Author Topic: A cult?  (Read 56469 times)

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Offline GregFL

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A cult?
« Reply #465 on: June 12, 2005, 05:35:00 PM »
And then our idiot president wants to give them more money under "faith based iniatives".

Jefferson would bitch slap Bush on sight....
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Offline Nihilanthic

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A cult?
« Reply #466 on: June 12, 2005, 06:18:00 PM »
Jefferson would probably walk around in his circa 1790's getup with a cane and pimp-slap everyone in washington DC left and right before hanging Karl Rove from a tree by a HEMP rope, and then basically dismissing the whole government for runoff elections.

 :grin: Hey, a man can dream!

Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side and it holds the universe together.
--Jedi Knight school drop out.

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Offline GregFL

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A cult?
« Reply #467 on: June 12, 2005, 06:20:00 PM »
:nworthy:
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #468 on: April 25, 2009, 02:44:17 AM »
"There are all kinds of scientific things you can say about religion, which religious people tend to not want to hear.
You can say, for instance, that Mormonism is objectively less likely to be true than Christianity.
Why can you say this?
Because Mormonism is just Christianity plus some rather stupid ideas."

-Sam Harris


     

Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion
By Christopher Hitchens      

         "If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future "revelations" after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world's fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword." He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people's bibles.
       
        In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being "a disorderly person and an impostor." That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or "necromantic" powers. However, within four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) as the discoverer of the "Book of Mormon." He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become that the region became known as the "Burned-Over District," in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which, unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess the signs of an ancient history.
       
         A vanished and vanquished Indian civilization had bequeathed a considerable number of burial mounds, which when randomly and amateurishly desecrated were found to contain not merely bones but also quite advanced artifacts of stone, copper, and beaten silver. There were eight of these sites within twelve miles of the underperforming farm which the Smith family called home. There were two equally stupid schools or factions who took a fascinated interest in such matters: the first were the gold-diggers and treasure-diviners who brought their magic sticks and crystals and stuffed toads to bear in the search for lucre, and the second those who hoped to find the resting place of a lost tribe of Israel. Smith's cleverness was to be a member of both groups, and to unite cupidity with half-baked anthropology.
       
        The actual story of the imposture is almost embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover. (It has been best told by Dr. Fawn Brodie, whose 1945 book No Man Knows My History was a good-faith attempt by a professional historian to put the kindest possible interpretation on the relevant "events.") In brief, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited (three times, as is customary) by an angel named Moroni. The said angel informed him of a book, "written upon gold plates," which explained the origins of those living on the North American continent as well as the truths of the gospel. There were, further, two magic stones, set in the twin breastplates Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament, that would enable Smith himself to translate the aforesaid book. After many wrestlings, he brought this buried apparatus home with him on September 21, 1827, about eighteen months after his conviction for fraud. He then set about producing a translation.
       
        The resulting "books" turned out to be a record set down by ancient prophets, beginning with Nephi, son of Lephi, who had fled Jerusalem in approximately 600 BC and come to America. Many battles, curses, and afflictions accompanied their subsequent wanderings and those of their numerous progeny. How did the books turn out to be this way? Smith refused to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other eyes to view them would mean death. But he encountered a problem that will be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely glib and fluent as a debater and story-weaver, as many accounts attest. But he was illiterate, at least in the sense that while he could read a little, he could not write. A scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of Isaiah 29, verses 11–12, concerning the repeated injunction to "Read," Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead.

        Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.) After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day.

        Mormon partisans sometimes say, as do Muslims, that this cannot have been fraudulent because the work of deception would have been too much for one poor and illiterate man. They have on their side two useful points: if Muhammad was ever convicted in public of fraud and attempted necromancy we have no record of the fact, and Arabic is a language that is somewhat opaque even to the fairly fluent outsider. However, we know the Koran to be made up in part of earlier books and stories, and in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America. This then popular work by a pious loony, claiming that the American Indians originated in the Middle East, seems to have started the other Smith on his gold-digging in the first place. A further two thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken from the New Testament. Of the three hundred and fifty "names" in the book, more than one hundred come straight from the Bible and a hundred more are as near stolen as makes no difference. (The great Mark Twain famously referred to it as "chloroform in print," but I accuse him of hitting too soft a target, since the book does actually contain "The Book of Ether.") The words "and it came to pass" can be found at least two thousand times, which does admittedly have a soporific effect. Quite recent scholarship has exposed every single other Mormon "document" as at best a scrawny compromise and at worst a pitiful fake, as Dr. Brodie was obliged to notice when she reissued and updated her remarkable book in 1973.

