No!:
“…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…"*
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 means viewing their errors, misjudgments, and mistakes with compassion and empathy, and asserting our own perspectives with humility and a recognition that we too are prone to error, misjudgment and mistake. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction.
"Applewhite attended Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where he was remembered as an extrovert with a magnetic personality that “he put to only positive uses,” in the words of a former college roommate.10 He served as a campus leader in the a cappella group, judiciary council, and association of prospective Presbyterian ministers, and graduated with a degree in philosophy…
Yet Applewhite also dabbled in astrology, and he clearly was somewhat of a religious seeker…
following their predicted martyrdom and resurrection, a UFO would descend in a technological enactment of the rapture wherein it would hover midair to pick up the Two and anyone else who believed them and accepted their message. The UFO would then return to outer space, delivering its passengers to a heavenly utopia. The bodies of the Two and their followers would transform through biological and chemical processes into perfected extraterrestrial beings, and they would live indefinitely in the “Next Level” or “Evolutionary Level Above Human,” as the Two later called it, in a state of near-perfection…”*Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch
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