I saw a program on television that mentioned “cults” that believed in space aliens. The term cult generally denotes a religious group. My question: Does anyone think that a belief in space aliens truly be considered a religion? If so, why? Or why not?
This may seem like a silly question, but it does bring up an interesting question on what is or isn’t a religion. Give the “religious” atmosphere infecting the country and this a country based on the freedom of religion, could these people really be considered “cults”?
Well it depends upon their worship. Space alien cults are quite polytheist in a certain respect. The idea of angels and aliens are not very distant actually. Angels come from the stars, just as aliens do. The bible has references to angels flying around in illuminated spinning disks, as does the Hindus tradition. The Mayan artwork is very reminiscent of space flight with gods sitting on things that look like rockets with some sort of control panel interface.
Also, religion doesn’t necessarily apply only to those cults that specifically believe in a God, that’s an incorrect assumption people generally make. Because we would consider the ancient Egyptians to be a religious culture, but because of changes in language, to claim a major difference between old organized polytheistic faiths, and modern UFO cults would be a hard semantic nitpick to prove, because the language has changed so much in the past few thousand years. The UFO tradition has a fairly rich tradition by this point and there is a lot of mythology out there.
Basically to make an argument for it not being a valid religion you’d have to argue that mythology has greater validity if it is older and grandfathered in, rather than modern mythology. This is compounded by the fact that ancient myths passed down to us are still the modern interpretation of an old story. You cannot remove the filtered lens of the present.
I got a cool book a few weeks ago IN ADVANCE OF THE LANDING: FOLK CONCEPTS OF OUTER SPACE which started out being a photo essay book on Rocket-UFO folk art & ended up being an overview of “flying saucer religions” since so many of such art displays were tied to religious groups.
Anyway, the answer to the OP is yes. I myself became actively Christian through my preteen interest in UFO/ancient astronaut lore. For a while, I even had 1950s-style “Space Brothers” incorporated into my concept of the Angelic hierarchy (somewhere between “thrones” and “dominions” ).
The Raelians are certainly a religion and probably a cult. Also a political movement, believe it or not, but that’s neither here nor there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raelians
Unless there’s a alien overlord, then their monotheistic.
This raises some fascinating new questions;
Do aliens believe in angels?
What religion are the aliens?
If they’re athiest does that mean God isn’t real?
Have the aliens actually seen angels?
Is the Bible correct. Do angels have space ships?
“I, for one, welcome our new <whatever> overlords”
Scientologists were the definition of cult by [Cult Awareness Network (CAN)](Strangers: Homosexuality in the 19th Century), at least until the early 1990s when CAN dropped them from the list of cults, about the same time that Scientology bought the name Cult Awareness Network incidentally.
Anyway, Scientology is probably the biggest religion whose belief system has to do with space aliens. Unarius is generally considered fairly harmless but is a cult nonetheless centered around the teachings of an extraterrestrial, and then there are organizations that combine it with other agendas (such as the Nuwaubians, who blend black supremacy and extraterrestrial intelligence- I’m sure there are white supremacists out there who do the same).
It’s not saying that people who believe in UFOs and ETI are cultists, but is referring to organizations whose spiritual teachings are extraterrestrial flavored.
When someone puts the words “cult” and “aliens” together in such a fashion I would tend to think they would be referring to a group of people that drink the kool-aid as the comet/ufo passes over.
there is a cynical saying that “a cult is a religious organization with no political power.”
dotchan has a more useful distinction–religions are based on ideals, cults are based on an individual leader.
Another useful distinction is the issue of secrecy. “Legitmate” religions are open to all, and don’t hide secrets. An outsider or convert knows in advance what demands the religion will make on you if you join. They may promise salvation or enlightenment or whatever, but you know that you must promise to remain chaste, eat vegetarian or whatever.
A cult keeps secrets . Like a religion, they also promise enlightenment or whatever-- but only much later are you told that you have to give all your money to the leader or drink poisoned Kool-Aide
).
