October 26, 2006

• I didn't find any websites for the DOC of Hamilton but I did find this negative post in some random forum.
• Oh great. Now I'm stuck in the Rick Ross database. Now I won't get anything else done tonight.
• Surely people have a right to be insane?
• The Dominion Christian Centre may be abusive towards it's members, and that might lead to questions about whether illegal activity is taking place behind it's walls or it may not. I certainly don't know. But even if it is, I find it hard to see the actions of the parents as tolerable. The story in the Hamilton Spectator suggests that she was grabbed off a city street and forced into a van. This is an adult we're talking about, not a child, and she is legally outside her parent's control no matter what they may think about her newfound religious beliefs. Hard to see it as anything but a kidnapping.
• aack! it's should be its.
• Surely people have a right to be insane? That's crazy talk! Sorry, couldn't resist
• The family appears to be Roman Catholic. Maybe they don't like their players switching teams?
• Nobody does.
• My perception of reality is more correct than your perception of reality. (You gotta admire the built-in Natural Selection of cult suicide.)
• I'm pretty sure Rick Ross is the guy the parents of a classmate of mine had talk to my high school (once upon a time, in a land far away). He had "deprogrammed" my classmate's sister and we first watched a clip from 60 Minutes of him in the process of doing so. That was one of the stranger all-school assemblies, I have to say.
• So when does he begin working on 700 club members?
• What "cult," mandyman. Do you remember? I find it interesting that deprogramming is dropping off with the increases in religious tolerance. Still, are we mindful enough to prevent further Jonestowns? Should we be? Hard topic to touch.
• Or Roman Catholics. Hard to know just where the cult/religion line is. If I had my way we'd deprogram everyone, even Unitarians.
• Defining a cult is a bit like defining terrorism -- pretty hard to do without stepping on protected civil rights. It's much easier to ban behavior. So, better to ban intentional sleep deprivation, a ban that would also cover military schools for example, than to ban its use in a religious context in particular. The first doesn't violate any protected civil liberties, but the second violates religious freedom protections. We've seen an example recently here in Canada with terrorism legislation where the judge found that banning an act when done for a political purpose represented a violation of the protection of political speech.
• Well, I do get angy at religions that isolate members from family and friends. But, I gladly welcome any religion that doesn't and further allows free time for introspection and unrestrained discourse. I know there are monkeys out there that think those things don't exist in religions. I'd rather not underestimate people. Call me a Pollyana optimist. I insist. ...she is legally outside her parent's control no matter what they may think about her newfound religious beliefs. Hard to see it as anything but a kidnapping. Yes, but... when someone's mental state is reduced to the point where their mental capacities are so reduced that they may in any other situation need guardianship can you still be intolerant of the abduction? I don't know. It's hard to see it in black and white on this one.
• When someone's mental state is reduced to the point where their mental capacities are so reduced that they may in any other situation need guardianship can you still be intolerant of the abduction? Yes. The question here is who has the right to judge whether someone is no longer capable of making decisions for themselves. For adults, that duty rests with the state not with the parents. If someone thinks their son or daughter is no longer capable of making decisions for themselves, they need to apply and obtain a mental health order from a justice of the peace. Then the police can apprehend the person and they will be evaluated. You simply cannot snatch people off the street. Period.
• Fair enough. I think I let the sensationalism of vigilantism get to my aching head too much, perhaps.
• If it were my child, I can't say with any certainty that I wouldn't feel desperate enough to do the same thing, whether or not I had any moral or legal right to do so. It's right that they're being charged, but I hope the judge doesn't sentence them too harshly. The really sad thing is, if the daughter ever DOES decide to leave the group, have they ruined any chance of her trusting them enough to ask for their help?
• This is, of course, assuming that the DCC *is* a cult. I know several devout Christians who are convinced that Freemasonry is a cult.
• Well, r88, my concern isn't so much towards the status of "cult" or "religion," but more about the exclusivity and cloistering that tends to be a symptom of certain brands of belief. When people constrict their support networks until they see no network at all it can be an overwhelmingly depressing thing to sit and watch. And yeah, DCC (DOC is a rapper), oops.
• Don't all religions do that? At least to some extent?
