The Rocket

Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: Opinion

With the passage of the 10-year anniversary of the Heaven's Gate "cult" mass suicide, as a country, we seem to have forgotten the merits of a nation that allows such an act of natural selection to take place. There is debate about what exactly defines a cult, however.

Many people consider a cult a religious group with unorthodox ideas that approach the station of taboo. The term cult is often used to describe a group in which the participants adhere to the organization, rather than the ideology, while those who are religious are said to adhere to the ideology over the organization.

One of the cults I find most interesting is the aforementioned Heaven's Gate. They had a quirky ideology, and quite a few interesting characters involved. They prove that cults can be more than just scary-they can be exciting and flashy, just like any other religion.

They strapped on identical Nike tennis shoes and then killed themselves, believing that there was a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp comet (which, of course, was carrying Jesus). The reason being that their souls would take the UFO to their afterlives.

The "Away Team," as they so cleverly called themselves, was headed by Marshall Herff Applewhite and his friend, Bonnie Nettles. They were known together as "Bo and Peep."

Now, I know it would be hard for me to take two people calling themselves that seriously, but it seems that they managed to find a lot of people who could. They hoped to follow Bo and Peep into the afterlife, and who is to say that they didn't?

As creatively unusual as the Heavens Gate ideology was, the truth is that no one really knows what happened to them. Maybe their souls were truly whisked away to enjoy an afterlife with Jesus on the Hale-Bopp comet.

It seems that the difference between cults and religions is a blurred line. But either way you slice it, mass suicides show that nature really does have a way of natural selection. Those who believe in an ideology so strongly that they'll kill themselves in a mansion are Darwin Award candidates. I'm just glad that they have a particularly interesting story to back up their actions.

Lisbeth Wells-Pratt is a freshman undeclared major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

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