So, I recently watched Going Clear, and with the recent mess around the Quiverfull Movements big poster family, the Duggars, I just can't believe how mainstream some cults or at least cult-like organizations are. Or at least how unremarked upon they are. And I'm wondering, does anyone know of other movements like this that aren't just cult-like, but bizarrely powerful in their own way?
Scientology is pretty well known at this point, but if you haven't seen Going Clear I highly recommend it. It's a course in how a charismatic mentally ill person (or alternatively, sociopathic) can manipulate people.
The Quiverfull movement is less on the nose horrific as Scientology, but they're still pretty bad. Here's a piece by Gawker on the subject (obviously a bit skewed, but the core is scary regardless).
I should note, that when I say 'cult-like', I mean organizations that encourage or actively require you to completely ignore any dissent and shun anyone who leaves the group, including family.
It's just insane to me that in this day and age, people can so thoroughly fall into these obvious patterns. It fascinates me and boggles my mind at the same time.
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Children of God are to me, perhaps the most disgusting cult to have ever existed, though they have been flying under the public radar recently due to a supposed change in their practices.(If you want to learn more about them be warned it's very unsettling stuff).
There are still a handful of people that survived the mass suicide of Heaven's Gate, and they still believe that Marshall Applewhite will bring them to the next level of evolution, although they aren't a large enough group or organized enough to still be called a "cult".
I just read an article about an Indian cult leader who made 400 males castrate themselves to receive the voice of god, of course with the mhuge bill for his hospital. The cult leader is also a music star, a cinema star and many other things in India. He's currently being pursued for fraud and other cases.
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I just read an article about an Indian cult leader who made 400 males castrate themselves to receive the voice of god, of course with the mhuge bill for his hospital. The cult leader is also a music star, a cinema star and many other things in India. He's currently being pursued for fraud and other cases.
The largest cults currently active are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Protestant Chritianity (lots of splinter groups here), Judaism, and Islam.
Each of these groups encourages you to believe in a bizarre, illogical mythology, to follow moral rules that are at oods with what is best for you and your society (to varying degrees), and to believe that anyone who doesn't share in your particular belief set will suffer for all Eternity.
Further, they encourage the mindset that you are, at your most basic nature, not good, and that fighting your natural instincts is not only a good idea, but actually the most important thing you can possibly do.
They demand sacrifices of personal and financial nature, and engage in all sorts of doublethink - such as condemning the "gay agenda" while preaching against judgement, claiming to be in favor of "family values" while actively protesting and working against public policies that have proven to be beneficial, and claiming to be "a religion of peace" while killing nonbelievers.
All religions are cults - it's just a matter of degrees.
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The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
This is not the place for splitting hairs on which major world religions are 'cults'
I suppose this was inevitable. Let's be clear that the major world religions do not qualify as cults for the purposes of this thread, even if they were a cult at one point. We're looking for what would be more classically considered a cult - a charismatic leader figure who demands an excessive amount of sacrifices from his 'believers', an extremely abusive system, the complete shunning of outside influences or at least of opposing facts (to the point where even access to these materials isn't allowed), secret ceremonies, etc. Most of the major world religions don't qualify. Mormonism doesn't even really qualify today. My catholic family can still talk to me even though I'm openly agnostic on religion, and the church is fine with that. I can attend my friend's Muslim wedding, it isn't a secret ceremony. I was able to be married by a Hindu Pandit even though I'm not Hindu myself. Let's not bog this down by hating on the major religions and keep it to the intended spirit of the discussion.
I have to say, some religions have cults in them. Best example: japanese budism has many cults revering a different buddha. But compared to scientology and raelians, they are nothing. And there's even one big cult here in the province of Quebec. The cult of the lamb. We are the lamb and we let the government eat us like the wolves they are. Pun asside, almost anything could be qualified as a cult due to the difference in opinions in a single group of persons.
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I have to say, some religions have cults in them. Best example: japanese budism has many cults revering a different buddha. But compared to scientology and raelians, they are nothing. And there's even one big cult here in the province of Quebec. The cult of the lamb. We are the lamb and we let the government eat us like the wolves they are. Pun asside, almost anything could be qualified as a cult due to the difference in opinions in a single group of persons.
Cult offshoots of the religions are fine. The Quiverfull movement is an example of a cult-like mentality. ISIS could be considered a death cult branching off of Islam. If you're going to be specific, fine, just don't vent about the major religion itself.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have a long scholastic tradition. If Baghdad's library wasn't burned down to the ground by the Mongols, we would probably have had a flowering civilization within the Middle East that would have rivaled the west. The same with had the Library of Alexandria not been burned over and over. In part why the west was able to rise out of being backward was through the monastic and scholarly traditions that were set down by the ancients and the Church Forefathers and Foremothers. Even today in Iran you can see women being educated for useful careers such as engineers and so on and they actually do work at good jobs there. Which is why I feel Iran when it gets it's head out of its posterior will evolve once again into a Great Power more easily than say Russia is terribly failing at today.
Quiverfull is the rise of Sola Scriptura, translated as scripture only, taking over fundamentalism and overtaking the Christian scholastic tradition evolving into anti-intellectual jargon. Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura as the foundation for their belief and practice, whereas Catholics have a longer tradition to be more "free range." Yet, even within the Protestant tradition Calvinism and Lutherianism derived off of the works of people like Thomas Aquinas for their intellectual foundation. If you read any Jesuit literature in particular, they tend to be more intellectually "free range" than what you would expect out of a religious institution. This is because with Thomas Aquinas found people like Avicenna and Al-Ghazali to be intellectually stimulating and maintained an indebtedness to their intellectual moorings with regard to religious thinking. The closing of the American mind and the Muslim both coincide with a lack of sharing of our intellectualism that seemed to be more open during other time periods, ironically such as the Middle Ages.
I for one am rather annoyed by the rise of ill-informed pseudo-intellectual groups that shun the Christian scholastic tradition in the name of Christianity. This is why Christianity lacks its vigor and capacity to maintain relevancy into the daily lives of people who question the faith and are unable to adapt it since it has moved away from encouraging an intellectual and artistic tradition and instead embracing dogmatic social trends.
If the church is to fight against sects that encourage anti-woman policies, then the church needs to embrace intellectualism and the arts as well as more of a communal role beyond just the services. Catholicism is in need of major reform and hope with Jorge Bergoglio we can see a saner form of push towards church traditions with his endearment towards Francis of Assisi. It seems to me that we, in the conservative community, need to return to what makes a country tick in order to battle against these ill informed cultist behaviors that encourage anti-woman policies. This War on Women and the creation of these strange ideas about anti-government leanings are becoming stranger. And I feel we need to start looking at the liberal side of the equation and what success that we can see through works such as Jane Addam's lifetime and other Progressive works like the Pittsburgh Survey and use that as a way to fight both radical Islam and deleterious forms of Christian fundamentalism. The point is not to turn conservatism into moderation, but rather to keep conservative policies realistic and relevant to the modern era. Even the Amish have to debate how to live in modernity, and they do very often.
I feel that what gives rise to cults is a culture that encourages closed mindedness, and the American mind doubts in the old and goes for simplicity in a pursuit of a dream that no longer is possible nor ever was.
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I've seen weird, but this is pretty out there as far as cults go. The article's information on the actual practices of the cult are pretty limited, but the actual leader of the cult sounds like she's mentally ill. I really do hope she gets some help, it's sad because the article states that she was abused at a reform school, which caused her mental deterioration.
Political extremists of either side here in the U.S. could almost be seen as cult-like. As someone who is more of a moderate/Libertarian, I see some mentalities on the hard left and hard right that are outright disturbing at times. Neither side is above bullying others to get their way. They can be just as aggressive as those Scientologist horror stories you hear.
I'm also of the mind that to seek a place of power in the upper echelons of government, you have to be someone quite megalomaniacal and narcissistic.
I don't wish to personally comment of the politics of other countries, as I am not well versed in them enough to speak.
Some time ago on Reddit, there was an interesting discussion about involvements in cults. I myself wrote about my personal interactions with one called Zendik that was somewhat migratory. They have since disbanded. These groups really know how to get their hooks into you. You can find some resources and stories from people who left Zendik. It's pretty creepy. I'd love to see how these people acted before getting involved, because even though they left the cult, you can tell in their writing that there was still something there that dug deep inside them. I'll say that many, many years ago, Lil' Firevine in his angry angsty punk rocker teen years was about ready to pack up and move out to an "art commune", until one day, the realization that it was a small cult slapped me right in the face.
