When does a religious cult go from Heaven’s-Gate-crazy to accepted establishment religion?
That’s the question on my mind as I chuckle over the news that Al Sharpton, devotee of the Magic Dead Jew religion, is in trouble for casting aspersions on the beliefs of Mitt Romney, devotee of the Magic Underwear religion.
Remember the Heaven’s Gate people, the ones who all committed suicide because they believed that the Hale-Bopp comet signalled the arrival of the heavenly spacecraft that would whisk them away to their destiny?
See, all the revealed religions pretty much start out like that. Comets, magic underwear, resurrected corpses. The key to graduating from Nutcase Cult to Respected Religion is all in the staying power. Obviously the Heaven’s Gate people fumbled the ball right off the bat with the mass suicide thing, so you’ll want to bear that in mind if you’re thinking of starting your own religion. But if your cult sticks around, maybe loses some of the weirder practices, maybe puts a little effort into blending with the rest of society, then you’ve got a shot.
Your first goal will be to achieve what we might call Scientologist Level: everyone still thinks you’re batshit insane, but they’re nice to you in person and have you over for parties. (It helps if you’re rich.) The next level, which will probably take your group at least a century to achieve, is Mormon Level: knowledge of your cult’s origins is fading among the general populace. People think of you as a slightly strange but acceptable minority religion. You’re on your way!
The ultimate level you want to get to, of course, is Establishment Religion That Is So Old Nobody Remembers It Started as a Batshit-Crazy Cult, which is such an unwieldy name that I’m just going to refer to it as Al Sharpton Level. Note that this level is not merely a matter of being an establishment religion, which is something that can happen within just a couple of centuries if you’re lucky enough to have a conqueror or two on your side. No, Al Sharpton Level is when your religion is so old that everyone regards it as profoundly, incontestably, indisputably normal. It takes a long time for a religion to accrue that level of mossy gravitas. Christianity has a couple of thousand years under its belt.
But the pace of cultural evolution is speeding up, so if you’re starting a new cult, buck up. Your religion could go mainstream sooner than you think. I won’t be surprised* if Mormonism itself reaches Al Sharpton Level within the next century or two (in which case we’ll have to rename Mormon Level, won’t we?). Just think: people will pray to Our Father Who Art On Kolob. There will be Magic Underwear boutiques on every corner. Children in Sunday school will learn to talk through their hats, just like Joseph Smith. Those checkout-line books for baby names and pet names will be joined by “Secret Names For Your Wives When They Die!”
And it will all seem completely normal.
*****
*Yes, I’ll be watching. My religion guarantees me eternal life on the planet Gliese 581C.
27 Responses to “When does a religious cult go from Heaven’s-Gate-crazy to accepted establishment religion?”
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Infidel says:
You and I, made of the same as stars, and the universe, all the same stuff. Was Job a seperate religion at one time?
May 10th, 2007 at 9:47 am EST -
Gwen says:
when your religion is so old that everyone regards it as profoundly, incontestably, indisputably normal. It takes a long time for a religion to accrue that level of mossy gravitas. Christianity has a couple of thousand years under its belt.
Yup. One unfortunate (to me) side effect of that is that the more batshit elements [like the basic weirdness of the incarnation, the resurrection, the "love your neighbour as yourself" thing, the Sermon on the Mount, and that consuming the body and blood of God thing] tend to fade out of the public discourse about the religion. It becomes all polite and grandmotherly - and conservative, of course. Which is something of a waste, if you think the batshit elements are where all the strength, the radical potential, of the thing lies in the first place.
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Infidel says:
In Sumer “the gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. If the temples/gods ruled each city it was for their mutual survival and benefit - the temples organized the mass labor projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple which only towards the end of the third millenium were they able to avoid by a payment of silver instead. The temple-centered farming communities of Sumer had a social stability that enabled them to survive for four millenia.
