Remember the "Heaven's Gate" suicide cult? They still exist!

[Archae]

A Living Member of the Heaven’s Gate Cult Gave a Rare Interview to a Curious Reporter

December 22, 2016 by Hemant Mehta 58 Comments

Remember Heaven’s Gate? Nearly two decades ago, 39 members of the cult killed themselves in a mass suicide, hoping to be taken to a spaceship behind the Comet Hale-Bopp.

The website, for some strange reason, is still active — and very much unchanged from 1997.

Troy James Weaver, a contributor to the website Fanzine, recently sent a message to the contact email on the website out of sheer curiosity and was surprised to hear back. What followed was an odd exchange with former members of the cult who maintain the site from Arizona, eager to rejoin the dead members after their own lives are over.

Do you have many people within your organization? What are your thoughts on suicide? I read about it on the website, but feel like it isn’t very clear.

The Group ended in 1997. There is no organization or members. No one should commit suicide.

So why maintain the website? Obviously if you still believe it, you are a proponent/member of something, right? The reason I ask about suicide, is because if Do and Ti [group founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles] were the only Next Level Members, what does that say about the others who took their own lives? They were human, correct? Not inhabiting a human body, but human? I’m confused by this and what I’ve read. I’m just trying to understand more clearly. Also, what is a task partner?

The website is to provide information for their future return. We are designated to maintain and care for it.

Humans are not to commit suicide. Those 38, and those 38 only, we allowed to shed their human body, take on space-capable, Next Level bodies and depart this planet. No human can do that or would be allowed to do that. We know you are confused about this but those individuals did not commit suicide. They broke the bond of human connection and quickly switched to a Next Level one.

Why 38? An editor’s note points out that the number of victims excludes Applewhite, whom Heaven’s Gate members don’t consider a mere mortal.

The entire exchange is fascinating in part because it means there are still members of the cult who cling to those beliefs. None of the coverage of the cult, post-suicide, changed their minds. It’s disturbing… and I also really want to talk to them.

By the way, it’s worth mentioning that we all laugh at Heaven’s Gate because their beliefs are absurd… and yet we’re surrounded by people who also believe in a prophet who was more than human. They also believe they’ll meet Him in the afterlife.

Christianity is no more sensible than Heaven’s Gate; it just has more believers.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/12/22/a-living-member-of-the-heavens-gate-cult-gave-a-rare-interview-to-a-curious-reporter/?Utm_Medium=email&Utm_Source=BRSS&Utm_Campaign=Nonreligious&Utm_Content=361

[jberryhill]

1. Who knows? Wait a few centuries and they might be the majority religion

Get a sponsorship from an emperor, and things can really take off.

[malaise]

2. Isn't that the truth

and they think some angel will take them up in the sky

[calendargirl]

7. I always thought we progressives were tolerant of all religions.

But jah, again it seems I was incorrect.

[Archae]

9. I'm an atheist, and I'm tolerant of all religions, except dangerous cults and fundies.

For obvious reasons, like the Heaven's Gate" cult, and fundies like Mike Pence and his "More Jesus than thou."

[Hekate]

11. What you said, Archae. Mike Pence is beyond fundy: he thinks The Handmaid's Tale is a how-to manual

[malaise]

13. I'm a fact based atheist

Tolerance does not mean that I buy BS

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Blasphemous Lies. Lies!

Last edited Sat Dec 24, 2016, 12:33 AM - Edit history (1)

everyone knows Xenu alone approves all comet-based space travel in this galactic sector.

[HassleCat]

5. Well, yes, but...

Getting your mileage reimbursement takes months.

[HassleCat]

4. If they did it 2000 years ago, they might have pulled it off.

We laugh at such shenanigans today because it's pretty easy to debunk the scam artists and whack jobs. Their followers consist of only the emotionally most desperate.

[pintobean]

6. I plan on catching Hale-Bopp on its next fly by.

[leftofcool]

8. Save me a seat will ya?

Something tells me that as soon as they cut my Social Security and stop my medicare, I am going to need to fly off somewhere..............for good.

[Hekate]

10. Quotation marks would be VERY helpful..... My bro had a brush with Bo and Peep in Oregon....

That was in the 1970s, and Do and Ti were going by Bo and Peep then. His landlord became enamored of them, and under instructions to rid himself of his property he gave the papers for the little house my brother was renting to him and signed it away.

Then the landlord disappeared into the forest, reappearing some weeks or months later rather embarrassed but alive. But the house was still my brother's.

It was just one of those odd family stories until the Heaven's Gate suicides, when we all went boing because, hey, wasn't that them? On this go-round my Oregon brother spent some time trying to track down an old friend of his to make sure he had not taken that spaceship ride, but I don't know how that turned out.

[AgadorSparticus]

12. Of course they would be in AZ. That just doesn't surprise me.