NationStates Jolt Archive

i have a problem with the word cult... looking at it from as an objective point as posible. are not all religions esentialy a cult?

the definition of cult according to Dictionary.com is: A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.

"A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false" everyone who devoutly follows a particular religion would naturaly see any other religion as extreamist or at least false.

"with its followers often living in an unconventional manner" nowdays... what exactly is conventional anyways?

"under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader" so... what? a religion stops being a cult when it grows large enough to have several if not many "authoritarian charismatic leaders"? tecnicaly, dosent the pope fit that description?

thuse, every religion is essencialy a cult, is it not? maybe i have less of a problem with the word as with individuals refusal to look at themselves and see the hypocracy within their own words. that so many people can, even unconsusly, say me and the people like me are right and everyone else is wrong. i find it very frusterating :headbang: .
what are your thoughts?

A cult is a religious/spiritual organization characterized by a charismatic leader, a la Reverend Sun Yung Moon and the Church of Unification.

A religious sect is either a schism (breakaway group), or it can also apply to cults who no longer possess a charismatic leader (i.e. they've since died), a la Bhaktidevanti Swami and Krisna Consciousness.

Does that help?

A few general rules of thumb to follow to determine if something is a cult:
If it ends in suicide
If it involves aliens
If they use brainwashing techniques i.e. sleep deprivation
If you see its members dancing in an airport
If the leader is the messiah
If they cut members off from friends/family/world
and finally,
If they mention the Necronomicon

A few general rules of thumb to follow to determine if something is a cult:
If it ends in suicide
If it involves aliens
If they use brainwashing techniques i.e. sleep deprivation
If you see its members dancing in an airport
If the leader is the messiah
If they cut members off from friends/family/world
and finally,
If they mention the Necronomicon

If you substitute Mein Kampf for the Necronomicon and Jews for aliens, you've got a good summary of Islam. Especially the suicide, brainwashing and cutting members off.

It's a global nazi death cult.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003897.php

Nearly half of my town is owned by the Unificationist. It's creepy.

"A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false" everyone who devoutly follows a particular religion would naturaly see any other religion as extreamist or at least false.

While that may be true, the word cult describes differences *within* a religion, not outside of it. So Wahhabism (sp) would be considered a sect (but probably not a cult, since they have many spiritual leaders).

"with its followers often living in an unconventional manner" nowdays... what exactly is conventional anyways?

It's determined by the culture. For example I just read a link posted here about how foreign insurgents were trying to coerce Iraqi women into wearing black clothing that would cover them from head to toe. That's not something Iraqi women wear.

"under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader" so... what? a religion stops being a cult when it grows large enough to have several if not many "authoritarian charismatic leaders"?

Basically yes. I suppose you could say that at one point Christianity as a whole was just some weird Jewish cult, but you couldn't say that now. Once upon a time everyone who was Christian was Catholic, but you can't say that now.

tecnicaly, dosent the pope fit that description?

If the pope was the sole member of the leadership, sure. He is in fact the head of the heirarchy, and from the definition you provided, I'd say that a cult doesn't have a defined heirarchy and just has the one spiritual leader.

Nearly half of my town is owned by the Unificationist. It's creepy.

Want creepy? Back in the 80s the Moonies (Church of Unification) kept getting in trouble because their fund-raising members would lie to people and say they were Unitarian Universalists instead.

How do I know this? I am a Unitarian, and I was personally approached by one of these people at an airport. Their literature was clear about who and what they were, but the Moonies weren't. Given that Unitarianism isn't an evangelical religion, and does not fund-raise at airports, I called their bluff, and they hot-tailed it out of the departure lounge. Back at home, I found out that this had become a problem perhaps a year prior to my encounter.

I certainly hope there weren't too many unsuspecting people who've been left with a negative impression of the religion of my youth. They are damn good people, those Unitarians.

Cults are not confined to spiritual organisations. There is significant brainwashing involved in many "financial" organisations, those high-pressure pyramid-type scheme businesses that seem to be everywhere lately. People sink significant time and money into these schemes, and go to seminars on how to "believe" in the product. I'm not talking normal salesperson stuff...I'm talking about the extreme meetings where they try to recruit you. I've seen some studies on how these types of financial cults are spreading, and they seem to fill a void in people who are not necessarily drawn to spiritual things. However, these people are often overlooked when we talk about cults.

As for all religions being cults...well, I'm a radical atheist, but I am not against other people having religious beliefs. I think it's a crock, but I'm not the one who chooses what people will believe. There are those who are mildly religious, and those who are fanatics, as in all things. As long as religion isn't brainwashing you (severely), cutting you off from friends and family and sucking you dry financially, I say, go ahead.

