Author: Douglas Becker

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Con Job, Part 2

Eric Fromm commented:

It becomes ever increasingly clear to many students of man and of the contemporary scene that the development of man’s intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man’s brain lives in the twentieth century (now the 21st); the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad–he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by the discrepancy between intellectual-technical over-maturity and emotional backwardness?

— Escape From Freedom

Escape from Freedom probes the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule. The analysis concludes that if humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism.

Herbert Armstrong established totalitarian rule, not as a mass movement, the basis of analysis of The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, but as an individual movement promising something for nothing: He appealed to the greed of human nature, but convinced his followers that his motives and theirs were pure. The individual was conned into compartmentalizing truths behind walls in order to accept the distorted perceptions of Herbert Armstrong, the con. It’s like entering the fun house at the circus with all those mirrors which make everything look funny: Things that are smaller, look bigger; things that are bigger, look smaller; things that are taller, look shorter; things that are shorter, look taller; things that are narrow, look wide; things that are wide, look narrow. Perceptions are distorted for fun at the circus in the fun house; perceptions are distorted for profit in Armstrongism. Nothing is as it seems. It must be so, to accomplish the purposes of the man at the top of the one man show — to live as an Oriental Potentate at the top of a Ponzi Scheme.

The first act of a con man is to establish credibility, and coincidentally torpedo the credibility of anyone or anything which will wreck the credibility of the con artist. There are a multitude of ways to do this, but in the end, the con man establishes an anti ad hominem around himself to make himself invincible: That is to say, he establishes himself as the expert so that people will accept anything he says, simply because he said it. Once this is accomplished, he is able to say pretty much anything and those following him will accept it as the one and only truth and make people feel special because they personally believe the crap he’s pedaling.

Herbert Armstrong had several “truths” to establish his credibility: Invented Church History, the utterly stupid idea of British Israelism, the misguided idea that if you obeyed God’s Ten Commandments (including a few of Herbert Armstrong’s own), you would have material prosperity in this life and become God as God is God with power as a ruler to make people bend to your will and all the Wealth of the Universe at your fingertips — forever.

One of the greatest weapons in the arsenal of Herbert Armstrong was the Feast of Tabernacles: Even though he was robbing people of their peace of mind, stability — financial and otherwise — family relationships, sanity, independence, self-respect — taking the very lives of people into a world of dysfunctional chaos and making them proud that they somehow made it all work (even though it didn’t) — the people compartmentalized away the confusion of their lives, looking for the one time in the year they could have all the nice things they did without the whole rest of the year. No one noticed or seemed to care, that they did it all on their own time and Herbert Armstrong really had no skin in the game: We all payed our own money to attend the annual circus and spend time in the Festival fun house of distorted perceptions. Three tithes was a masterstroke of manipulation to create an impressive impression of delusion deformed into a personal truth of prosperity for 8 days, while living a life of dystopian self-sacrifice the rest of the year. Of course, it wasn’t just self-sacrifice: It was sacrificing the children and spouse on the altar of self-serving idolatry to achieve something unattainable for one brief shining moment once a year.

The three tithe tithing system was certainly advanced for its time and predated the financial manipulation of the documentary Inside Job outlining the cause of the worldwide financial meltdown of 2008, which took over four decades of preparation by those of less than stellar morals (and none of whom have been convicted for their actions). Financial wizards devised Synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), Credit Default Swap, Derivatives (including futures), Hedging, leverage with high margins, Residential Mortgage Backed Securities, Securitization and deregulation to create their own prosperity, taking trillions of dollars of profit. [The terms are defined here.] Scientists and mathematicians who worked for the United States Government during the Cold War lost their jobs when the Cold War was declared to be over. They sought new vistas to apply their considerable expertise and in the 1970s settled on the Financial Sector to leverage their knowledge of technology to financial markets. It was not long before they created new financial instruments so sophisticated that the average person on the street could not begin to fathom the methodologies behind them, nor the potential impact they would have in the future of the world.

