A Roper poll says more than three million Americans think they have been abducted by aliens.

The Psychology of Christianity 1.6
Psychological Tactics

Cult to Religion
Distinguishing Cults and Religions
Methods Used
Nine Signs of Cult Recruitment

Abstract

Positive relationships were shown between religiosity and social delinquency like murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy. When the benevolence of religious belief is embodied in notions of a good God in heaven then those for whom this is the overwhelming religious feeling seem to be discouraged from murder, but other dimensions of religious belief are positive correlates of homicide. Religion can be evil. The United States, is by far the worst in measures of social deviancy. So, the theses of Christian sociologists are grossly false, and, from an inspection of them, it is hard to work out how they came to their positive conclusions of the benefits of religiosity. Could it be the usual reason? Honest scholarship and Christian belief are incompatible! If there are benefits for sociaty of religiousness, they are not evident in the United States, the most religious of western nations.

Cult to Religion

Rodney Stark and W S Bainbridge (Theory of Religion) realized that religions often began as cults, but once they were accepted widely, they became respectable and are called religions. A cult is a group of believers gathered together by someone with authority and charisma. Often the founders of cults are psychopaths, and the religion being part of their delusion, but, by acting as a sublimation for the psychosis, it can keep them from total mania.

Others, and often the successors of a founder, are entrepreneurs who see the potential in it for making money out of gullible people. Such people have often been “joiners”, those who try successive cults or philosophies before settling on one that suits their ambitions. Having gathered a group, they persuade them that the rest of the human race are too sinful, and must not be mixed with for fear of corruption, so, they spend less time with people outside the cult, and more time with cult members, becoming more extreme. The in-group are us, the godly, while the outsiders are the children of the Devil.

Many religions, like Christianity, began as cults sprung as a heresy from some current religion, or brought in from an alien one. Even so, in large measure, when “respectable”, the religion operates using cult techniques—psychological mind control and deception to brainwash new recruits and members. Many Christian sects and churches are cults. The purpose of the leaders is often personal gain, either of wealth or simply of power over people, but it is expressed in altruistic terms.

So, professional religionists also use mind control, and, naturally, the victims do not know, and think they act entirely freely. It is comical that Christian parents object to the methods of the Moonies when their own religion would never have gotten going without the same methods. They are deliberately kept ignorant of Christian history, of course, and do not realize, but ignorance is a poor excuse. They ought to want to find out, but one of the taboos of cult membership is questioning the cult—its leader or its principles.

Distinguishing Cults and Religions

Cults are supposedly distinguished from respectable religions by being focussed inwards while religions focus outwards (Singer, 1995). It is special pleading. Successful cults do focus outwards. Their purpose is to grow, but in growing they have to preserve their central beliefs, or they will not stay the same. So they have an inward focus too. Succesful religions are no different.

Hassan (1990) claimed religions do not have an authoritarian figure at the center. It would be hard to say that of the Catholic Church whose pope is the very embodiment of central authority. The Moslem religion has no central authority, but it depends on the authority of a system of imams each of whom leads his own mini-cult within the umbrella of Islam. Hassan added that religions do not recruit using deception, and do not use psychological techniques of persuasion.

It is hard to believe that anyone could be so naïve as to make any such assertion. The whole of the assured descriptions that Christian preachers give of heaven, hell and the afterlife are plainly deception since no one has or could have experience of them and tell the tale, and much of Christian recruiting makes blatant usage of psychological methods, and none are so blatant as the revivalist preachers. Surveys show 20% in the UK and 65% in the US believe in hell, but none, despite the guilt driving conversion, thought they would end up in this hotter place. All believers accept the priests’ assurances that, just by believing, their deckchair in the balmy place is reserved. No one thinks they will end up in hell, despite its much wider gate and easier path.

Someone with low self-esteem will be more easily persuaded than someone with high self-esteem, but only when the beliefs offered are unreasonable, incredible or otherwise unbelievable. In such a case, anyone with even moderate confidence will reject what is offered. Only those least confident and with the poorest self-esteem will be willing to yield to someone’s authority and accept it. That is why the religious leaders like to get at children who have yet to develop their critical faculties, and self-confidence. Keeping member’s esteem low is also necessary to keep them attached to the cult. Christianity does it by its constant emphasis on sin, something that even the best people cannot escape, they are told, because they have it at birth.

