Signs of demonic origins of a religion, cult, or spiritual movement

[Eucharisted]

This is based on signs which I’ve found in certain religions, cults, and movements, and everyone is free to contradict me.

1. Historical errors. A historical error can be as big as a belief in a major event which never occured, or as small as denying the existent of a certain group of people in history.
2. Culturalized truths. Culturalized truths are beliefs which have been taken from one or more cultures, usually to appease or appeal some people.
3. Hot drinks are bad. By this I mean hot and strong drinks like alcohol, hot coca, and coffee which are forbidden from being drunk, ever, not even allowed in moderation, because they are usually considered harmful to the person.
4. Evil is called good. This can range from evil being called good to evil being excused by an end (ends justify the means) to evil being covered up in good.
5. Brainwashing. Brainwashing in cults can take many forms: Only being allowed to get answers from the cult leaders, not being allowed to have non-cult friends, not permitted to - or at least discouraged from - asking questions, ignorance and misconceptions are spread as truth and reality to cult members, and being told to memorize or recite books without knowing what they mean or without being permitted to interpret them.
6. Defensive beliefs. Defensive beliefs means beliefs which are so conditional that they either deny the credibiliy of a non-cult person, they attack the scriptures of other religions by called them corrupted or incomplete, they accuse other religions of cospiracies regarding their teachings and scriptures, and they trick people into believing the cult beliefs - and examples of such tricks would include warm feelings, strange prayers, pseudoscience, half-truths used to lure people in, and new divine revelations (especially if those revelations are said to come from another religion’s god and the said god in said religion would never give the new revelations).

How would these signs mean a cult is from the demon? Because if it’s not God, than it must be from the devil.

 

[survive]

I disagree. A religious movement or any other belief in any field will by definition not consider the teachings of contrary systems to be complete and true. If I say the motor needs a 9-volt backup and the sign says it takes three C batteries, one of us is wrong. At this point the person who hand-lettered the sign says my sticky note is wrong and I say the sign is wrong. If it is wrong to call someone wrong, who is right? We’d better figure it out before we need battery power.
As to historic errors, well they happen. It depends on the size of the error.
The brainwashing thing is a terrible insult to the mind, but isn’t enough to write off a whole religious movement. Plenty of well-meaning people have decided to include degrees of this cruel practice in their movements because it can increase the efficiency of the organization at first. I strongly disapprove, but all it proves is that an organizer is too gung ho. There are recovery (drug, ex-gay, and others) movements that resort to it because they just want to help people change more than they really can in a short time.

 

[chrisse]

This is based on signs which I’ve found in certain religions, cults, and movements, and everyone is free to contradict me.

1. Historical errors. A historical error can be as big as a belief in a major event which never occured, or as small as denying the existent of a certain group of people in history.
2. Culturalized truths. Culturalized truths are beliefs which have been taken from one or more cultures, usually to appease or appeal some people.
3. Hot drinks are bad. By this I mean hot and strong drinks like alcohol, hot coca, and coffee which are forbidden from being drunk, ever, not even allowed in moderation, because they are usually considered harmful to the person.
4. Evil is called good. This can range from evil being called good to evil being excused by an end (ends justify the means) to evil being covered up in good.
5. Brainwashing. Brainwashing in cults can take many forms: Only being allowed to get answers from the cult leaders, not being allowed to have non-cult friends, not permitted to - or at least discouraged from - asking questions, ignorance and misconceptions are spread as truth and reality to cult members, and being told to memorize or recite books without knowing what they mean or without being permitted to interpret them.
6. Defensive beliefs. Defensive beliefs means beliefs which are so conditional that they either deny the credibiliy of a non-cult person, they attack the scriptures of other religions by called them corrupted or incomplete, they accuse other religions of cospiracies regarding their teachings and scriptures, and they trick people into believing the cult beliefs - and examples of such tricks would include warm feelings, strange prayers, pseudoscience, half-truths used to lure people in, and new divine revelations (especially if those revelations are said to come from another religion’s god and the said god in said religion would never give the new revelations).

How would these signs mean a cult is from the demon? Because if it’s not God, than it must be from the devil.

I think that the purpose of the religious/cult/movement is the red flag of Satan’s work. There are some who are not set up to proselytise, but rather to be exclusive. There are others whose intent is to spread with an imperialistic motivation, and the greatest of deceivers and plotters uses the tactics you mention to blind the followers to the Truth and to fool them into believing they are following YHWH commandments.

Once the greatest of deceivers and plotters has achieved this, his followers accept the degradation of the human soul of both themselves and their victims without question and with violence to defend his right to rule the world and defeat YHWH, thinking it is YHWH they serve.

YHWH will prevail, however, Satan’s fight will be ugly as I think the greatest of deceivers and plotters may believe he is the closest he has ever been to achieving his aim.

 

[Lisa44]

Are not all religious/spiritual movements other than Judaism and Christianity from the devil?

With the exception of indiginous people who worshiped a single creator.

Really, there is only one way to worship, and that is to worship God alone, and later, to worship his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Anything else is idolatry, or lies, in the case of Islam).

ie: everything else worships something in creation and not the creator himself. Except Islam wherein the devil used the idea of one God to ensare people with false teachings (against the teachings of the prophets and against the teachings of Jesus).

The belief in the one God, our creator, must be according to the truth of God as revealed by Judaism and then through Jesus.

To take the revealed teachings on God and then distort them and make them immoral in their dictates, as Islam does, reveals the evil plan of satan.