One analogy in the movie was used to describe the financial instruments this way: Suppose you were buying a house. The seller insists that your house be insured. If something happens to the house, both the seller and buyer would be covered. Suppose, though, that not only the buyer had the insurance, but 20 other outsiders took out insurance too. If the house burned down, not only would the buyer / seller get the insurance money, but the 20 outsiders would too — with no interest or stake in the property at all: It would just be free money.

Now it turns out that AIG was the major insurer. When one of the firms against which other companies insured went bankrupt, AIG could not cover the payout of the insurance and had to get a bailout — and so did several other companies. The people behind this Ponzi Scheme who were CEOs, Presidents and Directors of the companies which fell, managed to bail out just before the crisis to go to work for the Federal Government as regulators and financial consultants, insisting that Derivatives did not need to be regulated (oops!). In the process, they sold off hundreds of millions (cumulatively, billions) of dollars, all — due to the vagaries of the system they helped create — of which were tax free. And before Congress in the aftermath of this disaster, as these people were brought into account for their manipulation for their own profit (and for which they were not ultimately penalized), they explained that they didn’t do anything legal and they did what they did because no one stopped them.

Watching the movie (recommended to watch several times), is a disturbing experience.

What is even more disturbing in its own way is that Herbert Armstrong created financial instruments of his own without one whit of remorse to accomplish pretty much the same thing: To make himself rich, without accountability and — like those testifying before Congress — never admitted he did anything wrong. The Worldwide Church of God was one giant Corporate Ponzi Scheme, just as the Financial World was one giant Worldwide Ponzi Scheme.

Some people objected to the revelation in the movie that Cocaine stimulates exactly the same regions of the brain as financial gain activates. The truth is that it is science. Make no mistake: Herbert Armstrong’s brain was highly stimulated by the $2 Billion to $4 Billion dollars he ran through in the era of the Worldwide Church of God. He had an addiction to fine things and had quite an expensive habit we all paid for and that addiction was very likely the same as found in Cocaine addicts, lusting for the rush of the feeling of power.

Now maybe Herbert Armstrong was nowhere near as sophisticated as the Cold War scientists and mathematicians turned to churning out financial instruments, but he certainly was clever enough to distort Scripture to say what it did not say through Proof Texting and carefully compartmentalizing anything which would detract from his high concept ideas of control and manipulation. He was ahead of his time. He created a Sythetic Religious Corporate Disney World in the form of Ambassador College and he created his own corporate conventions for his “employees” (who paid for the privilege and not the other way around) to have fun consistently once a year to hold them captive and to continuously escape from freedom. Many religious people accept the premise that they should give 10% “to God”. But another 10% to be used to attend a church corporate convention once a year — money which cannot be used for any other purpose? And yet another 10% given every third year in a seven year cycle? It’s preposterous and decidedly Unbiblical. Scripture does not support such a thing, no matter how much of Herbert Armstrong’s distorted perception is employed to force fit it to try to make it true.

Herbert Armstrong was only the beginning. Not unlike Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff — and from the Inside Job movie — Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, and our fave, Alan Greenspan, the Armstrongist co conspirators have expanded the financial debacle perpetrated upon the dupes in the Armstrongist community. Herbert Armstrong bought gold diamond cuff links on church money, along with renting a yacht for family to sail on the Mediteranian. He spent money on gold and silver flatware for the table, and managed to take $50,000 cash everywhere he went as “mad money”. Ronald Weinland followed in the footsteps of Herbert Armstrong, spending $3.5 million as personal money out of CoG-PKG funds and the IRS caught him at it and the Federal Court convicted him. Nevertheless, Herbert Armstrong did worse and never got caught. We all should note Art Ferdig had a scam going in his Ponzi Scheme which cost his investors $35 million. He too has been convicted and is going to prison. He learned from Armstrong at his side as Herbert’s personal assistant. There are so many others (some of which are not offenders in the financial realm, per se, but are corrupt too, such as Kevin Dean). Herbert Armstrong not only was a scoundrel who made off with the money, he also taught his sycophant lackeys a thing or two about being a con artist. The entire venue of Armstrongism is a realm of ministers and administrators who are greedy for our money and they don’t stop. Those of us who listened to Dennis Luker for those decades know very well his self-concern over his salary and retirement. Everybody there is greedy and wants to live off of us in the social equivalent of the welfare system — only with much higher stakes. And yes, the UCG today is pushing its Million Dollar Faith initiative, promising to spread the gospel to the Arabs. It is another useless grab for money which will end in tears — for those who contribute to the folly.