If you substitute Mein Kampf for the Necronomicon and Jews for aliens, you've got a good summary of Islam. Especially the suicide, brainwashing and cutting members off.

It's a global nazi death cult.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003897.php
Uh huh...

Last time I checked Muslims don't dance in airports.

Also, WTF are you talking about with Mein Kampf? Muslims and Nazis are two very different animals. They read the Koran, which you can't subsitute the Necrinomicon for, unless you want Cthulu to eat your ass. And I don't think you want that.

They don't brainwash their memebers moreso than any other mainstream religion. Who is claiming to be their Messiah?

One more thing, you can't substitute aliens for Jews. Thats why I wrote aliens, and not Jews (or Jew aliens)

"No. We're all our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can't judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it. Prison's in your mind ... Can't you see I'm free?"


CHARLES MANSON
CDC NUMBER B - 33920
CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON
CORCORAN, CALIFORNIA

i wasnt confused abut the word cult. i know what the word is supposed to mean and what the word means to most people and how those conflict. i guess what i was really trying to convey was how very steriotipicaly the word cult is used. in the definition their is nothing about brain washing. it erks me that most people make no atempt to keep from sounding hypocritical. it frustrates me how cult is given such a negative spin and is used to smeer other people's beliefs. i fail to understand how some people can chose to be so blind to all other ideas. and im not the type of person who fails to understand much. next time i post i will make sure to make clear what im realy trying to say. thank you all for the input.

i have a problem with the word cult... looking at it from as an objective point as posible. are not all religions esentialy a cult?No. I wrote a paper on cults back in grade 9, and I still remember some of it. And while the word "cult" is sometimes used rather loosely (as a pejorative), cults are fairly distinct from mainstream religions, and even some not-so-mainstream religions sometimes called cults.

"with its followers often living in an unconventional manner" nowdays... what exactly is conventional anyways?Point. But cults tend to be high-demand, requiring more of the member's time than typical religions.

"under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader" so... what? a religion stops being a cult when it grows large enough to have several if not many "authoritarian charismatic leaders"?It's not exactly a matter of size, it's more the dynamics between the group and the leader. And yes, some cults do evolve to become less culty, and more religiony. Whether it stops being a cult depends on what you mean by cult.

tecnicaly, dosent the pope fit that description?Nope. He's not nearly charasmatic enough, or for that matter authoritarian enough. Jesus fits that description better.

But cults tend to have a couple of other characteristics. One is isolation, members in a cult tend to be isolated from the wider society, sometimes by physical isolation, sometimes by virtue of unconventional manners and beliefs, often because of the specifics of what they believe, and sometimes they're expected by the cult to isolate themselves from the world. The dynamic of a cult is that members are steered to get their social interactions within the cult, this is one of the things that makes leaving a cult so difficult. Another is that the outside world tends to be a bad place in the beliefs of a cult.

Another characteristic is brainwashing. This has been a bit sensationalized. But people are more suggestable than they realize, and the combination of a poor diet (another characteristic of cults), sleep deprivation (thanks for the reminder Hammolopolis) and very strong social pressure to experience whatever a member is supposed to experience is pretty strong. And people in cults do sometimes hold some pretty strange beliefs.

thuse, every religion is essencialy a cult, is it not?No. Religions do tend to have some of the characteristics of cults, but not all, and not to the same degree. There is no clear dividing line between the two, but a typical religion is a very different phenomenon than a typical cult.

It's been quite awhile since I studied about cults, but as I recall, most relgions were considered "cults" by the mainstream religion of their time. One of the primary differences between "cults" and "acceptable" religions is that the latter have been widely accepted by much of the society in which they have developed.

Another primary characteristic of "cults" is that most of their adherents are fanatically devoted to the tenets of the "faith" and/or their leaders. I find it interesting that Christianity was founded around the ressurection of Jesus, and there seem to have been very few adherents of the early church who were fanatically devoted to the leadership, even that of the apostles.

I always kinda thought as cults and religions much like the difference between you and 2 friends jamming in your garage vs getting signed by a major label and selling albums....

join the temple of EK.

bump

If you substitute Mein Kampf for the Necronomicon and Jews for aliens, you've got a good summary of Islam. Especially the suicide, brainwashing and cutting members off.

It's a global nazi death cult.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003897.php

Do you actually know anything about Islam that you haven't heard on fox news or jihadwatch.com?