• I think it might be useful to separate out the harmful and abusive behaviors of certain religious groups from the idea of religion itself. That way this discussion could avoid becoming an argument about the concept of religious belief itself. If my kid (or a relative or friend) were involved in a group that made them cut all non-group members out of their lives, I'd do what I could to convince them to leave that group. This would be true whether the group had a putative religious basis or not. On an odd note, my grandparents used to own a small house by a lake, and either in the late 70s or early 80s it was rented out by a group who deprogrammed people from cults. When they got the house back, all of the windows had been covered with foil or paper to block out whether it was day or night. The whole thing creeped my grandparents so much that they wouldn't rent out to those guys again.
• creeped out my grandparents, I mean.
• Agreed, and my point wasn't to attack religion in general. I'm just not sure that the concepts of cult and mainstream religion are all that easy to separate.
• Well cults are not necessarily bad things; this is why I'm not too concerned with making a distinction here. The usage of the word "cult" in the mainstream has brought alot of negative misconceptions. And, no, I would not make the claim most systems of belief constrict individual support networks drastically. It just isn't true. Yes, many belief systems have monks and nuns, however these are not the mainstream practitioners of these beliefs. As for deprogrammers, they tend to use the same psychological deprivation and conditioning techniques as the belif systems they try to oppose. I don't agree with either. But, I do find personal accounts of being isolated and alienated through subscription to certain group ideologies incredibly disheartening. I have not seen this in ex- members of "mainstream" beliefs, excluding angst ridden members who carry anger for parents for including them in their beliefs since birth. Although, I see a distinction here. Those people who left their parental religions tend to still maintain family ties. Albeit the strength of those ties depends on the quality of parent not the institutions they subscribe to. I have had throughout my life Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan and Buddhist friends; some remain, some have gone - ususally not for religious differences (unless they proselytize). As well, I have many friends and aquantainces who are areligious and have religious family with whom they are not estranged. I find it easy to seperate non-exclusive secular behaviour among the religious with exclusive secular behaviour among the religious. I consider myself areligious, not atheistic; I don't even think about personal spirituality or religion. Call it agnosticism or atheism if you need a handle, I don't really care. Think of it as someone who knows what hockey is but doesn't care about it either way (egad!). If their is one doctrine I do espouse, tho', it's educated tolerance for other people's ideology.
• What if this couple's daughter had fallen in love with a man whom they didn't like. What if this man had convinced her to cut off all ties with her family because they just didn't understand. Would the family be justified in kidnapping her and "deprogramming" her from the effects of this man?
• Just a couple of things, r88: 1) Your analogy seems messed up: To fall in love and to subscribe to an ideology are two different things (we aren't talking about love of/for a god, we're talking about the manner in which this love of/for a god is addressed and interpreted - the church; the ideology). Likewise, convincing a person to cut off contact and psychological conditioning which cuts off contact are two seperate beasts, as well. 2) We need an argument for abduction and deprogramming at this point.
• I think they're the same thing. Some outside influence has caused her to *choose* to sever her family ties. She's an adult and she has made the choice herself. Does it really matter what influenced that choice?
• Sometimes chickens, sometimes feathers.
• Is there a reason we haven't heard from Hamilton's Captain Renault in this thread? Captain, J'ACCUSE!! of what, I don't know, but it was fun
• If he's defending the parents, he can't weigh in. Hmmm..
• The plot thickens...
• Interestingly, and perhaps obviously, the minister of DCC Hamilton used a controversial bible quote from Matthew chapter 10 in his interview with CTV: "I come not to bring peace but a sword." This quote pits "father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother..." Some interpret this as metaphorical between the old and the new, some interpret it to mean Jesus preached violence. It seems that according to most people the violence is a misquote taken out of context. Luke chapter 12 apparently, says the same thing replacing "sword" with "division." In the same chapter, Jesus tells his disciples to flee the cities that would persecute them for their belief. I think it would have been equally effective (in regard to the current state of the family from a divisive standpoint) had the minister chosen to use the quote from Luke, however. Interesting choice of words - they imitate the sensationalist impassioned attitudes shown in the footage of his sermons. I'm no bible expert, this is just what I read.
• I vote we deprogram the religious right. Now that's a truly dangerous cult. *shrugs