Herbert Armstrong was certainly a corrupting influence.

No sane person would accept such a thing.

Let us return to Eric Fromm:

It seems useful to differentiate between “static” and “dynamic” adaptation. By static adaptation we mean such an adaptation to patterns as leaves the whole character structure unchanged and implies only the adoption of a new habit. An example of this kind of adaptation is the change from the Chinese habit of eating to the Western habit of using fork and knife. A Chinese coming to America will adapt himself to this new pattern, but this adaptation in itself has little effect on his personality; it does not arouse new drives or character traits.

By dynamic adaptation we refer to the kind of adaptation that occurs, for example, when a boy submits to the commands of his strict and threatening father — being too much afraid of him to do otherwise–and becomes a “good” boy. While he adapts himself to the necessities of the situation, something happens in him. He may develop and intense hostility against his father, which he represses, since it would be too dangerous to express it or even to be aware of it. This repressed hostility, however, though not manifest, is a dynamic factor in the character structure. It may create new anxiety and thus lead to still deeper submission; it may set up a vague defiance, directed against no one in particular but rather toward life in general. While here, too, as in the first case, an individual adapts himself to certain external circumstances, this kind of adaptation creates something new in him, arouses new drives and new anxieties. Every neurosis is an example of this dynamic adaptation; it is essentially an adaptation to such external conditions (particularly those of early childhood) as are in themselves irrational and, generally speaking, unfavorable to the growth and development of the child. Similarly, such socio-psychological phenomena as are comparable to neurotic phenomena, like the presence of strong destructive or sadistic impulses in social groups, offer an example of dynamic adaptation to social conditions that are irrational and harmful to the development of man.

— Escape From Freedom

The more we examine each of the irrational premises of Herbert Armstrong in his seriously deluded distorted perception sociopathic follies, the more we see the superstructure of his interlocking logic crumble as we pull the pin from the underlying key supports of the structure. In this case, we can compare Herbert Armstrong to those who are responsible for creating the worldwide financial meltdown, even though the scope was limited to only tens of thousands of personal financial meltdowns.

More disturbing is the aspect that the irrational forces created by Herbert Armstrong have led to the dynamic adaptation of over 100,000 (at a time — with more going through the revolving doors of the WCG in the 1970s), to produce in most of us psychological phenomena comparable to the neurotic, with the presence of strong destructive or sadistic impulses. In the mental disorder, Folie à deux, the patient will generally recover from the insanity passed on by the one possessing the madness because of static adaptation — the induced delusional disorder does not become ingrained in the character of the afflicted. It appears that the folly of the daft kook, Herbert Armstrong is not a simple  Folie à deux — the shared psychotic disorder — and thus requires more stringent measures for its removal.

It is incumbent upon us all to guard ourselves against all the various cons. It requires constant vigilance. We must be aware of the methods and practices of the con.

It takes considerable effort to win against totalitarian forces. As Eric Fromm says:

If we want to fight Fascism we must understand it. Wishful thinking will not help us. And reciting optimistic formulae will prove to be as inadequate and useless as the ritual of an Indian rain dance.

— Escape From Freedom

We must also embrace freedom and sacrifice our desire to be dominated by others for security, a desire of belonging. We must be willing to accept the responsibility and accountability to stand alone.

Freedom can have a high price.

It is only when we realize that being dominated by authoritarianism has a much higher price — in this case, measured in Trillions of Dollars — that the price of freedom is so much less than the Escape from Freedom.

Go forth and make the life of the con man miserable: From such turn away.

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PTSD

Silenced Fear
Silenced Fear

Mantayo says (over at the False Prophet Ronald Weinland blog):

Douglas Becker, Mr A[valokiteshvara] and others have referred to psychological concepts and models to help explain and understand the steadfastness of their addiction to the PKG and to Weinland. I agree with them, and there are other psychological models and insights that are relevant as well. Even so, I would like to add the following for consideration. I have seen this principle in operation many times over the years although I have seen no formal models based on the observations. It is not offered as a “one size fits all” analysis, obviously.

