The "Truth" and the churches

Mind Control – The BITE Model

From chapter two of Releasing the Bonds: Empowering
People to Think for Themselves*

Destructive mind control can be understood in terms
of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:

I.	Behavior Control
II.	Information Control
III.	Thought Control
IV.	Emotional Control

Information Control

1. Use of deception

a. Deliberately holding back information (Monkey trials. Evolution.)
b. Distorting information to make it acceptable (Walk on water, burning bushes, speaking in tongues, virgin birth, murder murder murder murder murder.)
c. Outright lying (God wants this, that, and the other thing. YOU DON'T KNOW. When God talks to you, it's a voice in your head called your conscience. Everyone has one, that's why "God is everywhere." Some people hear many voices, all the time. They are "schitzoid" and generally belong on medication. Usually these people ought not to be encouraged. God might tell them to stab you with a pitchfork.)

2. Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and
group rituals

3. Need to ask permission for major decisions (Like marriage, annullment, if it's okay to have sex, and how we should feel about it when we do? Birth control, abortion, who we want to have sex with?)

4. Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors (like... confession?)

5. Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive
and negative). (say the rosary, kneel on rice, whip your own back, give us some money give us some money give us some money)

6. Individualism discouraged; group think prevails (bible school)

7. Rigid rules and regulations (Puberty hits at age twelve. Wait ten to twenty years before letting the opposite sex touch you, only if you can manage to get someone to marry you, and God forbid you like it. You may live until you're one hundred years old. Only have sex with one person.)

8. Need for obedience and dependency

1. Regulation of individual’s physical reality

a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with (Can't live in sin.)
b. What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears (your skirt must be no more than two inches above the knee. Cover your hair. Cover your entire body except your eyes-wouldn't want to incite lust. Only women incite lust apparently. There was no Brad Pitt or One Direction back in The Day.)
c. What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects (A little wine is okay, but don't get your temple drunk, don't eat pork, no meat on Friday, meat can't touch dairy)

2. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged

a. Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio (every religion)
b. Critical information (every religion)
c. Former members (bye-bye)
d. Keep members so busy they don’t have time to think (bible school, church every other day, help the poor feed the sick tend the coffeeshop, vacation bible school, night bible study, because everyone is too stupid to read the bible on their own)

3. Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines

a. Information is not freely accessible (homeschooling)(how about this? You live in a town fifty percent Spanish. There's really no Italians in the town. The elementary schools languages? English and Italian. WTF?)
b. Information varies at different levels and missions within
pyramid (no we are getting into conspiracy theories.)
c. Leadership decides who “needs to know” what (no one needs to know that no sex for priests causes them so much frustration they resort to blowjobs from alter boys. Everybody knows blowjobs aren't really sex.)

4. Spying on other members is encouraged

a. Pairing up with “buddy” system to monitor and control (marriage.)
b. Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership (and then give them blowjobs, in atonement.)(If you're a sneaky sinning liar who doesn't confess sins except to confess to lying, they get you a job as cardinal, or mayor of some town)

5. Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda

a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes,
etc. (bibles, Watchtowers, Businessweek, Forbes, the Quaran)
b. Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult
sources (every banned book ever written-The Grapes of Wrath, The DaVinci Code, Are You There God It's me Margaret etc etc etc...1984, Slaughterhouse five...pretty sure Doctor Suess is on the banned books list. Dr. Suess is pretty peaceful. All his books promote cooperation and self reliance. Why on earth would the church ban them? Think about it. If everybody got along, tithing would suffer, for one thing. If there was one God, or no God, the whole tax free empire would crumple. John Lennon was banned, because he said "Imagine" no religion. and he was a peaceful, loving guy.)

