Difference between religion, cults, and philosophy
RyanS2
right. This means a liberty which is not reduced to the private sphere
only. To discriminate religious beliefs, or to discredit one or
another form of religious practice is a form of exclusion contrary to
the respect of fundamental human values and will eventually
destabilize society, where a certain pluralism of thought and action
should exist, as well as a benevolent and brotherly attitude. This
will necessarily create a climate of tension, intolerance, opposition,
and suspicion not conducive to social peace."
Pope John Paul II
In our modern world of the new millennium, the word "cult" has become
largely overused and is now a catch-all for any group, religion or
lifestyle which someone doesn't understand, or with which they happen
to disagree. This is a dangerous trend, as many of the organizations
labeled a cult by dissidents are truly legitimate groups. Once the
taint of the term "cult" is applied to a particular group, it is often
difficult to change that image to the public. In psychology this is
known as a "buzz-word", first made famous in a test by a psychologist
who would write down things like "masturbation" on a piece of paper
and show them to people while their heartrate was monitored. When they
saw the word, their heartrate would change, meaning there's a
definitive psychosomatic process going on in response to certain
words. This web-article is a synthesis of several articles on the web
about cults, and a few minor blurbs from me, to show some of the
confusion about the usages of "cult", "religion", "philosophy", and so
forth.
Difference between a cult and a religion?
While investigating a somewhat vast amount of information on this
subject, (including the fact that there's noteable differences between
how America views cults and how European countries view cults), here
is a small sampling of the literature on it.
Cults believe that the founder can/could perform miracles or other
supernatural feats, and the founder is perceived as somehow more than
human. The founder is considered infallible, or the founder’s
faults are ignored or explained away. [Gud er (stadig) blå, Mikael
Rothstein, Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S, 2001, ISBN 87-11-16015-2. pp.
184 - 218]
Cults have a strong contempt for organizations that follow the
teachings of the founder without being followers of the
founder’s organization. [Gud er (stadig) blå, Mikael Rothstein,
Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S, 2001, ISBN 87-11-16015-2, pp. 200-201]
The religious group prefers to view itself as isolated from people
outside of the group. [Religion in the Contemporary World , Alan
Aldridge, Polity Press, 2001, ISBN 0-7456-2083-3, p. 34]
Sociologists have proposed the theory that by portraying the leader as
a very special person, the followers feel that they themselves become
very special people by proxy [Gud er (stadig) blå, Mikael Rothstein,
Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S, 2001, ISBN 87-11-16015-2, p. 69]
The religious group prefers to describe itself as a philosophy that
straddles a boundary between psychology and religion, not as a
religion. [The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life, Roy Wallis,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 35]
The religious group promotes itself using modern marketing efforts.
[The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life, Roy Wallis, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 33]
West, L. J., & Langone, M. D. (1986). Cultism: A conference for
scholars and policy makers. Cultic Studies Journal, 3, 117-134.,
defines a cult by a few standards:
Cult (totalist type): a group or movement exhibiting a great or
excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing,
Employing unethical, manipulative or coercive techniques of persuasion
and control
Isolation from former friends and family
Debilitation
Use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and
subservience
Powerful group pressures
Information management
Promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it
Suspension of individuality and critical judgment
Designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders, to the possible
or actual detriment of members, their families, or the community."
Going into greater commentary on it, "Thought Reform and the
Psychology of Totalism", Robert Lofton outlines the eight basic
elements of mind control, and says that this applies to areas outside
of just religion, it also goes to political cults as well. Most of
all, he cites the tendency of cults to view the world in terms of 'all
or nothing' alignments
"Milieu" or environment control.
The second elemlent of mind control is "mystical manipulation."
Lofton cites the "demand for purity" as another defining element.
Again, going with environment control, the people must be seperated
from the "heretics" or nay-sayers.
Lofton's fourth element is the "cult of confession." Anytime a member
does something bad, they are supposed to report it.
"Sacred science" is the fifth operating characteristic of a "mind
control cullt". This means the ideology of the cult becomes too sacred
to be questioned, it must be accepted on its own merit.
Sixth defining element is called "loading the language." Functional
member vocabulary becomes simplified with the use of thought
terminating cliches, expressions or words designed to end the
controversy or conversation. There is a simple cliche or slogan to
answer a complex issue or difficult question.
Seventh operating characteristic of mind control is "doctrine over
person."
Lofton's eighth element of mind control is the "dispensing of
existence." The organization decides who will perish in the final
battle of good over evil.
According to the Cult Information Centre, all cults share five
characteristics:
1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain
its members
2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society
3. Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not
accountable, and has charisma
4. It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit
funds to recruit people
5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society
Robbins's (1988) review of recent sociological contributions to
the study of cults identifies four definitional perspectives:
cults as dangerous, authoritarian groups;
cults as culturally innovative or transcultural groups;
cults as loosely structured protoreligions;
Stark and Bainbridge’s (1985) subtypology that distinguishes
among "audience cults" (members seek to receive information, e.g.,
through a lecture or tape series) "client cults" (members seek some
specific benefit, e.g., psychotherapy, spiritual guidance), and "cult
movements" (organizations that demand a high level of commitment from
members). The Stark and Bainbridge typology relates to their finding
that cult membership increases as church membership decreases.
Meanwhile, Rutgers University professor Benjamin Zablocki (1997) says
that sociologists often distinguish "cult" from "church," "sect," and
"denomination." Cults are innovative, fervent groups. If they become
accepted into the mainstream, cults, in his view, lose their fervor
and become more organized and integrated into the community; and they
become churches. When people within churches become dissatisfied and
break off into fervent splinter groups, the new groups are called
sects. As sects become more stolid and integrated into the community,
they become denominations. Zablocki defines a cult as "an ideological
organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding
total commitment." According to Zablocki, cults are at high risk of
becoming abusive to members, in part because members' adulation of
charismatic leaders contributes to their becoming corrupted by the
power they seek and are accorded.
Following a request by a D.A., a judge asked Eloy Rodriguez-Valdes, (a
sociologist), to submit an expert report on "whether the group may be
regarded as a destructive cult." Mr. Rodriguez-Valdes describes
himself as "a psychologist, sexologist, and expert on destructive
cults" in private practice in Bajamar, Tenerife, Canary Islands. He
submits 20 criteria to be used to distinguish between a "religion" and
a "destructive cult", or a group that routinely using brainwashing.
The first is that "religions have a history, an antiquity, a social
evolution. They are not founded overnight," while destructive cults
"have no history, nor tradition" (Rodriguez-Valdes 1999, p. 35).
Second, religions "partake of culture and society--they are the result
of history" whereas destructive cults "have nothing to do with
history, much less are a result of it." Third, "members are free to
accept or reject the content or dogma of a religion," whereas the
"adept is under the obligation of believing, practicing and spreading
the doctrine and belief of a destructive cult" (Rodriguez-Valdes 1999,
p. 36).
What's a poor laymen to do?
Going through such a vast array of data, what's one to think? Well,
Rodriguez is way off target. Most religions have popped up fairly
quickly and spread rather rapidly, (e.g. Islam, Christianity,
Bahai'i', etc.) To the second part, he's making an appeal to
antiquity, which is the same thing most cults do. Several "alien"
cults now assign themselves to antique religions which they have
rediscovered. Again, this does nothing for forming a new definition.
For the third criteria, he must consider both Christianity and Islam
to be cults, millions of people have died in both instances for
questioning Church dogma or Qur'anic revelations. I'm sure that's not
"free to accept or reject the content or dogma of a religion". I could
go on but that's not the point of this paper.
Several of the other objections fall under similar critieria, e.g. the
founder's faults explained away. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and so
forth, do it. If we assembled a typology from these criteria, we could
label every religion that is out there to be a cult in some form or
fashion. From the vast data on this subject, let's try to be somewhat
objective. Here's the difference between a cult and a religion. A
religion is designed to help its members deal with society in a
fashion that is helpful to them and society at large. A cult offers no
real advice on how to deal with society in a productive manner outside
of segregation. Since cults tend to view the outside World in only
terms of white and black, the only ways that they offer advice to deal
with problems, particularly concerning morality, is through
seperation/segregation or through violence.
A religion is found to help its members, a cult is what we call a
'personality cult' or an 'ego cult'. The sole purpose of the ego-cult
is to worship the person who found it and the people they put in
charge of it. A religion can be a cult, even if not the WHOLE religion
being a cult, just certain sects of it. A religion usually has no
ideas on how society should be run, instead, it's primarily concerned
with how people should act inside of a society; while a cult has
grandoise visions, usually related to totalitarianism. A religion
makes no statements about its followers being special or better than
anyone else, a cult likes to fulfill fantasies of its followers in
regards to their worth.