Many people in difficult situations continue to put up with their torment “simply” because they are even more afraid of what will happen to them if they make a move to change the status quo. A job you dislike with a boss who is a bastard is better than unemployment, living with a violent, abusive spouse is better than being homeless and leaving the children with a violent partner, being in a loveless relationship is better than being alone or joining the ranks of the divorced. Holding onto a belief in Millennial Happiness is better than living in a real world of real problems. I am even persuaded that there would be more suicides if people were not fearful that they might find themselves in an even worse situation as a result of their suicide. Holding on to what you once thought was the true religious faith even though you now entertain reasonable doubts is better than being wrong, and burning in hell if you make the wrong decision. A form of suicide, if you will, in the minds of believers.

Sometimes these fears are realistic and safeguard us: it is better to live consumed by hatred of someone who wronged you than to take revenge, kill the offender and spend the rest of one’s life in jail.

BUT, many battered wives, many abused employees, many former religious believers eventually come to the point where they accept that – quite literally – no matter what happens in the future, it is not going to be worse than this. And that realisation is what sets them free. Free to begin working on learning a new way to live, with no guarantee of where the new path will lead.

To fear what will become of one in the future is a primal response to threat, real or imagined, and the loss of the certainty, the crumbling of the foundations which held up the edifice of one’s whole worldview can be an extremely upsetting and fear-inducing experience.

There are many websites, blogs and forums where these ex-believers work through their changes and are supported by others who have trod the path ahead of them – and survived. I want to emphasise that, by ex-believers I do not assume there will be a loss of religious faith. Some may go that way, others find a different set of beliefs but retain their faith in god.

I would exhort any COG PKG members who recognize the above dynamics in their own lives to take courage, take heart, and take responsibility. Leave Ron, he has no authority whatsoever. That much is certain. Is proven beyond reasonable, and even beyond unreasonable, doubt.

Ron has you believing that you are drinking living waters of truth. You are not. It is as Mike (DDTFA) describes it, it is poisoned Flavor Aid. So come and join the Non-Ron version of life again. It isn’t as bad as you have been persuaded, it isn’t as bad as you may remember, and it certainly isn’t as bad as where you live at present.

This is an important observation about fear and it has been addressed in the last chapter of Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, “Former Cult Members and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” which has this to say:

Sociologist Laurie Wermuth notes: “PTSD takes its toll on health by overreacting the body’s alarm system; stress chemicals flood the bloodstream, triggering changes in tissues and organs. Over time, too much of this stress reaction causes increased wear and tear on the body and in particular contributes to plaque buildup on the walls of the arteries.” A variety of adverse physiological and psychological effects may ensue….

Members of violent and extremely abusive cults are likely to be exposed to similar events. Yet even in groups or relationships lacking in overt violence, the constant stress, anxiety, and theats inherent to a cultic environment can have a lasting and traumatic effect on devotees. Counsellors would do well to explore the possibility of PTSD when working with clients who are current or former cult members. Sometimes the client will not make the connection to their cult involvement, so the savvy therapist may have to do some sensitive an careful probing.

The carrot-and-stick manipulation central to cultic social systems carries with it a toll of chronic anxiety and, at times, utter fear. It may be difficult for some mental health (and other) professionals to understand that the threat of spiritual annihilation or group condemnations can be so fierce a psychological danger as to engender physical pain.

The authors go on to quote the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder fact sheet:

  • Many people have long-lasting problems following exposure to trauma. Up to eight percent of individuals will have PTSD at some time in their lives.

Many adults who have grown up in the WCG have told me that they have recurring nightmares of suffering the Great Tribulation and being thrown into The Lake of Fire, decades after their childhood. There has been a tremendous impact of those children on their blankets hearing sermons about jack-booted Germans taking over their country, being sold into slavery, tortured, tormented, visions of mushroom shaped nuclear blasts, having their own homes, schools, parents and friends being ripped away, living in poverty and want, living out of garbage cans, sleeping under bridges in a bombed out smoking community being subject to radioactive fallout. It is not beyond imagination that those at 3, 4 and 5 years old, subjected to such virtual horrors are especially vulnerable and the horrors never go away. Meanwhile, those responsible for this trauma have not the slightest idea of the insidious nature of the collateral damage they do — for a life time in the lives of their victims.

