# Cults that are in no way Christianity

[The general definition of a cult](culture-cults.md) is "group [addiction](addiction.md)", but Christians require a more specific definition:

- For Christians, a [cult](culture-cults.md) is a culture that binds multiple heresies together.
- Most cult deprogramming is designed under the presumption the person is a victim of mind control, but that's not always the case.
- [Cult members](culture-cults.md) often have a normal-enough way to approach most of their life that you wouldn't know just by observing them.

[Language](language.md) is a *massive* factor in most cults:

- Their choice of words are often the same as the rest of Christianity, but carry an entirely different (and typically more complex) [meaning](symbols.md).
- Most [understanding](understanding.md) of specific concepts are hidden behind dense jargon and long explanations.
  - [Good educators](education.md) can simplify vastly complex ideas, but cults practically forbid that form of brevity.

Cults often borrow directly from the Bible.

- Their heresies tend to string passages of 1-2 verses at a time together, then use their inferred idea to defend their assertion.
  - A more thorough [Bible study](bible-study.md) will make it patently obvious to a typical Christian.
  - They'll often gloss over specific core ideas, so take your disagreements with them *very* slowly and methodically.
- They typically use those verses to advance an [influential](power-influence.md) leader's or written work's authority that sits alongside the Bible.
  - The secondary authority tends to combine heresies together into a [group culture](people-culture.md) of its own.

Most people, including Christians, can be close-minded, but cult members can take it to extremes.

- Cult members are told to accept everything at face value, with stern rebukes if they ask questions for [further understanding](understanding.md).
- To accept the doctrine of a cult, cult members have to personally reject [the simple Gospel message](jesus-gospel.md), meaning they often have a personal antagonism against Christianity in general.
- A cult may have *many* well-reasoned components, but the core doctrine's [logic](logic.md) breaks down compared to Christianity.

Many religious cults end up believing a few additional things alongside their heresies:

1. Most Christians are deceived (typically by the devil) to the point that they deserve condemnation or condescension.
2. There is no hell.
3. Any manifestation of [Satan](spiritual-warfare-tricks.md) can only come as a horned, evil-looking thing, and not as a beautiful angel of light.
4. [Modern health treatments](body-4_health.md) are inherently obstructing spiritual faith, and the only solution is either prayer or a prescribed set of obscure rituals.

The loss of "self" in light of a [greater purpose](meaning.md) can be attractive to many people.

- Just about [any substance whatsoever](addiction-substances.md) can become the basis of religious devotion.
- Most cult practices are unhealthy, unbalanced imitations of the symptoms of [healthy devotion to Christ](https://theologos.site/devotion-chaos/).

One fascinating truth about many false religions is that they frequently embody the *opposite* values of Christianity within their [myths](stories-myths.md).

- The story of Adam and Eve involves a fall from grace that requires God's intervention (therefore making mankind an antihero in the [story](stories.md)), but that same story reflects itself in other religions (e.g., Sethians, Prometheus) as man being the heroic bringer of hidden knowledge (making mankind a general hero and the gods as antagonists).
- Most ancient myths portray the gods as if they were as fickle as humanity, including broken promises and unexpected obstructions. The God of the Bible, however, is absolutely in control, with *people* being the one impediment to the goodness God wants.

It's worth being aware of the [charismatic leader](people-culture-cults.md) who founded the movement and their general views.

- There's typically a *lot* more if you research, but [convincing](power-influence.md) a cult member requires them coming to their own conclusions.
- Most cults demonstrate the remarkable [creativity](mind-creativity.md) of [the devil](spiritual-warfare-tricks.md) with [the truth](people-lying.md).
- When researching cults, don't let yourself become agitated by the absolutely *insane* doctrines they believe.

## 1. Religions/cults

I've only included *current* practiced religions/cults. Many cults go back as far as ancient history (e.g., Zoroastrianism, ancient polytheism), but they're [no longer popular](trends.md) and therefore not as useful for staying informed.

Judaism - founded by Abraham ~2081 B.C.

- Differing core values:
  - Christianity and Judaism share 2/3 of the [same Bible](bible.md) (the Christians' Old Testament), which dramatically changes the spirit of the
- Incriminating evidence:
  - While Jews *did* crucify Jesus, they are *not* a cult.
  - Technically, Jewish doctrine is heresy to Christians (beyond Messianic Judaism), but they deserve at *least* some respect because Jesus is a Jew, and they *did* come first as a religion (i.e., everyone at the time who believed in God honored Judaism in some fashion).

Gnosticism - founded a few years after Christianity itself ~40 A.D.

