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This is exactly why after Islam, Catholicism is the next greatest evil on Earth. Catholics these days aren’t quite the mindless Pope-deferring zombies they used to be. This new guy continues the tradition by living in an actual exclusionary patriarchy. The Vatican doesn’t let women vote. He has the audacity to lecture anyone else about morality and tending to the poor, while living in pure opulence.

How about you fit a few thousand migrants into your palace, Father?

It might do you a bit of good to understand how cancerous Islam is in between all that boy raping you cover up.

No one wakes up one morning and decides to join a cult. Even if someone did, good luck trying to look up the address for the nearest local cult, for there isn’t a single group that would ever admit to or advertise as being a cult. And why would they? The word ‘cult’ is explosive, loaded with connotations of brainwashing, lunatics, and mass suicide — not exactly an ideal marketing strategy. For the most part, cults are keenly and obsessively aware of their public persona and consciously labor to maintain a positive image.

Scrolling through their websites, their mission statements are warmly fuzzy and vague; they promise redemption, renewal, rejuvenation, and reinvention. They offer answers, solutions, and happiness. It’s all there, yours for the taking. What isn’t included is the reality beneath the surface, the leader’s demands for obedience from its members, the psychological pressure, the ability to subordinate all activities to the leader’s will.

But most people don’t find and join cults through Internet searches. Most people stumble upon them accidentally. A flyer in the laundromat for a free meditation class. A listing in the newspaper for a community service project. A poster at the library for a musical performance. Recruitment is purposefully subtle; the pull is gentle, gradual. Events are welcoming; attention is lavished on the visitor with the intention to create an environment that feels inclusive, nonthreatening, and safe. The visitor is warmly encouraged to return, to step in closer. It is not until later, often much later, that one may look around and, with great surprise, discover the strange terrain upon which one now stands.

Cults, whether they are offshoots of Eastern or Western traditional religions, are surprisingly similar in their methods and means. The tactics and techniques used to recruit, maintain, and disown noncompliant members seem pulled from a universal handbook of do’s and don’ts. With all of their rules and restrictions, laws and codes, ultimately cults are about grasping and preserving absolute and unconditional control.

Cults are fueled by and thrive on control. The willingness to surrender control comes from excessive devotion to the leader and the leader’s vision. The leader’s personal agenda is presented as a universal elixir, one that will eradicate both personal and global moral, ethical, and spiritual maladies. The follower’s faith becomes both the provider and the enabler.

Faith in the mission, faith in the leader is an agent used to unify a disparate collection of strong individuals from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The loss of the individual is the gain of the group. Individual achievements are discouraged, downplayed and finally eradicated while the group’s achievements are encouraged, celebrated and memorialized.

To maintain the unity and cohesion of the cult, there is a clear separation between those ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ Members are holy, special, chosen; outsiders are unholy, ignorant, toxic. Contact with the outside world — often including family — is discouraged, and family is redefined as the group itself. In this new family, subjugation and subservience is expected and obedience and control is demanded. From one’s sexuality to one’s personal hygiene, the leader possesses unquestioned, absolute authority over its members’ lives. For a cult leader, it is imperative to seem infallible, to possess the answers, the solutions, the only route to salvation. The leader is fierce in singular righteousness, in the design to hail oneself absolute. A narcissist with insatiable needs for power, control, and, very often fame, the leader seeks affirmation of supreme authority through alignment with public figures and celebrities, achieving large numbers of recruits, and amassing private fiefdoms.

Through the need to please the leader, to ascend the ranks, to work to fulfill the leader’s vision, cults dictate followers’ actions and thoughts. Obedient members receive exalted status and conformity is enforced through notions of guilt, shame, and failure by both the leader and other members. A system of reporting on members for transgressions creates both an internal police force and opportunities for promotion and rewards for turning in brother and sister members. Those who violate the rules are punished and eventually, to maintain the coherent group unity, expelled. After time, the group assumes all roles — family, friends, church, home, work, community, and departing, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, after years or even decades, without having a concrete safety net is challenging, and sometimes utterly impossible. The world on the other side appears frightening and overwhelming.

Just who is so easily swept up in the group-think and loss of individuality that are hallmarks of cults? A misconception is that there is a certain ‘type’ — usually imbalanced, weak — that not only finds themselves caught inside a cult but that isn’t able to extract themselves from it. The truth is, there isn’t one typical profile, ‘type.’ People with advanced degrees and people without any formal education are both equally likely to find themselves swaddled in orange robes or holed up in a compound. The urge to be a part of something is elemental, raw, and natural. To have a defined goal, a purpose, offers meaning. Most people strive for acceptance within social groups and long for affirmation from others. Be it in an office or country club, adjustments are made to conform, to gain approval and to advance.

In cults, extremism is the norm. When hyper devotion is expected behavior, for acceptance new recruits tend to rapidly thrust themselves into the prescribed lifestyle much to the chagrin of their family and friends on the ‘outside.’ There is no blame, no fault for having the audacity to plunge into belief, into faith so deeply, so forcefully that critical and analytical red flags, even if they once appeared, are snapped off. Belief and faith are such intoxicants that logical reason and facts become blurry and nonsensical.

While the boundary between cults and religion often feels confusing — the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions differ only slightly with cults being “small” in size and possessing “beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.” Deciding what is strange or sinister certainly depends on the beholder. When accusations of being in a cult appear, members quickly and vehemently deny they are in a cult — they are part of a ‘spiritual path,’ a ‘special church,’ a ‘progressive movement’ — other groups are cults, but not theirs. No way.

