Uh oh, I've been outed as an anti-cult cultist!
I'd think any poster (let alone a mod/admin) calling people of any religious persuasion insulting names
Evangelical fundamentalists, which is the large subset of evangelicals to which I was referring, are not morons. I'm sorry if that was taken by anyone as a personal insult, and I was not intending to demean anyone's intelligence. I was trying to condense to a word the conflict between science and their advocacy of certain parts of their belief system, and it doesn't condense well to one word. I have it on good authority that evangelicals are "probably, overall, a positive influence on modern politics."
(1) Not seeing any authoritarian leader type in the wiki. And even if one were to concede the Duggars are now somehow leaders of this, I do not see any mechanism for them to assert authority on others that share their beliefs.
First of all, the husbands and/or fathers seem to be the real authoritarians in this cult. And I'm sure they all have reasonably charismatic leaders of their local churches.
The Duggars have thier own reality TV show, which promises to be little more than an advertisement for the Quiverfull movement. They self-identify as Quiverfull adherents. They don't have to assert authority over anyone. They're walking examples of the prosperity possible under their *gag* wonderful lifestyle. Like Tom Cruise for Scientology.
(2) I read nothing about maximizing offspring, which would require affirmative action. On the contrary, they simply do nothing to prevent pregnancy. Furthermore, the link provided explicitly states they do not use the rhythm method, which has some facility for increasing the odds of pregnancy. In any case, truly maximizing one's offspring in this age would require the use of fertility drugs, which are mentioned in the wiki as something to be avoided.
Wow, that's a pretty nice twisting of concepts. They go further than doing nothing to prevent pregnancy. They have sex.
They're not maximizing offspring because they don't resort to heroic scientific methods that may or may not increase the average number of births per woman. Of course! The fact that the women are still baby factories means nothing. Of course you're right, it's not technically maximized if fertility drugs and artificial insemination could increase the average birth rate by even .1 children per woman per lifetime. It's not clear to me that they would increase it. Fertility drugs increase multiple pregnancies which increase complications which increase chances of future infertility, and artificial insemination often doesn't work even with fertility drugs... thought I don't know statistics, perhaps the success rate is better than attempting to conceive naturally these days? Those are still heroic scientific methods, and they could easily be rejected by cult doctrine for that reason alone.
Officially advocating the rhythm method would give women an excuse for not having sex when they're probably not fertile. I suspect that's why it's not advocated. The Quiverfull cult also emphasizes patriarchy. Or maybe they don't advocate the rhythm method because they're so drunk on the kool-aid that they can't read a calendar. I have no idea which.
It may be helpful to keep in mind that, until fairly recently, most Christian denominations did not look kindly on birth control.
But hey, at least we've found a lifestyle choice we can criticize without being accused of hate speech. Poor Duggars. They should have just listened to Planned Parenthood; murdered those kids in the womb.
In mainstream Christian denominations, people violate that prohibition all the time. Not so in the extremist cult denominations. The women can't violate it without being kicked out, and often in multi-generational cults like this, that means giving up the only social support network they've ever known.
It doesn't look like a lifestyle choice. It looks like coercion.
They should listen to Planned Parenthood, but not about abortion. Believe it or not, PP offers a lot of information in addition to their pamphlets on "how to cheaply hire a licensed hitman to kill your child."
You're so concerned about the parents rights. That's fine to a degree, but shouldn't you be just as concerned about kids who are being raised to believe that their purpose in life is to be baby factories? This is not Saudi Arabia. That crap shouldn't fly, and it shouldn't be permitted in the name of parents' rights.