I'm not upset, so don't misunderstand me. I'm surprised that a poster said I reminded them of Charles Manson. That's shocking to me, since it came from left field, and it makes no sense to me at all.

OK. I'm not an atheist.

I'm not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim.

I'm not into the occult.

Although I do believe the powers that be have an agenda, I'm not actively fighting the government.

I'm just a married guy with a family trying to sort through things having been a Mormon and left years ago, in between jobs, who developed some rather different views.

I do have unique views, I admit, making me intellectually homeless. Some few might relate to the way I think. I don't know. That's why I'm here.

But why would someone tag me as a "risk" or see me as Charles Manson, scary, just because I don't think like everyone else regarding the "Bible"?

What have I said or done that would cause a brain to conclude that about me?

Maybe someone out there can help me bridge in my brain how someone would compare me to Charles Manson.

I'm rather shocked.

Is it my name "Homeless"? Should I change it to "Intellectually Homeless"?

I'm asking the question to receive feedback, not to argue or defend myself. I'm not going to change my views, but I may consider leaving or changing my approach. I don't want to be "scary" or "charles manson". That kind of defeats the purpose of the board.

What's going on?

In which thread were you called Charles Manson? I would like to view the context.

Here is the thread that I was compared to Charles Manson:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,754433

"I am convinced you ARE looking for a following

"done with you

"you remind me too much of Charlie Manson with the family and twisting things

"scarey to me, I withdraw from your darkness and intolerance"

(posted by "mindlight," RfM, January 10 January 2013 01:04PM)

I don't think you're Charles Manson. I just think you're a conspiracy theory nut. Read a high school science book and work out all the issues you have there before you move on to the bigger questions.

It looks like it was just an exaggerated critique of your debate tactic.

They felt like your replies were twisting what the person before you had said... and they jumped to Manson.

It's similar to when people will compare someone to Hitler because he also wanted to increase medical research to allow children to be more healthy (or any comparison).

I think the person who made the claim explained there reasoning with the word "twisting"

I don't agree that your replies were twisting things, nor with jumping to a ludicrous example of someone who they also identified with the word "twisting"

"I'm Charles Manson: cult leader, failed rock & roll singer, convicted killer--and I'm a Mormon!"

Sorry, I just thought it was going to go this direction eventually, so....

LOL. Nicely done.

Well, you asked. Honestly, you remind me a lot of cult leaders.

They usually start with being "intellectually homeless" if you will. They determine that everyone else is in error and that they have figured out the true reality. They find a historical spot where mankind / current religion abandoned God and they are on a quest to restore mankind to that truth.

Your concept that it used to be right up until Moses and then mankind went astray rejecting God especially reminds me of these types of people. The extra crazy Mormon cult leaders often use this - the LDS church was right but then it went astray so now I'm going back to what they believed before it went astray - cue FLDS.

Joseph Smith fits this profile. He said that all of Christianity had lost their way and apostatized and that he was restoring the truth.

Brian David Mitchell (Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper) is the most recent one I can think of - he decided that the LDS church had gone astray right after Benson and he was the new prophet. Now granted he only had one follower - his wife - but that was enough to convince her to help him kidnap and rape a 14 year old.

There was that Kerry guy a few years before that that threatened Hunter with a bomb at BYU - same story - mankind had rejected God and he was the true prophet to bring the truth back.

It's not so much that you are intellectually homeless as the company you keep in your way of thinking is a little scary.

Then they get people to follow them - you don't seem to be having as much luck there, at least. So far you haven't set yourself up as a prophet to lead people back to the true way of God, but you seem, at least to me, to only be a hair's breath away from doing exactly that.

It's like I said in my very first post to you - you have invented your own religion. People who invent their own religion pretty much always do it in the guise of restoring the previous truth of God that mankind has lost. They ALWAYS think they have the true perspective that everyone else missed. They have personal evidence that this is the case.

With that said, despite me typically arguing pretty strongly against your viewpoint I personally like that you have some widely and even wildly different ideas - it's nice to stir the "group think" up a little.

So part of the critique is absolutely unwarranted - you are just stirring the pot of group think and that makes some people uncomfortable. However you also seem to be very set in your ways and your questions come across more as rhetorical questions than real ones.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2013 05:56PM by bc.

I can see how one might think like what you have written, if they have a religious reference point that can see so many other men and women speak of the "apostasy", like Joseph Smith did. I appear to them to be just one more Joseph Smith teaching "I know" how to fix what is wrong.

Thank you.

Interestingly, I guess I am not communicating very well at all, though I've tried. I'm not going to defend myself or my position, but to clarify it, since someone reading your post might misunderstand my view.

I'm not like Joseph Smith or these other people. I believe God withdrew his physical presence and immortality from the people, making it impossible for them to overcome death. I don't believe God wants us to die physically, and so, He came to Israel to make us immortal. Only God can do that. I can't do it. Moses can't do it. No one can. And it doesn't require magic dead Jesus blood. That is a pagan idea. And that is what separates me from all the other people you mention.

Israel specifically asked God to quit speaking to all the millions of people at the same time. They wanted him to only speak with Moses. It placed Moses as a "middle-man" between God and the people, and then, later came the pastors, rabbi, popes, priests, theologians, etc., to corrupt everything.

Two things: First, I'm not God, and cannot make people immortal. Second, God doesn't want prophets to speak for him, but, he wants us to figure this out from the consequence of Israel's decision that caused the corruption. Thus, God is not going to "restore" anything through prophets. Rather, his goal and objective is to make things more CONFUSING and MESSED UP, by putting man in the middle, so that we will realize the mistake made in Exodus 20. In short, **God** is the author of all the confusion, deliberately.

So someone thinking I want to be a cult leaders to remove the confusion, doesn't really know how ridiculous that sounds to me. God wants it all confusion, so that we will turn away from “religion” and the evil people who profit from it.

I am not in the position to "fix" the confusion and "restore" anything, but if I did try to do that, God would use me to make it MORE confusing and contradictory, just like all the others. That's the pattern over the last 3500 years. The confusion has increased more and more.

When God and Israel are ready to meet again like at Sinai, God will bring the evidence and process for immortality to earth, like He did before.

Furthermore, my stating that honest and good atheists could likely receive a greater reward in the afterlife than Christians is radical, right? So, if people read my posts, and make conclusions based on these people you identify in the past who see what's wrong and need to presumptuously fix it, they miss the point of my beliefs entirely. We are supposed die, until God Himself comes with the evidence and methods to fix death, like in Exodus 20.

But I certainly can see that if no one knows these things about my beliefs, they are going to judge me through religious filters of everyone else, and make wrong assumptions, just as you have identified accurately what they are probably thinking. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Maybe what would be better is that I set up a website, so people can go and read the ideas out of interest. Then they can go off and quit worrying about God and afterlife, if they like the lens I use to interpret the Bible. Maybe that is the solution to my interest in sharing here, rather than posting here and scaring people into thinking I'm Charles Manson.

What do you think?

To clarify I don't think you've shown any indication at all that you have any interest in being a cult leader - I don't think that is the case at all.

However, your personal beliefs about God are so far off the beaten path that it makes you look a little cuckoo - just like cult leaders. You know this - you know your viewpoint is rare and different - thus the reason you feel homeless.

Post here or don't. Some people having their feathers riled occasionally might do them good. Post here if it's helpful for you.

At the end of the day you have your reasons you have come to the conclusions you have and yeah most of us think you're nuts, but that's OK.

Personally I find it incredibly ironic that you attack the evidence of evolution - sure it has holes, but significant evidence does exist - not a enough for a proof, but plenty for a theory and you yet hold strongly to something for which there is essentially zero evidence - that Moses is anything more than a legend.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2013 01:56AM by bc.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. If you read all of my posts, you will see I never attack the evidence of evolution. What I challenge are the assumptions and processes of evolutionary science. Check it out, and you will see.

bc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> To clarify I don't think you've shown any
> indication at all that you have any interest in
> being a cult leader - I don't think that is the
> case at all.
>

NOTE: My comments below are about cults that evolve outside and independently of a pre-existing religious institution, as I recall the Manson clan did, and excluded cults like the Jones Town and the Waco cult.

