. Sadly for Horn, Trump was booted out by the US electorate before the construction work began, having failed even to build a single wall.

Apparently, Horn has detected an approaching asteroid, due to strike Earth in 2029. Not only that, but reading the paranoid writings of a 1st or 2nd century CE author of a book of dubious legends and prophesies, the Bible, he has concluded that this asteroid will be carrying a virus that will turn into the antichrist. His 'evidence' is that said 1st or 2nd Century CE author wrote:

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water — the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

Revelation 8:10-11

Earlier this month Horn claimed to have died and met God and Jesus who told him what the future held.

No mention of viruses there, of course, because no-one had heard of them in those days of ignorance and scientific illiteracy, but not content with the mental gymnastics needed to turn a 'star' named "Wormwood" (from the days when stars were believed to be little lights, stuck to a dome over Earth and could be shaken loose by earthquakes, to fall down), into an asteroid named Apophis, Horn goes one better and includes it in a conspiracy invented for the purpose usig the 'logic' there must be consspiracy somewhere or my 'prophesy' would look implausible!

He needs to explain why the governments of the world (for Tom Horn's and his parochial target marks' world, read, the USA) aren't becoming concerned that an asteroid is heading our way, bent on destruction. So, he has concluded that 'they' (ie, the US federal government) are aware but are conspiring with Satanic forces to keep news of it leaking out and alarming people, presumably in case they start asking God to change his perfect plan and divert the evil asteroid with which he plans to kill us - which would turn Tom and the 1st or 2nd century CE author of the Bible into false prophets.

He told Jim Bakker:

I believe that Apophis is carrying an alien microorganism on it in which a virus is being sustained. I believe it’s going to make coronavirus look like a walk in the park. On impact with the Earth, the contagion that is going to be brought to this planet. … I think that it’s going to be a trigger event that ultimately leads to the Mark of the Beast, which will mean that you’re going to have to be vaccinated. A contagion during the Tribulation period could sweep the world. Literally tens of millions of people are dying by the hour, and an international cry goes up around the world for some kind of cure, a vaccine. Well, a man comes forward — a single individual who happens to be the Antichrist — and he’s the only man on Earth whose blood is naturally immune to this alien virus. And so a vaccine is created from his blood by which all mankind then are required to be inoculated. So, it’s almost like a black communion.

Because, of course, that's how vaccines are made - from the blood of immune individuals. Clearly, Horn is even less of a biologist/immunologist than he is an astronomer or prophet.

But he has a handy book - the only book he needs - in which, with a creative imagination, the entire future of the world is spelled out in detail. All it needs is a few words to have their meanings changed and the historical context of the time it was made up, to be ignored.

Is this insanity caused by excessive religiosity, excessive religiosity caused by insanity or merely a fraud fleecing gullible fools by trading on ignorant superstitions and psychotic paranoias?

Watch his videos and decide for yourselves.

Trumpanzee Cult News - Amnesiac Trump Rewriting History

Donald Trump uses new website to rewrite history of his presidency | Donald Trump | The Guardian

According to this report in the Guardian, President reject, Donald J Trump, has launched his new cult website (45Office.com) with an account of his disastrous presidency in which he appears to have forgotten certain key events.

Consistent with his narcissistic personality disorder, it is full of self-praise and 'alternative facts', such as his claim to have acted decisively over the coronavirus pandemic and implying that he was personally responsible for innovative medical treatments and two vaccines. What he 'forgot' to mention was that he had dismantled the plans and contingencies that his predecessor, Barak Obama had put in place in preparedness for just such a pandemic, in his obsessive zeal to undo everything Obama had done.

In what could pass for a parody of the kind of self-eulogising, and disregard for the facts, that characterises Trump's personality disorder, in his opening 885-word braggadocio, written in the third person, which is hard to read without laughing out loud, he says:

Trumpanzee Fruitloop News - MAGA Pastor Becoming Even More Loopy

Shane Vaughn, First Harvest Ministries

Shane Vaughn Says He's Been Called By God to Denounce 'The Sin of the Biden Administration' | Right Wing Watch

Readers may remember Talibangelical Trumpanzee nut-job and self-appointed Prophet of God, Shane Vaughn, who was one of my sample of three Trumpanzee false prophets. Vaughn had prophesied a Trump win in November 2020 and was, like the many other false prophets who did likewise, desperately trying to explain why his false prophesy wasn't actually false and that he really had, despite all the evidence, related God's inerrant word to his dupes... er... followers.

Vaughn had earlier prophesied that Trump would never be impeached, after he had already been impeached the first time and shortly before he became the only president in American history to be impeached twice.

He also claimed that Trump losing in November had all been part of God's plan, so that Trump can serve twelve terms! Seriously!

