Reviewed by Yves Barbero

Reprinted from the October-December, 2005 BASIS

Like a lot of people involved in skepticism as a movement, I gave myself credit for knowing a lot about cults. Margaret Thaler Singer’s book showed me that I didn’t know the half of it.

Singer, who died in 2003, contributed to my education without boring me, or drowning me in minutiae, but still giving me a rich tapestry of details. This is the ideal book for those who want a thorough background on a subject that touches most people. She starts by a clear definition of what constitutes cults and their history over the last couple of hundred years. She goes on to describe likely recruits, and how they are recruited,

My personal fascination with cults goes back to my college days in New York. Walking the streets one day, I was intercepted by an intense young man in a white shirt and tie. Unlike me, he had close-cropped hair and was clean shaven. Did I want to take a short test? Sure, why not. I was taken to a walk-up office above a store and given sheets of paper and an answer sheet where I would fill in slots with a supplied pencil. There is no right answer, he said. It’s just to find out what kind of a person I was.

It wasn’t really a short test, and after filling out 30 or so answers, I started filling them out at random. I was majoring in sociology, and I recognized it as a knock-off of the Minneapolis Multiple Personality Inventory. Nevertheless, this fellow, after scoring the test, managed to tell me a lot of things about myself that seemed true. I had not yet heard of “cold readings” and was flabbergasted since I had randomly filled out most of the test. I did smell a rat and began asking questions myself. He didn’t answer me or react emotionally. I felt a twinge in the back of my mind of wanting to hit the guy. Instead, I walked out. To this day, I wonder if it was a Scientology recruiting attempt. But I can’t be sure. I hadn’t heard of Scientology at the time.

I encountered Transcendental Meditation next. I actually took the course ($70, almost a week’s pay at the time) and did it for a while, although I was never heavily involved. I had also been doing Tai Chi Chuan (a real martial art) and quickly determined that I’d been ripped off by TM. With Tai Chi, there was a simple exchange of fees for learning a demonstrable fighting skill. Tai Chi taught me about my body. TM was pure ritual, cash up front.

By the time I got settled in San Francisco, I’d encountered a lot of things, many not vicious at all, and probably not cultish in Singer’s strict sense. I suppose it’s possible to wear a saffron robe and eat brown rice while chanting without being in a cult.

In San Francisco, I was a little out of sorts and fairly alone when I encountered some intense young people telling me these marvelous things about a fellow named Jim Jones. Despite my telling them that I was an agnostic, they urged me to attend one of his services. I decided not to go. I had become resistant to intense young faces. And, as it turned out, for good reason. After the Jonestown murder/suicide, I became totally immune. It wasn’t just a separation of me from my money that was at stake.

The trick was not to become cynical. It’s perfectly possible to be committed to something without being committable. And sure enough, I ran into Bay Area Skeptics. Some members have unique agendas that are a far cry from anything I’d advocate. But we all go home at night to family and friends, and to the normal concerns of independent bright people.

I resisted reading Singer’s book for a few months, largely because I felt satiated with what I knew about cults. I had to remind myself that if you are not formally trained in something, there are lots of gaps that need filling. This has proved to be true for many things in my life. I’d always seen people who joined cults as saps or maybe victims deserving of their fates, and cult leaders as con men. I’m still embarrassed by the couple of times I’ve been separated from my cash, or made to do ridiculous things.

Some of my ideas about cult members touch on accuracy. But not entirely. I had never thought, for instance, of children brought up in cults. Missing from most of them is the necessary peer interchange that makes them independent citizens in our free-wheeling society.

Singer devotes a lot of her book to the emotional toll cults take on their members. She was a psychologist after all. She devotes a lot of her efforts to detailing the mechanisms of recruitment, retention of members (not all cults kidnap people and keep them under lock and key), and has a lengthy section on what happens to these folks when they finally leave, or are thrown out – something I knew almost nothing about. If someone you know has been in any sort of cult, this is mandatory reading for you. Why, for instance, don’t they take your good advise? Or why can’t they make the simple day-to-day decisions all people make? All cults have structured relationships that institutionalize many things that most people do half-consciously.

Will it help you understand suicide bombers? I think so since she touches on so many possible human behaviors. But it’s good to remember that cult leaders are not omnipotent. As many people were murdered at Jonestown and Waco as agreed to commit suicide.

She makes an important contribution to what is not a cult, and this distinction is important. She wrote that she was often asked if the U.S. Marine Corps was not itself a cult. So often, in fact, that she developed a 19 point chart on how the Marine Corps differs from Cults. I reproduce it entirely since it demonstrates the clarity of her analysis.

How the United State Marine corps differs from cults.

