Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00230)

Bart:

You're right.

Extortion, blackmail, or murder would obviously be something to oppose.
That's quite a different issue. Actual crime and the exploitation of people
needs to be corrected. There's a big difference between a priest or guru
faking phenomena and one that has dissident followers killed. In the first
case, there is someone building an elaborate fantasy that keeps people in a
certain spiritual holding pattern, people not yet ready to venture out on
their own initiative. In the other case, someone is a psychopath that needs
to be kept from harming others. 

For a particular religious leader, do we know for sure that he or she is a
dangerous criminal? Is our calling to expose such people? It may be, for
some. That is different, though, than attacking the belief system that the
guru teaches. The belief system may be fine for the many followers until
they convert to some other package of beliefs or until they awaken to a
self-directed quest leading them to seek out their own wisdom. The beliefs
only need challenge or corrected if they contain something actually harmful,
although that can be controversial. (Like Christian Scientists disbelief in
medicine leading to parents avoiding doctors for a sick child whereas the
court system may order medical attention.)

We have to be careful of this "expose the bad guy" mentality. Having a
suspicious frame of mind, eagerly seeking out crime to eradicate, one may
become a paranoid witch-hunter, lashing out with unfounded attacks against
problems that don't exist. I suspect, for instance, the theosophical
movement has seen a number of such nut cases attack it for problems that
only exist in the mind of the attacker. This is not to say, of course, that
one is a nut case for having legitimate concerns about wrong-doing.

I'm not saying that I'm against challenging other beliefs when I consider
them wrong. But I'd do so in the free marketplace of ideas, where I'm
offering something better in place of what people currently believe.

-- Eldon

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Lidofsky [mailto:bartl@sprynet.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 1:26 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World talking about Sai Baba

Eldon B tucker wrote:
> Any claims made on his behalf are probably more for the benefit of his
> followers than for proving anything to skeptics. If people follow him and
> benefit from it, should we seek to discredit him in the name of truth? 

What if people are harmed, even killed from it? Tales of extortion, 
blackmail, and even murder have come out of his group. Certainly, after 
one particularly revealing video was made due to a foul-up by one of his 
assiistants (handing him the gold chain with the wrong hand, so that the 
switch was visible in the video), that assistant disappeared a couple of 
days later. Whether or not this is coincidence is up to the individual.

Bart




 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/