Now Vaughn is claiming he has been given a special mission by God “to raise my voice against the sin of the Biden administration". Comparing himself to the biblical prophet, Elijah and Kamal Harris to Jezebel, and revealing his obsession with Kamal Harris (not a hint of racism or misogyny there, obviously!) he told his followers:

Trumpanzee False Prophet News - The Trump Delusion

Johnny Enslow, Prophet of God
"Trump is still President"

Johnny Enlow Insists Trump Has Been Secretly 'Ruling and Reigning' as the True President | Right Wing Watch

The distinction between religiosity and mental illness, if it's there at all, is often so blurred as to be indiscernible.

This was never more true than the case of the many Christian evangelicals who, whilst declaring themselves prophets of God, through whom God speaks, have now to come to terms with the fact that, to a man (or woman) they all prophesied, on God's authority, that Donald J Trumps would retain the presidency in November 2020. The reality is that their prophesies were false. Trump not only lost to the candidate who polled more votes than any other candidate in American political history, but, for the second time running, lost the popular vote.

Ever since then, every single prophesy by these frauds has proven false too. The courts never overturned the result; the 3vidence of 'massive electoral fraud' was never found; there never was a military coup or successful coup d’état by the Trumpanzees cult, despite trying, and Joe Biden is still president.

What a dissapointment! You felt sure that one more Trump term and you would finally gain the political power to which you're entitled! And it all went wrong when people voted the wrong way!

Why Trumpanzees Go along with President-Reject Trump's Delusions

August Landmesser 1936. The lone dissenter from the Nazi cult.

Source: Wikipedia

Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth | Psychology Today

An article in Psychology Today, by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., explains very well the current strange phenomenon of dedicated Trumpanzees insisting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the singular lack of evidence for it, that President-reject Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election.

The answer is that cult-think, i.e. the need to belong and conform to the pressure from a group, rather than have the courage to stand up and tell the truth, is the stronger motive for these weak and intellectually dishonest individuals. Conformity has greater value to them than the truth does. They will be admired more for conforming and not spreading doubt and dissent than they will be for defending the truth.

Silly Cults, Trumpanzees and Abdication Syndrome

Donald Trump, Big Daddy cult leader for childish people.

The Abdication Syndrome | Psychology Today

The reason so many people are attracted to cults, and not just wackadoodle religious cults but also political cults like neo-Fascist white supremacist cults and fanatical supporters of Donald Trump, is explained by psychologist Steve Taylor, Ph.D., writing in Psychology Today.

It all comes from a desire to return to the 'safe' authoritarianism of childhood, where decisions were made for you by authority figures who provided you with a safe and secure environment and catered for all your needs. It's for these reasons that we remember our childhood with affection. As Steve Taylor puts it:

Christianity News - Abusing the Gullible in South Korea

Lee Jae-rock. 15 years for "habitually" raping his followers.

South Korean Church Leader Sentenced to Prison in #MeToo Case - The New York Times

Continuing the tradition of Christian cult leaders exploiting the gullibility of their followers for sexual gratification, one such leader of a Christian cult in South Korea has been convicted of "habitually" raping his female followers and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

75 year-old Lee Jae-rock, who founded the mega-church, Manmin Central Church in Seoul, South Korea, has been the subject of allegations of corruption such as extortion, faud and sexal abuse for several years but it was only when the #MeToo movement caught on in South Korea that eight former members of his cult came forward with specific allegations. Some of them alleged that he had lured them to his apartment and ordered them to strip off "as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden", then he raped them.

The Christian Cult of Child Abuse

The Twelve Tribe cult's base at Klosterzimmern near Deiningen, Bavaria

European court upholds German move to take kids from sect

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that members of a Christian sect do not have the right to abuse children and that the German child-protection agency that intervened and took the abused children into care was right to do so.

The case had been brought by four families, members of the fundamentalist Twelve Tribes sect, who had had their children taken away. A fundamental tenet of faith for the cult is that children need to be beaten regularly to drive the Devil out of them. According to one former member, daily beatings of the cult's children are normal.

Scientology Is A Religion - Official!

BBC News - Supreme Court judges allow Scientology wedding

The Supreme Court of England and Wales has decided that a Scientology^TM church is a "place of meeting for religious worship" and so can conduct legal marriages. This ruling effectively overthrows a 1970 High Court ruling that Scientology^TM meetings are not acts of worship, in other words, Scientology^TM is not a religion.

In England and Wales, where the legal system is based on English Common Law, a lower court is bound by the rulings of a higher court and the precedent of earlier cases, so High Court judges were bound by the 1970 ruling until it was changed by a higher court or legislation in Parliament. The Supreme Court replaced the House of Lords as the highest court in the land a few years ago and it's rulings can only be reversed by legislation in Parliament.

