A lot of cultural beliefs are based on religious ones. Cultural beliefs in the US tend to be based on Christianity, in Saudi Arabia, not so much.

I don't think the system of beliefs all started at once. I wasn't clear enough in my writeup I guess but obviously the writeup needs to be way more involved to clearly state everything and nobody wants to read that. I think the system of beliefs started in little bits and pieces. A ruler said "you can't do that" and when asked why, they likely came up with a reason other than "I said so." Someone asked a ruler one day what happens when you die, and they came up with something, and so on and so forth. Over time, it became more cohesive. Also to be clear, this happened a LONG time ago....way before there were history books or anything...I'm talking nearly cave-man here. This evolution took a long long time.

I'm not sure which part of what I said you don't like. I think it's safe to assume the most forceful/persuasive individuals had a greater effect on what was formally written into the texts referenced by modern religion. For instance, lots of potential gospels were written for the bible, but only 4 found their way in. Someone made the call, and we both know it wasn't God. That's what I was trying to say.

If it's with the narrative of how it was preached and became established, if I'm not accurate there, that's fine, let me know where I'm wrong. I'm not being a smart ass, I'd genuinely like to know.

Right. But now lets say that an atheist in the US believes something like "abortion is wrong" as a behavioral belief (to avoid talking about morality). Would you say that the atheist's belief is religious because it is grounded in a Christian belief? If not, then how would you characterize it? And how would you distinguish it from other beliefs of that type?

My point here is that your categorization scheme is terrible, and won't hold up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny.

Okay, but why is this religious?

No. This is a terrible assumption.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. You should really read about the canonization of the Bible and (more importantly to the point you're failing to make here) the understanding that the gospels were "dominant" because they were the ones that the culture at large found to be the most "useful" (in the sense that these writings were the ones that people were drawn to as being helpful for understanding the belief system).

See above. Different religions have different narratives. It's not the overly simplistic picture that you've painted. That picture you painted represents pure naivete.

Gritmonkeys point (or whatever I can gather from quickly skimming the last page) seems legitimate if poorly phrased. As in, I think he is saying that the difference between religion and cult is not some difference in the nature of their beliefs, but normalcy. That is, we call something a cult at least in part because it is abnormal and not widespread. Am I missing something here?

I think whether a belief is cultural or religious requires consideration of the point of view of the believer. The atheists objection would surely be behavioral or moral and not religious obviously. By the same token, a deeply religious persons objection would likely be religious, but only they could tell you.


It very likely didn't start out that way. Over a very long period of time, it became so.

I don't think so...that is indeed my point.

I don't think there's any disagreement given the definition of what a cult is as provided by wikipedia:

But going back to his previous statement:

We find that there's great confusion as to the definition because this looks nothing at all like the wikipedia definition.

It's his attempts to move anywhere beyond the definition where he's having problems, not limited to factual inaccuracies regarding history.

This makes the belief relative, correct? So this removes your ability to declare beliefs if this to be religious or not based on the absolute nature of it. This is important.

So now you have beliefs changing from "not religious" to "religious" and then possibly back to "not religious" again (if held at some point in the future by an atheist who understands the belief to be cultural).

Do you see why your characterizations are problematic?

I would suggest that in practice there are distinctions between "traditional" religions and "cults" that are worth being able to call out via some word, however chosen. Like for example there are a lot of sort of vaguely religious people who describe themselves as Christians or as religious but who don't participate in any organized religious activities. It seems useful to be able to distinguish what they are doing from what is normally called "cultish".

I don't think there's any argument that what distinguishes a "cult" from a "sect" or "religion" is not the inherent validity of their beliefs, but there are other factors, and since it's primarily those other factors that actually give the term it's negative connotations, it's understandable that those to whom the negative connotations don't really apply would chafe at the label.

Does that make sense?

Another look at "cultus" which is not presented in the pejorative sense, circa 1920. From "Awakening to Community"; Rudolph Steiner.

