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Religions or cults.

CLAX1911 said:
No ma'am. I was talking about cults. And what separates them from religion.
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As atheistic and anti-theist as I am, I don't believe Christianity is a cult. Certain authoritarian, exclusive and conservative sects may be considered as such. Not the organized religion as a whole.
 
Molding impressionable childrens beliefs every week with promises of heaven and threats of hell, while drilling into them verses of a random books that are often nonsense certainly seems cultish to me. That said, not all religious do this. That leads me to believe that while organized religion is quite cultish (especially for the more devout), simply believing in your deity is not.
 
Nilly said:
Molding impressionable childrens beliefs every week with promises of heaven and threats of hell, while drilling into them verses of a random books that are often nonsense certainly seems cultish to me. That said, not all religious do this. That leads me to believe that while organized religion is quite cultish (especially for the more devout), simply believing in your deity is not.
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I generally agree, though it is difficult thinking like this I was raised in the Catholic church and that very much plays on my thought process.

That is why I had hoped to generate a more intellectual conversation among atheists. Strangely enough I seemed to have provoked some really touchy Christians.
 
Originally Posted by Tim the plumber View Post
Cult, religion same thing just a question of size.
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CLAX1911 said:
Can you expand on that?
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Not really.

Catholic church has a system of taking people away from society for life into a world of repression of maturity, monks/nuns, of being a guilt complex inducing brain washing organization. That's a cult in my view.

The Islamic faith is a death cult where murder-suicide is the way to heaven.

They are all the same.
 
CLAX1911 said:
That is why I had hoped to generate a more intellectual conversation among atheists. Strangely enough I seemed to have provoked some really touchy Christians.
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:lol:

There's nothing "touchy" about my response. It was a no-bs straight-forward response.
It must be you who's touchy since you're the one who's having a fit and a major sulk. :mrgreen:


Since you asked about OUR religion, I assumed you're asking RELIGIOUS PEOPLE who belong to any organized religion!


CLAXX1911
But this really got me thinking, are all Christian religions cults? (i omit other religions for lack of knowledge) Most religions engage in this tactic to some extent

Are they all really cults?

Is your religion different? If so I have some questions.
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Silly me. I didn't realize you directed that question to intellectual atheists.



Next time, be more specific.
Make sure you specify that you want only INTELLECTUAL atheists to be the one to give insight about their "religion."


That way, there won't be any silly, idiotic religious people (like me), who'll misunderstand and respond to your post, assuming you ask for our input.




I'm curious which intellectual atheist will bother with your irrational OP! :lamo
 
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Tim the plumber said:
Not really.

Catholic church has a system of taking people away from society for life into a world of repression of maturity, monks/nuns, of being a guilt complex inducing brain washing organization. That's a cult in my view.
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Not sure what you mean by "repression of maturity," but you do seem to be implying that those who choose a life of prayer and contemplation and service (Catholic or otherwise), are forced to. This hasn't been my observation at all.
 
Cults, in the sense of "harmful cults", are religious or quasi-religious organizations with very specific characteristics.


The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

‪ Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

‪ Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

‪ The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
‪ The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).

‪ The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.

‪ The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).

‪ The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

‪ The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iin order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

‪ Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.

‪ The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

‪ The group is preoccupied with making money.
‪ Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.

‪ Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
‪ The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.


A group with many or most of these characteristics is a harmful cult. Particular red-flags include isolating the individual from previous family and friends, requiring members to sign over all property and funds (or a large percentage) to the organization, and making the new member entirely dependent on (and obedient to) the cult.
 
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Moderator's Warning:
Let's keep it civil and topical folks.... the topic isn't each other...
 
lifeisshort said:
A religion worships an idea while a cult worships an entity. Yes that makes Christianity a cult.
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Religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
(oxford dictionaries)
 
“Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult: If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes.”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America

A cult is a religious group with socially deviant or novel religious practices.
 
I think it depends on how you define a cult. Typically, when we think of cults we tend to think of organizations that exert an unreasonable/unwarranted amount of control over an individual's lives. If that's the kind of definition we are going with then very few Christian churches would qualify as cults.

Other definitions tend to focus on the structure of the church, seeing organizations that are dominated by a single leader as being cults. Under that definition, more churches may qualify (until recently, Mark Driscoll's church, Mars Hill, might have qualified for example).

Still others focus on how unorthodox the beliefs are. This is not a very useful definition since it's just a popularity contest.