Scientology^TM was invented by the trashy sci-fi author, L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s to win a bet with another and better sci-fi author, Robert Heinlein, and is based on nothing more than his limited imagination. Hubbard had boasted that he could make more money by inventing a religion than by writing books - which was probably true for someone with his limited sci-fi writing abilities. Heinlein's response was to write Stranger in a Strange Land which shreds all organized religions and especially cults like Scientology^TM.

Scientology^TM has become notorious for its cult-like insistence on money-making, which has led many countries to classify it as a commercial enterprise rather than a religion, as well as the psychological techniques it uses to keep its members and to harass those who dare to leave and speak out against it or the cults leaders.

The case had been referred to the Supreme Court by a High Court judge who had refused to set aside the 1970 ruling and allow marriages to be conducted in Scientology^TM churches, as they are in Scotland which has it's own legal system and is not bound by English and Welsh court rulings and precedent. Lawyers for Scientology^TM had argued that it had evolved since 1970 so that ruling no longer applied. The judge had said that it was not for the High Court to rule on what constituted religious worship.

The five Supreme Court judges decided that it was the definition of 'religious worship' which had changed. The 1970 definition of religious worship as 'reverence or veneration of God or of a supreme being' was now outdated and would also exclude Buddhism. Lord Toulson, delivering the written verdict, said to confine religions to those which worship a supreme deity would be discriminatory. He broadened the legal definition of religion which should no longer be confined to religions which recognise a supreme deity. Which, aside from the circularity in that definition - religions are religions which may or may not have gods - raises more questions than it solves. What is now not a religion? Does it now include football club supporters, folk dancers, ufologists and sewing circles?

Of course, a religion based on nothing more than absurd ideas and half-baked pseud-science is nothing new. In that respect there is no real difference between Scientology^TM, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. The only material difference is one of age.

But the most significant thing about this ruling is that it reflects the shifting sands of 'religion', in what is rapidly becoming post-Christian Britain as many people are increasingly rejecting the absurd biblical mythologies and superstitions, but some are still looking for a 'spiritual' dimension and especially the sense of belonging to a community of like-minded people which the church previously provided. At the current rate of decline in traditional religions it would not be long before very few places could be called places of worship on the old definition. The Supreme Court ruling merely reflects this change in social attitude and cultural awareness. It marks a small step in the evolution of British culture.

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Albert Einstein
Letter to J. Dispentiere, March 24, 1954

I'm with Richard Dawkins and the late Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein that learning about the Universe and how we fit into it, and especially learning how we are the product of a process that means we are related to all other life on Earth, and are made of the same stuff the Universe is made of, is profoundly spiritual.

One of my most profound spiritual experiences was when it dawned on me that, because we are made of the same stuff the Universe is made of and are the product of an inevitable process the result of the fundamental laws of matter in this Universe, in a very real sense, through us the Universe has become self-aware. Through us the Universe can gaze in awe at itself.

Recognising that, and recognising that every single living thing is the product of survivors who never once failed to produce an offspring, and so we are all descendants of the first replicators and have all travelled the same journey, is profoundly spiritual.

Do I need to gather with others to share that and to get a sense of community? Not personally, though others might, but I like it when others agree with me and say so.

'via Blog this'

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The Cult of Pope Worship

We spent a few days in Rome last month and took in the obligatory tour of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City to see the Michelangelo ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and the murals by Raphael in the Stanze di Raffaello - book in advance on line for speedy entry; the queues are frightening.

Apart from very obviously being a vast, highly organised money-making industry, the thing that struck us most was how central the figure of the Pope is to everything. Every stall (there is one every few yards) selling tourist tat and over-priced strings of coloured beads to the 'faithful' carried a huge assortment of pictures of smiling Popes in various forms of fancy dress, sometimes with humorously phallic headwear, making pious magic gestures with two fingers, or just grinning beatifically.

Most of them were of the current Pope (how quickly they must have got those to the printers and out onto the stalls in such quantities); quite a lot were of his predecessor, Benedict XVI trying hard not to look like a leering paedophile who can't believe he's gotten away with it, and a few were of the Polish Pope, John Paul II. Conspicuous by their absence were photos of John Paul I whose mistaken election is reputed to have been corrected just 33 days later when he was found dead, allegedly by a nun who was visiting his chamber early in the morning.

Outside in St Peters Square, almost the entire area is divided up with crowd-control barriers for the vast numbers of Catholics who descend on the Vatican whenever a planned papal manifestation is announced. A couple we met in our hotel were telling us excitedly how they had queued (no seats are provided) for hours in the shade-free square in temperatures approaching 35-40 degrees and had been 'rewarded' with a brief glimpse of 'His Holiness'. One could only sympathise. Nuns in various costumes, looking for all the world like devout Muslim women in a hijab, only dressed in white, blue or brown, with every hair, ankle and neck well covered lest they arouse uncontrollable passions in men, twitter excitedly like groupies outside the stage door of the latest boy-band, hoping for a glimpse of the Pope - even the hem of a disappearing white cassock or the wave of a hand from a window will induce raptures.