" Everything that comes to expression in the various forms of worship, either as ceremonial acts or words, is a reflection, a picturing of real experiences, not earth experiences, of course, but real experiences in the world through which man makes his way before he is born; in other words, experiences of the second half of his path between death and rebirth. That is the part of the cosmos he passes through from the midnight hour of life after death to the moment when he descends again into life on earth. In the realm thus traversed are found the beings, the scenes, the events faithfully reflected in all true forms of worship. What is it, then, that a person is experiencing in the cultus in common with others whom some karma or other has brought together with him? For karma is so intricately woven that we may ascribe all encounters with our fellow men to its agency. He is experiencing cosmic memories of pre-earthly existence with them. They come to the surface in the soul's subconscious depths. Before we descended to earth, we and these others lived through a cosmic lifetime in a world that reappears before us in the cultus. That is a tremendous tie. It does more than just convey pictures; it carries supersensible forces into the sense world. But the forces it conveys are forces that concern man intimately; they are bound up with the most intimate background experiences of the human soul. The cultus derives its binding power from the fact that it conveys spiritual forces from the spiritual world to earth and presents supernatural realities to the contemplation of human beings living on the earth. There is no such reality for man to contemplate in rationalistic talks that have the effect of making him forget the spiritual world, forget it even in subconscious soul depths. In the cultus he has it right there before him in a living, power-pervaded picture that is more than a mere symbol. Nor is this picture a dead image; it carries real power, because it places before man scenes that were part of his spiritual environment before he was incarnated in an earthly body. The community creating power of the cultus derives from the fact that it is a shared, comprehensive memory of spiritual experiences."

Examples; the "Dionysus Cult" or the cult of the Roman Catholic Church during the passage from the Roman Empire. The loss of spiritual knowledge/understanding or in another aspect materialism, dumbs down the word "cult" to at best a meaningless monstrosity.

I can't hold my hand over my heart and say the pope's stance on something is due to a religious belief. Depending on the question, there's a damn good chance it is, but I can't "know it" without asking him. That's true of any belief at all, religious, moral, behavioral, whatever. That being said, maybe in your example it's not a belief, but a "stance." The belief is deeper than a simple stance on a current issue. I think beliefs get interpreted to stances. There was no abortion in the bible so religious people are interpreting passages certain ways in order to develop their stance on the issue. For instance people that want to teach creationism in school have a legitimate belief in literal interpretations of the bible. That's their belief, that Genesis happened just how it's written. Their stance is merely that it should be taught. I'm not sure how that applies though to the religion v cult argument though.

Anything, beliefs included likely changed in characterization over the 1M years of human evolution. Our recorded history only touches on a very brief portion of that evolution, but I would posit that it's safe to assume that beliefs have evolved over that period, same as everything else.

The truth is, nobody knows where certain religious stories came from. They were no doubt dreamed up by someone long-since lost to history. Some guy told a story around a campfire to his children, they changed it a little and told it to theirs, and so on. The story might have started out as the sun creating everything, and slowly evolved to "god." That's the problem with spoken history, we just don't know. It started out as a story to entertain, and it eventually became the foundation for the book of Genesis. I don't *know* that for certainty but it seems like a pretty likely scenario.

So that particular belief, as an example, started out as a story, eventually became religion. I don't think an atheist is going to believe it and convert it back to non-religious...he would probably just convert it to "fiction."

Okay. What does this ramble have anything to do with any of your previous points? You're just going off on more random tangents which appear to be narratives you're making up off the top of your head again. Is everything boiling down to "I posit that it's safe to assume"?

I was responding to your post about the belief changing from non-religious to religious and I was giving reasons why that makes sense.

Okay... What does that have to do with addressing the problematic nature of your classification? I would say that it "makes sense" to drop your definition of religious as a result of your inability to make a useful classification.

I'm having a difficult time trying to make sense of what you're saying, and it's because your ideas are very scattered and you do a lot of speculating. You want to talk about "at its source" but then you note that nobody really knows what's at the source because it's been lost in history. So what are you arguing?

I suppose. I agree with the truncated part of your post that devotion is a usual connotation of a cult and may not be representative of the guy who shows up in church on Christmas and Easter and calls themselves a Christian, but it is similar to those Christians who are very devoted.