I was a participant in the situation where a member was stalking another member in United, all the while the regional pastor was promoting the situation as a revenge against the victim who had offended his sensibilities. I heard the terror and trauma of someone who could never know when the stalker would show up in the parking lot to spy — being vulnerable to this outright outrageous behavior — all the while the Council of Elders would not give one shred of relief, nor obey Scripture to put the man out of the fellowship. I even went to Robert Dick, then, not only the Chairman of the UCG, but also the Chairman of the Ethics Committee, who told me to go to the regional pastor who was responsible for the situation in a “that’s not my department” stance, the ultimate in frustration (yes, go to the fox guarding the chicken house, and don’t bother me!). A restraining order in civil court was the only relief.

I am reminded of Richard Pinelli, at one time, a young man who was a director in the Canadian work giving a sermon in Spokane: He told the story of a farmer on the prairie who had a grass fire headed for his property and called Pinelli. The fire burned his neighbors’ fields, but burned around the farmer’s property line, leaving his farm completely untouched. That year, the harvest yielded a substantial return, since the price of the product was pushed up considerably by demand on a limited supply.

At first, I was inspired by the story of God’s Intervention, but as time went on, something bothered me about that story. I realized that what Richard Pinelli did was commit an act of self-aggrandizement to establish the ministry as a priesthood between the members and God: The real message — don’t talk to God, call us ministers so we can talk to God, because we have the pull, and you don’t.

Saturday, September 9, 2001, Richard Pinelli came to Tacoma to give the sermon. The sermon was about God “tipping over the barrel”. By that he meant that God would be patient with us, but at some time, there would come a time that God would have enough with us, and “tip over our barrel”. The person being stalked and I talked and agreed that he was actually threatening us for trying to stop the stalker! That if we didn’t fall in line with the ministers and cover the whole thing up, God would tip over our barrel and punish us. It was a maddening cringe-worthy sermon.

I personally remember the next two days extremely well: Sunday, a fine technologist from IBM spent the day working with me setting up LINUX on our IBM OS/390 Mainframe. We worked past midnight, so the next morning we were a little late getting into the County-City Building. There were long lines of people. I had to go through security and have my stuff x-rayed, even though I had a security card which should let me in. We didn’t know what had happened until we got upstairs to the Computer Center: People were in the conference room and break rooms watching 9/11 on television. I thought how ironic it was for Richard Pinelli to give a sermon on God “tipping over the barrel”, having a great opportunity to actually predict something that was supposedly fulfilling prophecy, but missing it by a country mile.

These are not the only accounts of Richard Pinelli installing fear amongst the members of the CoGs. He was also responsible for covering up the elder fondling a teenager in the UCG. But not to worry, since he was also behind the split between United and the Church of God, Worldwide Association, where he is now Pastor of the CoGWA .

Sometimes the fear inducing exercises by the ministry of the Armstrongists is subtle, but more often than not, it is PTSD inducing, creating near panic and long term devastating effects — all to keep the members in line.

This blog entry began with an example of fear in the PKG Weinland CoG. Even after Weinland’s 2012 Pentecost prophecy went bust, proving he is certifiably a false prophet, followed by his conviction as a felon for evading the Federal Income Tax, his followers are still… well… following him… mostly because of fear. It may be fear of suffering or the fear of losing out. The bottom line is fear.

 Juror #215 from the Weinland Felony Trial had this to say:

Douglas,
That’s an interesting question and I’m glad that you asked it. As a juror, we had sworn to remain impartial when presented with religious views that were different than our own, and were asked during jury selection if we felt that dealing with a minister of an “alternative religion” would affect our impartiality. So, the different beliefs expressed by Mr Weinland and the PKG members did not affect our consideration of the evidence or the charges.

