Talk:List of purported cults/Talk-Merged

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For a March 2005 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of deadly cults

From WP:RfD:

  • List of deadly cults → List of purported cults - Article title is inherently POV. A reader searching for a "list of deadly cults" will be presented with a list that includes many groups which are not. The article was on VfD (VfD votes were 3 for merge and delete (that is not possible according to admin), 3 to merge, and 1 to delete.) See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of deadly cults. --Zappaz 19:59, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Disagree. List of deadly cults is not an inherently POV title - some cults have been involved in deadly events, and the List of purported cults includes them. Furthermore, the page has lengthy talk and history sections which helped shape the current articles in the Cult topic, and for that reason they are worth keeping. -Willmcw 21:13, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
    • Delete, or remove redirect. This is blatant POV. A few cults mat have been involved in deadly events, but my group (and may others) is listed there and we are people of peace. This is blacklisting and inherently POV making peaceful groups guilty by association.. How come you don't see that? Maybe because you want to blacklist groups you disagree with? Is this the purpose of Wikipedia? ≈ jossi ≈ 00:01, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
    • Delete. The list of purported cults need not contain ONLY the ones that are deadly, and should not be condemned in that way not matter what else is wrong with them. Michael Hardy 00:14, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Move to a harmless location like List of purported cults/Merged 1 to keep edit history, then delete the double-redirect at list of deadly cults. -Sean Curtin 01:30, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
    • Preserve history: move to NPOV title and then delete POV title Agree with Gtrmp/Sean Curtin --Henrygb 00:17, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Origins of this article

As I see suspicions that EdPoor created this page below, it must be said that it is Andries who reated this page (as well as others like "doomesday cult", "suicide cult", "deadly cult" etc) and EdPoor merely moved some material here from cult. Hope we could avoid the usual pro-science/anti-cult debates. -ExitControl

[edit] I disagree with the radical step of moving from "cult" to "destructive cult"

Ed, why couldn't you be a bit more patient? Even I admitted that the cult article was a bit off balance, though I am critical of NRMs. I just needed some time to fix it. Besides the move is incorrect when you read the following definition of a destructive cult

"We define Doomsday/Destructive/Apocalyptic cults to be religiously based, very high intensity, controlling groups that have caused or are liable to cause loss of life among their membership or the general public.
It is important to realize that out of the tens of thousands of new religious groups worldwide, only a very few meet these criteria.
We do not include terrorist groups in the above definition, because their goals are primarily political, not religious. However, groups like Al Quiada (The Source) do have some points of similarities with destructive religious cults." from religious tolerance (I do not always agree with this website)

Andries 18:29, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We can distinguish between destructive cults and ordinary NRMs (at least after the fact), because the former actually get their members to commit horrible crimes. That's why we need 2 separate articles.

I envision the following set of articles:

  • NRM - general, scholarly
  • anti-cult and counter-cult movements - POV of "cult opponents"
  • destructive cult - indisputably bad groups

As for the checklists, include as many as you like. Just don't call them "one example" and "another example": give sources. Like Steve Hassan has a checklist, and probably Rick Ross too. Come to think of it, an article could simply link to those guys' articles, and we could leave their lists there.

I've compared my own church with both checklists, and I radically disagree with them about how much the checklist items apply (examples on request).

To be neutral, we should say that anti-cultist X says that checklist item #N applies 100% to this NRM, while sociologist Y says it only applies 3% -- and stuff like that.

It was really Barker and her Making of a Moonie that blew the lid off the "lump 'em all together" anti-cult scare. When she proved with documented research that hardly anyone contacted by a Unificationist gets involved, and showed how high the attrition rate was for people who "moved in", that really let the wind out of the sails of zealots like Hassan who claimed that hapless weak-minded victims could be "snapped" or "zapped" with (unpecified!) mind-control techniques right on the street -- "just one look, that's all it took". Gimme a break!

Sorry to be so passionate. I wasn't even gonna get involved, but somebody left a note on my talk page... --Uncle Ed 19:36, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with quite a lot of what you say. With regards to the checklist, I had already written that on the talk page. But I think you went too quickly and too far. I mean moving the cult article. The word "desctructive cult" is far less common than cult and besides different people assign different meanings to them. The cult related articles are a mess now, which is your fault. That is far worse worse than having just one article (i.e. cult) that was unbalanced. You did not have to use edits that had the magnitude of an atomic bomb. Andries 19:41, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Furthermore, the following definition DOES FIT 'destructive cult':

We define Doomsday/Destructive/Apocalyptic cults to be religiously based, very high intensity, controlling groups that have caused or are liable to cause loss of life among their membership or the general public. It is important to realize that out of the tens of thousands of new religious groups worldwide, only a very few meet these criteria.

It just doesn't fit 'cult' very well. Have you checked out religioustolerance.org? They call cult a "snarl word", meaning that it's like a tangled lump string (all snarled together), not like a dog that snarls at you!

You think I'd join an unpopular NRM without checking out what its opponents say about it? I'm not stupid, Andries. I've been studying 'anti-cult' & 'counter-cult' writings for the entire 27 years I've been in the UC. I compare what Anson, Shupe, Barker, Massimo, Hassan and others say with what I've actually experienced.

Sure, some local leaders may have done stupid or unethical things. But these people get weeded out. Aidan Barry, who promoted deception in fundraising, wound up quitting. I, on the other hand, who insisted all along that deception was against Rev. Moon's teachings, am still in. Go figure. --Uncle Ed 19:46, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

yes, Ed, I know and that meaning was already described in the old cult article. I did of lot reading on the subject and I am an expert by experience too. [1] Some NRMs are very rotten and can not be salvaged into something good. Andries 19:53, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Opposed to recent page move

I oppose the recent move and believe that the status quo should be restored until there is a consensus regarding the necessity of a move and the appropriate titles for each article. Please indicate your support or opposition for the move below. Unless there is a consensus that Ed's move was appropriate, I will restore the page to its previous location. uc 19:48, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with EdPoor's move and will restore back again. But probably we could move all that language to "anti-cult movement"? I see no sense in having separate pages on "deadly", "destructive", "doomesday" and "suicide" cults (as Andries proposed), when a scientific term "new religious movement" exists already and anti-cult rhetoric can be placed in "anti-cult movement". - ExitControl

I agree. This page move is a bad idea. I agree with much of Uncle Ed's rationale, that the Cult page as it now stands is horribly un-NPOV, and the idea of moving anti-cult and cult-interventionist material to the anti-cult page, but the word "destructive" as used here is simply somebody's POV. It's like having an article called "Destructive body art" or "Destructive voting for Ralph Nader".COGDEN 23:33, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I agree to the move. The previous page had a mish-mash for destructive cult stuff, checklists designed by anti-cultists as catchalls and a biasdd POV--≈ jossi ≈ 02:24, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Let's deal with it step by step. I agree with the move. Now we need to either transfor this article from anti-cult pamphlet to something balanced or just delete it entirely. I added a new page today, "dirty jew" - but even there I do not theorethize which Jews are actually dirty and which are not. "Destructive cult" is not a phenomena or scientific term, just an expression, after all. I agreed with Jossi, EdPoor and CogDen- ExitControl

Oppose this move. Exploding Boy 16:11, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

So what are we going to do? Merge destructive cult into cult? They both contain nearly identical versions of the 3 cult checklists.
I think we can distinguish clearly between cults which have PROVEN that they were destructive -- i.e., everyone agrees they committed suicide or murder -- and those which are only SUSPECTED of being destructive, manipulative, or time-wasting. We could, of course, mention the viewpoint espoused by some counter-cultists that ANY cult is potentially destructive -- as well as the viewpoint that cults merely vary in their degree of harmfulness. --Uncle Ed 15:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
yes, we can clearly distinguish which cults are destructive in hindsight. Social scientists have not found a reliable way to predict what cults will use violence. It is a bit of a circular concept. I am not saying that I seriously believe that groups that advocate peace and non-violence, like my former group will engage in mass suicide or large scale murder by rank and file members but I think it is important to know whether the group you are in or that you meet can possibly use violence. It is a bit meaningless to say that you can know for certain that you are in a destructive cult if your guru tells you to commit suicide or to murder people. Andries 16:57, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good points about circular reasoning and meaninglessness. My particular 'cult' has advocated violence on at least four occasions:

  1. God executed the flood judgment in Noah's time (Genesis 6:6) -- "violently" killing everyone but the 8 people in Noah's family - I guess my church "advocates" this action in hindsight.
  2. Rev. Moon told church members to form a Unification Crusade Army to defend South Korea if North Korea ever invaded - a last desperate measure, to be sure, but he made it quite clear this would involve killing.
  3. In a speech about dealing with persecution, he said -- but only once -- "If they come at us with machine guns, we will fight back with machine guns" (shades of Malcolm X!)
  4. One of Rev. Moon's sons has a company that makes pistols -- expensive ones, primarily bought by policemen.

Okay, now that I'm done bending over backwards to play devil's advocate, let me point out the countless numbers of times that Rev. Moon has stressed that suicide is a sin. (Murder, too, but this goes without saying.) People who commit suicide go to very dark and smelly places in hell. --Uncle Ed 17:50, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Checklists

I moved the cult checklists to a new article. --Uncle Ed (El Dunce) 17:14, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] See also

I removed a number of wikilinks that do not belong. Probably left over from a previous edit. --Zappaz 00:04, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

This article should be merged with List of purported cults. There's no reason to have more than one list of cults. -Willmcw 14:27, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I will merge them. -Willmcw 00:38, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of deadly cults

Admin: Please explain why you did not delete the article and chose to redirect instead?. There was only one vote for redirect, 3 votes for merge and delete and 3 votes for merge. The title List of deadly cults now redirects to a List of purported cults, meaning that a reader searching for a list of deadly cults will be presented with a list of groups which are not. Inherently POV title. Please delete. --Zappaz 16:13, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)