When cults trigger cynicism

A healthy dose of skepticism is understandably required to be a good scientist, a good philosopher, or a good empiricist in general. But not seeing the good, beautiful, or true leads to cynicism.

The past few days, if not weeks, have revealed how some groups of people have been outed for predatory behaviour and even outright delusions of grandeur, and in the process, allowed people critical of such individuals and entities to weaponise skepticism and even reason to argue their point and assert that they are right and everyone else is wrong. 

However, even if we discern which of the things we observe is black and white, the truth is a nuance that can be found in between — in the grey area, so to speak — and not a definite shade as cynics present, which unfortunately distorts reason and civil discourse, especially those tackling cults that gained notoriety. 

The End of Quiboloy’s Cult?

The week of the 08th to the 14th of September 2024 began with the unusual and uncanny arrest of Apollo Quiboloy, a pastor who leads the cult “Kingdom of Jesus Christ” in the southern Philippine city of Davao. 

It could be said that the apprehension was unusual and uncanny because the cult’s followers have been claiming that he personally surrendered after a fortnight of staying inside an alleged bunker beneath the KOJC compound, which was conveniently located beside the Davao International Airport (make of it what you will), while everyone else claimed that he was arrested since a warrant has been issued prior to the police storming into the compound.

(And in a very irrelevant tangent, I would like to apologise to the Mormons for mixing the official name of their church with that of Quiboloy’s cult and come up with “The Kingdom of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”. Again, it just comes out of my mouth with a bad taste and I certainly do not want to make fun of it because it is a serious matter, despite the circumstances about Quiboloy’s arrest and the events leading up to it being lowkey hilarious.)

His arrest came just days after another controversial personality, the Chinese spy and former mayor Alice Guo, was arrested alongside her associates in Indonesia, a topic which is, in itself, another can of worms. 

It could be said that the crusade against cults that have been alleged to commit criminal activities, as well as cult-like behaviours like what’s going on in the MrBeast drama saga, has been consistent over the past few years, and even decades. Some of them have been shut down after authorities got themselves involved; while others continue to operate — and even flourish — but has been ostracised and labelled by the court of public opinion as groups that have very unorthodox and outright heretical beliefs from established religious doctrines, crazy people with plenty of time on their hands who quietly make their presence known through their symbols and speech, and quite often, as organisations led by a nefarious cabal of “ministers” and other people who themselves may have records of intimidation against critics, predatory behaviour, or even outright criminal activity. 

In the case of the KOJC, the cult label fits to the T, as in terrible. The same goes with the World Olivet Assembly, (which, to be frank, has been indirectly messing up with my employment opportunities as of late) which is practically a tamer offshoot of the Unification Church in Korea, aka the Moonies or the cult of Moon Sun-Myung, and the Church of Scientology…

Does It Even Matter?

…which leads to the issue of Linkin Park’s new co-vocalist, Emily Armstrong, and her connections with the true-blue American cult. 

It is understood that Armstrong, formerly the co-founder and vocalist of the rock band Dead Sara, was born and raised into the Church of Scientology, and was alleged to have previously supported disgraced Hollywood actor, convicted sex offender, and fellow Scientologist Danny Masterson. However, it is not known how much support she offered Masterson before he was sentenced to prison for sexual abuse. 

What was clear, on the other hand, was that she addressed the matter within hours after her first performance with Linkin Park, which was livestreamed on their YouTube channel and on their website on the 5th of September this year. 

“Several years ago, I was asked to support someone I considered a friend at a court appearance, and went to one early hearing as an observer,” her statement read in part. “Soon after, I realized I shouldn’t have. I always try to see the good in people and I misjudged him. I have never spoken with him since. Unimaginable details emerged and he was later found guilty.

“To say it as clearly as possible: I do not condone abuse or violence against women, and I empathize with the victims of these crimes,” she concluded.

Still, anti-cult crusaders and some of the band’s fans — most of which are still reeling from the tragic demise of Chester Bennington seven years ago — assert that this statement from Armstrong was either weak, insufficient, or insincere and stressed that Armstrong cannot, and will not, replace Bennington, when in fact, it was never the band’s explicit intention. 

Her addition into the band was also a point of division within the Bennington family as Chester’s son, Jamie, called out Linkin Park’s leader and co-vocalist Mike Shinoda of disgracing and “erasing” his father’s legacy. This is despite the fact that Chester’s widow, Talinda, showed her support for what was perceived as a new chapter of the band, where its intention was to move forward by outrightly keeping the legacy of Bennington alive. 

Shinoda himself said in their comeback livestream that the audience will now play the “role of Chester Bennington” moving forward, which could be considered proof the band intends to keep the late singer’s spirit alive in every show. It could also be noticed that Armstrong was visibly emotional in several parts of the livestream, which was her debut performance with the band, which some fans perceive not only as a result of, to paraphrase the Linkin Park hit “Numb”, “feeling the pressure of walking in [Chester’s] shoes”, but also because she herself was a fan of the band and the impact of her addition appears to be personal. 

During the band’s Apple Music interview by New Zealander entertainment presenter Zane Lowe, Armstrong revealed that she was heavily inspired to launch herself into the world of music by Linkin Park’s first official album, Hybrid Theory, thus proving that she has been a fan of the band prior to being tapped on board. 