- Differing core values:
  - The body and physical world are evil or nonexistent, and since God is only spirit, it's our responsibility to only pursue non-physical things as well.
  - Spiritual understanding is a special knowledge ("gnosis"), and that knowledge is salvation.
  - This value system arises in different forms, including Theosophy and many post-modern philosophies.
  - Sometimes, they'll come to believe God lied to people (e.g., in the Garden of Eden).
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Jesus makes it obvious we must tend to physical things when loving others (e.g., [serving others](church-serve.md), [spiritual exercises](spiritual-exercises.md)).

Islam - founded as the Muslim religion by Muhammad in 609 A.D.

- Differing core values:
  - Jews and Christians are deceived by perversions in the Bible's translations, and Muhammad's revelations outlined in the Qu'ran set the record straight.
  - Allah is simply one God, and to say Jesus was anything but a prophet is blasphemy.
  - There is no Trinity, and it's nothing more than the polytheistic worship of 3 gods.
  - A Muslim is required to perform jihad ("struggle") against sin, which can sometimes include acting graciously to kill unbelievers before they continue sinning and incurring more wrath in hell.
  - Some things are absolutely taboo ("haram"), and even talking about them can be a sin.
  - While God *had* given grace to Jews and Christians, He's grown tired with their unfaithfulness and has abrogated His favor to the Muslims.
  - The end of the world will involve a peaceful death to all Muslim believers, but then there will be a great judgment of all humanity later after that.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Muhammad grew up in Mecca and worked to convert Jews peacefully, and much of the Qu'ran's earlier Surahs indicates that reality. However, once he went to Medina, he declared war on non-Muslims (specifically Jews) and adapted the doctrine of abrogation.
  - Islam is the most violent religion ever created, with more wars conducted in its name than any other religion.

Deism - founded as a movement in the 16th century, but present since antiquity

- Differing core values:
  - God does exist, but is relatively uninvolved with the world around us.
  - We are responsible to live good, moral lives according to God's standards and our conscience.
- A new adaptation is moralistic therapeutic deism, asserted by a few sociologists in 2005:
  1. A god exists who created and ordered the world, and watches over human life on earth.
  2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as indicated in the Bible and most world religions.
  3. The purpose of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
  4. God doesn't need to be particularly involved in a person's life except when God has to resolve a problem.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - The Enlightenment was founded on Deism, and is a massive component of [how the USA was established](https://theologos.site/the-west/).
  - Post-modern philosophy has demonstrated there is no philosophical absolute for virtue without any established Scripture.
  - Without any [religious devotion](spiritual-exercises.md) to God, society [slowly decays](mgmt-badsystems.md).

Mormonism - founded through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by Joseph Smith Jr. in 1830

- Differing core values:
  - The Bible is incomplete, and 3 books are also scripture: The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine of Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price.
    - There is also a Journal of Discourses originally written by Brigham Young that adapts most of those doctrines further.
  - The new scripture was shown through a prophetic vision to Joseph Smith Jr. in 1823 by him reading Egyptian hieroglyphs on Golden Plates the angel Moroni gave him.
    - There were once good, white Native Americans who had received Jesus (who had visited the Western Hemisphere after leaving Israel), but they were defeated later and left those Golden Plates.
  - There isn't simply one God, but many gods.
    - The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate gods.
    - "God" as we know him is Elohim, a human who lives on a planet called Kolob, who used to be a man like us on another world, and became a god by following the laws and ordinances of his god on his home world.
  - Humanity was produced by Elohim bringing a wife to this world, who he married on Kolob, and produce spirit children, who are all the people who have ever been born on Earth.
    - Jesus and Lucifer are spirit brothers, and are the first two spirits who were born.
    - Everyone is born as a spirit-person *before* they're physically on this earth.
  - There was a large spiritual battle millions of years ago between Jesus and Satan, with the aftermath determining all of humanity's fate:
    - Elohim would make sure followers of Jesus would be born into white Mormon families.
    - Followers of Satan became "demon-like" and ugly.
    - The people who stayed neutral had their skin turned black.
  - Jesus was born, got married, and had children.
    - He died on the cross and paid for sins, but also in the Garden of Gethsemane *before* he went to the cross.
  - Mormons can become gods, like Elohim, after death.
    - Mormons can baptize a dead person into Mormonism through their ancestors being baptized on their behalf.
    - A believing Mormon must learn 4 secret handshakes to enter the third heaven and be made into a god themselves, which will expand Mormonism to other planets.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Before running a religion, Joseph Smith had a dishonorable reputation with his father as a treasure hunter and used spiritual divination techniques to that end, but emphatically denied his background later in life.
  - Joseph Smith Jr. changed his story later and said the Golden Plates came from the angel Nephi, not Moroni.
  - The original doctrine promoted polygamy (multiple wives), but they've later changed their stance on it, with [divisions](people-conflicts-war.md) on the subject.
  - There's no reported evidence of either the Golden Plates or archeological evidence of white Native Americans.
  - There are 3,913 separate instances of the Book of Mormon edited with material distinctions.
  - In 1844 Joseph and his brother Hyrum destroyed an anti-Mormon publication called The Nauvoo Expositor and were placed in a Carthage, Illinois jail on trial for it, but a mob of ~200 people brutally murdered both of them.
  - Brigham Young immediate took over the group, moved everyone to what is now the state of Utah in 1846, and added a *lot* of momentum and details to Mormon theology and customs.
    - One example is the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, where Brigham massacred 100 non-Mormon immigrants, which led to his imprisonment, conviction, and execution 20 years later by the US government.