Can we also talk about relatively recent small cults. They might not all be as morbid, but some of them are. Some of them are also rather tragicomic.
In Finland there was the religious cult of Tapani Koivniemi, which was strongly evangelical lutherian group. They began as bible study but eventually turned into a cult. They insisted on complete authority of authority figures inside the cult, practiced a lot of evangelism and focused on things like speaking in languages out of faith. They interpreted the bible rather literally, and they had body mass index limits beyond which you would get thrown out. Children were forced to homestudy, and they were told that Jesus likes thin kids - which might not be horrible but certainly is creepy in more than one way. Not exactly the worst kind since apparently all you needed to do in order to leave was to get fat - though not exactly harmless either.
For a more horrible example: In Russia there was this Islam-cult that had been rejected by Islamic clergy. Basically the guy who founded it claims to be a prophet of Allah, they have their own adapted Qurans and apparently they also tried to declare themselves an independent Islamic state in a single building. The part where this goes full haywire though is that they built eight stories deep underground complex under the so-called prophet's home - which was occupied by more than 60 people. Some of whom were children, had been born there, and had never seen daylight in their entire lives. All in the name of full-blown religious separatism.
We're looking for what would be more classically considered a cult - a charismatic leader figure who demands an excessive amount of sacrifices from his 'believers', an extremely abusive system, the complete shunning of outside influences or at least of opposing facts (to the point where even access to these materials isn't allowed), secret ceremonies, etc.
Under the criteria you outlined in your post Russia, or at least Russian nationalism, with a charismatic leader and strong secret services, propaganda, and censorship qualifies. Much of the power structure in China is still built around what is basically a personality cult of Mao Zedong. Certain other countries, notably Saudi Arabia, also fulfill at least some of the criteria on a religious level with the whipping of those that criticize Islam (Recently a blogger was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes - *link*.). I'm assuming these are not to be the topic of the thread either?
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The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
Some sort of Tier system to give a false sense of achievement to members.
(Priesthood / High Master / Warlock / Witch. Some title as to give prominence.)
Segregation from family members and the community at large.
Cult members are often coerced or even forced to cut familial ties. Cults also have some sort of ranch in the middle of nowhere where they operate from.
Sociopaths for leaders.
Cults often have charismatic master manipulators as figure heads.
Secrecy of Doctrine
Example Temple of Seth and Scientology
Condemnation of other held views.
Cults often maintain exclusivity in regards to truth and often condemn others as being evil / from the devil.
All knowing leadership.
Authoritarian.
New better way.
You get all varieties of cults
Christian cults (Mormons JW)
Jewish cults (Kaballa)
Hindu cults (Hari Krishna)
Atheist cults (Church of Satan)
You can read more about it here if you are interested.
The largest cults currently active are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Protestant Chritianity (lots of splinter groups here), Judaism, and Islam.
Each of these groups encourages you to believe in a bizarre, illogical mythology, to follow moral rules that are at oods with what is best for you and your society (to varying degrees), and to believe that anyone who doesn't share in your particular belief set will suffer for all Eternity.
Further, they encourage the mindset that you are, at your most basic nature, not good, and that fighting your natural instincts is not only a good idea, but actually the most important thing you can possibly do.
They demand sacrifices of personal and financial nature, and engage in all sorts of doublethink - such as condemning the "gay agenda" while preaching against judgement, claiming to be in favor of "family values" while actively protesting and working against public policies that have proven to be beneficial, and claiming to be "a religion of peace" while killing nonbelievers.
All religions are cults - it's just a matter of degrees.
This is plainly false to anyone who has the most basic understanding of the philosophy of religion or the sociology behind the workings of cults and mainstream religions.
Church of Satan is basically a religion designed to troll Christians and fight religious encroachment in secular space. They wouldn't really be atheists if they actually believed in or worshiped satan.
Some sort of Tier system to give a false sense of achievement to members.
(Priesthood / High Master / Warlock / Witch. Some title as to give prominence.)
Segregation from family members and the community at large.
Cult members are often coerced or even forced to cut familial ties. Cults also have some sort of ranch in the middle of nowhere where they operate from.
Sociopaths for leaders.
Cults often have charismatic master manipulators as figure heads.
Secrecy of Doctrine
Example Temple of Seth and Scientology
Condemnation of other held views.
Cults often maintain exclusivity in regards to truth and often condemn others as being evil / from the devil.
All knowing leadership.
Authoritarian.
New better way.
You get all varieties of cults
Christian cults (Mormons JW)
Jewish cults (Kaballa)
Hindu cults (Hari Krishna)
Atheist cults (Church of Satan)
You can read more about it here if you are interested.
The largest cults currently active are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Protestant Chritianity (lots of splinter groups here), Judaism, and Islam.
Each of these groups encourages you to believe in a bizarre, illogical mythology, to follow moral rules that are at oods with what is best for you and your society (to varying degrees), and to believe that anyone who doesn't share in your particular belief set will suffer for all Eternity.
Further, they encourage the mindset that you are, at your most basic nature, not good, and that fighting your natural instincts is not only a good idea, but actually the most important thing you can possibly do.
They demand sacrifices of personal and financial nature, and engage in all sorts of doublethink - such as condemning the "gay agenda" while preaching against judgement, claiming to be in favor of "family values" while actively protesting and working against public policies that have proven to be beneficial, and claiming to be "a religion of peace" while killing nonbelievers.
All religions are cults - it's just a matter of degrees.
This is plainly false to anyone who has the most basic understanding of the philosophy of religion or the sociology behind the workings of cults and mainstream religions.
The lines between mainstream religion and "cult" are very blurred. Even defining religion can prove to be very difficult. What you've provided would be a cluster definition of what a cult is, which is useful in some aspects, but creates fuzzy boundaries of what a cult actually is. For example, I can name a dozen or so "cults" that have some traits you list, but not others. I have what I would consider more than a basic understanding of theology, and I recognize that many "mainstream religions" and "cults" share some resemblances. Does Catholicism not have a tier system? Condemnation of other views? All knowing leadership? New Better way?
The thing is, the world "cult" already has negative connotations. What comes to mind when we call a group a cult? It's less respected than religion, considered non-normative, and sometimes deranged. The word religion however doesn't strike the same chord. Truly what is the difference, other than size and the fact that they are long-established (hundreds of years +).
The largest cults currently active are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Protestant Chritianity (lots of splinter groups here), Judaism, and Islam.
Dude, Judaism is tiny. The five largest religions are Chistianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. If you're going to be a wiseacre, at least get your facts right.
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Church of Satan is basically a religion designed to troll Christians and fight religious encroachment in secular space.
This is debatable. I am fairly certain that LaVeyan satanism forms a rather defensible position on its own. Majority of the contradictions in Might is Right arise from the present sexism and racism, which are not present in the Book of Satan which is clearly a derivative work. Indeed much of the Book of Satan roughly correlates to egoism. Some part of the Book of Lucifer are arguably contradictory in regards to Book of Satan, notably the part where it states that "believers should be free to explore their own sexualities as they please, without harming others", where the last part is unnecessary in light of Book of Satan. There is also a debatable contradiction in the rituals outlined in Book of Belial or and Leviathan as opposed to the claim that men should try to free themselves from religious lies, though this is circumvented by claiming that they deal with science yet to be discovered. So for the majority of it, it is rather consistent - and therefore assuming it to be an exercise in trolling is really assuming malice where there necessarily isn't any. Simply disagreeing with Christianity is not necessarily intentionally trying to provoke Christians.
For some actual trolling: I would also like to note that while Satanism holds that babies and animals are purely carnal creatures and thus sacred and unfit for ritual sacrifice, it does not to my understanding prohibit the consumption of meat. Thus the implication is that it's completely okay to eat babies.
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The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
@ bakgat
I have far more than a "basic understanding" thank you very much. The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't make them less knowledgeable than you. All of the religions I mentioned have at least semi-hierarchical structures (tier systems), condemnation of other views, and, I would argue, sociopaths for leaders. They encourage unhealthy and demonstrably incorrect worldviews and beliefs, and claim higher authority.
@Blinking Spirit
I am not particularly well-versed on Eastern religions, nor was I being a "wiseacre" - having been through several varieties of Christianity and having numerous contacts of both Islamic and Jewish backgrounds, I hold firm that thse religious groups meet the definition of a cult and are fundamentally unhealthy. While belief in any God or Gods that have supposedly been active in human events is clearly nonsense, I am not sufficiently familiar with the preactice of Hinduism or Sikhism to comment on weather or not they fit the mold. As to Buddism, my (limited) understanding of it makes it sound more like a philosophical system of tought than a religion, espeically since follows are enouraged to question (in at least some branches), and there are at least some non-theist branches that don't believe in a "God" per se, therefore I tend to think it is missclassified as a religion and it woudl not fit my definition of a cult, again based on my limited understanding.
It's Abrahamic religions that I clearly call out as being cultish.
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"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men."
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
@ bakgat
I have far more than a "basic understanding" thank you very much. The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't make them less knowledgeable than you. All of the religions I mentioned have at least semi-hierarchical structures (tier systems), condemnation of other views, and, I would argue, sociopaths for leaders. They encourage unhealthy and demonstrably incorrect worldviews and beliefs, and claim higher authority.
Bakgat's dismissal of you was rude, arrogant, and empty of substantial content. And anyone familiar with his career in these forums can tell you that he is pretty reliably wrong about religious and social topics. ...Buuut he was kind of on to something with his offhanded mention of the sociology of cults.
There is a phenomenon wherein certain religious groups ask their members to make enormous lifestyle changes that deviate from the norms of their society, and others don't. Some religions ask you to live together with your coreligionists in a big compound, spend most or all of your time in devotion, practice group sex or sexual abstinence, do a lot of drugs, and so on and so forth. Other religions let you live in your own home, hold a regular job, start a family, and overall pursue your own life in basically the same way your neighbors do even if they're of different faiths. There is a difference between the Movementarians and Ned Flanders. Basically, it's a matter of separatism from vs. integration with society. Now, whether this or something else is the dividing line between "cult" and "non-cult" is of course a mere matter of definition - if you want to say instead "a cult is any religion with a hierarchy", I can't stop you. But it is a useful dividing line, it's the one I use, and it does seem to map pretty well to most other people's usage of the term.
A few observations: The major religions whose origins are recorded pretty clearly started as cults. Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha all had their insular cadres of disciples rejecting the ways of the world. The growth of these religions from cult to mainstream can be interpreted as a compromise of their high-minded spiritual ideals with the reality that most people most of the time need to work for a living. And, of course, people throughout the history of these religions have noticed this compromise, and sought to return to the "purest" (i.e. cult) form of the religion - becoming ascetics and monks. Now, ascetics are one-off figures, but monks form monastic societies, and so we see this compromise happen again in miniscule as the order and the society around it evolve over the generations. Being a monk, once a strange and deviant lifestyle, changes into a sort of alternative normal - monks maintain some of their cultlike trappings (such as celibacy), but they become an everyday part of the social landscape, and they engage in all kinds of pursuits outside the strict interpretation of their religion.
Basically, a cult is necessarily short-lived, because if it survives for long enough, it ceases to be a cult. And this is not just true in the trivial sense that young religious movements get tarred with the label "cult" while older ones get grandfathered out of it - rather, it is a real and interesting fact about the way societies evolve. Normalcy cannot long be denied.
As to Buddism, my (limited) understanding of it makes it sound more like a philosophical system of tought than a religion, espeically since follows are enouraged to question (in at least some branches), and there are at least some non-theist branches that don't believe in a "God" per se, therefore I tend to think it is missclassified as a religion and it woudl not fit my definition of a cult, again based on my limited understanding.
As to Buddism, my (limited) understanding of it makes it sound more like a philosophical system of tought than a religion, espeically since follows are enouraged to question (in at least some branches), and there are at least some non-theist branches that don't believe in a "God" per se, therefore I tend to think it is missclassified as a religion and it woudl not fit my definition of a cult, again based on my limited understanding.
It's Abrahamic religions that I clearly call out as being cultish.
You're confusing Confucianism/various Chinese school of philosophy and thoughts with Buddhism, I think.
Buddhism most definitely has its figures of worship and all those trappings of religion.
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Scientology
Going Clear Documentary
The Quiverfull Movement
A relatively tame article about the movement.
Duggar Scandal
Scientology is pretty well known at this point, but if you haven't seen Going Clear I highly recommend it. It's a course in how a charismatic mentally ill person (or alternatively, sociopathic) can manipulate people.
The Quiverfull movement is less on the nose horrific as Scientology, but they're still pretty bad. Here's a piece by Gawker on the subject (obviously a bit skewed, but the core is scary regardless).