On a personal level, my own beliefs are more accepting of those with different views. I feel that no one religion has a monopoly on religious truth, rather that each person must make their own choices when searching for meaning in their life, and each religion has validity in its own way. However, the “culture shock” did make me feel sad for these PKG members that instead of spending their time celebrating life, they chose to follow a path that seemed to be concentrated solely on the end of life and waiting around for the end of the world to hurry up and happen. It just didn’t seem like a happy way to live, and I don’t know why someone would choose to do that to themselves.

My favorite line from the movie “Shawshank Redemption” is (paraphrased), “You can get busy living, or get busy dying.” It just seemed like the members we saw (except for Ron and his family) were so busy preparing to die, that they had forgotten how to live . I know that the Judgement Day is important to many people, but if you spend all of your time obsessing over it, you’re missing the boat on why God put you here in the first place. It’s like walking into a concert by your favorite musician or band, and then spending the whole time looking at your watch, wondering when it’s going to be over. Relax and enjoy life a little bit!

Maybe I’m way off base, but that was just my personal impression.

It is the fear that the ACoG church members to concentrate solely on the end of life and waiting around for the end of the world to hurry up and happen, rather than spending their time celebrating life. Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias have this to say:

Complex PTSD applies to people who have been subjected to totalitarian control over a prolonged period (months to years), for example, hostages, prisoners of war, concentration camp inhabitants, victims of domestic battering or prolonged sexual exploitation and abuse, and cult members. Symptoms include persistent negative feelings of anxiety and / or sadness, chronic suicidal preoccupation, self-injury, explosive or extremely inhibited anger (may alternate), compulsive or extremely inhibited sexuality (may alternate), reliving or ruminating over experiences, a sense of helplessness or paralysis of initiative, a sense of defilement or stigma, a sense of complete difference from others (specialness, utter aloneness, a sense that no other person can understand, or not feeling entirely human), and preoccupation with the perpetrator *(includes preoccupation with revenge or unrealistic attribution of total power to the perpetrator). Complex PTSD is sometimes called Disorder of Extreme Stress. “As adults, these individuals often are diagnosed with depressive disorders, personality disorders, or dissociative disorders. Treatment often takes much longer than with regular PTSD, may progress at a much slower rate, and requires a sensitive and structured treatment program delivered by a trauma specialist….

Through cult recruitment and indoctrination, a person’s core beliefs are dramitically changed. In some groups, fear tactics and traumatic events (sometimes called “tests”) are deliberately used and even accepted by devotees as necessary for spiritual and psychological growth. Naturally, if a person was born or raised in a group, the cult-shaped belief system and behaviors may be all she ever knew.

The authors of Take Back Your Life conclude:

Perhaps most difficult of all is coming to terms with the idea that when abuse occurs, it is the perpetrator’s fault, and not the victim’s. Yes, cult members have some responsibility for the events and decisions that were made while they were seduced and entrapped in the group or relationship, and yes, some even became perpetrators themselves. In these cases, forgiveness–of others and self–plays and important role in healing.

Presuming, of course, that the perpetrators actually want to change their diabolical methods.

Nothing in Armstrongism is particularly benign.

PTSD is just another trauma from which to recover and we wish those on the path to recovery well and wait for others to begin the journey.

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Mythunderstanding

 

 

A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing
Baaaah…

 

 

Armstrongists aren’t very bright.

But they would like you to believe they are.

It’s so amazing that the world of the intelligent laugh at them as being stupid fools and they can’t see it: They assume that the ones who don’t adopt their religious beliefs are “unconverted” without “understanding”. The Armstrongists actually mock people who are educated, scientifically brilliant and knowledgeable. It is a tragic mistake for them to do so — to treat those who could help them out of their superstition with such contempt. It is a defense mechanism.

 

 

A moron has an IQ of 50 to 70.

An imbecile has an IQ of 25 to 50.

An idiot has an IQ under 25: Mental age of 3 (or less).

A fool can have any IQ.

The Armstrongists mock the intelligent as a defense mechanism — defense against truth, reality and sanity.

Consider the fact that Herbert Armstrong, born in the 19th Century, barely made it past eighth grade, but became the profound guru filled with all spiritual understanding and knowledge. Just how does that happen? In a word: Advertising.

