Talking About Dialogue Ireland

I posted previously about a leaflet for the Cracking Cults seminars. I picked it up in the Veritas shop on Abbey St. It's not one of my usual haunts I grant you but I was there for reasons I will go into some other time. The seminars are organised by Dialogue Ireland.

Dialogue Ireland describes itself as "inspired by Christian values [DI] is an independent Trust that seeks to promote people’s freedom to make informed choices about religious, spiritual and philosophical beliefs". It shares an address with the Veritas shop. I suspect they probably do a lot of good work - anybody who opposes Tony Quinn, Scientologists and the like can't be all bad.

I do have to wonder though about an organisation originally formed by the main Christian churches in Ireland, opposing, well other religious groupings. It's kind of like General Motors setting up a body to fight against start up car companies. But then competition in the world of religion and dogma has never been actively encouraged - most of them promising eternal damnation if you start shopping around. You can't serve God and Mammon after all and you certainly can't treat God in the same way you treat Mammon.

I tend to agree with the adage that a cult is a religion that hasn't got tax free status yet. All religions, after all, start as cults. Jesus was the original messianic leader. Go back eighteen hundred or so years and an anti-cult organisation might have given the early Christians a hard time. But cults are religions on steroids and if one is not keen on religions, then cults will really get one's goat, preying as they do, on the weak minded and those at a low point in their lives.

It must be hard for a Christian backed organisation to maintain objectivity about those cults that are based on Christianity. So for example, in its A-Z of various cults it does list Opus Dei but the only information is a link to an article by the author (CNN's Vatican analyst) of a book that dismisses most cult accusations against Opus Dei - and which was pretty well received by them. Including a link to a more critical material would provide better balance.

Another problem resulting from DI's origins is hypocrisy. Some of the criticisms and observations of the cults that Dialogue Ireland cover sound pretty familiar:
From the information on the School Of Philosophy And Economic Science:
Complaints have been made about the totalitarian structure of the group. It was claimed that those who displeased [the leader] were often dealt with severely. [The leader] had total authority, and, to many, came across as an awesome power to be obeyed – someone who had some indefinable access to the correct ‘answers’. The [cult] has been accused of fanaticism, bullying and lack of compassion.
(... because the RC Church is some sort of democratic wonderland with nary an authoritarian bone in its body?)

From an linked article on Raelians:
To Raelians, evolution is bunk
(... see Scopes Monkey Trial)

From the information on Anthroposophy:
Yet his so-called ‘thinking’, his supposed power of supersensible perception, led to a vision of the world, the universe, and of cosmic history which is entirely unsupported by any evidence, which is at odds with practically everything which modern physics and astronomy have revealed, and which is more like science fiction than anything else.
(... because the Bible is a such good source of knowledge on physics and astronomy?)

From the text of an article on the Mormons:
"Once you do research and start getting other viewpoints, you're toast," said Kali, who said he was excommunicated in 1996[..] "I could not do missionary work anymore."
(... see Hans Kung, also Society of St Pius X)

OK, these out-of-context snippets are a little unfair, but I hope the reader can see what I am getting at. Sometimes the division between a cult and a religion is just a matter of time, money and the number of members. It's a long running debate. It ain't going to get solved here.

Researching, opposing and counteracting cults is a good thing in my book. I think ideally this work should be done by a secular (as distinct from secularist) body with no axe to grind. I am not aware of any such body in Ireland so in that absence, and not withstanding the criticisms above, Dialogue Ireland should be supported, even by securalists.