Skip to main content

A Blueprint for the Cults

By Agnosticator ~

It can easily be argued (and I am) that American religious cults owe the New Testament for their existence because it contains a blueprint for the cults. The believer is told to focus upon doing God's will, while surrendering his own will, family, and all worldly possessions to God. Next he must separate himself from the "world" by living in a community of believers (see Mt.19:21, 1Thess.3:14, 1Cor.5:9-13, lCor.6:l). So why are we continually shocked and appalled by Christian cults?

200X Blueprint : DLN 001Image by LZ Creations via Flickr
The story of Ananias and Sapphira illustrates the importance of this communal life. They sold some of their own land and gave most of the money from its sale to the apostles, to be distributed to anyone who needed it. The married couple made one mistake by lying so as to keep a portion of their own proceeds for themselves. So of course, God struck them dead as an example to anyone who does not obey and give all their possessions to the commune (Acts 5:1-11).

Believers are expected to surrender their independent, rational capacity for thinking-their minds-so God can do his Will through them. But it isn't God's Will to surrender to the leader of the cult. Or is it? Someone has to decide how to follow God every step of the way since the Bible is vague about all the details. God also chooses leaders for the sheep to follow throughout His Holy Book. Since humans are easily manipulated by authority (see Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority"), God's slaves and sheep are in over their heads. Inevitably, followers will pay a price and their tragedies will make the news.

Far from being harmless, Christianity is potentially dangerous both to the believer and to others. By asserting it has the only Truth, and that this Truth must be obeyed, the Bible denigrates truth as a concept. Truth must be verifiable and "of this world" in order to be relevant to our reality. Otherwise, reality itself is denigrated along with it. How we deal with truth proves us to be either in or out of touch with reality, mature or immature, and ignorant or knowledgeable.

When I became a liberal Christian (after my fundagelical phase), I believed that many layers of false, man-made doctrines and beliefs had to be peeled away until the core of God's Truth was uncovered to reveal true Christianity. However, in attempting to do so, I discovered what I had mistaken as being core truths were merely veneer. These texts covered up the more numerous texts that betrayed what was stated by the few humanitarian ones. The veneer was stripped away, ending my Christian walk. These anti-human doctrines cannot be avoided.

Far from being harmless, Christianity is potentially dangerous both to the believer and to others. It is all too easy for church leaders to lead the sheep to slaughter while feeding them Truth which will set them free from this life.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro