TLDR - what’s the question mark in the following scale

Cult(-1)……………….Religion(0)……………….????(+1)

Long version (a.k.a my stupid mind’s question that is keeping me awake):

My understanding of cult is a group of people with an absurd or even possibly nefarious belief system. Like something negative.

By that definition I would put religion in the middle (though a majority of it leans towards the cult side). A group of people that is very serious about what they believe in, no matter how illogical it is.

So with this understanding what would you call the positive side ? A group of people coming together to have a tradition and belief system just for the fun of it ? Is there such thing ?

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[–] 38 points 1 year ago (18 children)

Religion and cult is basically the same thing with different connotative subtext.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    The only difference between religions and cults is the size.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Scientology is pretty new, and pretty big.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    ~3/4 century.

    Not much relatively but they're getting there.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    On the age scale, they’re barely a blip. On the size scale, they’re massive enough to disappear people with zero accountability.

    They’re a full-blown religion.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Do they still have the abulity to do that? they seem to have been way more quite recently or they could just seem less crazy compared to the general state of the world.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Pretty sure they do. They still own Clearwater, Florida (including the police department) and have a significant presence in East Grinstead, England, plus at least one mega-yacht in international waters. All they need to do is relocate you there then ‘handle’ the investigation when you come up missing.

    Shelly is still missing to this day.

    e: they may have toned down the crazy publicly because they were attracting too much attention, but I don’t think their power has diminished.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The only difference is the person using the word.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Nah, cults have other characteristics too, like a particularly charismatic leader, a tendency to have an extreme us-vs-them mentality, a desire for isolation rather than spreading the 'good word' far and wide, etc. There are definitely things that distinguish a cult of 100 people from a religion of 100 people, for example.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I would love to see a good faith discussion on this because I've thought about it for a while.

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