If we look at the history of all major religions, they all started off as a personality cult with a charasmatic cult leader who claims to be divine.
Of course, as the personality cults expand, it encompasses more and more of the masses and becomes mainstream but it never lost its foundation which is a personality cult. I do not believe any mainstream religion today that is still not a personality cult.
Christianity - we have Jesus whom no one has meet but was nevertheless charasmatic enough to become a cult leader. Once the cult has been established, he becomes a figure head which the cult followers wishes to maintain and to further their own power by in someway connected to him.
So my question now takes another form. Is man’s quest for “religious consicousness” simply the compulsion of man to belong to a personality cult?
It is a mistake when studying religion to study the philosophy side of it because first of all, the philosophy does not make any sense because it touches on the divine and secondly the philosophy can exist indepent of religion. So the philosophy of life propageted by a religion is not religious in itself in that it can exist independt of religion, in fact it exist prior to religion and merely the religion borrows it for its own advantage.
For instance, the concept of ‘do onto other as you would do onto yourself’ is not uniquely Christian, I can be a morally good person without becoming religious. So morality is indepent of religion.
Thus, to study the morality or philosophy of a religion is studying a non-religious side of religion. The study of religion should be on how the cult captures and retains followers and how the personality cult operates.
I have also noticed a similarity with the single armed Nazi salute with today’s evangelical ‘two armed’ salute when they fall into a trance. It is a personality cult administered by its ministers who are also divine in association with the ‘divine’ cult founder.
Well, in the case of retrofitted religions, we have Confucius and Lao Zi as clear examples of people who never made any claim to divinity, yet were later hailed as divinities.
Buddha is somewhat iffy, since his ‘enlightened’ stance does somewhat resemble godhood, especially in Theravada Buddhism, but I think that argument could go either way.
And Rael and L. Ron Hubbard haven’t claimed divinity either.
Now, all of these people clearly enjoyed a cult of personality. But the notion of divine needn’t be there.
Confucsius is a philosopher like Kant and he is definately not hailed as a divinity.
Buddha reached Enlightenment and if you study Buddaism, it has the same concept of Heaven and Hell and Buddha in his enlightened state is in Heaven.
As far as I know, Rael had something to do with Aliens. Now, we can call the divine as God, as Jesus, as Mohammed, as Aliens, they make no difference, because the concept of divinity is there. In Rael’s case, divinity is more futuristic than others. You see claim to know aliens is just as much an act of knowing the divine because in both cases, the aliens and the divine can not be proven to exist but people do believe it exist.
In fact Ufology is as much a religious study than anything else except it sounds more scientific. The central premise than both can not be proven is the trade mark of the divine which is something no-one can touch except the cult leader Rael. And see similarity in Mormanism.
I do not know who L.Ron Hubbard is so no comment there.
Let me put it another way, all cult leaders are looked upon as divine.
I would agree with you about Confucius. But, post Han-fusion, he was worshiped as the God of Learning in China. That practice officially ended with the rise of the Communists, but still actually continues in some areas.
As for Buddha and Enlightenment, it all depends on which sect you want to talk about. But I would argue that Nirvana is quite distinct from Heaven, since many of the higher realms mentioned in Buddhism more properly model Heaven/Hell and all those areas are populated by beings trapped in Samsara. If we add the concept of the Bodisattva to that, were we have people who promise not to enter Nirvana (ever), and that people consider Buddha to be one of those beings and they are waiting for the Maitreya Buddha. Many different varieties.
Now, I agree with what you said about Rael --but he doesn’t claim to be an alien. He just says he is in contact with them (actually, rather like Mohammad with his God). And L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of Scientology which is similar to the Raeliens, since it is based on Space Opera type crap. But, again, there is no claim of divinty.
Now, I can agree that all the charismatic founders all claimed to have special access to knowledge. Not necessarily divine, and not always (but usually) otherworldly, but it the emphasis is on knowledge.