Perhaps it is more useful to discern what a religious movement is or what a cult is by comparing its impact upon members’ lives: does it compliment or control? At their best, healthy religions and organizations compliment rich, full lives by offering balance, community, comfort. At their worst, they lapse into vehicles demanding control. Cults limit lives into narrow, claustrophobic existences whose singular purpose is the cult itself.

Cult leaders, experts in psychological manipulation, prey on both the follower’s ability to believe and need to belong. But this type of behavior is hardly limited to cults. After all, the aptitude and capacity to exploit human beings is universal, and, with the right ambitious and charismatic leader, any group easily could morph into a cult. What prevents that from occurring is that most established religions and groups have accountability mechanisms that restrain that from happening; cults, however, are purposefully designed so that the only restraints are the ones placed upon the people who, without even realizing it, have just done what they never thought they would do — join a cult.

Is it a Cult? The Top Ten Signs the ‘Group’ You’ve Joined is Not what It Seems

The leader and group are always correct and anything the leader does can be justified.

Questions, suggestions, or critical inquiry are forbidden.

Members incessantly scramble with cramped schedules and activities full of largely meaningless work based on the leader’s agenda

Followers are meant to believe that they are never good enough.

Required dependency upon the leader and group for even the most basic problem-solving.

Reporting on members for disobedient actions or thoughts is mandated and rewarded.

Monetary, sexual, or servile labor is expected to gain promotion.

The ‘outside’ world — often including family and friends — is presented as rife with impending catastrophe, evil, and temptations.

Recruitment of new members is designed to be purposefully upbeat and vague about the actual operations of the leader and group.

Former members are shunned and perceived as hostile.

Boyz 2 Men

Democrats colluded with Russia.

And still lost. Sad!

Congrats to our Airmen on becoming the first Air Force recruits to graduate initial skills training as F-35 Lightning II crew chiefs. http://tinyurl.com/nwphb3r

A non exhaustive list of UFO religious groups

                                             Raëlism

“Raëlism (also known as Raëlianism or the Raëlian movement) is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon (b. 1946), now known as Raël. The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans that they made. They purposefully misinformed early humanity that they were angels, cherubim, or gods. Raëlians believe that messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others who informed humans of each era. The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them.”

                                   The Nuwaubian Nation

“The Nuwaubian Nation or Nuwaubian movement was a religious organization founded and led by Dwight York. York began founding Black Muslim groups in New York in 1967. He changed his teachings and the names of his groups many times, incorporating concepts from Judaism, Christianity, and many esoteric beliefs.In the late 1980s, he abandoned the Muslim theology of his movement in favor of Kemetism and UFO religion. In 1991 he took his community to settle in upstate New York; then they moved near the county seat of Eatonton, Georgia, in Putnam County. His followers built an ancient Egypt-themed compound called Tama-Re and changed their name to the “United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.””

                                      The Universe People

 “ Universe People or Cosmic People of Light Powers (Czech: Vesmírní lidé sil světla) is a Czech and Slovak UFO religion founded in the 1990s and centered on Ivo A. Benda. Their belief system is based upon the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations communicating with Benda and other contactees since October 1997 telepathically and later even by direct personal contact. They are considered to be the most distinctive UFO religion in the Czech Republic.“ 

                                                                                 Scientology

“Scientology is a body of religious beliefs and practices created in 1954 by American author L. Ron Hubbard (1911–86). Hubbard initially developed a program of ideas called Dianetics, which was distributed through the Dianetics Foundation. The foundation soon entered bankruptcy and Hubbard lost the rights to his seminal publication Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, doctrines, the E-meter, and the practice of auditing. Within a year, he regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology.

 In the OT levels, Hubbard explains how to reverse the effects of past-life trauma patterns that supposedly extend millions of years into the past. Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as the tyrant ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy”. According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today. “         

                                                                              Heaven’s Gate

“ Heaven’s Gate was an American UFO religious millenarian group based in San Diego, California, founded in the early 1970s and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985). On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had committed mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.

Heaven’s Gate members believed the planet Earth was about to be “recycled” (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished, and rejuvenated), and the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. While the group was against suicide, they defined “suicide” in their own context to mean “to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered” and believed their “human” bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person’s body, they routinely used the word “vehicle””                                      

                                  Church of the SubGenius

“The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion that satirizes better-known belief systems. It teaches a complex philosophy that focuses on J. R. "Bob” Dobbs, purportedly a salesman from the 1950s, who is revered as a prophet by the Church. SubGenius leaders have developed detailed narratives about Dobbs and his relationship to various gods and conspiracies. Their central deity, Jehovah 1, is accompanied by other gods drawn from ancient mythology and popular fiction. SubGenius literature describes a grand conspiracy that seeks to brainwash the world and oppress Dobbs’ followers. In its narratives, the Church presents a blend of cultural references in an elaborate remix of the sources.“                  

                                                                  Aetherius Society

“The Aetherius Society is a millenarian, New Age, UFO religion. It was founded by George King in the mid-1950s as the result of what King claimed were contacts with extraterrestrial intelligences, whom he referred to as “Cosmic Masters”. Regarded as firmly based in Theosophy, the Aetherius Society combines UFO claims, yoga, and ideas from various world religions, notably Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Stefan Isaksson notes that it has “become a complex religious belief system that includes an extraterrestrial hierarchy of various spiritual masters and such concepts as universal karma and religious healing.” The religion’s goal is to prevent worldly destruction by improving cooperation between humanity and various alien ‘masters’,and by using 'spiritual energy’ to improve the spiritual calibre of the world “

👽  If you want more posts about UFO religions or want us to cover a specific group, message us!  👽

Boyz 2 men

Boyz 2 Men

gentle reminder

you’re not wrong, not useless, not an idiot - you’re amazing, keep up the good work, and please keep trying your best

So true !