Semantics of Cults: What's a cult?

i think that cult is a word that is simply utilized as an us vs them thought. it's always used wrongly and doesn't really mean anything. i mean sure it's easy to say that those crazy people who wear purple sneakers and drink goats blood are a cult, but it's hard to say where exactly a cult ends and where religion begins.it's really not a useful, productive word.

So anyone calling another faith a cult is drawing an artificial distinction?
quite.i think it's silly. it's like calling someone a bleeding-heart liberal. it's supposed to be so very negative when it really doesn't mean anything. liberalism is theoretically defined as democracy. so, hopefully, we're all liberals. the right uses this word, however, to imprecisely define the great and evil "they".sure. mormons are weird, a little creepy with their records and alleged practice of posthumous marriage... but they're relatively normal people with relatively normal wants and needs. sure there are crazies among them, but there are crazies among everyone. same thing with pagans. we all search for truth in different ways. maybe some will never find the truth. but by using imprecise namecalling, we accomplish NOTHING.This message has been edited by brennakimi, 11-13-2005 06:27 PM

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And why you think you take a Ho to a Ho-tel
Ho-tell everybody, even the mayor
Reach up in the sky for the Ho-zone layer
Now C'mon playa wants a Ho always
And Ho's neva close, they open like hallways

i said this before, nobody listened to me. they claimed i hadn't read the thread.

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i'm not going to capitalize my posts, get better eyes.