Methods Used

The methods used are most extreme and unsubtle in some cults or sectarian churches, but most Christian groups are more subtle, using some methods at some time. The degree to which they use them measures how far they have moved from free will to mental manipulation, or from God to the Devil, should we say? The professionals begin by showing their church in the most positive light. Then they increase the pressure so gradually the subjects do not realise what is going on. They are trapped! Much then is demanded of the congregations, who are expected to be utterly obedient. Leaving is deliberately made difficult—apostasy from Islam is punished by death! A website no longer extant (Jade’s) listed some of the methods:

Hypnotic techniques—extended audio, visual, verbal or tactile fixation drills to increase suggestibility, excessive exact repitition of routine activities, sleep restrictions, nutritional restrictions
Environment control—controlling time use and social and physical environment, by rewards and punishments, contact with family and outsiders discouraged, economic and other dependancy on the group reinforced
Information control—communication controlled, doubting or discomfirming information in group communications prohibited, rules for permissible topics to discuss with outsiders, and an “in-group” language often used to force members to think uncritically, within the narrow black and white parameters of the group’s doctrine
Personality change—causing the victim to evaluate central aspects of self and prior conduct negatively, efforts to destabilize and undermine the convert’s basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defence mechanisms, victim guided to re-interpret his life’s history and to adopt a new version of causality
Confidence removal—creating a sense of powerlessness, by subjecting the victim to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine their confidence in themself, their judgement, and their ability to make effective decisions
Emotional control—strong aversive emotional arousals using non-physical punishments such as loss of priviledge, humiliation, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other such techniques, hyper emotionalism and the manipulation of feelings, such as inducing alternating emotional highs and lows
Intimidation—psychological threats such as physical or mental illness, reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic loss, social failure, divorce, disintergration or failure to find a mate
Mystic manipulation—persuasion of the higher purpose and special calling of the group through a profound encounter or mystical experience, using narcotics, a staged prophecy or staged “miracles”
Greed and vanity—induce change, whether on a global, social or personal level, appeal to vanity and elitism in being given a chance to become one of the elect, elite, chosen ones, promises of power over others
No more secrets—self-disclosure to the other members, often in the context of a public gathering in the group, admitting past sins and imperfections, even doubts about the group and critical thoughts about the integrity of its leaders.

Dr Singer, a psychologist and expert on cults, thinks that people can be over confident in their ability to withstand cult propaganda, and that actually leaves them vulnerable. The basis of this is the so-called “Self-serving Bias”. It is the confidence people often have that “such and such does not apply to me”. You can say that most Americans are self deluded, are bad drivers, or believe everything they read, and many of them will agree because they will not include themselves among those who are. Everyone thinks they are free of the characteristics the rest have. Acceptance that psychological programming can affect you just as much as anyone else is the best defence against it. Then you are really on your guard, and not in a state of false security.

Nine Signs of Cult Recruitment

Dr Brad Sagarin on the Working Psychology Website has listed nine signs of cult recruitment. Not all of them need be present, but if several of them are, then baneful influences might have been at work.

Personality changes—Do you find yourself saying, “He’s a different person” or, “I don’t know her anymore”? Cult membership often requires and enforces a change of personality
Sudden shifts in values or beliefs—psychology shows that beliefs and values resist sudden change. A sudden change might show that the person has joined a cult.
Changes in diet or sleep patterns—Cults and religions often impose a required diet, pork is forbidden, or all meats, and practices that might interfere with sleep such as programmed praying. The aim is indeed programming, and also cost—spare money is meant for the cult.
Refusal to attend important family events—religions often assert their authority over the individual by requiring them to cut down family involvement until they eventually leave them.
Loss of personal autonomy—refusal to decide anything without advice from the cult.
Sudden use of a new ideology—the cult ideology or theology is presented as the answer to everything.
Simplistic, black and white reasoning—the world of the cult is simplified into those who are for us and those against, good and evil, black and white. All colour and even shades of grey do not matter.
New vocabulary—religions and cults have their own set books couched in their own vocabulary and use of it is a likely marker.
Missionizing—recruitment is necessary to cults. New recruits are encouraged to bring in their friends and relatives. It gives kudos to the individuals and money and members to the cult.

Christian converts meet every one of these criteria.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.