this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Article is shit. It says Scientology is a religion. It's not. It's a cult.
Pretty fucked it doesn't mention any of their crimes or how they've been banned by so many countries for these crimes.
Maybe one day someone will get me to understand the difference between religion and cult.
Religions are mainstream, cults aren't.
Cult: a small unpopular religion.
Religion: a large popular cult.
Or, if you prefer:
Though that kinda falls apart in the Scientologist's case. They have acquired a lot of real estate since Zappa first made that statement.
Iirc Frank clarified this as how many locations the cult has, not actual land ownership totals
Not surprised that he would update it as things changed.
You see, in a cult there's a guy at the top who knows it's all bullshit. In a religion that guy died ages ago and scholars aren't sure if he existed to begin with.
About 100 years.
Specific structures of exploitation maybe? I've been in some cults and in some religions and the cults has structures that the religions did not. That being said, I have seen "religions" that used to have or do have those structures. It's very hard to define. I like using Steve Hassan's BITE model but, like with any model it has a specific type of cult it is examining.
It's why the cult I'm currently working on starting has none of the oppressive structures. I'm an absurdist.
It's only a difference of being recognized by some form of ruling authority
Cults blackmail, torture, and murder.
But religions extort, torment, and kill.
See it's completely different.
Some cults call themselves religion. There are definitely many religions that have never extored nor tormented nor killed.
Such as?
Name one
I didn't make the claim but would Jainism meet your criteria?
Every religion on on day 0 was just a new cult that someone started
I was gonna say that most religions do as well, but honestly the overlap is almost concentric circles
If you make the circles the size of their members, yes.
But if you make the circles all the same diameter, then no.
Usually the big ones have a history of some abuse.
Concentric, so the former. Likewise there are non religious cults
All religions are cults. The only difference is how many people practice it and thus gain favor in society.
Some religions exist to help people, not to harm their members for the benefit of the church
Existing to help people is the same marketing spin that Scientology goes with as well.
I meaaaaaaaannnnnn........
It's an always and never thing. Those are bad words to use when discussing reality. We can find exceptions where well meaning people gather together and do real good in the name of a god. Likewise we can find unfortunately far too many examples of people coopting the structures that the well meaning people have built to harm their community.
Seems like those people would probably do good anyway regardless
yes so let's discount them because they use the name of a god to organize, as it coopts a preexisting structure and at one point in history made organizing a hell of a lot easier. like setting up groups on facebook.
it's kind of like (and yes i get this is a bad analogy but i am a musician so pthbt it is what comes to mind) blaming an atheist organist for playing at a church because the musician doesn't have a pipe organ at home