Tag Archives: The SCMP Letters Page

Last week in the Sunday Morning Post, there was a letter from the Asia area public affairs office of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – a religion that just rolls off the tongue. The writer was pointing out that his church had nothing to do with Warren Steed Jeffs a polygamist leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,  - another punchy name for a religion, who was recently jailed for sexually assaulting two young girls he had taken for wires.  The writer was keen to point out that there is no such thing as: “A Mormon fundamentalist, or radical Mormon, nor are there Mormon sects.”  Now I think he is being obtuse, but then thats what church leaders do.

Oh well, if this is not the work of radicals or fundamentalists, then perhaps I have the wrong definition: Lafferty Case Still Haunts

But in truth, I don’t really care, it’s self evident that Mormons are strange, they believe in a guy who  said an Angel directed him to the word of God, in the 1820′s, he was this charlatan!

I am more interested in fact in what defines a sect or cult from a religion.  I did post it on my Facebook as a question, a few of the more amusing answers were: “When enough idiots believe,” or “immediately,” or more thought provoking: ” When it stops killing it’s own members and starts killing non-members.

Not enough for me, so I went to the web, and here are the answers from the wisdom of the crowd.  Enjoy!

Generally a “cult” is based upon a single charismatic leader with direct access to God. When that leader dies, there are crises of faith and succession. If the cult survives, it may be transformed into a “sect”, where beliefs and leadership are in flux. Access to God is widespread. A “religion” has established dogma and leadership. Access to God is restricted to trained specialists.

David Dreaming Bear, Horsethief Canyon, California USA

A cult becomes a religion when it burns its first heretic.

Peter Brooke, Kinmuck Scotland

‘A religion is a cult with an army and a navy’ (to borrow from Max Weinreich writing on language and dialect). Consider the role of the state in the demise of the Roman religion and the rise of Christianity; the Crusades; persecution of the Jews; the battles between Catholicism and Protestantism; the fate of the Bah’ai in Iran; amongst many other examples.  Keith Mason, London UK

A Cult becomes a religion once it is viewed by outsiders as having a degree of moral authority. It’s a nominal distinction subjectively made.  Andrew Johnson-Green, Leeds West Yorks

As soon as you have to part with cash to join, it’s a cult. As soon as there are more than 10000 of you, it’s a religion. So, the Reader’s Digest is a cult, and London is a religion.  Tom Attah, Farnborough UK

Is this not one of the plural irregular verbs? We are a religion, you are a community, they are a cult.  Geoff Cohn, Sydney Australia

A cult is a religion without any political power.  Big Bill Robinson, Slough England

A cult becomes a religion when its members become so numerous that they require recognition by a governing authority. Witness the evolution of the Mormon religion in the US. Initially it was identified as a “cult” (and you can look this up in various almanacs), but eventually, it had so many adherents that it was recognized by the US government as a religion.  Nancy Thomas, Las Vegas, USA

Peter Lok, Pierce Lam and Cynthia Sze.  Remember these names, they’ll be appearing here regularly. They’ll be appearing everytime they have the audacity to write one of their pathetic anti-colonial rants in the SCMP.  Lam has ongoing issues with the ESF and expats in general, Peter Lok has issues with anyone who doesn’t love his motherland but reserves special ire for anything left over from pre 97. Sze is a wee cow who mostly moans about colonial remnants in the judiciary, the use of English in courts or the ‘alien’ common law.

Sze’s latest pile of shite  from yesterday’s letter’s page, forges a new path for her, ploughs new depths and is printed in full below.  You can judge for yourself what her issues are:

“Andrew Newell (“Let’s see the Union Jack”, April 26) and his like-minded compatriots who were dismayed “to see a PRC flag flying from the war memorial in Statue Square, and no Union Flag” should learn to appreciate the Chinese people’s historical perspective and respect the reality that the PRC flag now represents China.

The Cenotaph was erected originally as a memorial to the war dead of the first world war, for which China contributed a lot but got nothing in return.