        Like Muhammad, Smith could produce divine revelations at short notice and often simply to suit himself (especially, and like Muhammad, when he wanted a new girl and wished to take her as another wife). As a result, he overreached himself and came to a violent end, having meanwhile excommunicated almost all the poor men who had been his first disciples and who had been browbeaten into taking his dictation. Still, this story raises some very absorbing questions, concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes.

        It must be said for the "Latter-day Saints" (these conceited words were added to Smith's original "Church of Jesus Christ" in 1833) that they have squarely faced one of the great difficulties of revealed religion. This is the problem of what to do about those who were born before the exclusive "revelation," or who died without ever having the opportunity to share in its wonders. Christians used to resolve this problem by saying that Jesus descended into hell after his crucifixion, where it is thought that he saved or converted the dead. There is indeed a fine passage in Dante's Inferno where he comes to rescue the spirits of great men like Aristotle, who had presumably been boiling away for centuries until he got around to them. (In another less ecumenical scene from the same book, the Prophet Muhammad is found being disemboweled in revolting detail.) The Mormons have improved on this rather backdated solution with something very literal-minded. They have assembled a gigantic genealogical database at a huge repository in Utah, and are busy filling it with the names of all people whose births, marriages, and deaths have been tabulated since records began. This is very useful if you want to look up your own family tree, and as long as you do not object to having your ancestors becoming Mormons. Every week, at special ceremonies in Mormon temples, the congregations meet and are given a certain quota of names of the departed to "pray in" to their church. This retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi "final solution," and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a "lost tribe": the murdered Jews of Europe. For all its touching inefficacy, this exercise seemed in poor taste. I sympathize with the American Jewish Committee, but I nonetheless think that the followers of Mr. Smith should be congratulated for hitting upon even the most simpleminded technological solution to a problem that has defied solution ever since man first invented religion."

-An excerpt from Christopher Hitchen's book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Spoils Everything.
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #469 on: April 25, 2009, 02:50:31 AM »
Oops.  That was supposed to be:

God is not Great: how Religion Poisons Everything.
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Offline FemanonFatal2.0

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #470 on: April 25, 2009, 09:41:53 PM »
wow this one was pulled from the depths wasn't it?

I recently caught a good documentary into the interworkings of religious cults on the E! network "THS Investigates: Cults, Religion & Mind Control" I wasn't able to find any clips or a torrent to download but maybe someone else can find one.

Here's another one I found, its not as good but it still resonates. The fundamentalist LDS communities seem to operate in the same manner as the WWASP programs, the similarities are uncanny.

Religion or Mind Control

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #471 on: April 25, 2009, 09:45:20 PM »
its not a cult and doesn't practise mind control. Hate when those terms are thrown around because then you have no word for the real thing, and destroy possible understanding of it.
Athiest, BTW,
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Offline FemanonFatal2.0

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #472 on: April 25, 2009, 10:25:23 PM »
lol what rock have you been living under?

Being an atheist I would think you would see things a bit differently than the systematically disillusioned masses.

Consider this for a second, Religions and Cults are really the same thing... just opposite sides of the spectrum. So most would assume a religion like Christianity (which is simply a watered down version of Catholicism and Judaism) would be at the positive side of the spectrum where as a cult like "Satanic Cults" (btw check out this hilarious article ) would be at the very end of the spectrum. Where would Mormonism stand on that spectrum? Well I think if we categorized it according the the methods of mind control used and depending on the severity of the nonsensical doctrine (including any abuses and immoralities that are rationalized by the doctrine) You would find that Mormonism could very well be categorized as a religious cult. Of course I am more referring to the fundamentalist LDS church with members living in "communities" where its widely accepted to practice polygamy, as well as marrying off of teenage brides. The Modernized church of LDS may differ from the fundamentalist LDS communities in several ways, but I don't have any doubt that mind control still exists within the church.

Are you familiar with what mind control even is?

check this out Freedom of mind "B.I.T.E."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
[size=150]When Injustice Becomes Law
...Rebellion Becomes Duty...[/size]




[size=150]WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES
CAN I HAVE YOUR FLAT SCREEN?[/size]

Offline try another castle

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #473 on: April 26, 2009, 03:55:44 AM »
Quote
We don't handle snakes and dance around or anything weird like that.


What the fuck is wrong with handling snakes and dancing around? That's some serious bad-ass hard-core pagan awesomeness right there. Even if they *do* invoke jesus.

If the mormons did that, I might have a little bit of respect for them. Snake handlers care about one thing: their love of and faith in god, which manifests in the snake dance (a very ancient custom, btw). Mormons, on the other hand, do things like shuttle money off to influence the voting of ballot measures in other states. (Which, btw, is unconstitutional.) You've got fingers in many government pies, trying to influence policy to make decisions based solely off of YOUR interests, as dictated by your religion. You run a whole fucking state, for fuck's sake, and you've got shitloads of money, power and influence to do so.


