Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

Cults are everywhere. Almost everyone has their own theology they pray to, even if they declaim their atheism, rationalism, scientism, agnosticism as nothing more than 'centrist common sense', juxtaposed against the supposed ravings of Christians and Jews. Moslems are never included in the anti-religious slaverings of the post-modern of course. They are the cleverest and most tolerant of groups, even classified by some big brains as a race and one which is superior to anything the benighted West could develop. It reminds one of the fanatics who go to great lengths to protect the vaunted mud turtle from disturbance, yet are intolerantly vigorous in their prosecution of abortions-at-all-costs, as a 'female right'. Save the mud turtle. Murder the human fetus, which might anyway be just a soccer ball – science said so. These big minds see nothing absurd in such declarations of piety and religiosity in loving the mud turtle, but hating the fetus.

The variety of cults parading as religions is endless. The commitment to evolution at all costs; the cult of GlobaloneyWarming; the gay cult; the abortion fetishers; Mother Gaia, the worship of Obama or Oprah; the fascination with reality TV or Tiger Woods, the belief that anyone calling themselves a scientist actually is one and is by default 'always right'; or the cult of the transnational where inter-nation actors like the UN are somehow superior and moral in spite of all evidence to the contrary, these and plenty morel constitute very particular and quite absurd devotional theologies. Everyone has their theology, regardless of posturing to the contrary.

From evolution to Oprah, massive gaps in logic and facts are clearly evident. Yet when confronted by pertinent questions [how can a trace chemical like Co2, 95 % emitted by Gaia and which follows climate, cause climate change?]; the cult member reverts back to liturgical cant and religious chants. 'Scientists' who are in fact activists, have said so, Oprah said so, everyone knows it to be true, so the case is closed. When asked about helio-centricity most will say 'of course it is true, Galileo, Copernicus and all that', but offer no real proof about why it must be true even if it does seem quite obvious and apparent that it is true. Theories without proof are just theories. Evolution has its merits and place but large gaps exist, that Darwin in his magnum treatise left out on purpose on the advice of friends, who maintained that his theory would suffer if the gaps in data, logic and the record of sudden organism appearance and disappearance were included. When confronted by the problems with evolution [how can cells be formed from nothing?, how can a hot liquid mixture magically produce mono-celled and over time, multi-cell creatures?, where is the lab proof supporting this theory?], the ardent Darwinian will fall back on ad-hominem attacks and 'science says so'. No rational thinking required for the denizens of cults.

If you ask someone why Islam is peace, the usual rejoinder is that they are best friends with well-dressed, pious Moslems who are the most wonderful people in the world. The individual conflated to the general. Since Islam is a religion in their view it has to be 'good'. The same is not true of Christianity of course. If you ask them about the Koran, its violence, the history of 1400 years of Jihad and the daily destruction of non-Moslems around the world, the butchery of Christians [Black and Hamitic, therefore part of the minority-aggrieved 'class']; the reply will be 'what about the Crusades?', another topic the speaker knows little to nothing about, but feels assured that 'science' has proven that the Crusades, pace Walter Scott, were a bad event, regardless of the fact that they in part, saved civilization. Islam in toto, is fantastic because Scott, Moslem propagandists, post-moderns and politicians said so. Case closed.

So what is a religion ? None of the standard explanations make any sense. By the usual dictionary standard anything is religious. The typical definition includes a belief in the supernatural, god or gods; or a controlling force. This is not what constitutes a religion. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy struggles with the question, listing traits which might denote a religious group. Most are wrong:

• “Belief in supernatural beings (gods).

• A distinction between sacred and profane objects.

• Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.

• A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.

• Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in idea with the gods.

• Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.

• A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.

• A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.

• A social group bound together by the above.”

The above might be aspects of a religious culture, but they are not a definition or summary of what is 'religious'. A religion has many positive purposes and these can be encapsulated in the word freedom, in which freedom is attained by the human in the following areas:

-the mind

-the spirit

-the body

-the soul

-and accepting the Golden Rule

A real religion must free your mind. Without rationality you can't discover truth or beauty – two of the main objectives a religion searches out. Science does not explain everything, especially when so much of what is called science is simply activism and fraud. A religion will challenge your mind to rationally discuss, debate, defend and seek out truth, both in the physical and metaphysical worlds.

By using your mind, you free yourself. A religion must also free the body, by liberating it from control. You own your body, you are not a slave, not a cult member, not a knave of some power. You must own your body, and use it constructively in combination with your mind, to free your soul and by extension your spirit, and your ability to live within parameters and frameworks which mark out a civilized society, as underlined by the Golden Rule which is only found in Christianity and Zen Buddhism.

In fact the only theology which is a religion based on the above vital factors is Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.

In reading the excellent book by Anthony Kenny 'Medieval Philosophy', one is confronted by the obvious fact that rationality, Aristotelian theory, neo-Platonic ideas and science were deeply entwined with Catholic European development from late Roman antiquity to the 17^th century.

“Because the best-known medieval philosophers were members of the Catholic Church, their philosophy has often been regarded as a branch of theology or apologetics. This is unfair: they were all aware of the distinction between philosophical argument and dogmatic evangelism....Moreover many of the most significant thinkers were members of religious orders....”

By 410 AD, Augustine had compiled and synthesized Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian thought into a coherent, if sometimes flawed theology of mutating Christianity. Yet we are told that all was 'dark' between 400 and 1500 AD until some self-proclaimed geniuses popped out of the European cave and brought sunlight to darkness.

“A historian of the ancient world can read, without too great exhaustion, the entire surviving corpus of philosophical writing. A comparable feat would be well beyond the powers of even the most conscientious historian of medieval philosophy. Augustine, Abelard, and the great scholastics were such copious writers that it takes decades to master the entire output of even a single one of them.”

Reading, thinking, rationalizing. These are derivatives of a religion. Cults inform the opposite; slavery, ignorance, unthinking devotion, and violence. Cults demonize, religions free. Cults are violent, religions are only violent in self-defence – the crusades is a notable example of that fact. Cults hate inquiry, religions demand it. See Islam for more information on that point. Cults are soul-less, spirit-less, while religions are imbued with true spirit, faith and hope. Cults simplify, religions complicate.

There are many cults in today's world, but we should never mix up a cult with a true religion.