I should note, that when I say 'cult-like', I mean organizations that encourage or actively require you to completely ignore any dissent and shun anyone who leaves the group, including family.
It's just insane to me that in this day and age, people can so thoroughly fall into these obvious patterns. It fascinates me and boggles my mind at the same time.
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The Unification Church ("The Moonies")
The entire country of North Korea
Oh my god, don't even get me started on the Mormons. I have two friends that are former Mormons (Formons?) and they have horror stories.
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But yeah. It's pretty much human nature to try to be part of a group, no matter what.
Children of God are to me, perhaps the most disgusting cult to have ever existed, though they have been flying under the public radar recently due to a supposed change in their practices.(If you want to learn more about them be warned it's very unsettling stuff).
There are still a handful of people that survived the mass suicide of Heaven's Gate, and they still believe that Marshall Applewhite will bring them to the next level of evolution, although they aren't a large enough group or organized enough to still be called a "cult".
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Each of these groups encourages you to believe in a bizarre, illogical mythology, to follow moral rules that are at oods with what is best for you and your society (to varying degrees), and to believe that anyone who doesn't share in your particular belief set will suffer for all Eternity.
Further, they encourage the mindset that you are, at your most basic nature, not good, and that fighting your natural instincts is not only a good idea, but actually the most important thing you can possibly do.
They demand sacrifices of personal and financial nature, and engage in all sorts of doublethink - such as condemning the "gay agenda" while preaching against judgement, claiming to be in favor of "family values" while actively protesting and working against public policies that have proven to be beneficial, and claiming to be "a religion of peace" while killing nonbelievers.
All religions are cults - it's just a matter of degrees.
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
I suppose this was inevitable. Let's be clear that the major world religions do not qualify as cults for the purposes of this thread, even if they were a cult at one point. We're looking for what would be more classically considered a cult - a charismatic leader figure who demands an excessive amount of sacrifices from his 'believers', an extremely abusive system, the complete shunning of outside influences or at least of opposing facts (to the point where even access to these materials isn't allowed), secret ceremonies, etc. Most of the major world religions don't qualify. Mormonism doesn't even really qualify today. My catholic family can still talk to me even though I'm openly agnostic on religion, and the church is fine with that. I can attend my friend's Muslim wedding, it isn't a secret ceremony. I was able to be married by a Hindu Pandit even though I'm not Hindu myself. Let's not bog this down by hating on the major religions and keep it to the intended spirit of the discussion.
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[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
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[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
Quiverfull is the rise of Sola Scriptura, translated as scripture only, taking over fundamentalism and overtaking the Christian scholastic tradition evolving into anti-intellectual jargon. Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura as the foundation for their belief and practice, whereas Catholics have a longer tradition to be more "free range." Yet, even within the Protestant tradition Calvinism and Lutherianism derived off of the works of people like Thomas Aquinas for their intellectual foundation. If you read any Jesuit literature in particular, they tend to be more intellectually "free range" than what you would expect out of a religious institution. This is because with Thomas Aquinas found people like Avicenna and Al-Ghazali to be intellectually stimulating and maintained an indebtedness to their intellectual moorings with regard to religious thinking. The closing of the American mind and the Muslim both coincide with a lack of sharing of our intellectualism that seemed to be more open during other time periods, ironically such as the Middle Ages.
I for one am rather annoyed by the rise of ill-informed pseudo-intellectual groups that shun the Christian scholastic tradition in the name of Christianity. This is why Christianity lacks its vigor and capacity to maintain relevancy into the daily lives of people who question the faith and are unable to adapt it since it has moved away from encouraging an intellectual and artistic tradition and instead embracing dogmatic social trends.
If the church is to fight against sects that encourage anti-woman policies, then the church needs to embrace intellectualism and the arts as well as more of a communal role beyond just the services. Catholicism is in need of major reform and hope with Jorge Bergoglio we can see a saner form of push towards church traditions with his endearment towards Francis of Assisi. It seems to me that we, in the conservative community, need to return to what makes a country tick in order to battle against these ill informed cultist behaviors that encourage anti-woman policies. This War on Women and the creation of these strange ideas about anti-government leanings are becoming stranger. And I feel we need to start looking at the liberal side of the equation and what success that we can see through works such as Jane Addam's lifetime and other Progressive works like the Pittsburgh Survey and use that as a way to fight both radical Islam and deleterious forms of Christian fundamentalism. The point is not to turn conservatism into moderation, but rather to keep conservative policies realistic and relevant to the modern era. Even the Amish have to debate how to live in modernity, and they do very often.
