"I am God" - cult leader, or valid religion?

If they follow the law and you can't objectively prove them wrong, I don't see why not. It's not like Christianity is any more valid, for example. Appeal to Popularity? Otherwise, objectively, they're equivalent. The only difference is how many followers there are.

It's just that I don't want wack jobs like "you know who" abuse their power so they can do stuff that is just plain wrong.I would be terrified if they got legal status and justify all they do.

I said so long as they follow the law. If they want to kill people or molest children, I'll execute them myself. If they just want to be harmlessly crazy, I don't see why I should interfere, however.

Ok give them legal status but when they start doing evil stuff I will personally try to make them legally pay.

Okay, propose one. I'm afraid language just doesn't work that way, but I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise.

I don't have a term readily available, but cult isn't a good one to use. Cult doesn't have a value judgment, and isn't supposed to. "Criminals" works for me, since if they're worth stamping out, that's what they are.

No religion is above the law. At most, said whackjobs might get tax-exempt status, and that's hardly going to let them do anything.

I think that religions are generally much more benign than cults (though there are exceptions). Cults and cult leaders have a recurring pattern of narcissism, delusion, batcrap insanity, paranoia, claims of authority, and use of that authority to completely control the lives of its members. The only difference between a cult and a religion is that 1) religions tend to live on after their leader has died and 2) the moderate, typical forms of religions are better at integrating into society and do not necessarily cause significant hampering of interpersonal relations. For example, Southern Baptists are allowed to have conversations with non-Christians, yet a Scientologist who converses with someone who is deemed a "suppressive person" will be shunned themselves.

In this case, Jeffs is narcissistic and delusional (if not psychopathic), and he is using his claims of authority (i.e, "I am God") to control the lives of his victims. It is perfectly possible that he knows he is not God, yet is using that persona to convince the girls to have sex with him, and possibly convince the jury that he is insane.

edited 7th Aug '11 5:39:50 PM by LilPaladinSuzy

The definition of "cult" isn't the problem really. The problem is that people act as if any religion, mainstream or otherwise, has validity in the first place.

Can you prove they don't? Can you prove atheism does? If not to either of those two questions (hint: the answer to both is "no"), that isn't a valid argument.

"Co-opting a perfectly good word and changing the meaning serves no purpose other than to confuse people who know what the proper definition is and use it as such."

I feel your pain, buddy, I really do, but you're kinda fighting hundreds of years of linguistic history. For better or for worse, people find the word "cult" is more useful to them if it denotes something negative.

I think it is clear enough that no mainstream religion fulfills the Lifton criteria of a cult, including Christianity, although specific splinter groups within then might. That said, I am not sure the criteria are objective enough to serve as the basis of outlawing them.

It's the evolution of linguistics. The word 'cult' didn't exist at the beginning of time, it likely sprung from people who screwed around with wordplay and whatnot.

More on-topic, the entire dispute seems to be based on the idea that cults are bad, and religions are not. The thing to remember is that it's entirely possibly this 'madman' is actually god, and that all the religions that people believe in now are actually false. Just because more people believe something, that doesn't make it true.

I'm reminded of being perplexed the first time I played Morrowind and the state-run religion of Mournhold referred to itself as a cult.

Relevant to the topic, I consider a cult to be a small religious following, nothing more. It doesn't carry any inherent pejorative other than the fact that unless it's simply very new, there's probably a good reason it has a small following.

Sure sure. I'm up against religious dogma in all forms. I think it's damaging to the human brain in and of itself.

But still, I'm convinced that there is a huge difference between merely being wrong, and believing stuff for bad reasons - or actually killing and abusing people.

In short, religions are bad, but cults are worse.

Problem with this definition: Are you saying the Jews have been a cult for most of history?

I wouldn't go so far to call it 'damaging to the human brain', but it does involve a bit much of a submissive mentality. Submitting yourself to the will and belief of others is seen to be more of a cult thing, but it occurs almost all the time in any religion, and trying to differentiate cults from religions is pointless because they're the same basic idea.

It's like the difference between a planet and a dwarf planet: they're the same basic idea, but people often define them differently for clarity.

Are you saying Jews aren't productive members of culture?

edited 7th Aug '11 10:21:52 PM by Heartbreaker

Generally, cults tend to be small, insular, and focused primarily on a single charismatic and authoritarian leader. A religion is based on the worship of a god or gods, usually with some sort of tradition and/or scripture that is believed to come from that god and which serves as the basis of their beliefs and practices.

A major distinguishing factor is whether the cult operates openly and publicly, and how closed off they are from society at large. For example, anybody can walk into a Baptist or Methodist or Catholic church and find the preacher/minister/priest and ask him or her questions about their religion. They also publish books setting out what they believe and allow anybody to read them, and people can freely sit in on worship services. Ordained ministers are also subject to oversight by the institution itself.

Cults on the other hand are highly secretive and the leader usually insists that they don't have any significant contact with "outsiders", including friends and family. They rarely have a doctrine other than "what the leader says, goes" and the leader has no oversight or accountability.

So by that description, it appears that this guy is a cult leader.

And one other consideration, whether or not the beliefs are right or wrong, or whether or not the belief system can be supported with evidence or not, should have nothing to do with whether or not the group is a cult. They are a cult because of how they treat their followers, it has nothing to do with the doctrine, per se.

@BH: No, Diaspora Jews rarely met the "prevent its members from being productive members of the mainstream culture" prong. Jewish minorities have historically been good at making niches for themselves within the majority's caste system, from money lending in Europe to oil-making in India.