Some even believe the image of John Paul II will cure terminal illness.

What we both noticed particularly was how the proverbial visitor from outer-space would see Catholicism as Pope worship, with the Pope as a living god in just the same way that the Japanese Emperor was to pre-WWII Japanese and the way the Emperor was in the latter days of the Roman Empire. It looks for all the world as though the pre-Christian official Pontifex Maximus, or high priest of all the gods, had been transformed into the Christian Bishop of Rome.

Emperor Augustus 27 BCE - 14 CE,
Pontifex Maximus. The first Pope.

And this, of course, is precisely what did happen. The first Emperor to declare himself both Pontifex Maximus and a god was Augustus. As Pontifex Maximus he was uniquely placed to declare his elevation to the post of God-King to be the revealed will of God.

This explains why the Catholic Church is still rigidly hierarchical with the cult leader being the source of all clerical powers, the source of all religious dogma and the inerrant, infallible mouthpiece of God. To a devout Catholic, the Pope and God are as one. The Pope speaks the mind of God and announces His will. And with theological matters such as the existence of Limbo, and the qualifications for entry into Heaven, the Pope hands down policy to God.

Catholicism is the cult of Pope worship. The Pope is not the heir to an invented 'St Peter', but the heir to Augustus, the Roman God Emperor who died in 14 CE and whose title and role was passed down to the Christianised ruling god-king, the Pope, Papa or Holy Father.

If you want to see the last Roman god, Pontifex Maximus, a relic of a bygone age and the invention of a degenerate ruling class, go and stand for hours in the Roman sun - and remember to take plenty of money with you.

And women! Cover yourself up. God hates having to oggle at your bodies!

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What To Do With A Spent Loon?

Regular readers here and followers of the #atheism hashtag on Twitter will have heard of 'Sacerdotus' which is one of the many pseudonyms of an unemployed narcissistic, probably psychotic loon who spends most of every day boasting about his academic qualifications, claiming to hold various university degrees, tweeting and blogging about how he's about to 'destroy Atheism' and fantasising about being a Catholic seminarian about to qualify for the priesthood, whilst simultaneously displaying his crass ignorance about almost everything. In fact, he was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, New York shortly after 2003 because of gross misconduct, thus ending his clerical career and simultaneously rendering himself unemployable.

Readers may also be aware that he has developed something of a psychotic obsession with me, inventing lurid tales of child abuse and terrorist activities and posting them on his blog. He also, rather pathetically, desperately tries to convince people that I have declined to debate him despite the fact that the record of his public display of cowardice in running away from my challenge to him to engage me in open debate can still be read in Debate: Is There Scientific Evidence Only For The Christian God?. I had challenged him to establish his claim to have scientific evidence proving the existence of the Christian god. The topic of the debate, which, had it been won would have established his claim, together with simple terms for ensuring transparency and unbiased moderation, and reducing his opportunity for his usual obfuscation, avoidance and quibbling over the meaning of words as a diversion, was laid out for discussion. As expected, his boasting proved to be empty and he refused to even discuss the terms, let alone producing anything resembling the scientific evidence he claimed to have or engage in anything resembling meaningful debate. It seems that the idea of open debate in a neutral forum is terrifying to him.

Following that public humiliation, 'Sacerdotus' went on a spree of abusive posts on Twitter, setting up impersonations of my account to post sexually explicit obscenities, campaigning to have me banned from Twitter, accusing me of being behind a conspiracy to have all Christians banned from the Internet, and issuing threats of violence resulting in Twitter intervening to take down all his accounts and any new ones, pending an undertaking to observe the rules he signed up to on joining. He was placed on special monitoring to ensure compliance. At the same time there were several crude and inept attempts to hack my Twitter account by changing the password.

In the traditional style of a deranged psychotic, he frequently claims to have provided reports to the FBI, NYPD and something called 'The UK Authorities' on my 'terrorist' activities allegedly provided by his many 'contacts' who he says are watching me, presumably imagining 'The UK Authorities' would need his assistance and that of his team of 'contacts' if any of this were true. No doubt in pre-word processor times these 'reports' would have been written in green ink and signed "A Consernd Cityzen".

So, having initially spotted 'Sacerdotus' as an inept, infantile fraud ripe for plucking, so to speak, and recruited him to help me discredit religion in general and Catholicism in particular, by putting him on a public stage for all to witness his dishonesty and ineptitude in the name of Jesus and Catholicism, what to do about him now?

He has just spectacularly failed yet another simple challenge in which he only needed to answer an easy question exploring a fundamental tenet of Christianity (see here). It's now become something of a sport on Twitter to challenge 'Sacerdotus' to a debate to see what excuses he will come up with next, or even if he will acknowledge having seen the challenge.