So maybe you guys don't dance with snakes, but you sure emulate their stereotype nicely.


I wish folks would stop bashing the snake people. I'd sit down and have a beer with any one of those people any day of the freakin week. Twice on tuesday, even. (Xcept I don't think they drink.)

I'd never sup with a die-hard mormon.


I don't care whether the Mormons are a cult or not. (They are barely a religion.) Rather, they are a controlling political interest, and that's all that concerns me.


Quote
Here's another one I found, its not as good but it still resonates. The fundamentalist LDS communities seem to operate in the same manner as the WWASP programs, the similarities are uncanny.


You *do* know that WWASPS was spearheaded by the Mormon church, right? Maia talks about it in her book. You wouldnt *believe* how many programs out there were started by Mormon interests.
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Offline Oz girl

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #474 on: April 26, 2009, 09:21:53 AM »
Any religion that someone once disliked is called a cult. If you can have friends outside of the faith and walk away any time you want without having to fear anything I dont think it is a cult.
I don't know if mormonism is. It certainly does not seem any more or less crazy than most & it's followers appear to be as socially diverse as any other. But it's links to this industry and the fact that it's more prominent senior members have been involved in particularly brutal schools like utah boy's ranch is a big worry. There is a certain protestant work ethic mentality and obsession with the evils of popular culture taken to seriously wierd extremes that is common to many mormon institutions within this industry but I am not sure whether this is part of the mormon churches philosophy or if they stumbled upon a wider cultural obsession and ran with it when it became evident that there was a dollar to be made.
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Offline FemanonFatal2.0

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #475 on: April 26, 2009, 10:00:23 PM »
Quote from: "try another castle"
You *do* know that WWASPS was spearheaded by the Mormon church, right? Maia talks about it in her book. You wouldnt *believe* how many programs out there were started by Mormon interests.

Yes, I am very well aware. Just making a comment as to the fact that the "cult-like" mind control exists just as much in the mormon religion as it does in the programs. Its funny how the modern Mormon church claims to have stepped out of the fundementalist ideals but as soon as they get the chance they channeled their uber mind control religion into a big business money maker.


Quote from: "Oz girl"
There is a certain protestant work ethic mentality and obsession with the evils of popular culture taken to seriously weird extremes that is common to many Mormon institutions within this industry but I am not sure whether this is part of the Mormon churches philosophy or if they stumbled upon a wider cultural obsession and ran with it when it became evident that there was a dollar to be made.

I'm pretty sure its a bit of both.

BTW when I was in CBS, the only church the upper levels were allowed to attend was the Mormon church.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
[size=150]When Injustice Becomes Law
...Rebellion Becomes Duty...[/size]




[size=150]WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES
CAN I HAVE YOUR FLAT SCREEN?[/size]

Offline Anonymous

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #476 on: April 26, 2009, 10:57:10 PM »
mormonism is a deadly virus. luckily, it only infects stupid people.
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Offline Che Gookin

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #477 on: April 27, 2009, 05:32:32 AM »
Mormons have always amused me. "We don't drink," chug chug chug..

The Mormon bottles, the parties they throw out in the woods, to whatever else it is that they do to skirt their own rules never fails to provide quality amusement. But mainly the Mormon college girls.. God damn..

How many of them end up on, "Girls Gone Wild" over spring break?

Quite the few I'd wager to guess.
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #478 on: April 27, 2009, 05:59:51 PM »
I met a mormon girl once.

i got her really stoned and had sex with her.
then i played some music for her....the beatles....which she never heard or heard of before.

then she decided she wasnt mormon anymore.
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Offline psy

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Re: A cult?
« Reply #479 on: April 27, 2009, 06:45:31 PM »
Quote from: "FemanonFatal2.0"
Quote from: "try another castle"
You *do* know that WWASPS was spearheaded by the Mormon church, right? Maia talks about it in her book. You wouldnt *believe* how many programs out there were started by Mormon interests.

Yes, I am very well aware. Just making a comment as to the fact that the "cult-like" mind control exists just as much in the mormon religion as it does in the programs.

That's not true. I might not like the LDS church, but it's not quite a cult, and what their members go through is more along the lines of indoctrination, which is very different than thought reform.  Read Singer's continuum of influence and persuasion, also her criteria of what constitutes a cult.  Even i the LDS church were a cult, it's "thought reform" is nothing near what goes on in your average program.

The key thing for me is a lack of informed consent in a cult.  You can't really say that people going into the LDS church (or any church) don't know what they're getting into.  With a cult, you don't fully know what you'll be going through, much of the teaching is layers on layers of secrets, and the overall purpose of the organization is singular: to make money for those on top and debilitate people so a good portion of their time is spent in service of the group.  The LDS church is pretty open about their purpose to spread their religion and promote their various agendas.
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