I think that distinction between cult and religion is the size of its followers. Cults are small while religions are big. Although I take that religious people think that difference is that cults are "fake" and that cult leaders are crazy.
Now there is also the play with words - you know there is a cult and there is a "cult"; as well as there is a religion and "religion". Meaning just what Aurora wrote that some film has a cult following: it's not a cult in a real sense of a word cult, but rather what people say affectionately about some movie or singer. Just like some people like to say with religion, that they religiously follow some singer. Or like some people say that they are "dead" they don't mean dead as in clinically dead but rather tired or in trouble.
Now there is also the play with words - you know there is a cult and there is a "cult"; as well as there is a religion and "religion". Meaning just what Aurora wrote that some film has a cult following: it's not a cult in a real sense of a word cult, but rather what people say affectionately about some movie or singer. Just like some people like to say with religion, that they religiously follow some singer. Or like some people say that they are "dead" they don't mean dead as in clinically dead but rather tired or in trouble.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