Christian Science - founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879

- Differing core values:
  - Most of the doctrine of Christian Science is a hybrid of vague and [illogical](logic.md) post-modern philosophical language revolving around Christian theological concepts.
  - The doctrine borrows heavily from Hegel's philosophical gnosticism, where all things are Mind, with Matter not a part of Truth.
  - Diseases are simply matters of belief, and the mind is capable of healing everything through Truth.
  - Sin is simply an illusion, and in no way real or worth directly addressing.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Mary Baker Eddy had a morphine [addiction](addiction.md), as well as *many* material possessions, in light of her admonitions to live spiritually.
  - Christian Science produced a relatively expensive publication at the time that ended up repeatedly sharing the same redundant pseudo-philosophical pseudo-spiritual information.
  - Mary's life was fraught with scandals and strange cover-ups.

Jehovah's Witnesses - founded through the Watchtower Society in 1879 by Charles Taze Russell as an [offshoot of the Millerites](history-church.md)

- Differing core values:
  - The correct version of the Bible is Russell's New World Translation, which contains *many* doctrinal differences between any other Bible.
  - The Watchtower Society regularly produces publications that declare themselves as having the most biblical authority and interpretation of any published work.
  - Jesus was simply created *by* Jehovah as the "firstborn", and isn't God or part of a Trinity.
  - The Trinity doctrine is inspired directly by Satan.
  - The only people who receive salvation are 144,000 selected people by God in [Revelation 14:1-5](https://biblehub.com/bsb/revelation/14.htm), and not simply people who will prevail through the rest of those 21 judgments.
  - There is no hell, simply the soul's disappearance.
  - Nobody will see Jesus return.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Charles Taze Russell committed lied under oath about his ministry, his college background, and his divorce.
  - Judge Rutherford was able to successfully hide the "Russellite" name after Russell's death by [rebranding](marketing.md) as Jehovah's Witnesses.
  - Society publications have no author attribution, which they claim enhances their humility but also serves to exonerate responsibility for bad doctrine.

Beyond the above, there are other Christianity-imitating cults with a lesser degree of influence and varying cult-like qualities:

- Rastafarianism
- Seventh-Day Adventists
- Unification Church
- Unitarian-Universalism

Further, other religions/cults are *very* much incompatible with Christianity because they represent entirely different value systems, as well as *not* giving Jesus full authority:

- Bahá'í Faith
- Buddhism
- Caodaism
- Confucianism
- Deism
- Eckankar
- Hinduism
- Jainism
- Moorish Science Temple of America
- Nation of Islam
- Neopaganism
- New Age
- Scientology
- Shinto
- Sikhism
- Spiritism/Spiritualism
- Taoism
- Wicca

## 2. Secular cults

Some cults do *not* conform to a religious basis (i.e., no explanation of [the Big 3 questions](religion.md), especially the afterlife).

- The authority isn't spiritual, so it doesn't typically centralize on one personality, but they tend to have specific [influencers](power-influence.md) who advance the cause.
- They don't promise immortality, meaning members are never motivated to perform tremendous sacrifices that could create severe loss in this world (e.g., [violence](people-conflicts-war.md)).
- However, the group's leadership still demands unfailing devotion to specific core doctrines, without any open-mindedness to [alternative perspectives](image.md).
- Ironically (and in alignment with cult affiliation) many of their proponents are unaware of their value system's dogmatism, but have an obsession with destroying other groups they've deemed as dogmatic (especially [religion](religion.md)).

Christians can be part of a secular cult without realizing it.

- Often, they're [consenting to actions](people-contracts.md) they don't realize are incompatible with Scripture.
- When they do realize, they will be forced into an ultimatum to give up their social movement to follow Jesus or give up Jesus to keep following the movement (Matthew 13:1-23).

Organized crime - existing as long as civilization, but grew in scale with industrialization starting in the 19th century

- Core values:
  - Serving the cartel/mafia/syndicate/organization is more important than serving yourself.
  - Anything that accomplishes a self-interested purpose is a worthwhile endeavor.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - *Some* goods may require Christians may use the black market (Bibles and Christian literature, mostly), but it carries [too many risks](safety-riskmgmt.md) for a Christian to safely conduct if there's a legitimate alternative (Romans 13:1-7).
  - Most black market transactions exploit [vices a Christian shouldn't engage with](morality-sins.md) and provide services that work *against* the reigning government's interests (and therefore subordinating their role and God's direct authority over them).
  - If an organized crime organization *becomes* the [government](politics-systems.md) (typically through [building enough power](power-types.md)), then their black market activities fall under "normal" [market conditions](economics.md).