1. The Marine recruit clearly knows what the organization is that he or she is joining. What will be expected of him or her and what will transpire are laid out clearly before joining. There are no secret stages such as people come upon in cults. Cult recruits often attend a cult activity, are lured into "staying for a while," and soon find that they have joined the cult for life, or as one group requires, members sign up for a "billion year contract." The United States Marine Corps (USMC) program is set and outlined from the start.

2. The Marine recruit retains freedom of religion, politics, friends, family association, selection of spouse, and information access to television, radio, reading material, telephone, and mail.

3. The Marine serves a term of enlistment and departs freely. The Marine can reenlist if he or she desires but is not forced to remain.

4. Medical and dental care are available, encouraged, and permitted in the Marines. This is not true in the many cults that discourage and sometimes forbid medical care.

5. Training and education received in the Marines are usable later in life. Cults do not necessarily train a person in anything that has any value in the greater society.

6. In the USMC, public records are kept and are available. Cult records, if they exist, are confidential, hidden from members, and not shared.

7. USMC Inspector General procedures protect each Marine. Nothing protects cult members.

8. A military legal system is provided within the USMC; a Marine can also utilize off-base legal and law enforcement agencies and other representatives if needed. In cults, there is only the closed, internal system of justice, and no appeal, no recourse to outside support.

9. Families of military personnel talk and deal directly with schools. Children may attend public or private schools. In cults, children, child rearing, and education are often controlled by the whims and idiosyncracies of the cult leader.

10. The USMC is not a sovereign entity above the laws of the land. Cults consider themselves above the law, with their own brand of morality and justice, accountable to no one, not even their members.

11. A Marine gets to keep her or his pay, property owned and acquired, presents from relatives, inheritances, and so on. In many cults, members are expected to turn over to the cult all monies and worldly possessions.

12. Rational behavior is valued in the USMC. Cults stultify members' critical thinking abilities and capacity for rational, independent thinking; normal thought processes are stifled and broken.

13. In the USMC, suggestions and criticism can be made to leadership and upper echelons through advocated, proper channels. There are no suggestion boxes in cults. The cult is always right, and the members (and outsiders) are always wrong.

14. Marines cannot be used for medical or psychological experiments without their informed consent. Cults essentially perform psychological experiments on their members through implementing thought-reform processes without members' knowledge or consent.

15. Reading, education, and knowledge are encouraged and provided through such agencies as Armed Services Radio and Stars and Stripes, and through books, post libraries, and so on. If cults do any education, it is only in their own teachings. Members come to know less and less about the outside world; contact with or information about life outside the cult is sometimes openly frowned upon, if not forbidden.

16. In the USMC, physical fitness is encouraged for all. Cults rarely encourage fitness or good health, except perhaps for members who serve as security guards or thugs.

17. Adequate and properly balanced nourishment is provided and advocated in the USMC. Many cults encourage or require unhealthy and bizarre diets. Typically, because of intense work schedules, lack of funds, and other cult demands, members are not able to maintain healthy eating habits.

18. Authorized review by outsiders, such as the U.S. Congress, is made of the practices of the USMC. Cults are accountable to no one and are rarely investigated, unless some gross criminal activity arouses the attention of the authorities or the public.

19. In the USMC, the methods of instruction are military training and education, even indoctrination into the traditions of the USMC, but brainwashing, or thought reform, is not used. Cults influence members by means of a coordinated program of psychological and social influence techniques, or brainwashing.

Reading the 19 points is instructive for many reasons. You can apply most of these points to most organizations, from corporations to religious and political groups, and determine if they are a cult. For instance, I applied the appropriate points to the Cistersian (Trappist) Monks and found that although they live in seclusion and in silence, they are not secretive (how they live is transparent public knowledge). Nor are they deceitful in their recruitment. They are subject to authority (Rome and civil law), take care of their members, materially and physically (health care and exercise). They insist on a thorough education, and go out of their way to make sure you belong by placing markers in the training of novices when they can honorably leave. I met one former Trappist some years ago, who left after a brief time. He said he was glad for the experience although he was no longer a practicing Catholic.

The section on “Intruding into the Workplace” may be of immediate use to readers since often, cults conduct “seminars” for corporations. It may be just revenue enhancing for the cult with no thought of actually recruiting, but it can leave emotional scares on the employee and may (and has) lead to lawsuits for the employer. Human resources (personnel) managers are encouraged to read these 20 pages just to keep out of trouble.

Lastly, Singer has a nice postscript to the 2003 revised edition about Millennium Cults, another neat 20 pages that includes Aum Shinrikyo’s gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the Heaven’s Gate suicides, The Millennium murders In Uganda, the “Moonie” makeover, the Hare Krishna child-abuse case, Falun Gong, and what happened to the Cult Awareness Network. She also analyzes the connection between Cults and modern terrorism. I wish Margaret Singer had lived to carefully research and write a book about the psychology of terrorists. What she wrote in those two pages is tantalizing.

