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Goodbye Jesus

Christianity - The World's Oldest Cult


thebatman

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Reading the bible, it is very apparent to me that Christianity has been a cult from its inception. It should be no wonder why the Jews thought Paul was insane, because he was! Some biblical proof for my hypothesis. I won't post all the scriptures because it would take too long, so I'm assuming anyone reading is well versed in New Testament doctrine. All of these are tell tale signs of a cult.

 

 

- Emphasis on Jesus being "the only way". All other paths are wrong. Anyone who disagrees is wrong.

 

- Emphasis on giving money to cult leaders. They even threw in the story of Ananias and Saphira to scare people into giving their money. I guess the God of the universe has bad credit or something, he can't seem to handle cash.

 

- Members are taught to associate only with cult members. Paul taught Christians to only associate with other Christians, what fellowship does light have with darkness? etc. Paul taught the members to shun those who were sinning in church. Shunning is a staple practice of mind-control cults. It is a form of psychological torture which isolates a person and makes them dependent on the cult.

 

- Paul mocked those who left the Christian cult. Demas is the name that comes to mind, but there were at least two others that Paul named. Paul would discredit and slam those who left the cult, and slander their name. This is a warning sign of a cult, anyone who leaves is in the wrong no matter what the reason.

 

- Strange practices and rituals. Drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Jesus. Jesus taught people that it's better to mutilate yourself by cutting off your hand and plucking out your eyes, than to go to hell. Speaking in gibberish tongues. Things that seem strange to outsiders become normal in a cult.

 

- Persecution complex. Cult members are taught that they are persecuted because the world is "evil" and they are the only righteous. Cult members are paranoid of persecutions and fearful of the outside world. The early Christians were persecuted because they were a public nuisance, and they still are. They would go door to door, preaching Jesus. All of this is taught in the New Testament.

 

- Man worship. Christianity is the world's largest polytheistic religion. The man Jesus, is exalted as God himself. Cults teach that their human leaders are to be worshiped. 

 

- Cult leader Jesus, a mysterious schizophrenic who was killed for being a lunatic. Assuming Jesus did exist, the man was obviously insane. They put him to death because he was a cult leader who taught people that he was God. Afterword, his followers figured out they could get rich by souping up the story of Jesus. Reading the gospels it's painfully obvious the whole thing is made up to benefit the cult leaders.

 

 

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I am in my early 50's and now I make the discovery that I belong to a cult. I think I may have to go and eat a quart of ice-cream and a large bag of potato chips, to take this all in.

 

Many thanks for this post, thebatman. It really does help me to see things more clearly.

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thebatman,

 

Take a moment to think about the 'function of religion,' as a way of gaining perspective.  I posted this in another thread earlier today and I think it applies some what to what your OP is illustrating.

 

....we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise. God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes.

 

~Religion for Atheists; a Non-belivers Guide to the Use of Religion by Alain De Botton

 

Now that we've "lost our particular religion" what  will facilitate us in determining those "aspects of religious life which contain concepts that could fruitfully be applied to the problems of secular society." In our attempt to "burn off religions’ more dogmatic aspects" can we "distil a few aspects of them that could prove timely and consoling to skeptical contemporary minds facing the crises and griefs of finite existence on a troubled planet." Can we  rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that which no longer seems true? ~Alain De Botton

 

What shall we do now that the hoax of our particular religion has been revealed? How do we recover the human spirit of which religion has made so much of a mess of, and how we do it without relying on the theological superstructure with which it is entwined?

 

Those rhetorical questions seem justified especially if we want to avoid the same old crap wrapped in a differ package leading to just another nowhere.

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I agree with the overall point of your post, but I would take issue with the idea that Christianity the "world's oldest cult." To me that's like saying Windows is the world's oldest operating system. Nah, they just borrowed and sythesized ideas from someone else (Apple/Judaism & mystery religions) who borrowed theirs from someone else (Xerox/Zoroastrianism & Mesopotamian mythology). Maybe it's just the world's most popular cult. wink.png

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Those are definitely signs of a cult! I laugh when xians talk about them other cults, which are the religions that don't agree with them. Ha! Their own behavior is cultic...anyone who has to use coercion, guilt & shunning to help people to "convert" have no ground to stand on. Truth doesn't need all of that shit, which indicates it's all one hugely fabricated LIE. Good to be free from it...but it's not easy to come to grips with being entangled in the web xianity for sooo long. *sigh* I know what you mean Pixie, it is depressing....to think of how we were lied to & deceived. damn....WendyDoh.gif

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting quote came across last year.. "If you believe in it, it's a religion, and if you don't care about it one way or another it is a sect, but if you fear it and hate it, it's a cult"

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I agree with the overall point of your post, but I would take issue with the idea that Christianity the "world's oldest cult." To me that's like saying Windows is the world's oldest operating system. Nah, they just borrowed and sythesized ideas from someone else (Apple/Judaism & mystery religions) who borrowed theirs from someone else (Xerox/Zoroastrianism & Mesopotamian mythology). Maybe it's just the world's most popular cult. wink.png

 

Microsoft Windows actually had its roots in an older nature based pagan operating system that worshiped the Apple. :-)

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Just add 'sociopathic' to the word 'cult' and I agree 100%..

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  • 2 weeks later...

The difference between what most people consider a cult and a respectable religion is only how old they are and how many followers they have. 

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The difference between what most people consider a cult and a respectable religion is only how old they are and how many followers they have. 

 

This is true of "most people," I agree.  The word is loaded with that meaning in the media and general modern parlance.

 

Probably next most common interpretation in terms of definitions for this word is "authoritarian / manipulative group" as defined by people who are concerned about social pressures and unethical coercive behavior.  There are specific sets of criteria for what makes a group fall into this category (along the lines of what was pointed out by the OP), though in some cases that's a little tricky because there is more like a sliding scale for these things and some groups are "iffy."

 

I've noticed that Christians -- especially fundamentalist Christians -- often conflate the word "cult" with "heresy," which really confuses things and doesn't allow them to properly evaluate groups that are in fact bible-based, Christian "cults" in the unethically manipulative sense.  It's very convenient for abusive churches to confuse these two terms.

 

The definition of "cult" is different in religious studies and doesn't have a pejorative meaning.

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I perceive all religions as cults.

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