One thing that really stands out in CNN's docuseries about the 'Heaven's Gate' cult for HBO is how it desperately tries to link the cult with Christianity. But maybe this explains why the CNN produced a documentary about a cult that was news almost 25 years ago...
Let me share just a couple of thoughts about it.
Watching it left me wondering why Clay Tweel's documentary about a millenarist UFO cult is so filled with comparisons between this cult and Christianism... I have seen many documentaries about Heaven's Gate and about other cults (several about Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, for instance) and never seen anything similar before... One thing is that the cult founders took elements from Christianism in the origins of the cult; and another is that, in the documentary, every element of the cults' history and characteristics is compared to some element of Christianism.
For instance, the comparison by sociologist Reza Aslan of the change in the group's beliefs after Bonnie Nettles' death (one of the two founders), with an alleged change in what he calls the "Jesus movement" (sic) after Jesus' crucifixion, arguing that Jesus' death contradicted the "Jewish definition of the Messiah"... Well that is why it's called Christianism and not Judaism, isn't it?
The same Reza Aslan claims that the concept "cognitive dissonance" was created in the theology field, what is false... In fact, Aslan, when he speaks about cognitive dissonance in the Heaven's Gate cult and in early Christianism, shows a perfect example of cognitive dissonance himself, by ignoring the fact that Jesus' figure was a rupture from established Judaism... An evidence of this is that Jesus' fate was decided by the Jewish people, not by the Roman authorities, when they choose him over Barabbas to be executed. So he was a rupturist figure from the "Jewish definition of the Messiah" already before his death.
While I was looking at it I saw other parallelisms that could have been brought up but were ignored.
Regarding the genderless society proposed by Marshall Applewhite, the same day I write this, we learnt that:
And what about millenarism, and Applewhite's meassage 'follow me or you are doomed'...?
Watching it left me wondering why Clay Tweel's documentary about a millenarist UFO cult is so filled with comparisons between this cult and Christianism... I have seen many documentaries about Heaven's Gate and about other cults (several about Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, for instance) and never seen anything similar before... One thing is that the cult founders took elements from Christianism in the origins of the cult; and another is that, in the documentary, every element of the cults' history and characteristics is compared to some element of Christianism.
For instance, the comparison by sociologist Reza Aslan of the change in the group's beliefs after Bonnie Nettles' death (one of the two founders), with an alleged change in what he calls the "Jesus movement" (sic) after Jesus' crucifixion, arguing that Jesus' death contradicted the "Jewish definition of the Messiah"... Well that is why it's called Christianism and not Judaism, isn't it?
The same Reza Aslan claims that the concept "cognitive dissonance" was created in the theology field, what is false... In fact, Aslan, when he speaks about cognitive dissonance in the Heaven's Gate cult and in early Christianism, shows a perfect example of cognitive dissonance himself, by ignoring the fact that Jesus' figure was a rupture from established Judaism... An evidence of this is that Jesus' fate was decided by the Jewish people, not by the Roman authorities, when they choose him over Barabbas to be executed. So he was a rupturist figure from the "Jewish definition of the Messiah" already before his death.
While I was looking at it I saw other parallelisms that could have been brought up but were ignored.
Regarding the genderless society proposed by Marshall Applewhite, the same day I write this, we learnt that:
Mr. Potato Head brand goes gender-neutral, dropping "Mr." title https://t.co/R5sMUIt869
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 27, 2021
And what about millenarism, and Applewhite's meassage 'follow me or you are doomed'...?
1 comment:
An attack to Christianism? Indeed!
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