I wonder how many cult leaders started out thinking "I'm going to run out and start a nut case cult today". I doubt there were many.

I would bet that most start innocently enough when someone learns to use words to manipulate a, or a group friend(s). Then that person becomes a leader simply by getting better and better at manipulating people. Manipulation grows into controlling, which grows into brainwashing. without trying to form a cult, a cult has formed.

When I look at some of the characteristics of a cult, and look at what the aspects of the leader are, I see some stuff that I view as similar. I see enough to warrant a "you remind me of a cult leader" statement. Saying that person "A" REMINDS YOU of person "B" is not at all the same as saying that person "A" is the SAME as person "B".

A statement "you remind me of Charles Manson" does not warrant a so you are calling me Charles Manson sort of response.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2013 11:33AM by MJ.

bc, I have thought this very thing on every single one of Homeless' posts.

Homeless, whether you want followers or not, the way you communicate your ideas and indeed, the nature of your ideas, make you seem like a cult leader. The first thing that popped into my mind after reading some of the posts of what you believe was Joseph Smith. As bc said, I feel like you are one centimeter away from trying to recruit followers into your freshly minted cult.

This may not be what you have in mind, but it's how you come across.

This is why people are going to be uncomfortable. Well that and the blatant disregard for evidence, proofs, and science but I digress.

Joseph Smith? I haven't claimed to see angels, speak with God face to face, or claim I have the revealed truth to restore what was lost. I'm saying, the whole thing is corrupted, all religions, and no man is going to restore it or fix it. If God appeared in Moses' day and talked to the people, demonstrating with evidence that He is God, well, why isn't He doing it today? When Moses lived, God demonstrated to all of Egypt the 10 plagues. Something change. I point to Exodus 20. That was the turning point. That's it. It takes a lot more than a belief like that to form a "religious following". Sorry. I don't disgregard the evidence in science. I disregard the assumptions and reject the bad science that deviates from the pure scientific method. That's always been my claim, but for some reason, it gets twisted into something else, as though I reject the "evidence". I don't. I challenge the assumptions and processes.

Hi Homeless,
As a 90/10 reader/poster here I spend the majority of my time reading the posts and not bothering to reply unless I just can't help myself.

You seem to be caught off guard and legitimately curious as to how you could make someone "uncomfortable" with your words and approach, while I obviously can't speak for everyone I can say that for myself personally - I'm always put at edge when someone writes or talks as if they know what "God" wants, thinks, and what his or her goals are. I can't quite go the distance and say you remind me of one of the cultish aforementioned personalities, and I'm all for stirring the "group think" mind you but at least for me your writings do come off as if written from someone who considers themselves separate and "elevated" from the rest of us.As if you ( and perhaps only you ) are privy to some special kind of enlightenment , understanding, or relationship with the Gods that the rest of us ( for whatever reason ) can't, don't, or won't have.

I prefer to assume it's unintended and just a matter of communication breakdown meets text's difficulty in conveying what someone really means since I don't want to think that way of someone without "proof" but I can't help but feel something akin to what those others have mentioned whenever I read your posts and that translates to an unease and awkward feeling I normally only feel around TBM's these days.

I hope this sincere feedback helps in someway somehow. My reply has zero intentions of offense, harm, or hurtfulness so I apologize right off the bat if it comes off that way. Good luck on your journey and may you find peace!

This is very good feedback. Thank you. I get it.

I think the major reason I come off that way is by proactively posting my view in a place where no one is asking for it. If I put it on a website and just let people spread the idea by word of mouth, then it would probably be better received as an idea alone, rather than attaching a human being to it, such as myself. So that's probably what I will do sometime in the future. I'm not in a big rush to do it, so it might not be for a while.

Just don't use this template: http://www.heavensgate.com/
LOL. I'm totally kidding.

Yep, you're just like Charlie Manson.

You have a cult of hippie girls out in the desert and use them
to attract guys to ur cult through wild group-sex orgies.

Admit it. You go out at night on murderous raids too, don't ya?

You haven't built any Autobahns, lately have you? Annexed
Czechoslovakia? Yeah, you're just like Hitler too, aren't ya?

you seem to be an attention whore.