Hmmm. four thousand years. Of course we now know they were totally wrong shit you get these batshits running the country like it meant something to God and we’re toast. Seriously though, there has got to be a realization, when is the last time a president has been taken to task for invoking God? during a press conference. “Mr. President, you said last week you thought the victims families could be sure their loved ones were with God, can you elaborate on that?” -
Violet says:
Sumer didn’t have a revealed religion, or if they did it’s been lost to history.
Also, Sumer lasted about 1000 years, not 4000.
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Infidel says:
Not revealed? What of Ishtar?
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Violet says:
A revealed religion is one based on a divine revelation to particular persons at a particular time, e.g., Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, the Branch Davidians, Scientology, etc., etc.
The ancient polytheistic relgions, like that of Sumer, are not revealed religions. They didn’t have a clear starting point or a prophetic founder. They evolved over time from the religion of the earliest human settlements in a given area.
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Infidel says:
Oh. I thought since Ishtar took all her clothes off on her way throught the seven shades of shit ending up naked, taking the throne, and then being turned into a rancid piece of meat, that that qualified her as having been revealed and worship of her a revealed religious experience- I stand corrected.
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simply wondered says:
goddamn atheist anthropologists…
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Infidel says:
Maybe these later religions required more proof, and at last today the bar has been raised to not only do you have to proclaim your actual meeting and talking with but I must also- tough sell.
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Violet says:
goddamn atheist anthropologists…
You mean me? I don’t consider myself an atheist, actually. If by God we mean the ground of being or whatever, then obviously we can’t possibly know what’s going on. Existence itself is an unfathomable mystery. But I have no hesitation about saying that most of the extant religions are rather silly and primitive attempts to explain that mystery. I often compare god and religion to the stars — god may exist, but we are in no better position to know what’s really going on than our ancient ancestors were to understand what the little lights in the sky were. Campfires of skydwellers, holes in the sphere, divine beings…
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Violet says:
Infidel, it’s funny you should mention the Descent of Innana (earlier Sumerian version of descent of Ishtar) because that represents the ancient prototype of the Dying and Rising God — a motif exploited by Christianity, obviously.
Most revealed religions are built upon deep cultural foundations, with bits and pieces of the extant religious culture.
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Infidel says:
I had been led there on a search for Job, thinking how much more universal can you get then God is agin me, and yet if that is the case then there is a God and by God I’ll show what faith I got ’cause in that case I wouldn’t be here if not for God. (all “him”s removed in the interest of non-misogyne) I’m such a pig!~ proof reading for spelling and catching myself with an inalterable leaning towards a male God.
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simply wondered says:
‘but we are in no better position to know what’s really going on than our ancient ancestors were to understand what the little lights in the sky were.’
they are angels dancing. next, please…
(i have decided to know things - i am a born-again knowstick) accepted-establishment-religion status here i come -
cicely says:
(i have decided to know things - i am a born-again knowstick) accepted-establishment-religion status here i come…
You’ll have to change your name first. ‘Simply wondered’ just won’t do…;)
I recently watched a tv series called ‘The Story of God’, about the origins and paths of the abrahamic religions. The writer and narrator (who’s name I forget but could delve around and find as a matter of politeness and respect - just not right now) and who is Jewish, talked about a ‘principle of uncertainty’ to which he thought we ought to aspire. That sounded like a good idea to me. I do tend to refer to myself as an atheist, probably because I’m anti-god and religion as a package, but I guess I’m really, like you, Violet, anti-certainty about stuff - big stuff - that no-one can yet really know - particularly when oppressive rules get made because of it. (I like the ‘campfires of skydwellers’ image, btw.) Agnostic seems like a word lacking any kind of punch to me, because I want to convey the certain-ness of my uncertainty! Or, that I think it’s important to say ‘I don’t know’ and to encourage others to say it too, and still know it’s possible to be ‘good’, i.e fair and humane, for it’s own sake, here and now - and not for the sake of god, religious ideals ( read ’stupid rules’) or heavenly reward. Actually, I think it’s probably easier to be good and generous when you live in wonder than it is when you live in religious faith because it’s so much freer and more expansive.
But I haven’t answered your question. Oh, well - that’s because I don’t know. Never would be good though.
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simply wondered says:
‘The writer and narrator (who’s name I forget but could delve around and find as a matter of politeness and respect - just not right now) and who is Jewish, talked about a ‘principle of uncertainty’’
- heisenberg? (but i can’t be certain)
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cicely says:
Ha! Professor Robert M.L. Winston is the man, and that there is a fact…
If you google ‘the story of god tv series’ you get 3 or 4 entries about it. (There’s also a book by the Prof with the same title.)
It was a BBC series aired in Britain in 2005, but only made it here to OZ a couple of months ago. Richard Dawkins makes an appearance and Winston is a well known scientist too, but less anti-religious than Dawkins. He wouldn’t say he’s agnostic so I think he’s a believer, but he sees the possibility of religion and science co-existing peacefully if they didn’t hold on so tightly to ‘certainty’, particularly, I think, in opposition to each other. He sees the impulse to belong to something larger than life itself as a consistent human thingy and the source of belief in god. I think we can’t help but ‘know’ we belong to something larger than life itself, whatever it may be, and however cold, warm, random, organised or whatever it may be, but this doesn’t lead me to gods, one god or any religion. I just can’t pretend to know what it is. In The Life of Brian pick a side sandal scene, I’d be the one standing in the middle going ‘but how can you be sure?’ For some unknown reason, or multitude of reasons, I don’t feel a need to be. And ain’t I a human being? Mysteriouser and mysteriouser!
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cicely says:
I learned a few moments ago that a 3 part series is starting next Sunday night hosted by Richard Dawkins. It’s a spin-off from his book, ‘The God Delusion’, which I’ve been meaning to buy. Yippee!
We humans do seem to have a great capacity for delusion - self and otherwise, don’t we? I’m certain that some astute person could point out mine - the ones that are invisible to me and somehow sustain me. Maybe people who buy into the craziest religious narratives are making some kind of coverall to throw over more personal doubts and confusions. Well, some of them anyway. But I’m talking to myself now, so I’d better say goodnight.
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simply wondered says:
winston is a lord!!! (tho not ‘the lord’, obviously) and owner of one hell of a tache; and a friend of mine sent tony blair a copy of dawkins’ book. he got the standard flunky-issued letter of thanks from tb’s office.
just so you know. cos i do. -
cicely says:
Oooh…the facts are piling up here…I think we need our own version of the serenity prayer.
Grant me the serenity to know what I can’t know,
the courage to learn what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.I’m just not sure who does the granting. My most ego-less and honest self, if I can access her, I suppose.
Being the mostly self-educated somewhat compulsive information gatherer and spouter I am (on a limited number of subjects though) I also like to remind myself of this quote of Montaigne - which I found on a calendar. I don’t actually know who Montaigne is.
‘A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.’
Now, it’s off to the mundane yet challenging business of earning a living.
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Infidel says:
Wouldn’t you consider “Batshit Crazy” an unrevealed religion that practices, say, human sacrifice?
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Burrow says:
I still think the Mormons are bat-shit crazy.
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Violet says:
Burrow, I agree. I also think that Mormonism, like Scientology, was founded as a fraud by a professional huckster. It tells us a lot about the will to believe.
Cicely, you would like this: there’s an interview in Salon this week with Lewis Wolpert, the biologist who wrote “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast.” He thinks that human brains have evolved to be “belief engines” — it’s all connected to toolmaking and our grasp of causality.
Here are some snippets from the interview:
Can you explain the “belief engine” in the human brain?
What makes us different from all other animals is that we have causal beliefs about the physical world. I know that if I throw this glass at the window, it’s probably going to break. Children have this understanding at a very early age. Animals, on the other hand, have a very poor understanding of cause and effect in the physical world. My argument is that causal understanding gave rise to toolmaking; that was the evolutionary advantage. It’s toolmaking that’s really driven human evolution. This is not widely accepted, I’m afraid, but there’s no question about it. It’s tools that really made us human. They may even have given rise to language.
But there is evidence that some animals have a very primitive form of toolmaking.
There’s no question that certain apes are at the edge of causal understanding and they do make some very simple tools. Chimpanzees can break a nut with a stone. They can also take a stick and peel it to get ants out of a tree. But it’s still very primitive. Curiously, some crows show remarkable toolmaking, using sticks to get things out of bottles. But on the whole, it’s primitive compared to us.
And I suppose the radically new thing our ancestors did was to put two objects together — for instance, a piece of stone on a wooden handle.
Precisely. You can’t do that without having a concept of cause and effect. And once you had that concept, you wanted to understand the causes of other things that mattered in your life, like illness. That’s the origin of religion. The most obvious causes were those things caused by humans, so people imagined there was some sort of god with human characteristics. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different gods in different societies.
So once you have an understanding of cause and effect, then ignorance is no longer tolerable? You want to explain everything.
Exactly. You know, we cannot tolerate not knowing the causes of things that affect our lives. If you go to the doctor when you’re ill, the one thing you can’t stand is the doctor saying he or she has no idea what’s wrong with you. And when they do diagnose you, I’m prepared to bet that on your way home, you’ll tell yourself a story as to why you got ill.
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Violet says:
To continue with the Wolpert interview, in these two questions he says something I take issue with:
So religion gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, even though in your view it’s totally an illusion.
Yes, many people would find it very hard to live without religion. But there is no meaning, I regret to tell you. [Laughs] We don’t understand where the universe came from. But to say God made it, well, you want to say, who made God?
To say there’s no meaning is a pretty depressing assessment, isn’t it?
No, why should there be a meaning? I mean, we want a cause as to why we’re here, but I’m afraid there isn’t one. I don’t find it depressing at all. I think it’s remarkable that evolution has brought us into being. We’re only here for one purpose, from an evolutionary point of view, and that’s to reproduce.
When he says “there is no meaning,” he’s overreaching. We actually have no idea what’s going on, why the universe exists, what existence even is. It would be more accurate to just say that all the stories we as a species have told ourselves so far have zero evidence in their favor, and that all we can observe at work is certain processes — the Big Bang, evolution, etc.
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Infidel says:
When it gets right down to it we can’t observe any of the most sophisticated science that happens to explain the most basic structure to our universe. We believe scientists because they are….scientists. We don’t have cyclotrons or radio telescopes. We have never seen the atom or other galaxies. We believe.
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cicely says:
Yeah, I agree. If there is meaning beyond what we make of our own lives, socially and individually, and beyond what we see and experience in the natural world, we don’t know (can’t prove) what it is, but hey, we can’t know or prove that there isn’t any either.
He thinks that human brains have evolved to be “belief engines” …
I wonder what happened to mine then. Or his for that matter, or yours?
I can’t even believe we’ll ever get to the bottom of it all before we eliminate ourselves entirely. So much for our sole purpose being reproduction! Oh, but we might get a second go at it on mars if we can get there fast enough. I believe in Mars. Do you think there might be a new batshit-crazy religion somehow involving Mars on the horizon?
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cicely says:
Sorry for any confusion - infidel, I thought I would be next. I agree with you too. I believe in scientists. They have proved stuff though, and I expect they’ll prove more stuff. They’re also quite willing, quite often, to say they don’t know. I like this about them.
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Infidel says:
They want to send a return vehicle to Mars first, one that will manufacture rocket fuel using a mini nuclear power plant, so by the time the second rocket reaches Mars w/people, the return vehicle will be ready to bring them back- about 10 years. That is the kind of thinking that makes us great!
