espite the scientific and rational and largely-secular age in which we live, superstition still flourishes.  People have lucky numbers, play the lottery, read horoscopes, cross their fingers, believe in guardian angles and spirits and ghosts, and so on.  Of course the real biggies, when you're talking about superstition, are organized religion, but most people who believe in that don't like to think of it as a superstition.  Even if they think that every other religious person on earth believes in nonsense, and that only they have the one true faith.  *pat on the head*

For most people, a bland, "Of course I believe in God." is plenty, and they can then spend 98% of their lives not thinking about anything more important than the peeling paint on their late model SUV and how much little Susie's braces are going to cost.  Yet for some people, that's not enough, and when bland, conventional religion doesn't offer enough excitement and feelings of specialness for them, they turn to the more extreme forms of religion, and join cults. Not that they just leap in, it's always a slower introduction and seduction, that gradually grows more and more complete until the person is brain washed and convinced that anyone outside of the cult is their enemy and must be fought, converted, or completely shut out.

As a general rule of thumb, the more illogical and wacky and dangerous the beliefs, the more often they need to be reinforced.  Regular bland religions are fine meeting for a couple of hours on Sunday, when it's more about social ties and being seen than any of the supernatural stuff.  People with more needs and mental weaknesses need to have them reinforced more often, and start going to bible (or whatever) study several nights a week, and reading more and more of whatever holy literature will reinforce their delusions.  The people who believe in really insane stuff, that some individual is an angel, or reincarnation of god, or whatever, need to pretty much live it 24/7, or else reality will creep back in and undermine their insanity.

It should also go without saying that all cults and controlling religions need huge sticks to keep their flock in line, and threats of eternal damnation vs. promises of eternal paradise and salvation are the most simple type.  All in the future, with no need to prove anything or change anything in the meantime.  And the bigger the wackiness, the bigger the stick you need to keep people toeing the line.

Other purposes of cults are to give direction to people who can't run their own lives.  Lots of adults, due to personal weakness or a bad upbringing or some type of minor mental illness, need to be told what to do.  These types of people usually end up being dominated by their parents and/or spouse, and usually work in jobs that require and allow very little personal initiative.  While this sort of thing is stifling to most of us, some people embrace it wholeheartedly. And for the few unlucky enough to not end up in the Army, or in prison, or with a dominating spouse, there are always cults out there.  Cults that will tell them everything to think, when to eat, what to wear, and so on.  It's very difficult to break people out of cults, since the personality flaws and defects that put them into the cult in the first place are never going to be helped or cured by the cult lifestyle.  They're like those people with a genetic predisposition to being alcoholics; it's simply far more difficult for them to avoid drinking than it is for the rest of us, and if they take even a sip they're pretty much guaranteed to drink themselves halfway into a coma.

I hope you didn't click this page link and start reading this introduction looking for soothing, happy news. Cause you aren't real likely to get much of it here.

I see all cults as dangerous, whether or not they actually profess goals of readying themselves for Armageddon and stockpiling weapons. A cult doesn't need to be as packed full of wackos as David Koresh's bunch in Waco, the Aum Shinri Kyo subway poisoners in Japan, or even Manson's filthy junkie Children to be a danger to society.  And when you've got a bunch of weak, brainwashed sheep following one guy, it's just a matter of time until the guy in charge gets even further delusions than it took to build the cult in the first place, and starts sending his flock out to murder, or steal, or harass.  In most cases, mass suicide is really the best you can hope for.  Refreshingly enough, that's quite often what you get.

• This page collects news items and other comments about cults. More recent additions are added on top.

February 12, 2004

The major media has pretty much learned to ignore them, after getting burned last year, but those Raelian nuts are still running around, giving interviews and pretending that they can clone babies, with their magical, alien technology.

Clonaid was founded by the Raelians, a religious sect that believes extraterrestrials created life on Earth through genetic engineering. Boisselier is a "bishop" in the movement, led by former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself "Rael."

Dr Boisselier said the parents were an infertile couple and it was the father who gave the cells to have the baby.

"The mother has been carrying the child, so it is very easy, the situation," she said.

Dr Boisselier declined to reveal further details about the child, his family, or their doctor, for privacy reasons.

Clonaid grabbed international headlines last year, after it claimed to have created the first cloned human baby, a girl named Eve. Since then, the organisation says a further five cloned babies have been born, including the Sydney boy. Another seven babies are expected to be born in various countries before the end of February, as part of a new group of implantations. But the organisation's claims have been dismissed as a hoax by the wider scientific, medical and religious communities, due to its failure to produce DNA proof of the babies.

The thing that depresses me about this is that they apparently have a long waiting list of prospective clients, who are willing to pay them big money to come and wave a little magic stick over the pregnant woman's belly, and then proclaim that it's now a clone of one of them, rather than an actual genetically-created child. I guess I'm not that shocked or bothered that a cult can make their wacky claims; I'm just bothered that otherwise sane people are willing to humor them and take them seriously, so long as the cult fills a need or void in their lives.

Why are humans so weak?

Cult finds 'eternal youth' formula

The controversial cult which claims to have cloned five babies says it has discovered a way of reversing the ageing process.

The Raelian sect believes it can use stem cells to turn back the clock on any part of the body.

