[valinors_sorrow]

Golly, I had forgotten how good this thread was and all the great comments and links everyone added -- worth a read back through, I thought!

[Morganite]

Yes, some postmoderns say that everything is connotation. That is, apparent denotation always has a connoted meaning too.

Anyhow, here's my view of religions and cults. It's long so I'll post the url:

http://web.ncf.ca/dy656/earthpages3/...igion_cult.htm

(the intro needs a rewrite but the chart is good...)

I have visited your link and find it distressingly similar to the "we are right and you are wrong" brigade. In fact, they say nothing different. Having stripped the word 'cult' of its true meaning, they redefine it to support their conlcusion that cults are somehow inferior, less - if at all - divinely favoured, and are simply emanations from the dark regions of Pluto. It is a sickening display of semantic fiddling that does violence to any definition of religion, especially to Christianity that it claims to represent.

Here is my main objection to this semantic manipulation in the pursuit of an enemy: The categories it posts under 'Cult' heading, have not been and in some cases are still not, alien to mainstream and side of the road Christianity, especially those of a right wing neo-conservative nature. It is the pot calling the kettle black and relies on the ignorance of the reader to swallow their historical inanities.

If that is the foundation of their premise and conclusion, then they are in trouble, more trouble than they can cope with, and more trouble than they can answere when the tables are turned to show how they themselves follow they very lines of separation and control that they charge against their definition of a cult. A person could get themselves into real difficulties with issues like truth, honesty, and misrepresenatation by believing what this website says.

The chart is as bad and as misleading as the verbiage accompanying it. It smacks of bigotry.

M:)

[earthpages]

The article, the chart and the website are about dialogue, understanding and positive transformation. I don't know which version you read as I updated the intro Saturday morning. But it was mostly a stylistic revision. What is said here was also said before the revision. Please read it:

---

These are just working definitions; they're not etched in stone. Instead of trying to provide exhaustive definitions for religions and cults, a precarious task at best, the following chart elaborates on an idea from Gregg Stebben's Everything You Need to Know About Religion (1999).

The chart attempts to summarize some of the main beliefs and practices found within religions and cults. Again, this outline doesn't represent the final word on religions and cults. The attributes listed in each column don't universally apply and many of the distinctions are debatable. In keeping with Max Weber's approach, however, these categories are ideal types. Ideal types are generalized constructs designed to stimulate thought. They don't provide precise definitions nor exhaustive descriptions.

---

http://web.ncf.ca/dy656/earthpages3/...igion_cult.htm

[Morganite]

The article, the chart and the website are about dialogue, understanding and positive transformation. I don't know which version you read as I updated the intro Saturday morning. But it was mostly a stylistic revision. What is said here was also said before the revision. Please read it:

---

These are just working definitions; they're not etched in stone. Instead of trying to provide exhaustive definitions for religions and cults, a precarious task at best, the following chart elaborates on an idea from Gregg Stebben's Everything You Need to Know About Religion (1999).

The chart attempts to summarize some of the main beliefs and practices found within religions and cults. Again, this outline doesn't represent the final word on religions and cults. The attributes listed in each column don't universally apply and many of the distinctions are debatable. In keeping with Max Weber's approach, however, these categories are ideal types. Ideal types are generalized constructs designed to stimulate thought. They don't provide precise definitions nor exhaustive descriptions.

---

http://web.ncf.ca/dy656/earthpages3/...igion_cult.htm

I have revisited the site you add a link for, and followed several other links through Langone's work. I still find his definitions, and yours, disagreeable. Principally because he appears to take a view not unconnected with his own religious position - you would surprise me if you told me he was an atheist - and defines the groups he opposes from his own position. This is known as 'psychologists error,' as it is an extension of the principal believeing - eroneously - that everyone sees things in the same way he does. Psychaiatrists and scholars are not free from making these fundamental errors and building upon their specious foundations, as history attests.

From your charts and Mike Langone's dialogue I deduce that Orthodox chrstians are engaged in cultic worship because they follow slavishly a central charismatic cultic figure, Jesus, and each has its own narrowly defined set of rules that the believer must adopt if he is to remain in fellowship. I refer to the mind control apparati of catechisms, articles of faith, confessions, etc.

That being so, then all religions are cults - I note with displeasure that Langcome suplies one dictionary definition that suits his purpose but ignores the very many others that controvert his narrow view. Either a word means something or else it doesn't, but if someone is taking a word and applying a very narrow definition to it for their purposes, then he must unpack his terms and set up a very good and concise case for his doing so, in order to carry the reader along the line of his argument.

Weber was a sociologist, a seminal one, Langone is a psychiatrist with a narrow focus on something that obviously disturbs his tranquility. If it were not so, then he would not only be more even handed, but he would appear to be even handed and more scholarly. To anyone seriously interested in this subject, I heartily recommend Brian Wilson's work on religion and cults as a fair, balanced, erudite, and honest scholarly research and writing.


M:)

[earthpages]

I have revisited the site you add a link for, and followed several other links through Langone's work. I still find his definitions, and yours, disagreeable...I heartily recommend Brian Wilson's work on religion and cults as a fair, balanced, erudite, and honest scholarly reasearch and writing.M:)

But since I created the website to stimulate dialogue and not to 'declare the truth', one could say that on the whole it's been successful.

I'll certainly look up Wilson's work. Feel free to mirror your comments at Earthpages; or for that matter, to submit an article.:)

[Toms777]

What religions do you believe are cults and why

A cult is any religion that I despise.


Tom

[earthpages]

A cult is any religion that I despise.


Tom

I assume you're making a joke! If not, I respect your direct honesty. Probably that's how a lot of people really feel about 'cults' when they define them as such. But still, I think that there is a genuine difference between a religion and a cult. It's hard to pin down. And that's probably why some people find my chart inadequate--because it's unclear and there's so much apparent overlap. But isn't that like life? Anyhow, what is the difference? Well, maybe one difference could be that a true religion would be open to change and development, ever seeking to express the fullest possible truth, while a cult would stick to its leader's egomaniacal dictates. Now, some may say that the RC Church doesn't change and therefore is a cult. But actually, many things have changed within the RC church. As for the notion that Jesus is an example, par excellence, of a cult leader (since he seemed to say that he was God's very Son), we have to keep in mind the possibility that one of these historical figures could be speaking the truth while all the others are not. Many assume that, because quite a few historical figures have made claims to be "The One," they're all liars or deceived. But again, intellectually we can conceive of the possibility that one such figure could be telling the truth.;)