So, I guess it depends on how you define cult.


Personally, I don't find these kinds of "what qualifies as a ____?" questions all that useful though. Ultimately, the point of all words is to help us communicate with each other. There is no real thing called a "cult" that some churches are and some aren't. The word cult is just a useful shorthand for describing a kind of religion when communicating with another person. If using the word cult to describe a particular church helps you to communicate information about that church to someone else accurately, then use the word, if it does not, then don't use it. I don't believe there is some kind of conceptual object called "cult" and we must peel away the layers of a church to see if beneath the surface we find it is such an object. Cult is just a word, if it's helpful in describing something, use it, if it isn't then don't.
 
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nota bene said:
Not sure what you mean by "repression of maturity," but you do seem to be implying that those who choose a life of prayer and contemplation and service (Catholic or otherwise), are forced to. This hasn't been my observation at all.
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So walking away from the challenges and opportunities of life is not repressive and hindering to your personal development?

Go forth and multiply is very different to curl up in a dark corner and die slowly.
 
Tim the plumber said:
So walking away from the challenges and opportunities of life is not repressive and hindering to your personal development?

Go forth and multiply is very different to curl up in a dark corner and die slowly.
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How do Christians walk away?

What curl up and die in a corner???
 
nota bene said:
Not sure what you mean by "repression of maturity," but you do seem to be implying that those who choose a life of prayer and contemplation and service (Catholic or otherwise), are forced to. This hasn't been my observation at all.
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I don't think many are forced too (in some religions they are), but I consider almost everyone who was believes in the religion that they were 'brought up' to believe to have been somewhat coerced, even if they don't realize it.
 
Tim the plumber said:
Becoming a monk or a nun is definitely avoiding the real world of challenges and opportunities.
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A lot of monks and nuns deal with the REAL WORLD - first hand!

They probably know more about it than you!

A lot of them do charity works, care for the sick, the poor, the orphans, those dying of AIDS/leprosy - who'd been abandoned or dis-owned by their own families and friends, etc.., A lot of them see horrors of the real world -
some are out there in places like Africa! And other places, being in the midst of situations of which only a tiny fraction of reality you see on tv as you enjoy your hot dinner.


Anyway, depends on your idea of "challenges" and "opportunities." What may be challenging to you isn't for them. What you may see as opportunities, isn't the kind of opportunities they want to have.

What ever happened to that saying, "as long as you're happy with what you do?"


If they are not coerced or forced into it...if they voluntarily sought that lifestyle....who are you to say that they're wasting their life away?

I had a close friend who voluntarily entered a nunnery. She's quite pretty too and one of the smartest in class.
That's what she wanted to do.
 
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CLAX1911 said:
I have for whatever reason looked into some rather creepy religions that are absolutely cults. Curiosity made me look. First I looked into some rather local and unknown cults here in Houston. Particularly demonic ones or cults centered around the worship of Satan. Strangely they are quite different than the church of Satan. So I looked at the more mainstream cults such as scientology, then into the watchtower organization and even the Amish. I really am starting to think scientology is actually an atheist cult, but the other two seem to call themselves Christian.

Now down to business, the part that makes me say they are cults is the institution of rules created by an organization or some random bishop and the coercion to follow those rules. Now the watchtower organization has many rules that they instill in their children and to break these rules requires the offender to be shunned, not shunning somebody is one of those offenses. Which may sound rather harmless but it becomes quite sadistic when you look at the rules. You aren't really allowed to have friends outside the organization thus making you dependant on it. This is coercion and frankly brain washing. The Amish are a little better but not much, they don't allow their children to attend schools, or learn anything of the world, then they have rumspinger, or something like that where they ate allowed to and even encouraged to see the world, but they have very little hope in thriving in it due to the brain washing and failure of the Amish to provide education to them.

To each their own, hey if you want to be part of a cult, be my guest.

But this really got me thinking, are all Christian religions cults? (i omit other religions for lack of knowledge) Most religions engage in this tactic to some extent

Are they all really cults? Is your religion different? If so I have some questions.

Atheist please feel free to contribute, I always welcome your perspective.
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There is really no practical difference between religion and cults. It's all a matter of social perspective.

As far as I've been able to discern...

Religion: A popular or socially agreeable dogmatic belief system.

Cult: An unpopular, novel, or small dogmatic belief system.

