Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

I can take seriously the vulnerable, flawed, delusional humanity of True Believers of every sort, whether in the religious mainstream or on the alternative fringes of convention (and sanity). I cannot take their “beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices” seriously if that means suspending rational judgement and normalizing what is so clearly a derailed, destructive, perverse relation to reality. Taking experience seriously means trying to understand why and how the events in someone’s life have led them to whatever relations they bear. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction. “…we need to take seriously the religious beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices of adherents of alternative, belittled, and discredited religious movements. It is far too easy to dismiss the members of Heaven’s Gate as either insane or victimized, and in both cases we fall into the same sort of trap of demonization that colors the dehumanizing political discourse of the twenty-first century.” — Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch