Something fun to think about: English has a shit lexicon for talking about wrongdoing.
We have sin, which is wrongdoing against God (as informed by our ministries, hence why thinking sexy thoughts is sinful but war profiteering is not.)
We have crime which is wrongdoing against the state, which is why exposing embarrassments of the regime gets you more prison time than murder one.
When it comes to wrongdoing that doesn’t involve church or state, we have to use a phrase that awkwardly fits:
crime against humanity
sin against nature
Our laws tend to function around sin and crime (yes, even here in the States, where there’s an alleged wall of separation.) When there are victims, we first see to it the state is satisfied before we look to the well being of those affected. In many cases, the victims get no aid, no reparations, nothing.
Wrondoing can be neither crime nor sin, and still affect:
other individuals
the community
a given demographic (black neighbors, gays in your community, women)
the environment (including biodiversity / wildlife, entire ecosystems)
the people of a region or a nation (independent of the entity of the state)
the international community (international law and international courts exist, but they have very little power to enforce that law, hence why Putin and George W. Bush are both at large)
Most wrongdoing done by religious institutions are disregarded as sins. And most wrongdoing done by state agents are disregarded as crime. And then much wrongdoing is too complex for courts to understand or establish jurisdiction (The hedge-fund shenanigans resulting in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis of 2008 or the OxyContin lobbying / marketing campaign by Purdue pharma resulting in the current opioid epidemic).
So, in this case, newspeak is here, and when we have to sort out our own morality, it helps to be able to figure out who is affected, and who or what we’re looking to safeguard when we’re making a proscription.
Yep, the only way to form a cult that amasses wealth and draws hot groupies is though fear and hate rhetoric. And I’m not willing to create a ministry that’s abusive and hurtful for personal gain.
Some people do start benign NRMs based on mild virtues like kindness, compassion, mercy and generosity, but those aren’t the ones that get huge and go nationwide…not while retaining their core values, at any rate.
I don’t judge anyone who follows a religion, but I like this quote. I have a grandfather that has more patience than a saint and helps other a little too much risking going into debt and he’s lost faith in religion and his church. He said “I don’t know what there is after death but if there’s a heaven then the good I do in life will be enough.” The church didn’t treat him well despite his kind generous nature and i agree with him that feels like some form of organized crime. I’m atheist and I never learned to blindly follow like my older family members did. It’s strange to see them tirelessly running around doing chores for their church but it makes them happy I guess so I don’t question it.
"The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own”. - Frank Zappa
There’s another quote of his but I don’t think it’s true for everyone.
Yep, the only way to form a cult that amasses wealth and draws hot groupies is though fear and hate rhetoric.
Idk about that. There have been a number of very successful cults that amassed wealth and hot groupies through excess affection and utopianism. In fact, one popular form of recruiting cult members is Love Bombing which typically involves existing members bombarding an individual with attention, affection, and romantic advances. While this is often paired with techniques for isolating the individual from the outside world, it is extremely effective on people who already feel alienated and isolated.
If you get into the weeds of how all sorts of groups from QAnon to Cutco to church youth groups operate, they inevitably involve providing these intense positive emotional experiences to new prospective members. Hell, look at the Lakewood Church in Houston or the Baha’i temple. Their entire model is based around these lukewarm vibes sessions, very reminiscent of 60s-era charisma cults.
Some people do start benign NRMs based on mild virtues like kindness, compassion, mercy and generosity, but those aren’t the ones that get huge and go nationwide
Lots of MLMs are structured around the idea that these businesses are a surrogate family and that participating in the sales campaigns is a kind of good deed that you’re doing for others. Amway, Mary Kay, and NXIVM all got big doing these ostensibly social and charitable projects to gin up membership, before exploiting folks who put their trust in them.
Billionaire philanthropy groups follow similar patterns, with individuals drawn in on the idea that the Ford Foundation or the Hoover Institute or the Carnegie Foundation or the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation are doing legitimate good deeds. Only in hindsight do you realize you’re being chewed up and spit out - manipulated to provide lots of cheap/free labor, to take on legally/morally dubious tasks, to generate positive PR while submitting to abusive bosses - by a core of organization insiders who see you as a useful idiot.
Love Bombing and the like are recruitment tactics, which is how you get lonely or angry people to look at and engage with the movement. Much the way there’s some sound personal advice in Dianetics the point is to get the layperson interested in becoming an initiate. This is one of the cult orgy spots, since yes, some movements encouraged their recruiters to engage sexually with with their marks, not approved by the mainstream since it runs contrary with the anti-free-love themes of Christianity. (Most NRMs by far identify as Christian, though that’s its own deep dive.)
(The other cult orgy spot comes in the harems or proclivities of the movement leaders, who often will draw an endless supply of groupies much like athletes, politicians or actors. Or, as per the case of Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn, can extort attractive workers for sex with low risk of consequence, which seems to run congruous with executive branches of large businesses. The Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon, a Tau Buddhist commune is a rare special case for the US, but the local population and the state freaked out not because too much sex was happening, but because it was insufficiently Christian for the 1980s US.)