As I was reading this book in preparation for this review, I stopped for a haircut. My barber, whom I know to be deeply religious, asked me about the book. I told her that it was a well-written, very readable book about cults. Knowing about her religious views, I told her, mostly in jest, that when a preacher talked more about himself than Jesus, it was a cult. Her eyes lit up. Maybe I’ll lend her the book.

by Yves Barbero.

Reprinted from the October-December, 2005 BASIS

My imaginary friend Kilroy is not unlike me except that he’s a believer. I tend to accept the best arguments, not wanting to throw my soul in turmoil if some major upset in the intellectual world topples my pet notions. Coward that I am, If the best arguments don’t pan out, I just accept new ones that appear to be right. But Kilroy believes firmly in the guiding hand of some cosmic engineer.

Intelligent design? I suggest.

Nothing that stupid, he says. I don’t anthropomorphize. More like intelligent direction.

A theory of progress, perhaps?

No, no! You’ve got it all wrong. Look, in the beginning was a singularity.

I brighten: Big Bang?

Shut up, and you’ll learn something!

I close my mouth.

I’ve been bothered by an idea, Kilroy says. Why does God want to be worshiped? It makes no sense. It’s like us demanding that ants worship us, differing only by an infinity of additional degrees of magnitude. I figure that some ancestor of ours, early on, figured out that the awe folks had for nature could be personified and exploited. He put on a headdress so he’d seem taller than the people around him and made a claim that he understood the meaning of it all. Since the damn thing was heavy and unwieldy, he applied some basic physics and made the headdress pointy on top so it’d be lighter and better balanced – even if his cosmic thinking wasn’t.

I nodded, but kept my mouth firmly shut. Conspiracy theories don’t impress me much.

Later, he or one of his henchmen invented all sorts of rituals to keep people in line. Better they dance and bow than think. A young woman the ancestor con-man desired kept her distance, preferring a strong warrior her own age to keep her warm at night. He soon developed a set of rules that favored his desires over the warrior’s charms. Kilroy quickly pointed out that all this happened over several generations. Remember, these guys were inventing this as they went along.

I wanted to ask him about the worship thing but figured he’d eventually get to it, so I kept my peace.

At some point, of course, economics and power came into it. You could keep people in line by suggesting that the guy organizing the first agricultural or fishing village had some cosmic go-ahead from on-high to control behavior and, incidentally, property. So you bowed to the king, and he bowed to the greater, if conveniently silent, invisible power, who would occasionally make pronouncements through the king’s chief priest.

This, Kilroy suggested, was the beginning of organized religion. But society changes. No one, not even modern monarchs, believe in the divine rights of kings, although it did take the U.S. Army to dissuade the Japanese of this belief in 1945.

He must have seen my eyes so he supplied that, yes, he did believe in the cosmic engineer because he thinks that life must have some ultimate purpose. Naturally, my humanistic inclinations make me think that any purpose we have is the purpose we ourselves assign. Kilroy knows this about me. But he persists. Kilroy points out that it was a stretch to think that this cosmic engineer actually created it all. Some arbitrary roll-of-the-dice natural process actually did that. But it’s not out of the question that locally, the Earth presented the right combination of location and resources to be molded into what it is today.

I didn’t ask him if this engineer came in a flying saucer, or who engineered the engineer. I didn’t want him distracted from his tale.

The Victorians gave a special status to children, he announced, creating or enhancing some wonderful fantasies – Peter Pan, Father Christmas, and Alice in Wonderland to name a few. It was no big leap to create a children’s Jesus, who takes care of people. These children grew up retaining these un-Biblical notions, and they passed them on to us. Actually, the social message in the Bible is that we should take care of one another.

Now, of course, in this age of democratic property management, we have a heavenly CPA. Keep your accounts balanced and you shall see the Kingdom of God. Of course, keeping the accounts balanced is a question of interpretation. Write a check, or vote a certain way, and the interpretation comes in two-minute sound bites. And, of course, you cannot question God’s role in the continuous manipulation of creation. This cosmic tweaking is accompanied, for many, by the absolute timetable of Genesis as filtered by Bishop James Usher (1581-1656). Our modern nobility in Washington encourage this as a distraction, or, in more than a few frightening cases, because they, themselves, believe it.

Not everything is a cynical conspiracy. Both Kilroy and I acknowledge this. Even powerful people are perfectly capable of self-deception. Who knows, maybe the first con-artist actually believed he spoke to heaven.

Kilroy sees modern fundamentalism as crude and ridiculous, whether it is the bargain basement transaction of flying a plane into a building in exchange for a berth in paradise, complete with peeled grapes and three-score and ten virgins, or making a commitment to do a number of self-demeaning rituals framed by blind-belief to enter a post-mortem hotel where you get to stupidly do the same worship rituals for an air-conditioned eternity.

