Eileen Barker is a professor in sociology and is an emeritus member of the London School of Economics, and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights at. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (Inform) and wrote studies about cults and new religious movements. A professor is a senior teacher, lecturer and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... The London School of Economics and Political Science, often referred to as the London School of Economics or the LSE, is a specialist university based in London, often regarded as the worlds most prestigious social science institution. ... In religion and sociology, a cult is a group of people (often a new religious movement) devoted to beliefs which may be different to those held by the majority of society. ... A new religious movement or NRM appears as a religious, ethical or spiritual grouping that has not (yet) become recognised as a standard denomination, church, or body, especially when it has a novel belief system and when it is not a sect. ...
Barker has rejected the term and the notion of 'brainwashing' as overly simplisitic.
Rick Ross and other anti-cult / counter-cult activists have labelled Barker a "cult apologist". Anton Hein said that she is not critical enough about cults. Rick Alan Ross (born November 1952) is a controversial protagonist in the anti-cult movement who maintains a website with an extensive listing of articles about destructive cults, controversial groups and movements, and related research about mind control theories. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Opposition to cults and new religious movements. ... The Christian countercult movement is a loosely knit affiliation made primarily of Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians to resist viewpoints and organizations which they see as opposing what they view as the historic and orthodox Christian faith. ... A cult apologist is a term (which some find pejorative) used by anti-cult activists to describe a scholar of cults and/or new religious movements perceived as responding to the movements they study with advocacy instead of with neutral scholarship. ...
Bibliography
The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?, Blackwell Publishers, November 1984, ISBN 0631132465
EileenBarker has spent 25 years in the field studying the eruption of new religious movements in an age of volatile belief.
EileenBarker is Professor of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Barker describes how, in 1986, she was observing four ex-cult members talking about their experiences at the annual meeting of a group dedicated to warning others about the danger of cults.
Barker goes as far as to admit that some of the arguments for creationism can be fairly complex and that there are, in fact, qualified scientists among the proponents of creationism, but this seems somewhat hard to swallow.
Barker fails to notice that a comment of this sort is applicable to all the positions discussed in her article and as such is inconclusive.
Concluding the article Barker alludes (p.197) patronizingly to creationist scientist's role of comforting the 'ignorant masses' (as in the previous article), but beyond this she does allow that creationism as such may be beneficial to science in the long run.
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