Political campaigns - began significantly as a group in the USA in 1860 through a vast [marketing](marketing.md) effort

- Core values:
  - The hope of the nation, and the world, rests in the selected candidate being elected.
  - (for [conservatives](politics-conservativeliberal.md)) We must bring society back to [known-good virtues](values.md) we once had.
  - (for [liberals](politics-leftism.md)) We must give more [freedoms](people-boundaries.md) to people who don't have them.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - At its extreme, it has become [Fascism and Marxism](politics-systems.md), which are both tyrannical regimes that strip society of its freedoms.
  - It's not possible to scale Jesus' [command to love](https://theologos.site/devotion-chaos/) upward to a political scale (at least, [not yet](https://theologos.site/millennium/)), so we can *only* work with the domain of what we have control over, then release the rest to God.

[Multi-Level Marketing](marketing-mlm.md) - founded in the 1920s from multiple organizations

- Core values:
  - The leadership of the MLM company have the authority from their [success stories](success-1_why.md).
  - Self-sufficiency through an MLM organization is the secret to [living well](goodlife.md).
  - Everyone can benefit well from MLM, and the people who don't follow its winning formula are an inferior type of person.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Most MLM culture advances greed and shameless violation of [boundaries](people-boundaries.md) with their former friends and family.
  - Many MLM companies' leadership are run by convicted white-collar criminals.

Pride - started in 1970 in the USA as Gay Pride but grew heavily as a political movement starting in the 1980s

- Core values:
  - Everyone's sexuality is absolutely within the domain of choice, and there is no distinction between genders except what you wish to be.
  - All things involve sexuality, and reflects the primal desires we're based in, and the broad sexual range reflects the range of humanity's exploration (e.g., transitioned in language from "gay" to "LGBT" to "LGBTQQIAAP").
  - All society must accept all forms of sexual expression, and any conventional models of family must be updated to reflect that broader scope of sexuality.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Except for the [trend followers](trends.md), every single person who publicly asserts their sexual deviancy has had a history of sexual abuse in their childhood.
  - The LGBetc. movement has a strong emphasis on sex, to the point that it's impossible to ever discuss anything *not* about sex with them.

Climate change - started in the 1970s by several scattered scientific papers but asserted as a movement started in the 1990s

- Core values:
  - The world will collapse within a few short years if we don't act fast as a human species to stop it.
  - Anyone who doesn't act in line or question the climate scientists' assertions is dooming us all.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - *Dozens* of climate predictions have been stunningly wrong.
  - Most climate science measures carbon, which is easier to control populations but doesn't directly correlate scientifically to *anything* nearly as much as water.
  - Climate scientists tend to disregard God's created solutions to our problems.
    - Radiation-eating bacteria cleans up nuclear fallout.
    - Hydrocarbon-consuming microbes clean up oil spills.
    - Excess carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide gives more air that plants love to breathe, meaning more plant growth and the ecosystem balancing itself out.
    - Within months of COVID-19 shutting down all economic activity, smog cleared itself up.
  - Climate science also doesn't address how utterly unimportant we are.
    - The Mount Saint Helens eruption caused more pollution in one event than the entire Industrial Revolution.

Atheism 2.0 - provoked by Alain de Botton in 2012 but previously explored in the 17th and 18th century

- Core values:
  - The realm of [science](science.md) holds the greatest authority for mankind.
  - The values contained within religious doctrine must be extracted from all faith-based ideologies.
  - Atheism must substitute *all* religion with secularized distillations of calendars, [art](mind-creativity.md), [speech](language-speaking.md), [propaganda](stories-storytellers.md), [gathering](groups-small.md), and [collaborative works](creations.md).
  - Atheists in the scientific community have used various tactics to justify *all* supernatural events, including God's flood in [Genesis 7-8](https://biblehub.com/bsb/genesis/7.htm) (most recently, a large meteor) and explain where all life came from.
- Incriminating evidence:
  - Relative to most religious groups, most of the atheistic communities on the internet are relatively unkind, unpleasant, and critical.
  - Atheists' insistence of science as a rigor is a dogmatic validation of the published works of scientific journals, *not* the [gathered body of knowledge](science.md) according to [what can be empirically proven](science.md).
  - They usually hold a double standard of quality for most elements that validate the Bible (e.g., Daniel's prophecies actually coming true, Noah's ark has been found, flood vs. macroevolutionary theory, etc.)