From Jasmine Sailing (jsailing@netonecom.net) Mon May 5 09:24:21 1997
Amidst a schizophrenic delusion of grandeur, Rhoads@aol.com
swore:
* "Organized religion is a test. If you fall for it, you fail."
* -- Mason
Yes, Darwin's Gate is organized religion. So is joining a chaos temple. It doesn't matter in this case, though, because it's the same ol' story of any religion deviated from the Christian norms being deranged and worthy of purging from the gene pool.
Seriously. The only real difference between Heaven's Gate and Christianity is that the former expect a UFO to take them to Heaven and the latter think angels and the dead son of God will do it. Yet, somehow, Christians are accepted by damn near every person in this country while Heaven's Gate are ridiculed by everyone here. So what do we have here... people who are insane because they replace angels and dead guys with UFOs in their beliefs. Okey. UFOs are tangible, they're most likely out there. You would think it would be EASIER to accept the Heaven's Gates version than the Christian version. It's just not the way things are grilled into everyones' WOP minds though. I dunno. Maybe I'll shut up if one person manages to give me a rational explanation of how Heaven's Gate is any weirder than Christianity. I don't think it's going to happen though. I don't think it can. The only difference is that Christianity is status quo and Heaven's Gate isn't.
Ok, so Christians don't have mass suicide rituals. They do the sane thing and kill everyone else instead... Or did. =) Of course there's the little question of someone called Jesus, who let himself be killed to save everyone else. Which is exactly what the Heaven's Gate people did. He's a martyr, they're kooks. Christians stood there waiting for the lions to eat them in arenas because they wouldn't disavow their beliefs. They're martyrs because they believed in cannibalism, eating the flesh of the saviour, rather than UFOs.
After everything that has been done in the name of religion throughout our history, a small clump of people trying to martyr themselves (for a UFO, or Christ, or the great sand glop Glorp) isn't that big of a deal. Do I want to join Heaven's Gate? Hell no. They keep to themselves, though, and I like that in a religion. I just wish people would accept it that they're no more weird, and definitely far more peaceable, than the standard religions in this country.
The Mormon cult, IMHO, is far larger AND weirder. People don't seem to have a problem with them being in our backyards and having their Church of Latter Day Saints ads on our TVs. Of course they're ok because they kill Indians but they don't kill themselves. Whatever. I think peoples' ways of thinking are quite screwy. It should be easily accepted that Heaven's Gate is no more weird than anything else out there. And then people who need someone to kick should go take a look at the Mormons, Scientologists, and Fundamentalists.
Too bad there aren't more cults that just keep to themselves and kill their own selves. I'd rather keep that trait IN the gene pool. It's a nice change of pace from the usual slaughter of everyone different. =)
Jasmine Sailing %%%% Cyber-Psychos AOD %%%%
jsailing@netonecom.net
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http://www.netonecom.net/~jsailing %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Cyber-Psycho originates from the Greek roots khyber (governor)
and psyche (soul). In this world only the crazy are sane. We are the
crazy who seek to be our own governors, we regulate and correct the
evolution of our own souls. Trust no one who doesn't laugh.