Islam alone attempts to take the very revelations of God and make them into something unholy and sick.

That is why Muslims are forbidden to read the revealed teachings of God, as it would make clear to them that Islam is not from God.

 

[Lisa44]

Actually, Mormonism might fall under a similar umbrella as Islam in that it has distorted the revealed teachings of God.
I have never read the book of Mormon so I am not educated about that particular cult. But it seems as though it is similar to Islam in that it purports to follow the prophets and Jesus when it fact it distorts scripture.
Mormonism was, and still is, polygamous, which goes directly against Jesus’s teachings. Also Islam and Mormonism have similar teachings about the afterlife and multiple wives in heaven…etc…

sickening teachings like that. Mormonism has sinse made the appearance of sexual cleanliness, but we know this is just a fascade and cultish practices still occur in temples and in private practice.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

This is based on signs which I’ve found in certain religions, cults, and movements, and everyone is free to contradict me.

I think there are some serious flaws with your list, which ultimately says more about your own beliefs and personal bones you have to pick than it does with any generally reliable proof.

1. Historical errors.

Historical errors are no proof of anything. History is such a minefield of he said/she said, and from a post-structuralist historical viewpoint, the idea that “history is fiction with footnotes” is not an unconvincing idea. History, moreover, is not where you find truth. Consider what Shakespeare’s idea of history seemed to be (at least on the evidence of Macbeth)–the record of who kills and who is killed–and one cannot anymore consider history the teacher of much more than the great sadness of human folly.

Even if one considers history as the record of stuff that happened, one is no closer to recognizing truth. There is a qualitative difference between what is truth and what is mere fact. Myth reveals truth, for instance. The newspaper (at its best, I suppose) reveals fact. Facts in a particular context which lends value to those facts may reveal truth, but history qua history is just an interminable record of misery.

A holy text is not a history book, but a written revelation of truth. To treat Scripture (or any religion’s holy book) as a history book is to do the text and the religion a vast disservice.

So what of the historical claims of Christianity (the claims that Jesus was an actual person, etc.)? These must be seen in a broader theological context–St. Paul would lead us to believe that our focus is not the historical Jesus, who he was or wasn’t while he walked the earth, but the Jesus of the Resurrection, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father. In other words, the Jesus revealed by the Church. This is why historical scholarship has nothing to do with the revealed truths of Christianity. The life of Jesus represents an intrusion of the Divine into history. That intrusion gives history value because that intrusion is supremely valuable. The moral of the story is: truth is not dictated by history–history is given value by truth.

2. Culturalized truths.

It is generally understood (for instance) that the influence of Persian/Zoroastrian culture on Judaism led to what became the Christian vision of hell and the devil (probably augmented by a liberal influence from Egyptian religion and the character of Apophis/Set/Typhon). Does this represent a challenge to the truth of Christian doctrine? I should say not!

3. Hot drinks are bad.

This seems related to a dislike of Mormonism and not particularly germaine to the evaluation or construction of any set of general criteria for determining the supernatural or preternatural origin of a religion.

Abstaining from certain things is a matter of discipline, not a matter of doctrine. Just as celibacy in the Roman Church is a discipline, not a doctrine.

4. Evil is called good.

That individuals attempt to justify or excuse their own errors is not surprising and does not require demonic influence. I’m sure the bishops present at the notorious Banquet of Chestnuts were quite happy to call their debauchery good. I’m sure the bishops who mishandled the pedophilia scandals could justify to themselves why they did what they did–and could probably bring canon law into mix to do so. But that has nothing to do with Catholic Christianity and everything to do with human broken-ness.

Nonetheless, this is probably your most viable criterion, as long as we do not suppose that good and evil are opposites–good cannot be placed on the same level as evil, otherwise, one risks falling into the dualism which sees good and evil as representatives of different versions of the same sort of thing. They’re not. Good is of an entirely different order than evil. Evil, in fact, is the absence of the good.

5. Brainwashing.

What one person calls brainwashing, another may simply call obedience (such as someone’s obedience to the teachings of the magesterium, or one’s obedience to one’s confessor, abbott, catechist, or priest).

6. Defensive beliefs.

People in various situations can be defensive. This has everything to do with either a mistrust or their own footing in their tradition, a misunderstanding of their religion’s doctrines, a lack of faith that cannot withstand criticism or test, or simple close-mindedness (among other reasons). Again, this is a reflection of human broken-ness, not an indication of demonic activity.

Let me note that what is emerging here is not that there is a list of rules for what represents demonic influence and what not. What is emerging is the question of authority and discernment and how those relate to values. This is less of a math problem (religion A meets criteria 1-4, religion B meets criteria 5, therefore religion A is demonic, but religion B not so demonic) and more of an experience / formation of conscience issue. Conscience cannot be formed by a dictate. It is formed by discipline and experience.

I think the question of authority, discernment, and value, bourne out by experience is more relevant to determining the nature of the source of a religion or cult than whether or not a religion sees caffeine or alcohol as not good for you. Perhaps the first question we could ask is not regarding a tradition’s views of history, but: What fruit does the tradition bear?

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is grace and mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[spoiltvictorian]

3. Hot drinks are bad. By this I mean hot and strong drinks like alcohol, hot coca, and coffee which are forbidden from being drunk, ever, not even allowed in moderation, because they are usually considered harmful to the person.

This one really is true, but remember that in the good old days, pagans were drunkards and Christians had to encourage moderation. Now Christians have to fight to preserve joy and feasts!