October 21, 2003

I've heard often of the Falon Gong "cult" that the Chinese government is always viciously and violently cracking down on, but I'd never read anything about what they actually did. Today I read a detailed and informative article about their beliefs and practices in James "The Amazing" Randi's weekly update, of all places.  Since I've long heard about the Falon Gong guys but never heard what they really are, I figured the rest of you might be in my shoes and would want to educate yourselves.  Basically it's a bunch of clever martial arts demonstration stuff disguised as magic, with some classical mythology and stories about superhuman powers for good measure.

Li preaches that the "qi," "ki," or "chi" — the "energy substance in the human body" — can, through practice of Falun Gong, be activated, changing the physical state of the body, achieving healing and health. Through such training, he says, one can emit a "high-energy cluster that is manifested in the form of light with fine particles and high density." This he calls, "Gong." "Fa" he defines as "Law" in the sense of a "primary cosmic law that pervades all things in the universe." "Dafa" is "Great Law." "Falun" means "Law Wheel." The purpose of Falun Gong, he says, is to cultivate a person's "Gong." This is done through physical exercise and the development of a person's "mind-nature," or "Xinxing." Li teaches that a "super-eye" obtained via Falun Gong can give his followers X-ray vision, that "goodness" cures disease, and that deep breathing exercises can solve the world's problems. This is how they describe the "Dharma Wheel" that they claim each adherent can actually grow in their abdomen:

Falun Gong is characterized by the cultivation of a Falun [Dharma wheel], located at the lower abdomen. As an intelligent entity of high energy substance, the Falun automatically absorbs energy from the universe and relieves the body of bad elements.

In short, folks, this is another mystical cult basing its philosophy on mythology and pseudoscience, a spiritual movement loosely based on Buddhism, Taoism, yoga-style exercises, and blatant fantasies.

If you got through that whole first paragraph, you're stronger than me.  But hey, the 2nd and 3rd are readable and informative.

Knowing about the fantasies that the Gongers actually believe in doesn't do anything to change my disgust at the Chinese Government's brutal crack down on the followers of this mostly-harmless self-improvement cult, so the Gongers still have my sympathy, but it's not like they're all that much better off following that fairy tale than other, government-approved fairy tales.

January 6, 2003

Insert your "Religious nuts are sick and twisted." comment in this one.  And if you don't have any such comments, you'll probably be able to think some up pretty soon.

Yes, "God's Creation Outreach Ministry". This one sets off just about every warning light I have.  Tiny fanatical religious sect with an ominous name, home schooling (so no rational adults can interfere in their personal perversions), dedication to corporal punishment...  it's like a child abuse assembly line.  And it's even sadder that the boy they murdered was adopted.  His own parents vanished, probably crack fiends, he's been abused and is miserable, and then gets adopted by these psychos who beat him for Jesus and tie him up like Houdini, even gagging him so that he eventually chokes on his own vomit.  

The only surprising thing to me is that they are black; I expect white people when I hear about this sort of Christian religious lunacy.  The (adoptive) parents should be fed to wolves.  Christian wolves.

January 5, 2003

Well, that's that.  The Raelians aren't going to allow DNA testing on their first "cloned" baby girl.  Because there is no baby girl, they have less ability to create a good clone than Lucasfilms, and they are a bunch of publicity-desperate kooks? No, of course not.  It's because um... the courts might order the baby taken away.  Yeah, that's it.  But you can be sure she's really a clone, I mean it's not like a cult of alien-worshiping idiots would lie.

Rael said he made the decision after a "judge in Florida signed a paper saying that the baby Eve should be taken from the family, from her mother."

However, no Florida judge has made such a ruling. A hearing date has been set in Broward County Circuit Court for January 22 on a lawsuit filed by attorney Bernard Siegel, who wants a legal guardian appointed for the baby girl.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a mediocre lie.

Will the public get a chance to see the baby soon?

"I don't think so," Rael said in the "Crossfire" interview.

At another point, he was asked if his group had simply gotten away with a great publicity stunt. Rael, speaking from Canada via satellite, said his earpiece was having technical difficulties.

"I am so sorry, but the sound is so bad. I cannot hear anything," he said.

You have to give the Raelians some credit; they jumped into this at the right time and got away with a great hoax.  And it didn't even require any work! They just made some outrageous claims, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to back them up with, and launched their PR offensive at the right time of the year (slow news around Xmas to New Years), and the media gobbled it up like leftover cranberry sauce.

If their claims of thousands of people being on a clone-making waiting list aren't completely false as well, they've got a great little scam going here.  Some oddly-dressed head kook can just pray over the couple pre-conception, or wave a magic wand, or whatever, charge the gullible couple $10,000, and rely on the parents' "the emperor has an identical set of invisible clothes" self-delusion to believe they have a clone baby.  Frankly, I'm surprised that some other pseudo-scientific cult didn't think of it first, given the wacky stuff people will believe and pay for. The Scientologists should have been all over this one a decade ago, with their long history of scams and schemes to bilk their naive followers.

Meanwhile the Raelians are claiming their second cloned baby has been born.  Hopefully the media will ignore their continuing claims, and dig up the cloning stuff again when some real scientists claim success.

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