I have many more such questions which would also show his cowardly disingenuousness, but is there any point to this? Does it help further the cause of Atheism and to discredit Catholicism more (is that even possible after all the recent scandals?) to continue to expose this sad fraud who probably has a personality disorder or Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, and is possibly mentally ill, and who has probably outlived his use-by date as an example of the harm religion does to people?

Or should I just ignore him from now on, consigning him to the obscurity he probably fears most, bearing in mind that the reactions he gets on Twitter are probably his only means of self-affirmation and the only way he has to measure his perceived importance to the world, no matter how distorted that perception is?

I have prepared this little questionnaire. I will leave it up for a week. Please let me know your thoughts.

Now 'Sacerdotus' has spectacularly failed another simple challenge from me what should I do?
	Keep exposing him as a fraud by putting up more challenges for him to flunk every few weeks or months?
	Leave the infantile fool alone now and ignore him?
	Keep baiting him because he is such a good argument for Atheism?
pollcode.com free polls

[Update 19 April 2013]

Voting is now closed.

With the vote being 55:45 in favour of ignoring the infantile fool, serial Internet abuser and sociopath, Manuel de Dios Agosto, aka @Sacerdotus, in future he will now be ignored by me no matter what username he uses. I suggest others do likewise as that would seem to be the only way to help him control his psychotic behaviour.

It just remains for me to thank him for the sterling work he did for me, albeit unwittingly, in helping to discredit religion in general and Catholicism in particular. Would Manuel be the obnoxious little excrescence he is today if it hadn't been for the Catholic Church? Nice one Manuel.

PS. Just one last thing, for anyone who is tempted to believe Manuel's denial that he is the Manuel de Dios Agosto who was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, and his claim that Manuel de Dios Agosto is a young child: here is the account by Claudia McDonnell of the announcement by Bishop Garmendia of New York in New York Catholic that Manuel de Dios Agosto was to be admitted to a Franciscan seminary. The Franciscan seminary in New York is St. Joseph's. The New York Catholic site was archived on 2 February 2003 so clearly this announcement was made more than ten years ago. Manuel left the now closed (for low academic standards) Grace H Dodge school in 2000 when he would have been 16. There is no formal lower age limit for admission to seminary but this is not normally before age 18, which would mean Manuel entered seminary in 2002 - consistent with the site being archived in 2003. Assuming Manuel was indeed 18 years-old at the time, this would make him 31 years old now. Although very clearly mentally still a minor, Manuel is chronologically not the minor he likes to pretend.

In fact, by trying to involve an unfortunate child who has the misfortune to share Manuel's name and who Manuel found on the Internet, by using him to divert attention from his psychotic fantasies and abject failure to ever substantiate a single one of his claims, is tantamount to the very child abuse he accuses others of.

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More On Mormons

Religions are not sources of objective morals, they are sources of excuses for behaving immorally. This is why no one who is not indoctrinated into the abusive ways of cults like Mormonism can read accounts like the following and not recoil in horror, mystified how any rational person can behave that way towards others.

Incidentally, this is the same deranged cult thinking which was behind William Lane Craig's professed puzzlement and 'disappointment' with people who react with revulsion at his spirited defence of genocide and especially his casual declaration that there is nothing wrong with killing children because it is good for them and makes them happy. Find that hard to believe? Read it here in William Lane Craig's own words.

Cult thinking

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

William Lane Craig

But this blog isn't about William Lane Craig's repulsive creed or how he insults our intelligence to promote it. It's about how cults are founded by people looking for an excuse for their repugnant behaviour and how they attract other like-minded individuals, and then, when a systematic process of childhood brainwashing is in place, they gain a rationale of their own and a perverted culture is produced, inducing people to behave in ways which normal people find repulsive.

But should we really be surprised by this when a brief study of history reveals so many examples of all mainstream religious cults behaving in exactly similar ways?

This account of the behaviour in a fundamentalist Mormon cult, called, appropriately, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS was published in the Denver Post, 4 March 2001. It was related to the reporter by a woman, Laura Chapman. who had escaped from the cult.

As a little girl, Laura Chapman taped the words "Keep Sweet" on her bathroom mirror to remind herself how to get by in this remote, polygamous community. Keeping sweet, Chapman says, meant staying silent as her father molested her starting at age 3. It meant hiding her secret from her 30 brothers and sisters. It meant being lashed with a yardstick by one of her father's four wives. It meant having to quit school at age 11, then work without pay in a store owned by her church's prophet.

Keeping sweet meant being forced into marriage at age 18 to a man she didn't know, let alone love. It meant having a baby every year. It meant walking 10 paces behind her husband. And, above all, it meant smiling, sweetly through her pain.

Polygamy prevails in remote Ariz. town Slavery to some is salvation for others.
Denver Post, March 4, 2001. Article ID: 1058372

As Los Angeles Times reporters found:

Among sect members, girls as young as 13 are forced into marriage, sexual abuse is rampant, rape is covered up and child molesters are shielded by religious authorities and law enforcement.