I don't deny there may be other factors that contribute to the negative connotation, but I think it is fair to say that the presence of seemingly ridiculous beliefs that are outside of the accepted norm is a large part of what brings in the negativity. Indeed, I suspect that if you took two groups from a local town with very similar devotion and insularity and deference to a local authority and whatever other factors you like, but one called themselves Christian and the other was some weird new age religious thingy, the latter gets called a cult and the former doesn't. There will be a negativity brought to bare on the "cult" due simply to the fact that its beliefs and practices are abnormal and not these other factors.

uke: I'm sure you're right about that, and as long as the definition of cult includes that relative idea of cultural acceptability then it will inevitably be true.

I suspect that any useful distinction between religion and cult will suffer some kind of fuzziness or relativity, but I still think there's a useful distinction to be drawn anyway, at least in the current world. But that's because I don't think all religion is harmful to individuals, but a "cult" has the connotation of being harmful.

For those that think all religion is detrimental, the word cult ceases to draw out any useful distinction, but rather than simply asserting that there is no difference between "cult" and "religion", we might as well just have the actual underlying argument I guess

I'm arguing that the source of all religions are man. Ie the stories and original beliefs came from man. God did not come down from heaven and write the stories down. Some person, or group of persons took these collections of oral histories and eventually wrote them down and over time, that became religion. Those stories are no less fantastic than whatever a cult leader has come up with today. They are as equally likely as my Sparkles the purple unicorn religion.

A cults system of beliefs has just as good s chance of being accurate with respect to god as an established religion, but it isnt widely accepted as valid.

I guess you disagree and think religions are something more, but I've heard literally no argument to that effect so I could be wrong.

Let's say for just the moment that God appears before me and I tell someone "I saw God!" And they believed me. Word spreads and then there's a religion that's formed based on my seeing God.

Even under the assumption that I *really* saw God, it would still be true that the source of religion is man because word spread through me. It can be traced to me and my claim. So what does it really mean when you say "came from man"?

Again, you're only repeating your speculation. You have already admitted that nobody really knows. But in the very next breath, you want to assert an affirmative conclusion. Do you not see the intellectual inconsistency of this view?

The truth is nobody knows where certain stories come from. But there is NO DOUBT that you know where it comes from.

I am challenging you on your intellectual consistency. I don't care if you believe that all religions have the same origin. Go ahead and assert that and believe it all you want. But don't pretend like you've argued the point in some way when your argument undermines what you're claiming.

Be less naive. Stop making up stuff off the top of your head.

Bolded: Probably, but I'd suggest that to be more a result of religious bigotery than anyting else.

Underlined: I don't think this is actually true. If you actually compare the religious/spiritual beliefs of groups we refer to as cults, they don't really differ that much from more mainstreamy kinds of spiritual/new-agey teachings. If you take Scientology as an example, their general body of beliefs isn't really outrageous or bizzare in their metaphysical claims. If anything it's the opposite - to anyone knowledgable of the history of religion, it seems as a rather haphazardly plugged-together amalgamate of gnosticism meets new age meets "scientific mysticism". The significant and recognizable differences are usually along the line of limited "followship", separatistic tendencies, charismatic leader, tendencies to foster emotional/economic dependency, etc. Then again, it might well be that there's some language problem here and that what "we" in germany might refer to as a cult, you'd call a sect and vice versa.

No mate, derision fail. I referenced the CTA and advertisers are only breaking the law if they 'too aggressively' market to children so it wouldn't have been honest of me not to qualify my own position with that when I knew that qualifier existed in my comparison object. I could have left it out, I don't really need it.

I'm guessing you didn't actually read any of the link I posted. You're jumping a little prematurely at the moment, you need to calm down a bit.

If you truly believe Theism false, do you (or would you) teach children that god definitely doesn't exist?

Or have I misunderstood what you mean by 'theism is false'?

I see religions aggressively targeting toddlers and I see McDonalds doing the same thing but having legal restraints imposed on the levels and methods by which they do that. Since it can't be proven that any gods exist (which would settle the moral imperative issue), how is it that religions are given a pass? In America, for example (because this all happens under the umbrella of one legal system), there are many religions being taught to children as if they were true, they can't all be true, therefore some are false beliefs being taught to children as the truth and those children are being persuaded of something because they lack the cognitive ability to reason it for themselves.

How is that not unethical?

??

I can see why'd you post that but I summed up a lot with the word 'something', basically all the things that I object to with regard to the urging of religious belief on children, it just gets tiresome to keep typing it and I assume that people know to what I'm referring.

