What distinguishes a cult from a religion?

[BloodyHeretic]

I go to a Catholic High School. My Religious Studies teacher told us that a cult forces/strongly pressures members to stay in the cult, whereas a religion doesn't do that. So if we follow that logic, then Christianity and Islam are notorious cults lol. No wonder half the kids in my school are atheist.

I like the sound of that school.

[Aura]

I go to a Catholic High School. My Religious Studies teacher told us that a cult forces/strongly pressures members to stay in the cult, whereas a religion doesn't do that. So if we follow that logic, then Christianity and Islam are notorious cults lol. No wonder half the kids in my school are atheist.

I like the sound of that school.

Yeah, Canadian Catholic schools are much more liberal than the U.S., because here they're funded for by the government. So alot of people who think religion is bullshit go to the school anyways.

[AngelaRachnid]

Dont cult members kill themselves =the believers, while religon kills the non believers

A

[Minimalist]

The purpose of the essence of Religion, its conscious intent, is to create free men: to become oneself

Secularized religions serve to enforce subjective morality and cults serve to create psychological slaves.

It is hard to accept that anyone could be as naive as you come across.

[reverendjeremiah]

What distinguishes a cult from a religion?

All the children you can fuck openly (religion) versus all the children you can manage to fuck without the authorities finding out to shut you down (cult)

Apparently cults can be shut down, while religions have one sided discussions with the public about their bad press.

[Nick_A]

The purpose of the essence of Religion, its conscious intent, is to create free men: to become oneself

Secularized religions serve to enforce subjective morality and cults serve to create psychological slaves.

It is hard to accept that anyone could be as naive as you come across.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." Mark Twain

[kriskiran]

I agree. There's no difference except the number of members.

[Justtristo]

Nothing really apart from the opinions of the general public.

[BethK]

Probably the best all-around best definitive tool to use to decide whether something is a "cult" or a "religion", without putting your own beliefs on the validity or invalidity of the group's belief is the Advanced Bonewitz Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (ABCDEF). http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html He has the person making the evaluation look and decide for themselves on how likely something is to be a "cult" as opposed to "group with strange/foreign beliefs". It has you evaluate how much the group controls its members - financially, practically (surrender of will/disempowerment), sexually controlling or using members, attributing special wisdom or knowledge of the will of the object of worship to its leader(s), proselytization, dropout control, how much wealth the group or its leaders have as compared to their average members, isolation from non-members, paranoia, violence, grimness, and hypocrisy.

The beauty of this is that if used at all objectively, it is utterly useless for deciding something is a cult just because it was made up a week ago last Tuesday, has 5 members and worships asphalt. It can get high marks for some of the world's popular "religions" which are in some ways very cultlike.

Weird beliefs are not necessarily cults, and large religions may well be very large cults.

[The Grand Nudger]

lol, so many amusing responses. There is actually a distinction between a cult and a religion. It's the combined effect of time and membership.