After the Second World War, it was used to commemorate the dead of both wars.The battle over Hong Kong in the Second World War was one between two imperial powers.

Britain’s miserable defeats by the Japanese throughout the entire Asia theatre exposed the fact that it would not be able to recover its pre-war conquests when peace returned.

The subsequent cold war extended the lease of Britain’s colonial administration of Hong Kong, but its reoccupation of Hong Kong after 1945 was nothing if not usurpation of the fruit of victory won by heroic Chinese war efforts.

After the reunion, the only war dead whom Hong Kong people want to commemorate are their compatriots who sacrificed their lives for the protection of the motherland from invasive enemies in the opium wars, imperial aggression and the second world war.

The Cenotaph is turned to good use serving that purpose.”

What a pathitic wee bitch!!!!!!!!!!  But why, Oh why, is the SCMP publishing such utter shite! I’ve met old men that fought in both the first AND the second world wars, the one thing they ALL had in common was an amazing egalitarianism, their immediate enemies not withstanding.  They all knew more about humanity than a bigoted bitch like Sze.  And for the most part, in 1945, people in HK fought against their common enemy, if they fought at all, which of course, many prominent families didn’t, choosing collaboration instead!  In the face of an advancing, cruel and inhumane foe, I wonder whether Sze would fight, yield or collaborate?

Why do these people view colonialism as evil,  the simple facts are:  HK only exists because the British created an environment for hard working Chinese to impove their lot and that of up to 4 succeeding generations; when, at the same time,  their compatriots were being murdered, indoctrinated and starved by meglomania.  Also, conveniently forgotten is the fact that many of the millions of the last generation to “touch base” in HK are only alive precicely because they did in fact escape almost certain death or at the very least a continued mere subsistence existence.

Paul Kokoski wrote in the Sunday Morning Post this morning, “Same-Sex Marriage defies Bible and Science.” Quite why Mr Kokoski, ( yeah, I’m ignoring the obvious abbreviation), should want to write to a Hong Kong Newspaper when he appears to live in Canada, is beyond me, but lets allow that he has a Hong Kong connection.  As previously pointed out elsewhere in this rant, so what if it’s unnatural, it’s no business of anyone else’s, as long: “as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”  But Kok, goes on to spout his own ideas of science without offering any basis for his argument, I suppose as a christian, he expects us to have faith in his authority and word.

Why does the SCMP keep publishing these letters from reactionary idiots?

There was a common, if discordant theme in three letters published on Sunday, Peter Sherwood warns of the very real dangers of criticising religion:  ”It can get you killed.” It has caused the deaths of untold innocent individuals and continues to kill today.  Stephen Anderson advocates a strange paradox: “It is wrong to brand organised religion as bigoted.  We must protect freedom of speech.” An illogical argument, especially so given organised religions historical and ongoing persecution of free speech over the last two thousand years. Whilst Gordon Truscott exercises his freedom of speech with another of his frequent and religiously motivated arguments against homosexuality.

I have no issue with Mr. Sherwood, who offers a logical and precise argument.  Mr. Anderson is obviously confused and seems to forget that indoctrination of children hardly inculcates the ability to think rationally, denying them the freedom to think that is so necessary for logical freedom of speech.    Belief， as we all know is a matter of faith, and faith must eliminate logic.

Truscott merely proves the point, a religiously indoctrinated individual with a self-motivated desire to cure homosexuals by denying them freedom of choice. This indoctrination is so very obvious from his many previously published letters branding homosexuality as unnatural.  On this point only, I can agree with him, homosexuality is not natural, but only because in nature, procreation is the norm; our bodies were designed for reproduction.  However, it is the beauty of our evolutionary free will that we can choose to confront and challenge the norms, exercise our human identity and choose to be what we want to be.

Religion is a tool used by men, and it is mostly men, to manipulate other men; it remains a tragedy that so many individuals today remain blinded from an early age by their manipulations at the hands of religious bodies and that we continue to allow prejudice to masquerade as principle.