Cults and sects.

[Bazza]

What are peoples views on these, do they do more harm than good or is there room for cults and sects alongside the major world religions?

[Slyguy]

I don't see cults being more screwed up than religions since religions experience a lot of cult-like behavior as well.

[Steggy]

Originally posted by Slyguy
I don't see cults being more screwed up than religions since religions experience a lot of cult-like behavior as well.

yeah since all of the southern baptist next week are gonna go poisen themselves with kool-aid to go hop on an asteriod. :o

[bekahbeans]

Slyguy has a point though. I'm not saying that the local Baptist church is necessarily as bad as a cult, but they can get to be cult like if the focus is taken off of God and put more on a person, such as a pastor, or if the congregation tries to control its members more than it tries to just guide them and let them make their own decisions.

[DoubleEdgeSword]

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

I don't know who wrote that, but on some levels, I agree. Murdering nonbelievers with the sanction of any religion is still murder. Poison koolaid is just another choice. I'm assuming the people who have participated in both, did so because they "believed."

On a side note, George Bush is sounding as shrill and as religion-adled as Osama Bin Laden these days.

[bekahbeans]

sounds like Marx.

[DoubleEdgeSword]

You're absolutely right, bekah. Karl Marx it was. Thanks. :)

[bekahbeans]

No problem. ;) Guess that Sociology class really did teach me something. :D

[butterfly]

My friend Alison (who I believe I've mentioned elsewhere) told me once that zie thinks that Catholicism is like a cult, because the emphasis seems to be more on the Pope than on God.

I'd like to emphasise that it wasn't me who said that!

[pinky]

Personally, I see a difference between those groups that are usually called "cults" and those that are called "sects."

Sects, in my opinion, are subgroups of a mainstream religion that agree with most of that religion's teaching, but have a different viewpoint about one or more issues, and find that they can not reconcile the two viewpoints. Depending on how serious the issues at dispute are, and how large a following a sect can garner, it can be a relatively minor split, or it can be cataclysmic for the religion. But it doesn't have to be a negative thing.


Cults, on the other hand, are groups that use mind control to a pernicious degree, and are often, if not usually, the result of a charismatic figure with an ulterior motive (monetary gain, power) gaining influence over individuals that he/she can identify as weak.

Essentially, sects are the end product of legitimate concerns, while cults tend to be dangerous and malevolent.

[Allie Lowell]

The Salvation Army is a CULT. My mother and father are on pension's and they give and have given far too much money over the years to that...*spits*...CULT, where it lines the pocket's of the fat cat's who run the business. I can still smell the stench of my mother's army uniform as I slept through the sermon's when I was a nipper...*gags*

:throwup: