Sending Back The Telescope
Found a wonderfully written post at RFM / Recovery From Mormonism forum boards.
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Subject: Sending Back The Telescope
Date: Mar 09 00:04
Author: Bernelli
Mail Address:
Posted by request (from my personal blog)...
The Heaven's Gate cult that committed suicide in San Diego in 1997 believed that a spaceship was traveling in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet, and that they would be transferred to the craft by committing suicide when the comet was near Earth. Before the mass suicide, they purchased an expensive telescope in order to see the craft within the comet's tail. When they were unable to spot the spaceship, they sent the telescope back claiming that it was defective. In other words, their belief in the spaceship trumped all rational evaluation, they were willing to suspend all critical thinking skills in favor of their religious doctrine, and their faith was deemed more honest and true than any and all scientific evidence to the contrary.
In a sense, this has to be the single most dangerous message that religion - not just cults - teach their members: if the telescope doesn't tell you what WE tell you, send it back. It's defective.
In spite of the awareness of the dangers of faith and religious zeal that Americans have gained since 9/11, we seem to be unwilling to acknowledge the extent to which our own pious beliefs lead us down dark alleys, and choose instead to believe that dangerous levels of zealotry only occur in other people's religions on the other side of the world where most Americans can't even identify continents, much less countries.
It would seem that it is almost impossible to have a civil, rational discussion about religion in America. Far too many participants in such discourse consider themselves to be possessed of such faith that they are willing to ignore or excuse problems in the doctrine or the religious culture that would be obvious to an impartial observer.
Place such a person into an otherwise civil discussion about religion, and civility ceases to exist. Believing that you are in possession of complete, unquestionably accurate information about God, his plans for you, and the horrible punishments that await those who don't believe the same things as you do enable the faithful to have the most condescending, most hostile, most downright hateful attitudes toward their fellow man. These attitudes and the behaviors they inspire are rationalized by a belief that God favors some people more than others, and ultimately doesn't really give a shit about people who are not members of one specific religion.
Oh wait, that's not true. He still loves them. They just don't get the same benefits as the "chosen ones."
For decades I've been asking tough questions about the religion that I was raised in. As I sought answers, I continually found myself hitting a wall. The answers either weren't there, weren't spiritually satisfying, didn't coincide with other aspects of the doctrine, were in direct conflict with the behaviors of a good portion of the membership, ignored widely accepted scientific and historical facts, or went against personal experience and observation. Upon reaching any of the above impasses, the advice I was given was, without exception, to send back the telescope.
There's a point where you just can't be told that anymore, and I had reached it.
For years, I had attempted to avoid rocking the boat within my family, biting my lip and playing along while they participated in (and expected me to participate in) the various rituals of our religion. But I had always felt dishonest about it. I was compromising my personal integrity by pretending to be someone who professed to believe in something that had never felt true to me. And, contrary to the expectations of the culture, the more I researched and explored and participated in the religion, the less I found myself able to accept it.
I woke up one Sunday morning and realized that that was it. I was done. I wasn't going to pretend anymore, I wasn't going to participate anymore. I had had it, and I was through, and I wasn't going to hide, and people were going to have to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't part of the in-crowd anymore.
I don't claim to have all the answers. Maybe having all the answers isn't as important as we've been made to believe. I think it is hopelessly naive to think that all the answers are obtainable, or packaged in a neat one-size-fits-all belief system. I've been preached to, yelled at, guilt-tripped, insulted, threatened, disregarded, accused, and confronted with all of the methods that religion uses to attempt to convince itself that nobody in their right mind could possibly be exposed to religious doctrine and still reject it. I'm not a horrible person, I'm not an anti-Christ, and while I'm not perfect and have made some mistakes, I'm a good man who strives to be a better man. And I've found that I can do that, and maybe even do it more effectively, without embracing religion.
So I'll keep my telescope, thank you very much, and you can preach to me until you're blue in the face, but if I don't see a spaceship in the tail of that comet, I'm going to say so.
We all need to be less willing to sacrifice our critical thinking abilities when what we see with our own eyes conflicts with what we are expected to believe.
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Subject: Heaven's Gate: Pascal's Wager at Work!
Date: Mar 09 00:14
Author: Baura
Mail Address:
I recall watching the videos of the Heaven's Gate "travelers." One woman summed it all up. She said that the promised reward was so great, so wonderful that she just HAD to go for it.
This struck me as Pascal's Wager in action. She had a wonderful eternity to gain on the mothership traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet and only a temporary, mortal life to lose.
Subject: Very nicely written. Thank you for sharing.
Date: Mar 09 00:40
Author: Tiphanie
Mail Address:
You're exactly right about religious extremism being slowly but surely on the increase in the US. Hopefully people will realize what's going on before they spend as many years as some of us did looking for Quakers on the moon or planets named Kolob. :/
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theSam!! is also keeping his Telescope.
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Subject: Sending Back The Telescope
Date: Mar 09 00:04
Author: Bernelli
Mail Address:
Posted by request (from my personal blog)...
The Heaven's Gate cult that committed suicide in San Diego in 1997 believed that a spaceship was traveling in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet, and that they would be transferred to the craft by committing suicide when the comet was near Earth. Before the mass suicide, they purchased an expensive telescope in order to see the craft within the comet's tail. When they were unable to spot the spaceship, they sent the telescope back claiming that it was defective. In other words, their belief in the spaceship trumped all rational evaluation, they were willing to suspend all critical thinking skills in favor of their religious doctrine, and their faith was deemed more honest and true than any and all scientific evidence to the contrary.
In a sense, this has to be the single most dangerous message that religion - not just cults - teach their members: if the telescope doesn't tell you what WE tell you, send it back. It's defective.
In spite of the awareness of the dangers of faith and religious zeal that Americans have gained since 9/11, we seem to be unwilling to acknowledge the extent to which our own pious beliefs lead us down dark alleys, and choose instead to believe that dangerous levels of zealotry only occur in other people's religions on the other side of the world where most Americans can't even identify continents, much less countries.
It would seem that it is almost impossible to have a civil, rational discussion about religion in America. Far too many participants in such discourse consider themselves to be possessed of such faith that they are willing to ignore or excuse problems in the doctrine or the religious culture that would be obvious to an impartial observer.
Place such a person into an otherwise civil discussion about religion, and civility ceases to exist. Believing that you are in possession of complete, unquestionably accurate information about God, his plans for you, and the horrible punishments that await those who don't believe the same things as you do enable the faithful to have the most condescending, most hostile, most downright hateful attitudes toward their fellow man. These attitudes and the behaviors they inspire are rationalized by a belief that God favors some people more than others, and ultimately doesn't really give a shit about people who are not members of one specific religion.
Oh wait, that's not true. He still loves them. They just don't get the same benefits as the "chosen ones."
For decades I've been asking tough questions about the religion that I was raised in. As I sought answers, I continually found myself hitting a wall. The answers either weren't there, weren't spiritually satisfying, didn't coincide with other aspects of the doctrine, were in direct conflict with the behaviors of a good portion of the membership, ignored widely accepted scientific and historical facts, or went against personal experience and observation. Upon reaching any of the above impasses, the advice I was given was, without exception, to send back the telescope.
There's a point where you just can't be told that anymore, and I had reached it.
For years, I had attempted to avoid rocking the boat within my family, biting my lip and playing along while they participated in (and expected me to participate in) the various rituals of our religion. But I had always felt dishonest about it. I was compromising my personal integrity by pretending to be someone who professed to believe in something that had never felt true to me. And, contrary to the expectations of the culture, the more I researched and explored and participated in the religion, the less I found myself able to accept it.
I woke up one Sunday morning and realized that that was it. I was done. I wasn't going to pretend anymore, I wasn't going to participate anymore. I had had it, and I was through, and I wasn't going to hide, and people were going to have to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't part of the in-crowd anymore.
I don't claim to have all the answers. Maybe having all the answers isn't as important as we've been made to believe. I think it is hopelessly naive to think that all the answers are obtainable, or packaged in a neat one-size-fits-all belief system. I've been preached to, yelled at, guilt-tripped, insulted, threatened, disregarded, accused, and confronted with all of the methods that religion uses to attempt to convince itself that nobody in their right mind could possibly be exposed to religious doctrine and still reject it. I'm not a horrible person, I'm not an anti-Christ, and while I'm not perfect and have made some mistakes, I'm a good man who strives to be a better man. And I've found that I can do that, and maybe even do it more effectively, without embracing religion.
So I'll keep my telescope, thank you very much, and you can preach to me until you're blue in the face, but if I don't see a spaceship in the tail of that comet, I'm going to say so.
We all need to be less willing to sacrifice our critical thinking abilities when what we see with our own eyes conflicts with what we are expected to believe.
------------------------------
Subject: Heaven's Gate: Pascal's Wager at Work!
Date: Mar 09 00:14
Author: Baura
Mail Address:
I recall watching the videos of the Heaven's Gate "travelers." One woman summed it all up. She said that the promised reward was so great, so wonderful that she just HAD to go for it.
This struck me as Pascal's Wager in action. She had a wonderful eternity to gain on the mothership traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet and only a temporary, mortal life to lose.
Subject: Very nicely written. Thank you for sharing.
Date: Mar 09 00:40
Author: Tiphanie
Mail Address:
You're exactly right about religious extremism being slowly but surely on the increase in the US. Hopefully people will realize what's going on before they spend as many years as some of us did looking for Quakers on the moon or planets named Kolob. :/
------------------------
theSam!! is also keeping his Telescope.
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