Cults...Being Bad or Religious....

I'm not a religious person..i respect peoples views but i sometimes find it difficult to understand how cults can develop and turn so sinister. Such as mass suicides, these may be rare but i could never understand how religion can develop to this stage.

Here's a few of the famous cults that have been around;

• Charles Manson and "The Family"


• Jim Jones and "The People's Temple"


• David Koresh and the Branch Davidians ("Students of the Seven Seals")


• Heaven's Gate

These are taken from site which goes into detail about the characteristics and actions of the cults; http://www.mysterynet.com/richardson/cults.shtml

The last Cult is probably one of the most shocking. I'm going to focus on this because i think it shows you how out of hand these cults can get!!!

Heavens Gate Cult

Here's an extract from the website, when i read it i couldn't help but think this isn't real religion..UFOs??

"Heaven's Gate had 21 women and 18 men voluntarily commit suicide for three successive days in three groups, beginning March 23, 1997. They lived austere, celibate lives as preparation for the next level of existence: life without sexual identity, gender or activity. Some committed voluntary castration. Based on a mixture of Christian beliefs and UFO theories, Heaven's Gate followers not only believed that extraterrestrials sought to bring humans to a higher level, but that properly-timed suicide would lead their souls to be "replanted" in a container that would take them to that higher level."

This cult is in much more detail and has the suicide images on: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/heavens_gate/5.html

http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/28/mass.suicide/links.html

According to the above you can understand why cults are seen as so bad, why they are rejected from society,but in most cases they reject themselves from society.

I think its the mass suicides which give cults such a bad reputation. Suicide is obviously a serious thing to do, so for all these people to do this in some cases for an encounter with an alien....Its very absurd.

The below pictures show some disturbing pictures of the outcome of suicide cults such as heavens gate;

These cults are often referred to as 'Killer cults', this website shows an interesting look at these KILLER cults!! http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/cults1.html

But overall cults are bad, The lecture spoke of being TOO religious and many of us felt quite uncomfortable when he was sort of 'Preaching' at the start. If your not religious this can make you feel quite uneasy but I'm not going to slag religion off because its very important to some people. But i think these cults are bringing a bad name to religion and giving presumptions and stereotypes to other sects, domination's and cults which are totally against suicide.

I think these Cults are very bad for society, Brainwashing people to think they are going to a better place.

But religion isn't bad so we shouldn't get confused.