I feel that what gives rise to cults is a culture that encourages closed mindedness, and the American mind doubts in the old and goes for simplicity in a pursuit of a dream that no longer is possible nor ever was.
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Apparently, they found a Final Fantasy VII Cult.
I've seen weird, but this is pretty out there as far as cults go. The article's information on the actual practices of the cult are pretty limited, but the actual leader of the cult sounds like she's mentally ill. I really do hope she gets some help, it's sad because the article states that she was abused at a reform school, which caused her mental deterioration.
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I'm also of the mind that to seek a place of power in the upper echelons of government, you have to be someone quite megalomaniacal and narcissistic.
I don't wish to personally comment of the politics of other countries, as I am not well versed in them enough to speak.
Some time ago on Reddit, there was an interesting discussion about involvements in cults. I myself wrote about my personal interactions with one called Zendik that was somewhat migratory. They have since disbanded. These groups really know how to get their hooks into you. You can find some resources and stories from people who left Zendik. It's pretty creepy. I'd love to see how these people acted before getting involved, because even though they left the cult, you can tell in their writing that there was still something there that dug deep inside them. I'll say that many, many years ago, Lil' Firevine in his angry angsty punk rocker teen years was about ready to pack up and move out to an "art commune", until one day, the realization that it was a small cult slapped me right in the face.
In Finland there was the religious cult of Tapani Koivniemi, which was strongly evangelical lutherian group. They began as bible study but eventually turned into a cult. They insisted on complete authority of authority figures inside the cult, practiced a lot of evangelism and focused on things like speaking in languages out of faith. They interpreted the bible rather literally, and they had body mass index limits beyond which you would get thrown out. Children were forced to homestudy, and they were told that Jesus likes thin kids - which might not be horrible but certainly is creepy in more than one way. Not exactly the worst kind since apparently all you needed to do in order to leave was to get fat - though not exactly harmless either.
For a more horrible example: In Russia there was this Islam-cult that had been rejected by Islamic clergy. Basically the guy who founded it claims to be a prophet of Allah, they have their own adapted Qurans and apparently they also tried to declare themselves an independent Islamic state in a single building. The part where this goes full haywire though is that they built eight stories deep underground complex under the so-called prophet's home - which was occupied by more than 60 people. Some of whom were children, had been born there, and had never seen daylight in their entire lives. All in the name of full-blown religious separatism.
Under the criteria you outlined in your post Russia, or at least Russian nationalism, with a charismatic leader and strong secret services, propaganda, and censorship qualifies. Much of the power structure in China is still built around what is basically a personality cult of Mao Zedong. Certain other countries, notably Saudi Arabia, also fulfill at least some of the criteria on a religious level with the whipping of those that criticize Islam (Recently a blogger was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes - *link*.). I'm assuming these are not to be the topic of the thread either?
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
You get all varieties of cults
Christian cults (Mormons JW)
Jewish cults (Kaballa)
Hindu cults (Hari Krishna)
Atheist cults (Church of Satan)
You can read more about it here if you are interested.
https://carm.org/cults-outline-analysis
This is plainly false to anyone who has the most basic understanding of the philosophy of religion or the sociology behind the workings of cults and mainstream religions.
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The lines between mainstream religion and "cult" are very blurred. Even defining religion can prove to be very difficult. What you've provided would be a cluster definition of what a cult is, which is useful in some aspects, but creates fuzzy boundaries of what a cult actually is. For example, I can name a dozen or so "cults" that have some traits you list, but not others. I have what I would consider more than a basic understanding of theology, and I recognize that many "mainstream religions" and "cults" share some resemblances. Does Catholicism not have a tier system? Condemnation of other views? All knowing leadership? New Better way?
The thing is, the world "cult" already has negative connotations. What comes to mind when we call a group a cult? It's less respected than religion, considered non-normative, and sometimes deranged. The word religion however doesn't strike the same chord. Truly what is the difference, other than size and the fact that they are long-established (hundreds of years +).