Create your myth cobbled together from unreliable sources like Ellen G. White and John H. Allen, not to mention William Miller, flesh out the eschatology with impressive sounding credentials including Biblical proof texting, put up your shingle, be patient to wait awhile and the money will come rolling in. Be sure to sell, sell, sell your idea with tenuous connections to current news filtered through hyperbole based prophecy and it is sure to make you a success — especially if you make empty promises of supernatural rescue in false prophet style “the end is coming” prognostication.

Establish a religion. Send out booklets. Put up a Magazine. Clutter the airwaves with your claptrap. Make sermons. Get a social group together to support each other in their stupidity. Make it sound reasonable and attractive and you can sell any kind of kooky crap to the weak minded careless fools. Make it so they will agree with some of your major points without reservation and then they will swallow the rest, hook, line and sinker. Then prepare to live in a mansion, eat the best, wear the best, associate with the best and travel the world. It hardly matters that the religion makes no sense at all and can be readily proved objectively with science. Make empty promises and they will come with money in hand, ready to pay for the privilege of being duped and abused.

Just be prepared to dumb yourself down to their level.

Anyone who is suspicious about all this may want to examine the evidence provided by Ronald Weinland who represents all of Armstrongism in a microcosm. His prophecies about the end of the world were proven false. Moreover, he is now a convicted felon. Yet, a widow in his church provided $300,000 out of the collateral of her home to insure his freedom for four months when it has been amply demonstrated that his trustworthiness is less than stellar. His Evangelist dupes are still supporting him without one shred of any evidence that they have two active brain cells left to rub together to support a spark of intelligence. His infantile followers lap up his swill with abandon.

Take note that Ronald Weinland is very little different from the original Herbert Armstrong who did much the same things — using income of the church as his own personal cash machine to use as he saw fit for his own personal lust fulfilment. Gold, diamond rings, travel, staying at posh hotels, taking vacations, spending money on his wife and children: Except for the name on the door, you can’t tell whether we are talking about Herbert Armstrong, Ronald Weinland or any of the other host of 700+ cults of Armstrongism. They are all pretty much the same. For example, United spends 80% or so on minister’s salaries, retirement and other maintenance and some of the percentage left is used for evangelism. The UCG doesn’t have local church buildings for the greater percentage of their congregations and renting halls hardly inspires confidence in the abstract notion of stable churches. In fact, they have had split after split after split over who knows what — mostly “governance”. This, in turn, seems to be reduced to the concept that only the money is important, but that may not be fair: Egos also must be considered.

Given that British Israelism as the core belief of Armstrongism and their Key to Prophecy has been disproved and that their church history has been shown to be a fraud, it is a wonder that anyone with half a brain is left hanging on to the dying proposition of false prophecies and false hopes of a world which will never come. It would be better if they all grew up, left and got a life. Alas, that does not seem to be happening because it appears that people get some sort of enjoyment in being terminally stupid: This is not an issue of faith, it’s an issue of intelligence.

Armstrongists can be fat, dumb and happy, believing that they are rich and increased in goods (but are, blind, naked, poor and going bankrupt supporting their cultmeister in the lifestyle to which he wants to become accustomed) as long as they don’t look at the environment around them and see reality.

Consider the realities of SIGMA, for example. Arlan Andrews, Senior presents the article, “SIGMA: Summing up Speculation,” in the September 2012 Analog Science Fiction and Fact, with the subheading:

In a fast changing world, who’s best qualified to anticipate future problems–and solutions?

Certainly, not the Armstrongists who have a dismal record of such things — failed on all accounts.

Dr. Andrews writes:

As a science fiction writer speaking to U.S. government authorities at meetings in 2008 and 2009, I had said that dictatorships would fall when people had cell phones and texting and other communications devices: “Think of the revolutionary social changes, spreading around the world at the speed of light.” I used the term “flash mobs” back in those ancient days.

As founder of the science fiction thhink tank SIGMA, making such forecasts is one of the things I am privileged to do. My forty SIGMA colleagues, science fiction writers all, do the same thing.

Armstrongists are having their own experiences of having their dictatorships undermined by modern technology.

