I saw a quote on the web somewhere which made me wonder...

At what point does a cult become a religion? At what point does the cultic atmosphere transform itself into a viable religious idea? When I was a kid I got into a Christian Youth Group that could be called cultish. We did cultish things, became extremely insular, had a charismatic youth leader whose word we took as gospel... until he started sleeping with the kids in the group. Thankfully it all fell apart after that, so I suppose in the end we weren't a cult. But the spark was there.

Its a good point. One person's cult is another's unswerving blind faith. What do you think are the differences between "cults" and the so-called "Big 3" religions? Or is there no difference??

~ Viper ~

The separation between cults and mainstream religion today is not clear because all of these are being used to exercise control over everyday folks. We get involved looking for friendship and some truth and then we get manipulated to their way of order.
All of them think they are right, so we must be smart about what we get involved in. Our biggest problem is we are uninformed, many groups are either somewhat secretive or largely secretive about their beliefs and objectives.
Example.
Mainstream churches will hit you over the head with tithing, look at Hebrews chapter seven, it will inform you tithing is over, (old law, pre Christ) You will not here them preach on Hebrews Chapter seven, why? Because they want your money that is why, it also puts you into bondage to them. So we see how the lack of knowledge on our part is something used by others against us.
Scripture is in itself pure but man is misusing even it.
Unnamed

That's a crucial point, UD. We often talk of Christianity, and people think of it as a single faith, but there are so many branches of it now, many of which I personally consider to be cults. And some of them are high profile, high membership organisations! Islam is similar, divided as it is into its different factions, the most fundamental being Wahabbi, who believe even other Muslims are "infidels".

But then, its a very easy thing to start a cult, wouldn't you agree? Incidentally, do you profess to any particular school of belief?

~ Viper ~