Here are all the aspects of the re-worked religion brought together in one know-nothing fundamentalist package – a terrible God, demanding worship, who nevertheless takes care of you in paradise, if you pay your ritualistic heavenly tax of bowing and singing forever.

I couldn’t hold back any longer. I blurted, why bother with the cosmic engineer concept at all? Just use the hypothesis that if something is there, it’ll take care of itself in the end. If nothing is there, nothing is there.

Kilroy is a believer. That just won’t work. Better to work out a new theology. Make people happy in this life with their lot. He could see my head moving from side to side in disapproval and disbelief.

I know, he says, it’s like the double argument Christians use that without religion, people will rob, rape and murder, so even if Christianity is not true (but of course it is), it should be promoted. I just want to make people happy. I acknowledge that they can’t do without religion, so I am supplying one, true or false. But it is not just that, I think I’m onto something.

And I could see in his eyes that he thought that to be the case, so I sat back and gave him my continuing attention. He did once say “Stealing is when you take a piece of bread from a hungry child, even if you own that bread. The rest is mere law.” Such wisdom deserves respectful attention. The fact that an imported bottle of beer was supplied facilitated my patience.

Imagine that the cosmic engineer sought, or even set in motion, planets in likely orbits. He fiddled with them until just the right conditions existed for life to evolve. He came back from time to time to mold things so intelligent life would evolve. I know what you’re thinking. Arthur C. Clarke invented the whole thing in his 1951 story, “The Sentinel,” which later became the 1968 movie, “2001.” Maybe he had a sub-conscious inkling of the truth and expanded on it. A lot of people thought Clarke was a mystic, aliens substituting for God as in his 1953 “Childhood’s End,” until he wrote the novel, “3001" in 1997, wherein mankind rebels against the aliens’ grand design. He even posits a logical structure for all the unlikely faster-than-light overwhelming dazzling show of the movie.

I remember! It turned out to be computer program, and we had happened to have a nasty virus stored on the Moon to defeat it. Clarke did say that a sufficiently advanced technology would seem like magic. I guess he became an atheist and accepted his own quote in this novel.

It doesn’t end there, Kilroy insisted. Maybe the cosmic engineer influenced Clarke so we have that twinkling of the truth.

And maybe, I quipped, God actually finds parking spaces for Christians in SUVs who are virtuous enough to utter a whispered prayer instead of the usual obscenity.

He ignored the wisecrack and went on. We mustn’t anthropomorphize. The cosmic engineer has motives of some sort and we need to decipher them. I think he wants us to get smarter by offering clues to some grand multi-generational puzzle, and when we deviate from that course, he throws us a curve. Spiritual fulfillment and reward after death is nonsense. We die, we die. That’s all. Fundamentalism is counter to his purpose. I’m convinced of that. The earthquake in Pakistan is punishment for Islamic smugness since they abandoned their early love of learning, and replaced it with self-suppression. A prayer rug is no substitute for lively thinking. The hurricanes here have as much to do with the self-righteous nonsense going on in Washington as global warming.

The floods in Europe?

To get their engineering juices going. But Europe is generally going in the right direction. They may not be deliriously happy in their cosmopolitan secularism, but their lives have more satisfaction since more of them figure things out than not. I’m happy, I suggest, and I live in the good old USA.

You don’t suffer from the self-hatred of most fundamentalists (they’re subject to a third-rate spiritual novel and aren’t allow to deviate to a better plot). You’re not trying to shove your notions of truth down people’s throats. You’re happy to present an idea and see if it flies. You don’t flagellate yourself if someone ignores or laughs at one of your ideas. You just fiddle with it until you think it’s time to run it up the flagpole again.

Fundamentalists work to suppress ideas that challenge their world-view. They have no interest in getting smarter. Remember when those museums were pressured into not showing some IMAX films because the underpinning of the science in the films was evolution. They didn’t simply ask that a sign be posted warning people who want to be insulated from thinking that the films were pro-evolution. They decided, since they had the political clout, that no one would see these documentaries.

I summed up for Kilroy All these disasters are designed to make us smarter by steering us away from religions that unthinkingly worship the cosmic engineer and in addition, force us to do some engineering of our own. The cosmic engineer doesn’t want worshipers. We shouldn’t expect rewards after death, just here, and we’re mostly on our own except that the cosmic engineer occasionally gives us a kick in the ass to keep us on track. Okay, I understand that he doesn’t want to be worshiped, but why did he set this scheme up in the first place?

Because he’s lonely and wants to evolve a company of peers, not ass-kissers.

Now who’s anthropomorphizing?

by Yves Barbero

Reprinted from the October-December, 2005 BASIS

There are many creation myths or startup schemes around. Creation myths are far from being a unitary idea. Even among those insisting on a specific religious framework such as the Bible, there are differences. Those insisting on Genesis as having the final word are separated into two camps.