On the other hand, other fans of Linkin Park and those of Dead Sara pointed out that her statement was a reflection of her delicate situation within the Scientology cult (or at least her unfortunate affiliation to it), specifying that while she may have wanted to come out as a critic, it would result in much worse outcomes than the current state of affairs that is playing out — including, but not limited to, character and literal assassination. These fans additionally speculated that Armstrong had instead made cryptic messages against the cult on some of her Dead Sara songs, as well as Linkin Park’s new single “The Emptiness Machine”, and revealed that she was probably a lesbian, one of several sexual and gender identities Scientology labels as against its doctrine.

Due to the powerful influence of the Church of Scientology, such speculations may not be proven in the future, if at all. (Such an influence can be similarly observed in a substantially large group here in the Philippines which is, frankly, much larger than Quiboloy’s.)

In the end, what matters most for all of us is introspection.

Cults and Cynicism

With that said, this has been the common observation: Cults knowingly or unknowingly trigger skepticism from everyone outside their circles, and unfortunately, an unhealthy dose of skepticism clouds reason by promoting science and empiricism as the purest and only acceptable forms of critical thinking in all things and in all discussions. And as a result, people end up promoting hopelessness through cynicism. 

A practical and unfortunate side-effect of such a cynical reasoning is the xenophobia people increasingly present against all religious beliefs, specifically Christianity, which could be considered a sweeping generalisation due to the “bad apples” affecting the reputation of such congregations. 

For example: A new study about the Shroud of Turin, the alleged cloth that was wrapped around the body of Jesus Christ after he was taken down from the cross, revealed that most of the cloth itself was at least 2,000 years old and, more importantly, that the stains that marked it were consistent with Jesus’s torture and crucifixion as told in all four canonical Gospels in the Bible. 

And yet, even when faced with rather compelling evidence proving what seemed to be literal Bible truths, the craving or demand for more evidence from the most stubborn of anti-religious folks (preferrably those favouring their atheistic or anti-religious bias) is apparently insatiable, and frankly, cynical. 

This was the sentiment also observed by the editors of the National Catholic Register, an American Catholic newspaper currently owned by EWTN. 

While the Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, has not explicitly declared that the Shroud of Turin is indeed the cloth that first witnessed what Christians believe as the resurrection of Christ, the editorial stressed that the church, guided by the watchword “Fides quaerens intellectum” — “Faith seeking understanding” — has spearheaded scientific efforts to discover the truth behind the artefact and promoted further studies to understand it.

“It should … be pointed out that the people who most passionately insist the shroud is a fraud, no matter what evidence to the contrary comes forward, are completely unscientific themselves,” the editors wrote. “They operate from the premise that science has already proved the nonexistence of God and that, therefore, all supernatural claims about the burial cloth must be bunk. Yet in reality the physical sciences don’t address the existence of God at all. They investigate the mechanics of our created universe, not the mechanism by which it was created in the first place.”

A healthy dose of skepticism is understandably required to be a good scientist, a good philosopher, or a good empiricist in general. However, questioning everything without seeing what is good, beautiful, and true in it — especially if it is for others and not for the self — leads to a cynical mindset, and that is what is dangerous in the world we currently live in as it usually leads to people losing hope for the world, and for each other. 

One of the phrases or sentences that could summarise this is “What is in it for me?”

Someone who has been trying to tell cynics to give hoping for the good a chance is Dr. Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford University and the director of its Social Neuroscience Laboratory. 

Zaki recently published a book called “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness”. In a nutshell, he says that cynics may observe and rightfully call out the problems and the issues society has been dealing with that most people do not see, but do not offer solutions because, in their minds, “What’s the point?”

What cynics lack, Zaki argues, is the realisation that the world is not as dark and as cold as it is, that there will always be people who are genuinely good and open-minded that promote the good of the other.

As someone who professes Christianity and witnesses the injustices of day-to-day life firsthand, this is what I personally struggle to hold up to; and I admit that my own observations tend to lead me towards cynicism.

But what keeps me merely skeptical at worst and not becoming fully cynical? It’s a person: The Man of the Shroud. 

The fact that some scientists attempted to skew their findings about the Shroud of Turin in the late 1970s and the 1980s that concluded that it was fake makes me think that those very scientists have gone full cynical and did the controversial sindonological study out of spite for religion. Come to think of it, the world was in the middle of the Cold War and the bar for the trust people have for each other was at least in the Sixth of the Nine Circles of Hell. (Although, to be fair, it was the digital advancements of the 21st Century that lowered that same bar to at least the Seventh.) But I digress.

It could be said that the findings of the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud in question has been debunked in recent years, saying that the cloth as it is now was a hybrid of fabrics from both the time of Christ and the Medieval period as a repair job after a fire gutted the shrine of the Shroud in the northwestern Italian city of Turin and damaged the cloth in question. Scientists have also found out that the image in the Shroud cannot be properly replicated, which complicates the study as it is. 

But outside the controversial — and frankly, cynical — aspects of sindonology, the clearer scientific evidence presents reasons to believe that the Man of the Shroud is God Crucified.

To conclude, this position regarding the Shroud of Turin only solidifies one of the famous statements made by one of the Catholic Church’s most brilliant minds (if not the most brilliant), St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. Beware the man of a single book. We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have laboured in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”

Indeed, the command — the Mandatum — of loving one another is exactly what the Man of the Shroud is telling all of us. For Christians, this love for the other dispels the darkness and despair of cynicism. This love — this charity — is where faith and hope leads to.