Mythology: Usually a religion that has died and no longer has adherents. But in some cases, these are actually live religions, but the dominant religious structure condescends to them (see Native American and other global tribal beliefs).

Based on my observation, I believe the difference between a cult and a live mythology is that in the case of the former, the dominant religion sees them as threatening, and in the latter case they don't. They feel a need to smear cults (not that they don't usually deserve it), whereas they merely write off live mythologies as "crude" or "simple-minded."

In reality, there is no practical difference between any of them. There are religions that claim their leaders have divine authority just like many cults do (see Catholicism and Buddhism). Adherents to mythologies, living or dead, are no less strong in their belief. They are all unsubstantiated beliefs in magic for the dual purpose of providing leaders with authority and power, and allowing ordinary people to feel a false sense of security by believing themselves to be important to the universe and that there are no unanswered questions about reality.
 
CLAX1911 said:
I have for whatever reason looked into some rather creepy religions that are absolutely cults. Curiosity made me look. First I looked into some rather local and unknown cults here in Houston. Particularly demonic ones or cults centered around the worship of Satan. Strangely they are quite different than the church of Satan. So I looked at the more mainstream cults such as scientology, then into the watchtower organization and even the Amish. I really am starting to think scientology is actually an atheist cult, but the other two seem to call themselves Christian.

Now down to business, the part that makes me say they are cults is the institution of rules created by an organization or some random bishop and the coercion to follow those rules. Now the watchtower organization has many rules that they instill in their children and to break these rules requires the offender to be shunned, not shunning somebody is one of those offenses. Which may sound rather harmless but it becomes quite sadistic when you look at the rules. You aren't really allowed to have friends outside the organization thus making you dependant on it. This is coercion and frankly brain washing. The Amish are a little better but not much, they don't allow their children to attend schools, or learn anything of the world, then they have rumspinger, or something like that where they ate allowed to and even encouraged to see the world, but they have very little hope in thriving in it due to the brain washing and failure of the Amish to provide education to them.

To each their own, hey if you want to be part of a cult, be my guest.

But this really got me thinking, are all Christian religions cults? (i omit other religions for lack of knowledge) Most religions engage in this tactic to some extent

Are they all really cults? Is your religion different? If so I have some questions.

Atheist please feel free to contribute, I always welcome your perspective.
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The fundamentalist denominations of mainstream religions most certainly do behave like cults.

Thus the religion itself is less the issue than the particular fundamentalist practice of it.

Fundamentalism employs legalism, extreme black-and-white dualistic right-or-wrong good-or-evil thinking, literal interpretation, and control of members thinking and behavior, among other things.

There's a soft undercurrent of paranoia about fundamentalism that, with regard to its adherents, asks the question which came first, the chicken or the egg -- does the fundamentalism create paranoia or are people prone to paranoia attracted to it?
 
CLAX1911 said:
You aren't really allowed to have friends outside the organization thus making you dependant on it.
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For me that is the main factor that differentiates a religion from a cult. A cult will try to get you to cut all ties with everyone who is not part of the cult, including your own family.
 
BrewerBob said:
For me that is the main factor that differentiates a religion from a cult. A cult will try to get you to cut all ties with everyone who is not part of the cult, including your own family.
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Was it not Jesus who said that to follow him meant that you would have to lose all ties to your family?
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
There is really no practical difference between religion and cults. It's all a matter of social perspective.

As far as I've been able to discern...

Religion: A popular or socially agreeable dogmatic belief system.

Cult: An unpopular, novel, or small dogmatic belief system.

Mythology: Usually a religion that has died and no longer has adherents. But in some cases, these are actually live religions, but the dominant religious structure condescends to them (see Native American and other global tribal beliefs).

Based on my observation, I believe the difference between a cult and a live mythology is that in the case of the former, the dominant religion sees them as threatening, and in the latter case they don't. They feel a need to smear cults (not that they don't usually deserve it), whereas they merely write off live mythologies as "crude" or "simple-minded."

In reality, there is no practical difference between any of them. There are religions that claim their leaders have divine authority just like many cults do (see Catholicism and Buddhism). Adherents to mythologies, living or dead, are no less strong in their belief. They are all unsubstantiated beliefs in magic for the dual purpose of providing leaders with authority and power, and allowing ordinary people to feel a false sense of security by believing themselves to be important to the universe and that there are no unanswered questions about reality.
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Some cults are quite popular. Biasing trends of millions of people world wide.
 
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