Boys are thrown out of town, abandoned like unwanted pets by the side of the road and forcibly ostracized from their families to reduce competition among the men for multiple wives.

Children routinely leave school at age 11 or 12 to work at hazardous construction jobs. Boys can be seen piloting dump trucks, backhoes, forklifts and other heavy equipment.

Girls work at home, trying to keep order in enormous families with multiple mothers and dozens of children who often eat in shifts around picnic tables.

Wives are threatened with mental institutions if they fail to “keep sweet,” or obedient, for their husbands.

FLDS: Blind Eye to Culture of Abuse
David Kelly and Gary Cohn. Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2006

Just think: a very large number of rational Americans actually wanted a member of this cult as their President in 2012, albeit, at least officially, a member of a reformed and 'moderate' branch.

I never once considered going to the police, Going to the police would have been going against the whole town. Everyone was [molesting]. The church never said it was all right, but it was treated nonchalantly.

Sara Hammon, 30, after enduring years of sexual abuse at the hands of her [FLDS] father and brothers.

All this is very reminiscent of what was happening on Pitcairn Island where an isolated fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventist cult had been established and where a culture had developed in which systematic abuse of young girls by older men was the norm, even being defended by some older women. Strong cult leaders who manage to convince their followers that they speak to God and get instructions from him, as Mormons claim to do, can and do abuse the power this gives them.

But what is informative is the way, when the abuse becomes so widespread, and especially when they come into contact with cultures where humanism is prevalent, many cult members eventually see it as immoral and repulsive, just as many Pitcairn Islanders did, and just as former victims of Mormon cults are doing. There is an innate human morality which sees through those imposed by religious cults and even eventually by mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam. Just as nominally Christian countries have now rejected much of what Christianity's holy book, the Bible, calls for and instructs because it is frankly repugnant to innate human decency, so Muslim countries will eventually overthrow the more repulsive diktats of the Qur'an, maybe cherry-picking the few good bits, just as some Christian societies have. It is this humane rejection of so much of the Bible which was obviously concerning William Lane Craig and his fundamentalist, would-be theocrat backers.

Human beings don't get their morals from religion. Where religions are civilised and humane it's because they have been tamed by civilised human beings and have been forced to adopt our standards. The Catholic Church, for example, is just beginning to come to terms with the fact that many people, even those still professing to be Catholics, are rejecting much of what it teaches and much of what it tolerated in the form of clerical abuse of power, hence the general air of crisis and decay pervading it from the top downwards. The fall in recruitment to the priesthood is as much to do with people rejecting what the church stands for as it is to do with the thought that power without real accountability no longer offers the opportunities for abuse that it once did.

When people no longer need excuses, and when people no longer tolerate a pretence of piety as a cover-all excuse, religions cease to have any purpose. Tweet

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More Loopy Religious Cults

Continuing with the series on religious cults, (see The Heavenly Peace of Jesus and Top Five Christian Cults), this blog looks at a few more religious cults from history.

A band of Thuggee

The Thuggee

The Thuggee cult, from which we get the English word 'thug' was an Indian Hindu cult devoted to the goddess Kali the consort of Shiva (The Destroyer).

The cult was first mentioned around 1356. Their speciality was joining bands of travellers and gradually gaining their confidence until the place and time were right, then they would ritually murder them by garotting them with a silk handkerchief, after which their bodies were robbed and buried.

The cult seems to have been put down by the British by 1870 having killed an estimated 2,000,000 Indian travellers.

Hassan-i-Sabbah

Assassins of Alamut

The Islamic cult that gave us the word 'assassin' for someone who carries out a political or contract killing. The name was originally a term of abuse derived from the Arabic 'Hashishin', for 'user of hashish'.

The cults origins are obscure but it was taken over by its legendary first grand master, Hassan-i Sabbah, a Persian Ismaili Muslim missionary of the Nizari order, to defend his mountain stronghold at Alamut in about 1091, in response to the First Crusade and the political turmoil this had caused in Persia.

The cult leaders gave their followers hashish, which they told them gave a glimpse of Heaven, so they could be persuaded not to fear death. They then sent them out to carry out political killings for clients. Often, the assassination took place in full public view to increase the kudos, and hence the price, of the cult but the Assassins were usually careful not to kill innocent bystanders as they believed this would discredit the order and lead to civil strife.

As they grew in strength, the cult expanded into Syria and at one point reputedly considered converting to Christianity so they could benefit from lower taxes then paid to the King of Jerusalem, Amalric I. Ironically, this plan came to nothing when the Assassin negotiators were assassinated by Christian knights.