Dr. Andrews continues:

I wanted to provide this new service to government bureaucrats who never had the opportunity or the mindset to appreciate science fictional ways of thinking. Too busy worrying about their funding and the political aspects of their decisions, they seldom ventured far from the straight and narrow. Never did I hear any of them discuss disruptive technologies, destructive political events, or widespread natural calamities. Linear thinkers, all.

Not unlike the Armstrongist leaders with their “linear thinking”. They may talk about disruption, destruction, doom and death, but they offer not one whit of thought to preventing it or dealing with it in a productive way — other than making money off of it.

The original SIGMA team started by Arlen Andrews included, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Doug Beason, Dr. Charles Sheffield, Dr. David Brin, Dr. Geoff Landis, Dr. Robert Forward, NASA astrophysicicist Dr. Yoji Kondo (“Eric Kotani”), Dr. Stanley Schmidt of Analog and Dr. Gregory Benford.

Some may wonder what these and other highly qualified luminaries did for the United States since the establishment of SIGMA?

Over the intervening years, though not acting as a group, individual SIGMA members were called upon to participate in government projects, some brainstorming for DARPA on new technologies for education; other members maintained paid consulting arrangement with other agencies. I even lobbied unofficially for the Air Force’s DC-X Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) project in the White House, bringing in Air Force officers to brief the new Administration on it, and continued that effort for several more years. While at OSTP, I also wrote the first White House endorsement of molecular nanotechnology, published in The President’s Report to Congress on Science and Technology in April 1993….

…We made other suggestions to DHS (Department of Homeland Security), many along low-tech lines, items that would help first responders in emergencies, ideas for border security, comments about how the chemical/biological detectors in cell phones that DHS was proposing should be utilized. The ideas and comments were technical, social, cultural, and political….

…Other government agencies, some that prefer not to be named or even mentioned, have called on SIGMA to brainstorm on future developments in communications, computer applications, politics, sociology, demographics, and culture.

These forward thinking futurists were the first to introduce NATO planners to the concepts and importance of social networking and texting. They also predicted the potential for drastic overnight, overwhelming social change, facilitated by handheld devices in the hands of disatisfied or revolutionary “flash mobs”. Further, the influence on government has been to affect the thinking patters of those SIGMA has worked with to think realistically about the future and has produced tangible benefits.

Contrast this with the “stick in the mud” thinking of Armstrongism: A vision of the dark ages unleashed upon the people with a tightly controlled government preceded by anarchy and followed by a static rigid society making no social progress whatsoever. It isn’t just the false prophecies of Armstrongism based on their “Mythunderstanding” using the Key to Prophecy, the thoroughly discredited British Israelism and their insistence upon deceiving people with their fraudulent church history, it’s the ugly missteps of people like Roderick Merdith writing such stupid crap as The Shocking Truth About Queer Men and claiming that Hitler is still alive, ready to usher in the Fourth Reich. All of Armstrongism is centered on fears, uncertainties and doubts with an eye to building empires with lots of money and power for those at the top — certainly not as a public service to do what can be done to make the world a better place today. In place of futurists like SIGMA helping build the future and find solutions, Armstrongism is a degenerate cancer undermining the very fabric of society, causing it ultimately to deteriorate wherever it goes. The 700+ splinters should have taught us that.

Armstrongism has also brought us something else for which we need to find a new term: Herbert Armstrong was one to take advantage of those at the bottom of the social pyramid to put himself near the top. Ronald Weinland has followed in his footsteps along with his peers, such as, but certainly not restricted to David Pack, Gerald Flurry, Roderick Meredith, John Rittenbaugh, Don Haney. People have been searching for the words to describe these reprehensible people and we now have our suggestion from the Urban Dictionary.

Bottom Feeder:

1) leech, or in other words a total lack of responsibility to provide for oneself. Relies heavily upon friends, neighbors or anyone really for sustenance. a slacker through and through.

2) a loser who profits from the fortunes of others. A low or despicable person.

5) The absolute lowest and filthiest form of life, that is so much of a scumball that every living and non-living piece of matter would benefit from it’s/their death.

8) One of higher social standing, attractiveness, or intelligence level whom chooses to prey on those whom are poor, weak, or vulnerable.