6. Unethical use of confession

a. Information about “sins” used to abolish identity
boundaries (once you tell your secret, you feel closer to who you told it to, and afraid they will tell. Instead of telling a preist, tell the world.)
b. Past “sins” used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness
or absolution (Christian Science is big on that)

Thought Control

1. Need to internalize the group’s doctrine as “Truth”

a. Map = Reality
b. Black and White thinking
c. Good vs. evil
d. Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)

2. Adopt “loaded” language (characterized by “thought-terminating
clichés”). Words are the tools we use to think with.
These “special” words constrict rather than expand understanding.
They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous
“buzz words”. (Sinful thoughts are what cause domestic abuse. Men beat on their wives because they know what other men are thinking about them, but it's the wives fault for having tits.)
3. Only “good” and “proper” thoughts are encouraged.
4. Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down “reality testing”
by stopping “negative” thoughts and allowing only “good”
thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive
criticism.

a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in “tongues”
f. Singing or humming

(Positive thinking allows people to ignore reality. Read  
http://www.alternet.org/health/143187

"Positive thinking is different, she says, from being cheerful or good-natured -- it's believing that the world is shaped by our wants and desires and that by focusing on the good, the bad ceases to exist.

Ehrenreich believes this has permeated our culture and that the refusal to acknowledge that bad things could happen is in some way responsible for the current financial crisis.

In her new book, Ehrenreich examines how the positive-thinking movement was started by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and an amateur metaphysician named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in response to Calvinism; how being positive became mandatory in corporate culture; and how she thinks prosperity preachers, such as Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston encouraged a culture of debt by telling their congregations that God wants them to have a big house and a nice car."

5. No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen
as legitimate
6. No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or
useful

Emotional Control

1. Manipulate and narrow the range of a person’s feelings.
2. Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it
is always their fault, never the leader’s or the group’s. (right, like if you want to have sex, it's not a natural part of growing up, it's because your a whore or being incited by one.)
3. Feeling-stopping (with number 4, Excessive use of guilt). Like thought-stopping, this is the automatic suppression or blocking of feelings that are not acceptable by the cult identity- such as feeling \”homesick\” or feeling \”depressed\” or feeling \”resentful\”.
4. Excessive use of guilt

a. Identity guilt

1. Who you are (not living up to your potential)
2. Your family
3. Your past
4. Your affiliations
5. Your thoughts, feelings, actions

b. Social guilt (stop inciting, and give give give, especially to the church of whatever)
c. Historical guilt (Jesus died for YOU, you dirty sinner who is ungrateful)

5. Excessive use of fear

a. Fear of thinking independently
b. Fear of the “outside” world
c. Fear of enemies
d. Fear of losing one’s “salvation”
e. Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
f. Fear of disapproval

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows.
7. Ritual and often public confession of “sins”.
8. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever
leaving the group or even questioning the leader’s authority. The
person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled
future without being in the group.

a. No happiness or fulfillment “outside”of the group
b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: “hell”;
“demon possession”; “incurable diseases”;
“accidents”; “suicide”; “insanity”;
“10,000 reincarnations”; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends,
peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group’s perspective,
people who leave are: “weak;” “undisciplined;”
“unspiritual;” “worldly;” “brainwashed
by family, counselors;” seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.

Community

If you grew up indoctrinated under the aberrant religious teachings of Bob Jones

Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Cult Survivors (and Their Supporters)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Independent-Fundamental-Baptist-IFB-Cult-Survivors-and-Their-Supporters/207805449251466

1. 
   "Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers," (Mormon Doctrine, by Bruce McConkie, p. 547). (Meaning God was an Incubus?)

1. 
   Good works are necessary for salvation (Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, p. 92).

1. 
   There is no salvation without accepting Joseph Smith as a prophet of God (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 1, p. 188).

http://carm.org/teachings-of-mormonism

Mormons

1. Bible
   1. "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. . ." (8th Article of Faith of the Mormon Church).
   2. "Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God," (1 Nephi 13:28).
2. Book of Mormon
   1. The book of Mormon is more correct than the Bible, (History of the Church, 4:461).
3. Devil, the
   1. The Devil was born as a spirit after Jesus "in the morning of pre-existence," (Mormon Doctrine, p. 192).
   2. Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers and we were all born as siblings in heaven to them both, (Mormon Doctrine, p. 163).
   3. A plan of salvation was needed for the people of earth so Jesus offered a plan to the Father and Satan offered a plan to the father but Jesus' plan was accepted. In effect the Devil wanted to be the Savior of all Mankind...
   4. 
      
   5. Jesus' sacrifice was not able to cleanse us from all our sins, (murder and repeated adultery are exceptions), (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, 1856, p. 247).