I always encourage my own children to ask questions and seek out knowledge for themselves so I don't ever tell them the 'truth' about something that I can't actually be sure is true. I don't believe that I ever exploit their lack of cognitive ability to reason for themselves to a degree required for making decisions on issues like religion or abuse the trust they have in me to act in their best interests for my own ends.

Given that we've had problems before with you not understanding epistemology I'm a bit cautious about the work that the word "definitely" is doing here. But yeah, I will teach my children that while some people believe in various gods, there is no reason to think that theism is true. Pragmatically, it won't just be me raising my children and my missus is actually a stronger atheist than I am, so that will factor into it.

Depends what work "definitely" is doing. Theism is false like geocentrism is false. Do I assign 0% probability to either of those? No, I have to account for Cartesian demon etc.

It's not unethical to teach falsehoods to children unless one 'knows' that they are false. This is why I'm saying that the focus should be on showing why theism is false, not on the fact it is being taught to children.

No kidding, I really struggle to wrap my head around epistomology, no idea why when on the face of it it seems simple. Different types of knowledge and different ways of acquiring it. I struggle to apply that though.

I was trying to establish a level of (IMO unreasonable) certainty not just a personal conviction, i.e., there is certainly no god, and so anyone who disagrees is definitely wrong.

"no reason to think that theism is true" is further than I would go at this time.

For the record, my understanding of this is an example of something I've learned because I've been posting here. I'd never seen 'Cartesian demon' before but I'm aware of the full version of Descartes 'I think, I am' and that he references a demon as the methodology by which he explains it so the idea of Cartesian doubt to explain not assigning 0% probability is now meaningful to me.


Is it unethical is you can't be certain that what you're telling them is true? I think this is the crux of my issue, no one can be certain that god exists. If you're simply hedging your bets, then why choose one god over any other?

I agree in your above hypothetical that ultimately it would still be coming from you, and thus man.

That being said, if I trusted you and you said you saw God...I'd believe you *thought* you saw god, but what you likely saw was something else. Maybe you had a dream, maybe you got drunk, maybe you were dehydrated....if we think about the period of time around and before the old testament, people thought all kinds of things were "god." They thought the sun was god, they thought lightning was god's anger, they thought if you were walking one way and lightning struck a tree it was god telling you to turn around, and so on and so forth.

You can feel free to believe what you want, but when someone in the old testament thinks a burning bush is god talking to them, I think lightning struck it, and they had nfi what lighting was and thus assumed it was god. That's the biggest source of the problem I have with ancient religious texts in general. The people had nearly zero understanding of science and the world around them. They didn't know why something happened, so they used god to fill the void for the questions of why.

So, you have question 1 as to "did the person referenced in the bible *really* see god or did he just see something he didn't understand? Then on top of that, you have who knows how many verbal re-tellings before it finally gets written down into the permanent record. At the end of the day, I don't think there's any dispute from you or any religious scholar as to whether anything in the bible was written by god. It was written by man, and thus subject to their mistakes, version control problems, misunderstandings, ignorance, personal agendas and outright lies.

I mean, who here thinks God came down from heaven and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? Do you think it's maybe 99.99999999999% more likely ( i might be shy a few .9's to be honest) that a group of cities was destroyed by an earthquake or volcano and since they had NFI what that was, they attributed the destruction to God's anger and tried to come up with reasons why God was angry? I mean...has God come down from heaven and destroyed anything else lately and then come on the news to discuss why he showed the city his wrath?

Meh you are arguing semantics. I'm just typing the same way I speak. Change no doubt to "very likely" in my original sentence. It doesn't change the gist of what I'm saying which is the stories in the bible *probably* (i added that word in for you) came about the same way ALL ancient stories have come about. Someone *probably* originally told them either based on something that happened, or as a way to be entertaining, and over time and generations the story changed. Have you ever heard the saying "Tell a lie enough times and it becomes true?" Since we don't know for certain how it came about, we have no choice but to apply some sort of logic or reason as to where it came from right? At least we do if we aren't going to simply believe "because god told us it happened that way."

If you've got anything resembling proof that it didn't happen that way, I'm all ears.