Once someone is a novice or a practicing disciple, then the movement needs mechanisms to get them willing to labor long hours on cheap food and minimal medical care (sometimes dealing with supply scarcity and disease), and that’s when the promise of a big payoff soon comes.
In the cases of MLMs, the promise is you’ll get rich too when you are selling AMWAY products to customers, or the next iteration of resellers down the line. This is why doomsdays are popular among NRMs, which have to be imminent. This year. Preferably a month away. Then they know they only have to work a few weeks until the rapture, and it will all be worth it. It’s also why the doomsday cult story doesn’t end but gets really scary after the doomsday comes and goes without any exciting events. A friend of mine was an AMWAY seller for some time, and had a regular buddy that would show up in a super-fancy suit to come and coach her on selling. In retrospect, it was pretty creepy.
Then the movement’s prognosticators may reschedule the apocalypse, usually justifying it with a misreading or new information or whatever, but their service force gets increasingly restless with each one, and something needs to happen. This is the point when special God’s Chosen mischief squads are deployed to engage in terrorism, or assassinate government officials or whatever, and if they don’t already have the attention of law enforcement, they’re now regarded as a clear and present danger. Stand offs and mass suicides follow.
The Millerite Great Disappointment when the second advent failed to manifest between 1831 and 1844 enshrines into US history that life goes on and that your flock of loyal followers get disillusioned and restless if the show fails to start at the designated time, too many times. Thankfully, mass suicides are rare, but it means we can’t yet trace a consistent path from the cult building intentional communities and giant statues to when they’re shooting at officials and drinking the flavor-aid.
Just in case anyone feels the entrepreneurial holy spirit flowing flowing through them and wants to become a legally ordained minister, www.themonastery.org can hook you up for the low low cost of your email. Ive been a minister through them for over a decade. I originally did it as a joke but you can actually use it to do all the priestly things like perform weddings and stuff.
Many many people that go through real seminaries come out atheists, but then need income so they become pastors. My wife went to seminary when she was questioning her religion and after learning about it was an atheist. She didn’t become a pastor tho.
I see this sentiment in these type of threads alot. Think about what you are saying. Just because you can be atheist and not kill people does not mean others can. Some people really need Jesus.
Morals? Try laziness. It sounds utterly exhausting to peddle shovelfuls of bull excrement all day after day after day. To soothe and stroke the constant irrational, ignorance-fueled beliefs, anxieties and xenophobias of “your brothers and sisters in Christ”.
I’m going to throw this out to see what others think.
Personally, I don’t believe in “morality”. Morality is arbitrary and, therefore, inherently abusive.
What I do believe in is ethics. Ethics, by its very definition, requires explanation and justification. Morality does not. Morality can be - and usually is - little more than a dictate; a tool abused by the powerful to maintain control, power, authority, and privilege.
That doofus who made the McDonald’s documentary was given a tv show for a bit. His idea was to have people who are opposites swap lives. The religious moron who swapped with an atheist kept saying that if you didn’t get your morality from the christian bible, where do you get it. The fucking guy couldn’t imagine people having an innate sense of right and wrong unless the church spoon-fed it to them.
This line of thought gets even more terrifying with the rise of churches endorsing further and further right ideals - we shouldn’t feed the hungry, we should persecute those secular organizations that do. The church shouldn’t help those dirty immigrants fleeing horrific living conditions, we should send them right back there since it’s “god’s will”.
Parotioners already don’t think for themselves, it’s trivial to shift the Overton Window on what being a “good christian” means from the original teachings of Jesus to the rants from orange Jesus.
Not really scary, The very question reveals an unconscious moral sense. Be afraid of the Christian who is jealous that Atheists don’t have to follow rules.
Apparently, atheists are amoral degenerates because they don’t fear god or divine wrath or hell. Waxed ineloquently.
When he stopped to catch his breath; I asked if he thought i was amoral.
He didn’t catch the warning flares. Went on to more or less repeat all of what he said, adding in that this lack of fear is why they need to punish us.
So, i asked him what Christ’s last instructions were. He stared at me blankly. Had to think about that.
Finally he said “spread the gospel…” as if maybe it was a trap. (Hey, some of his survival instincts are still working…)
So, I asked if he really thought that he was doing a great job of that right now. He looked confused. So I asked him what the gospel was
“The news of christs sacrifice and his love for everyone…”
So, I asked him what divine wrath and judgment has to do with it. So he went on a massive diatribe again about god’s judgement and how if they didn’t were all fucked.
“It’s a good thing I don’t believe in your skydaddy, then. A fairy tale can’t fuck for shit. Oh. And can we talk about how the only reason you’re a good person is divine wrath?”
The fun part was he filed a complaint with HR. Apparently I was the one harassing him. (And apparently the Dumbass forgot that he worked for a contract security company. We have security cameras… everywhere, including in the waiting lobby’s coffee service where he had cornered me.)(he got told to shut up. And then quite because of PeRsEcUtIoN)
Yep. I had someone “explain” to me that the only reason I had morals was that I was a good god fearing Christian. Because they couldn’t fathom the idea that someone could treat others well and not want to harm anyone without fearing god. When I said I’m an atheist they absolutely refused to believe me. Like they walked away from the conversation convinced I am Christian solely because I’d never killed anyone.
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