Pentecostal 'cookers' are no more insane than any other theist megacultists.

How much reason is enough reason? How much pragmatism (and what kind) is enough pragmatism? How pragmatic can we be - and in what way - before we're become inconsistent and incoherent?

I recommend that we avoid too much Jamesian pragmatism about belief systems. That is - we avoid too much of the permissivism of William James. Sure - it's smart and nifty in many ways, as was the approach of Voltaire to religion (born largely of necessity.) That doesn't mean it is a good idea now - at this point in history, in countries like Australia or the United States.

For example - we can keep sticking our head in the sand about the fact that Pentecostals are no more extremist and sick in the head than Catholics or Anglicans, but we'll just look silly. When we do this - say that Pentecostals are a cult but the other Christian megacult sub-cults are not - we make no sense, and contradict ourselves.

Who's we? Reasoning atheists and agnostics who don't have imaginary friends and comorbid paranoid and grandiose delusions about non-things as demons and anti-christs. Anyone appealing to scientific and scientistic reason as the basis for good policy and good governance (as well as good mental health!) I include in this the special sciences like social psychology and evolutionary psychology.

Christian megacults are all delusional and dominionist. They all involve delusional beliefs and are all part of the religious schizophrenia pandemic. It's precisely why they snipe at each other on doctrinal grounds in the first place. From the perspective of the reasoning, scientifically astute policy maker - there is, and can be, no meaningful difference between the Pentecostal sub-cult of the Christian megacult and the Angilican, Catholic, and Baptist subcults when it comes to what makes them delusional, irrational, deleterious to the national interest, and dangerous. The fact that theist nuts fight each other over the hair-splitting, nit-picking details of their batty, infideliphobic, bigoted doctrines is completely beside the point (except that it demonstrates what they really are and what they are really about).

If one schizophrenic patient in the psychiatric ward says they're not as sick as the other patient because some of their delusional beliefs are subtly, or even markedly (according to some cock-eyed assessment) different: then we give them a nice therapy session, or else we send them back to the garden undisturbed and unperturbed. What we don't do is regard them as more mentally well than the other schizophrenics because their version of the specious delusion, and their subjective take on their delusions of reference, is different in its narratological details than that of the next religious schizophrenic. Two mental patients fighting over which one of them is really Napoleon are still two mental patients.

Philosophers know the perils of the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy. It's not sensible to start singling out one megacult based on the specious details of their doctrines, and claim or infer, or assume, that the other megacults are not cults.

Bottom line: the Pentecostal 'cookers' are no more mentally unwell and unbalanced than all of the other theist delusionals that we make the constant mistake of allowing to influence our domestic and foreign policy.

The salient characteristics and properties of the Pentecostal megacult are no different to the salient characteristics and properties of the other Christian theist megacults - Anglican, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist, and so on (technically they're all megacults because they all have more than 1 million members.) They all involve delusional beliefs in imaginary friends. They are all part of the religious schizophrenia pandemic.

And who in their right mind takes sensibly the charge that Pentecostals are somehow worse or more nutty than Anglicans and Catholics when it comes to their approach to worldly wealth (prosperity doctrine)? They're ALL dominionists and grifters and all of them literally believe that they're trying to gain wealth and influence on behalf of their imaginary, psychotic, male, infideliphobic friend.

Very importantly - they all need money to function. Remember that grifter clerics have to eat! All of that church property needs maintenance and for rent or taxes to be paid. Megacult clerics like priests, pastors, imams, rabbis, parsons, priors, bishops, cardinals, and so on don't appreciate their bottom lines being eroded by competitors from other sects of the megacult! There are only so many dupable sheep and there's only a finite amount of government funding to go around! There are only so many wealthy, nutty donors to appeal to.

It's no good caving in to claims by powerful megacults that 'there's lots of knowledge in the Vatican libraries' or 'Protestant Christians have contributed X to science or Y to civilisation'. Remember that many of the leadership of megacults are not really believers in their nutty doctrines - or else they're on a spectrum of delusion that would be difficult to map. Some of them are just sufferers of anti-social personality disorder. Megacults are complex entities, and their memetic narratives have, in many cases, been cultivated multifariously by many different political and cultural influences and imperatives over a long time.

Pentecostal cookers are just more enthusiastically and flamboyantly nuts than their competitors. They're selling more mental junk food faster and better, and the purse strings of the competing megacults are under stress. Not to mention the political and social influence, and all of the benefits that come with it.

The moment any of us makes concessions to any of the megacults by backing their claim that only Pentecostals are mentally unbalanced megacultists, the former nutters have got us by the incoherent inconsistencies. It's silly to make concessions in any case - since adults with imaginary, male, psychotic, misogynist, infideliphobic friends and comorbid paranoid and grandiose delusions are unequivocally mentally unwell. They should not be allowed anywhere near parliament except as supporting functionaries who do accounting or run or refit cafes and such. Nothing involving policy or legislation - especially war powers - should fall remotely within their ambit or purview.

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