The Alamut fortress was eventually overrun and by Mongols in 1256 and it's library completely destroyed, hence the obscurity of the order's origins. The Syrian stronghold was occupied by the Mamluk Turk, Sultan Beibers I in about 1265, though the Mamluks continued to make use of their services for a while.

Mokichi Okada

Church Of World Messianity

The Church of World Messianity is a Japanese cult, with offshoots in the Japanese community in Brazil, which was started by a Tokyo jeweller, Mokichi Okada in 1935.

Okada, a former member of the Shinto Oomoto sect, claimed he had received a special revelation from God in 1926 telling him about the healing power of divine light, or Johrei. He soon branched out into the quack medicine business opening a clinic for healing with divine light. Believers hold out their arm towards a sick person with their palm open. 'Divine light' flows down their arm and into the patient, allegedly healing them. It can't be seen or otherwise detected in any way known to science. The origin of this 'divine light' is a paper scroll with some writing by Mokichi Okada on it.

The clinic was closed down by Japanese authorities a year later as it violated Medical Practitioners' Law. Not forgetting his jewellery business, he required cult members to wear a pendant, bought from the cult, naturally. No scientific evidence for the efficacy of this treatment is known to exist.

Mokichi Okada soon became a multimillionaire and amassed a large private art collection, now housed in the private Mokichi Okada Association Corporation's Museum of Art in Atami, Japan.

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Top Five Christian Cults

Within religious circles, one man's cult seems to be another man's mainstream religion, but a few things seem to characterise modern 'New Age Religion' cults, apart from mysticism and rituals:

• Autocratic rule. Often claimed by 'divine right'. Usually dominated by one charismatic man regarded as the font of all 'wisdom' and frequently claiming direct divine guidance and instructions.
• Women play a subordinate role. Women are expected to be at the disposal of the senior men.
• Many cults are apocalyptic, believing some great disaster is about to befall the world, or the Second Coming of Jesus is imminent, and their leader is a prophet sent to prepare the world for it or to provide an elite who are to survive the apocalypse.
• Fundraising is a major preoccupation, with members either required to raise money by begging or selling the cult's produce, or to donate a large proportion, even all, of their income.
  
• Extremely rich leaders.
  

In fact, in many ways, the social structure of religious cults closely resembles the social structure of gorillas and the common chimpanzee.

1. 

   Elijah

   Church of Bible Understanding.

   This cult was started in New York in 1971 as 'The Forever Family' by a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and vacuum cleaner repair man, Stewart Traill, who had been expelled from the Pentecostal Church. He claims to be a reincarnation of Elijah, to know the exact date of the 'Second Coming' and to possess a unique ability to understand the true meaning of the word of God. Members were required to live in a commune and donate 90% of their earnings to the cult. All aspects of members lives are carefully controlled by a process of harsh criticism and public humiliation.
   
   The cult branched out into the carpet cleaning business, with "Christian Brothers Carpet Cleaning", and used van sales. As part of President Bush's 'Faith Based Initiatives' the cult is reported to receive US Federal Government funding for a 'mission' in Haiti where it indoctrinates Haitian children in return for food and clothing.
   
   Stewart Traill is reputed to have amassed a considerable fortune.

2. 

   Shoko Asahara

   Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth).

   A Japanese cult drawing partly on aspects of Christianity, particularly the Bible Book of Revelations. The cult was started by Shoko Asahara in 1984 in his one-bedroom Tokyo apartment, initially as yoga and meditation school.
   
   From this the cult diversified into publishing and, following an intense advertising campaign in which it claimed to offer a cure for physical illness and the realisation of life goals through positive thinking, it became one of the fastest growing religions in Japanese history. It's teachings were a mixture of Christianity, ancient Japanese teachings and the science fiction books of Isaac Azimov. Secretive religious practices involved the use of hallucinogenic substances like LSD, electric shocks and being hung upside down for prolonged periods.
   
   From this, the cult moved into extortion, holding cult members against their will and murder of opponents. Following a failed bid for election to political office as the 'Supreme Truth Party' the cult effectively declared war on society and began to amass weapons and manufacture sarin gas. This was used in a deadly attack on the Tokyo underground on 20 March 1995 in which 13 commuters were killed and up to 5,000 more were affected. On 5 May 1995 the cult attempted to detonate several hydrogen cyanide devices on the Tokyo underground, each of which was capable of killing up to 20,000 people. Asahara and several senior cult leaders were convicted and sentenced to death for the killings but to date, the sentences have not been carried out. [Update: Asahara and six followers were executed in 1918 as a punishment for the 1995 attacks and other crimes and the remaining six on death row were executed on 26 July that year. On New Year's Day 2019, a cult member drove a car into a crowd in Tokyo, to protest the executions, injuring at least 9 people, 1 seriously]
   
   The cult is still in existence, maintained by donations and has officially apologised for the attacks and claimed to have changed its ways. Its existence is guaranteed under Japan's constitutional freedom of religion.