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
This is debatable. I am fairly certain that LaVeyan satanism forms a rather defensible position on its own. Majority of the contradictions in Might is Right arise from the present sexism and racism, which are not present in the Book of Satan which is clearly a derivative work. Indeed much of the Book of Satan roughly correlates to egoism. Some part of the Book of Lucifer are arguably contradictory in regards to Book of Satan, notably the part where it states that "believers should be free to explore their own sexualities as they please, without harming others", where the last part is unnecessary in light of Book of Satan. There is also a debatable contradiction in the rituals outlined in Book of Belial or and Leviathan as opposed to the claim that men should try to free themselves from religious lies, though this is circumvented by claiming that they deal with science yet to be discovered. So for the majority of it, it is rather consistent - and therefore assuming it to be an exercise in trolling is really assuming malice where there necessarily isn't any. Simply disagreeing with Christianity is not necessarily intentionally trying to provoke Christians.
For some actual trolling: I would also like to note that while Satanism holds that babies and animals are purely carnal creatures and thus sacred and unfit for ritual sacrifice, it does not to my understanding prohibit the consumption of meat. Thus the implication is that it's completely okay to eat babies.
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
I have far more than a "basic understanding" thank you very much. The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't make them less knowledgeable than you. All of the religions I mentioned have at least semi-hierarchical structures (tier systems), condemnation of other views, and, I would argue, sociopaths for leaders. They encourage unhealthy and demonstrably incorrect worldviews and beliefs, and claim higher authority.
@Blinking Spirit
I am not particularly well-versed on Eastern religions, nor was I being a "wiseacre" - having been through several varieties of Christianity and having numerous contacts of both Islamic and Jewish backgrounds, I hold firm that thse religious groups meet the definition of a cult and are fundamentally unhealthy. While belief in any God or Gods that have supposedly been active in human events is clearly nonsense, I am not sufficiently familiar with the preactice of Hinduism or Sikhism to comment on weather or not they fit the mold. As to Buddism, my (limited) understanding of it makes it sound more like a philosophical system of tought than a religion, espeically since follows are enouraged to question (in at least some branches), and there are at least some non-theist branches that don't believe in a "God" per se, therefore I tend to think it is missclassified as a religion and it woudl not fit my definition of a cult, again based on my limited understanding.
It's Abrahamic religions that I clearly call out as being cultish.
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The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
There is a phenomenon wherein certain religious groups ask their members to make enormous lifestyle changes that deviate from the norms of their society, and others don't. Some religions ask you to live together with your coreligionists in a big compound, spend most or all of your time in devotion, practice group sex or sexual abstinence, do a lot of drugs, and so on and so forth. Other religions let you live in your own home, hold a regular job, start a family, and overall pursue your own life in basically the same way your neighbors do even if they're of different faiths. There is a difference between the Movementarians and Ned Flanders. Basically, it's a matter of separatism from vs. integration with society. Now, whether this or something else is the dividing line between "cult" and "non-cult" is of course a mere matter of definition - if you want to say instead "a cult is any religion with a hierarchy", I can't stop you. But it is a useful dividing line, it's the one I use, and it does seem to map pretty well to most other people's usage of the term.
A few observations: The major religions whose origins are recorded pretty clearly started as cults. Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha all had their insular cadres of disciples rejecting the ways of the world. The growth of these religions from cult to mainstream can be interpreted as a compromise of their high-minded spiritual ideals with the reality that most people most of the time need to work for a living. And, of course, people throughout the history of these religions have noticed this compromise, and sought to return to the "purest" (i.e. cult) form of the religion - becoming ascetics and monks. Now, ascetics are one-off figures, but monks form monastic societies, and so we see this compromise happen again in miniscule as the order and the society around it evolve over the generations. Being a monk, once a strange and deviant lifestyle, changes into a sort of alternative normal - monks maintain some of their cultlike trappings (such as celibacy), but they become an everyday part of the social landscape, and they engage in all kinds of pursuits outside the strict interpretation of their religion.
Basically, a cult is necessarily short-lived, because if it survives for long enough, it ceases to be a cult. And this is not just true in the trivial sense that young religious movements get tarred with the label "cult" while older ones get grandfathered out of it - rather, it is a real and interesting fact about the way societies evolve. Normalcy cannot long be denied.
Scientologists don't believe in a "God" per se.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
You're confusing Confucianism/various Chinese school of philosophy and thoughts with Buddhism, I think.
Buddhism most definitely has its figures of worship and all those trappings of religion.