Well, every religion is also an ideology, in that it is a set of hyper-irrational shortcuts to avoid thinking.
I think the definition of “cult” is so murky that we can’t say that any group or organization is or isn’t a cult.
I disagree. :dubious:
As greenslime1951 said in a previous posting:
It is undeniably a totally batshit, wack-job attempt by someone who was either a loony (if he believed in it himself) or a con artist (if he didn’t) to offer weak-minded people the illusion of control over their lives.
Damned right.
To me it is a joke - just as mixology is a “serious” discipline.
To me, I think L Ron Hubbard thought “heck you can make a religion about any piece of crap as long as you can get people to believe in it.”
And as others have said, when something is declared a religion then the tax laws go right out the window. I believe other laws also may not apply such as child labor laws which the church supposedly violated.
That s a bit harsh. I have no religion at all, just trying to find out why Scientology is being called a religion.
I can respect some of the members of number of mainline religions if they are decent people, do not try to convert me and try to do good and live peacefully. Never in my life have I accused some religion of being a cult. Well, perhaps the Jonestown folk.
Nothing I wrote deserves that snarky reply.
I think the best definition of the difference I read is a religion is something you are born in. A cult is something you join when you are an adult.
I thought we weren’t allowed to call each other a “cult” on the SD anymore.
I seem to recall one of my Sociology texts in college defining “cult” as any religious sect or movement based on the teachings of a single charismatic leader who specifically seeks followers and adherents.( or something similar to that) It went on to talk about the fact that 20th century popular culture had given most people the wrong idea of what “cult” actually meant. I remember specifically the text mentioning that by definition Christianity was the largest “cult” the world had ever seen.
I personally don’t know enough about the history of L. Ron or Scientology to make a judgement on whether Scientology would fit that particular definition or not.
Here is a checklist for characteristics of a cult. The Bare-Faced Messiah link I posted up above is a biography about L. Ron Hubbard.
Yikes. I don’t think I’d be linking to anything by the ICSA. They’re kinda scary and not anything close to objective, being formed by family members who supposedly lost their children to groups they (the parents/founding members of ICSA) decided were cults. Worse, they’re not even any good at science.
From wikipedia:
International Cultic Studies Association - Wikipedia
The ICSA were basically the creators of the Satanic Panic which is now looked upon with such embarrassment by doctors, police officers and media members alike.
That I didn’t know! I’d seen checklists like that around other places too, like on the Xenu site. I think they had more detail though, and explained more though.
Is this better?
What’s the most-suckered person to come out with secrets? The xenu/volcano batshit and whatever else I can’t rmember from that South Park episode were secrets told by ex members. Is there any accounting for how much that gave? Are millionaires (or ex-millionaires) among that group? Just people who gave tens of thousands? Could there be even wackier ‘secrets’ awaiting for a defector?
Much better. It’s very similar Isaac Bonewits’ ADVANCED BONEWITS CULT DANGER EVALUATION FRAME (ABCDEF, get it?), which is at least referenced (positively) in many introductory Religious Studies/Psychology of Religion textbooks, if not reprinted outright. The best thing about it, IMHO, is that it allows for relative weights to be given to different aspects, depending on their intensity, and allows for a numerical representation that can be used to compare groups. The higher the total number score, the greater the risk of harm to members of the group.
Now, I’m not at all sure that the ABCDEF has been tested empirically, but it has a great deal of “truthiness” to it, and it does have a history of being used in the field. It’s easy to score something like Heaven’s Gate and see a high number, and see that something like Amway, which is often referred to as a cult, does indeed have some qualities of a cult, but isn’t a particularly dangerous one, numerically speaking.
The term ‘cult’ is kind of meaningless. One could argue that science fiction show followings are close to being cults.
The term you want to look for is destructive cult
Okay. Go for it. Pick a science fiction fandom and argue that it’s a cult.
Really?
They even call them ‘cult films’. They aren’t talking about the Moonies.
:rolleyes:
Again, not a destructive cult, just a cult. Cults can be perfectly harmless, even fun.
Scientology is an evil cult hellbent on trying to rule the world
So, is the Dope a cult? 
From all of the above, I admit the definition of “cult” is too fuzzy to even consider.
“Religion” is also somewhat open to interpretation. To help answer my question in the OP as to whether Scientology is a religion, I wonder if members worship any god, Jesus, Mohammad, Ra or L. Ron Hubbard?
Interesting that no Scientology member or former member has jumped in to this thread. Are they forbidden from posting to this forum by their leaders, or do the SDMB powers-that-be forbid members from posting? Again,
It is the societal equivalent of a blood-sucking parasite.