3. 

   God

   The Unification Church (Moonies).

   Invented by South Korean Presbyterian Christian Sunday school teacher and electrical engineer, Sun Myung Moon, who declared himself to be the Christian Messiah, the 'Moonies' believe God has chosen South Korea to create Heaven on earth. One of Moon's practices was to hold mass ceremonies in which tens of thousands of followers were married to partners randomly allocated by Moon.
   
   Being God of course meant that Moon needed as much money as possible, so no donation was ever too large. In later life, he concentrated more on material things like running his multi billion dollar business empire than on the spiritual needs of his followers.
   
   Bizarrely for a god, Moon died on 3 September 2012.

4. 

   David Brandt Berg

   Children of God (now known as the Family of Love and Family International).

   Children of God for formed by 'Christian and Missionary Alliance' pastor, David Brandt Berg amongst the Californian Hippy communities in 1968. It taught that sex, even with children, was natural and right. Female members of the cult were sent out to sell sexual favours to men to show God's love, and to solicit donations to the cult in a practice called 'Flirty Fishing' or 'FFing'. A refinement of this technique was to work through escort agencies ('ESing'). In effect, the cult was an organised prostitution and child abuse ring.
   
   

   I am quite satisfied that most of the women who engaged in this activity and the subsequent refinement of ESing, (which was finding men through escort agencies), did so in the belief that they were spreading God's word. But I am also totally satisfied that that was not Berg's only purpose. He and his organization had another and more sordid reason. They were procuring women to become common prostitutes. They were knowingly living in part on the earnings of prostitution. That was criminal activity. Their attempts to deny this must be dismissed as cant and hypocrisy. To deny that the girls were acting as prostitutes because 'we are not charging but we expect people to show their thanks and their appreciation and they ought to give more for love than if we charged them' is an unacceptable form of special pleading. The 'FFers handbook' told the girls that fishing could be fun but fun did not pay the bills. 'You've got to catch a few to make the fun pay for itself. So don't do it for nothing'. - Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Ward – 1995^[11]
   
   

   Source: Wikipedia - Family International

   
   

5. 

   Jesus' Relative, An Evolutionary Kingdom Above Human

   Heaven's Gate

   Based on the Christian Bible Book of Revelations, Heaven's Gate was the last in a series or renamed and reinvented cults invented by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Following a heart attack during which Applewhite claimed to have had a NDE he decided that he and his nurse, Bonnie Nettles, were the 'two witnesses'.
   
   

   And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
   
   

   Revelations 11:3

   
   The cult taught a mixture of apocalyptic Christianity, science fiction inspired partly by the TV Series 'Star Trek', and a bastardized version of evolution. Marshall claimed to be directly related to Jesus and so to be a member of an "Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human". Apparently, their mission was to warn that earth was about to be cleansed, renewed and refurbished prior to recycling.
   
   In three batches over the three days 24, 25 & 26 March 1997, Marshall and 38 Heaven's Gate cultists committed suicide so they could be taken to the 'Next Level' aboard the spaceship Marshall had told them was behind the Hale-Bop comet. Only one member survived, having left the commune a few days before so he could continue the cult's work.

Of course, as we can see from this small sample of Christian cults (weren't all Christian sects, and indeed Christianity itself, once cults?) one essential ingredient for cult formation is a supply of gullible and credulous or otherwise vulnerable individuals ready and willing to suspend their own rational thought processes and so be exploited by the cult leaders, often in return for nothing more than a sense of belonging to a group. For an understanding of how this works, see 'Whatever Possesses Religious People?'.

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The Heavenly Peace Of Jesus

Hong Xiuquan

An interesting BBC Radio 4 program a couple of days ago on the "Taiping Rebellion" in Southern China, 1850-1864. What made my ears prick up was the fact that this rebellion was lead by a fundamentalist Christian zealot.

I'll come on to him later; first a little background:

At the time of the rebellion, China was ruled by the Manchurian Quing Dynasty which was regarded as foreign by the Han Chinese. The Manchus had invaded China from the north east in 1644 taking advantage of the disarray following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty during a peasants' revolt in Beijing.

China, under the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century, suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of the Western powers; in particular, the humiliating defeat in 1842 by the United Kingdom in the First Opium War. The Qing government, led by ethnic Manchus, were seen by much of the Chinese population, who were mainly Han Chinese, as an ineffective and corrupt foreign regime. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic leader Hong Xiuquan, a member of the Hakka community, a Han-Chinese sub-group that inhabited southern China but traced their ancestries back to northerners in the Song Dynasty. Having arrived too late to acquire the best land, they were engaged in constant conflicts.⁵ Among these serious problems were the prevalence of female infanticide, creating massive imbalances with shortages of women being worst in the primary Taiping centers.

Wikipedia - Taiping Rebellion