Think of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, Moses David, David Koresh, Mohammed, King David, and so many more. And let's not forget Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Why are many cultists sexual predators? Do they have elevated testerone and TSH levels. Should we do a clinical study and advertise for religious sexual predators.

This sort of behavior is sometimes an indication of a personality or characterological disorder. And sometimes in the manic phase of bipolar disorder.

Any ideas?

The religious leaders you have in mind are people without a strong sense of self who need the adoration of others to compensate. They conversely have little or no empathy. They will lie, cheat, steal, do anything to feed their emotional needs. Sexual conquests are particularly potent means of feeding their egos. In the case of religious or cult leaders, sexual dominance cements their control over the group.

It is not just religious leaders that behave this way. There a disproportionately large number of high-functioning narcissists and sociopaths in a number of prominent professions including law, medicine and, perhaps most aptly, politics. History is replete with political leaders who thrived on public adoration and sexual conquests.

Cult and religious leaders lose some of their mystique if you see them as what they are, a particular subset of a broader category of emotionally crippled predators.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the case of religious or cult leaders, sexual
> dominance cements their control over the group.

Or they became religious leaders because they would have access to a pool of victims, some of them willing.

That is what I am saying.

Narcissists and sociopaths attract their personality disordered counterparts: borderlines and codependents, others with weak senses of self.

A person need not start out as a religious leader, but in some cases they form leadership relationships with natural followers and the ideology/faith follows. If the social situation is right, the result can be a significant movement. JS was like that, as were the leaders of some of the other cults of his day. But Charlie Manson did the same thing--look into the life histories of his followers and you get a pretty typical soulless follower--and you could even argue that so did Hitler. Losing a world war and then going through a decade of economic horror created a sense of confusion, of fear, and a hunger for easy solutions and strong leadership. Hitler was asexual, possibly do to physical limitations, but otherwise he fits the pattern of a misfit criminal who finds a way to hypnotize and enslave others by dint of a powerful new system or thought.

Sometimes sociopaths or narcissists are too self-centered, too obtuse, to pursue such a strategy. This type ends up in jail time and again. But even if they are high-functioning they may fail to arise at the right time or in an appropriately vulnerable society and hence cannot organize. They may get no farther than marrying a vulnerable person and ruining her or his life and those of their children.

But sometimes a high-functioning narcissist or sociopath happens to stumble into a group that is ready for him. Again, Hitler arising at Germany's darkest hour; or Manson finding a crowd of lost kids who hated their parents and had no consistent value systems. Then group friendships can evolve into leader-follower relationships, then teacher-student ones, and ultimately personality cults. Since it is all about control and feeding one's own ego, sexual dominance is almost a natural extension of the narcissistic project.

So yes, Stray Mutt, the narcissist has always pursued the same things--adoration, power, fame, sex. He has just stumbled on a great way to get those things.

Spot on, Lot's Wife!

Lot's Wife is totally a pillar of this community!

Absolutely. Salt of the earth.

Elder Old Dog is a charming, amusingly cynical, presumably handsome gentleman who would be hugely attractive to me if I were attracted to men. All yours, Seniorita Saucie.

Short of that, he's someone whose intellect, humor, and generosity make me consider him a friend even though we've never met.

LIKE !!!!!!

I think, too, that they feel they can get away with it because they don't believe their female followers would hesitate in the least to participate, thus contributing to their feeling of power and control.

Lots wife,

Thank you for an insightful reply. Your conclusions are my own. But I don't think it is about sex per se, but more domination and control.

Yes. It's about control, power over other humans.

We know that rape is not about sexual attraction. It is about power and control and violation. It is an act of violence.

Sexual predation by religion and political leaders is the same. These are often people whose actions often stop just short of the line defining rape or other sexual assault. Sometimes the line changes over time, as society progresses, and the cult or political leader becomes someone whose past behavior would land him in jail today. We see successful men like that on TV almost every day.

But in these cases we are still looking at issues of control and dominance. You can say the leaders are attracted to religion or politics because they want sex, or because they want power. Both are true. But the sex is to a large degree a really potent way of demonstrating power over one's followers.

I totally agree with Lot's Wife. I just wanted to add my two cents that I believe that its the other way around in that Hypersexual predators become religious leaders as a way to
get women to do their sexual bidding. Its just all about their egos,sex, power and dominion over women.

Emotionally crippled predators prefer emotionally crippled prey. The stakes of Zion hold up a mighty large circus tent.

Well said.... I like that.

There you go again taking a simple thread and messing everything up by raising the really important question.

I think the issue you raise is fascinating. There is a psychologist, German Swiss, named Alice Miller/Muller. She wrote lots of books about the damage that bad childhoods do to people, effectively making them narcissists, borderlines, or sociopath (the three closely related empathy-deficit disorders). She then went on and suggested that German child-rearing techniques--seen but not heard, tough love, sleep alone, etc--were similar to the things that harm individual children. In other words, she thought that a lot of the ills of German society, including its (then recent) Nazi past, may have been the result in part of German family culture.

I remember boning up on Islamic polygamy back when I was trying to understand Al Qaeda and seeing 1) parallels to Mormon polygamy, and 2) a lot of the dynamics that Miller had described. Basically, if you put women in competition for a man's resources, her stress level goes sky high and she and her kids are deprived of emotional stability and love. It is easy to see this situation producing an abnormally high number of people with disordered personalities.

Mormonism jettisoned the practice of polygamy but I think its shadow still looms, not only in telling little girls that they'll have to share a husband; but also in keeping many parents too busy to provide stable love and support and in instilling guilt and self-doubt in everyone. God's love is conditional; the individual is inadequate; the only way to achieve personal fulfillment is complete devotion to an organization and ideology. Intelligent narcissists rise in this organization, gaining popular adoration and power, and people with some degree of co-dependency bow the knee.

In this way Mormon society evolved a system that produces a strong hierarchy held together by varying degrees of emotional dysfunction. Along with the relocation to Utah, enormous income streams from tithes, and good luck, I think this one reason why the church has been so cohesive and strong for two centuries.

Viewed in this way, the difficulties the church is encountering today stem in part from smaller families and less parental willingness to perform stupid make-work jobs--allowing more parent-child interaction and even affection--and the reduction in guilt that ensues from the enlightenment provided by the internet. We are in the midst of the process and hence can't see it all clearly, but in my view the narcissist/borderline dynamic (overstatement) that cemented the church together is crumbling.

I wondered why I was set upon by bullies and molesters as a child. My emotional damage must have been visible to them.

Most of these nut jobs couldn't get a real job and support themselves if they tried. They're too lazy, want to be in control.
Anyone can technically be a preacher. These are all the extremes; there are plenty of other " fake " preachers out now days. I can easily read the bible and write a sermon on it, whether I believed in what I was saying or not, if I was a creepy, no good scumbag taking advantage of people.
I'd have to get someone else to get in front of the people and preach it though.
There are some churches that you don't even need a degree to teach, mainly baptist ones.
Luckily, it's just a small group of churches like this, just one of them though, is one too many

Sexual predation is probably the default setting for men.

The alpha male gets all he wants. So does the alpha female.

Lesser males and females have to come up with schemes...

In high school I *made up* the origin of Love: it was a scheme for convincing non-alpha people that there was a basis for them to believe that hooking up was okay. In other words, 'falling in love' made not being alpha material people worthy of their existence. You were alphas in each other's eyes.

Are there any alpha male religious leaders? And don't give me that bullcrap about how JS could beat any man wrestling. JS was a coward.

What drives a person to become the leader of a closed sect/ cult in the first place?

These leaders typically think they speak for god.

I would think if you can get yourself to that point, having sex with your followers would naturally follow.

Chicken and egg?

But I agree with Lot's wife.....its about control, ego, etc.

One facet might be that they cannot believe that they can pull so much shit over on the believers. They push the boundaries in exerting power, commanding financial support then sexual domination to satisfy that power itch. COuld be different reasons for some, but power and lust satisfaction would be my guess.

Let's not forget Gandhi,
http://www.minoritiesofindia.org/gandhis-sexual-abuse-of-grandnieces/

And Tedd Haggard, who got busted snorting coke of his gay hooker's ass, after making "Jesus Camp" the movie where he bashes homosexuality and after he played a staring role in Richard Dawkins, "The Root of All Evil".

This is an epic take down. I'd love to see him do a similar take down on Mormonism, but the real stuff, the sexual perversion of Joseph's Myth and Bring'em Young screwing their follower's wives and teenage daughters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmMv0ceWTVQ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2016 12:49AM by koriwhore.