ℹ️ Evangelical Cult Tactics: Instilled Fears of Hell and Thought-Stopping "Doubt-Your-Faith" Questions
Last Updated: 1 year, 3 months ago
When the act of critically thinking and questioning is perceived as a dangerous existential threat that brings eternal torture, don't be surprised when people violently oppose even its possibility as if they are stamping out a fire.
Evangelical and Apologist Tactics to Evade Tough Questions
What is probably going to turn into a whole genre on my blog is my arguments for how Evangelical Christianity is a cult. For context, you may want to read my article on the definition of a cult, which draws on the best-sourced material currently available - the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control, developed by Steven Hassan, who is arguably the leading expert on cults and cult-like or authoritarian indoctriantion.
This video is a great example of some of these tactics, including those which could be categorised broadly as "Thought stopping" tactics (falling under the "T" for "thought" in the BITE acronym).
Repeating the Premise as an Answer
Something I noticed in this video is that Wise Disciple, the creator of the original video, keeps restating the same premises and questions themselves about how tri-omni God is as if he's somehow answering the question of why tri-omni God needs people to pray to Him at all.
This "pure sentimentality [that] doesn't exist any of the actual logic at play" as the response video creator Prophet of Zod referred to it, is actually a defensive response to the potentially doubt-inducing question, the same bizarre behavioural response to cult indoctrination I keep seeing where the normal process of logic gets hijacked and it's just repetition, reassertion of the belief.
Denial Of Doubt
This is because doubt itself is seen as dangerous for a Christian so he is defending himself against it rather than facing the reality of the question or even properly hearing it and processing it - the question itself is just that subconsciously frightening because of the threat it poses to one's life-saving faith as lingering doubts can cause hellfire if not swiftly swatted away by the subconscious before the thought fully forms.
This is something that happens when high-control environments like cults and fundamentalist religions teach people thought-stopping techniques and the belief in thought crimes from programmed instilled fears (see my article on cults, which makes mention of Stephen Hassan's BITE model of authoritarian control, which in turn references all of these above italicized as well as many other means of deep control cults employ over their victims) like the belief that truly asking the question and actually considering it as a serious thought (instead of giving a knee-jerk defensive response to swat it away as quickly as possible just like you would learn to automatically block a threatening physical attack) can cause literally _dangerous_ doubts which have the power to literally cause you to be eternally damned to Hell as a consequence because they can steal your faith through doubt.
Not Hearing The Question
With fear like this, you can see get gibbering like we're seeing here - repetitions and reassertions that don't make sense and don't answer or even properly address or truly acknowledge the question itself beyond stating it: the actual comprehension of the question is not evident from the response (notably the question itself could here could just as easily be replaced with something else, like "how do I know God loves me" or "why should I worship God" or even "who is God").
A Programmed Defense to the "Hell-inducing" Danger of Doubt
The response can thus just seem like a traumatised and imprecise defense, which is basically a trauma response to the programmed fear of hell to keep the Bad Thoughts of doubt at bay. If you listen to the actual defences many apologists from a similar high-control environment give (where suppressing critical thinking in the name of "faith" and self-censorship from secular sources of information are notably discouraged as "avoiding worldly influence") they very often are either learned responses which don't properly adjust if you give a new question that isn't in the prerehearsed script, or reverts to standard tactics such as accusing your motives often become increasingly dogmatic (ending with "I don't believe you" or "I don't trust you" type responses) or else distraught and emotional when there is no clear answer even if they were the ones pushing for the conversation to continue.
Note I am specifically talking about this happening in a conversation both parties explicitly consented to or they specifically initiated, which is proposed as reasonable and logic-based discussion or debate and which started out that way, and assuming you yourself are not trying to be mean or try underhanded debate tactics or pressuring the conversation to continue. You can witness this often happening as a pattern in faith-vs-reason/"evidence for God" debates.
These when you see them should be a sign you're dealing with indoctrination and cult-programmed trauma responses and are no longer having a normal "debate". It is a good moment to check in with the person on how they are feeling and remind them that they do not have to continue the debate or discussion if they do not want to (from my own cult upbringing the combined pressure, trauma and conditioning of such situations can often make it near impossible for a cult victim to realise they are in that situation themselves or even identify that they are becoming distressed - their programming specifically programs thought-stopping and emotion-stopping techniques and instills subconscious fears they will likely not even realise they are responding defensively against and becoming trauma-activated by.
Sadly, evangelicalism functions very much like a cult in terms of its indoctrination practises, and in my opinion, should be labelled as such. I base this on the common and widespread teachings of evangelicalism and their stated teachings and common practises and comparing it to the BITE model, as well as drawing also on my own personal experiences of evangelical church upbringing for over 20 years. As always I encourage people to compare their own teachings from high-control institutions to Stephen Hassan's BITE model and to be wary and skeptical of any organisation that employs high control over its members and discourages autonomy, critical and individual thinking and research from external sources.
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