A cult generally has little to offer to people inside of the system.
Hence, the leader is usually very charismatic, and is especially good
at knowing who wants to hear what, but the message will conflict when
followers compare stories. This is because the leader is trying to be
"all things to all men", since the purpose is the elevation of his
ego, he/she wants as many people as possible to follow him.
Segregation is especially important, if not directly then indirectly,
talking to others outside the group when not necessary is forbidden. A
cult wants to pressure people, and it does so slowly usually. The
"boiling frog" theory. If you take a frog and place it into boiling
water, it jumps out. If you slowly turn up the temperature in the
water, the frog sits in it until it boils to death. In psychology,
this was proven by an campaign where people were asked if they would
put up a small sticker in support of clean Earth. Later on, they were
asked to put up a monstrous sign in their yard, and those who did the
small step first usually put up the big sign, especially when compared
to those who had not received the initial contact.
This is the reason why businesses will mail you things and say, "If
you don't wish to be a member, please cancel by checking this box and
sending the form back." In business lingo, it's called "putting your
foot in the door." People who check the box and send it back will be
more likely to buy things later on from the company. Cults start off
slow with what they ask their members to do, just small things the
person won't want to do, (i.e. a demonstration against abortion), but
over time they will increase the demands to outrageous proportions. A
religion shouldn't have increasing demands placed upon you. You may
voluntarily decide to get more actively involved within it, but it
should never be something which is not directly agreed to by you.
In essense, if we were to capsize this, the argument is that a
religion is about "empowerment", and a cult is about "disempowerment".
A person is empowered to the extent to which his/her needs are
translated into rights. To implement this change requires the proper
functioning of both the carrier and the agent, the individual and the
collective. To achieve empowerment is a constant battle of
influencing, persuading, chiding, commanding, and even forcing
situations and the people involved within the situations to react to a
set of values we produce, while simultaneously preventing them from
exerting their power over us. This empowerment is not a static field,
but is everywhere, manifested through both the written and unwritten
mediums, which include rules, regulations, manners, habits, personal
temperment, and social practice.
A religion is about empowerment, which involves people developing
capacities to act successfully within the existing system and
structures of power, and carries over to the individual to the
collective to achieve new goals and adapt to a changing environment. A
cult, by converse, is one that seeks to relegate the member to
disempowerment outside of the group, to take away personal freedom,
choice, and lifestyles.
Because of the abuse by researchers of cult/religion terminology, the
easiest way to get objective information about cult/religion
differentiation is to review literature written about abusive men in
relationship to their spouses. This is the best example of a cult,
(rampant Narcissistic Personality Disorder), played out on an
individual level. The abuser will typically look for a woman with
Dependant Personality Type. After getting together with his victim, he
begins taking measures to segregate her from acquaintences. This is
the boiling frog in action. After that, it becomes friends who aren't
too close, and from there, to close friends. Finally, he wants her to
sever off connections with intimate family members and those closely
connected.
From these criteria, we can see that the label "cult" is probably
overused in most cases, the actual usage being confined to a very few
movements. I would agree with a statement posed by Robert Wright in
"Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny", that a religion can't be
considered a meme if it helps the people whom it inhabits. Since a
cult is destructive rather than constructive, it's like a virus that
kills off its host before it can transmit itself to another host. You
don't have to worry about "wide-spread cult terror", because quite
simply, the mechanisms for replication are not sustainable.
Difference between religion and philosophy
"Religion...means the voluntary subjection of oneself to God."
The Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1913
"We have learned more about 'the religions,' but this has made us
perhaps less...aware of what it is that we...mean by 'religion.'"
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 1962
In trying to work out my dichotomy, I came across an interesing
article, which I would like to quote at some length, ("What is
Religion", by: Thomas Idinopulos, Cross Currents, Fall 98, Vol. 48,
Issue 3:
Although Theravada Buddhism is usually included in any book on the
world's religions, it is not theistic, recognizes no sacred being or
beings, and does not officially encourage worship of Buddha or any
"higher being" (despite popular veneration of the Buddha-ideal).
Theravada Buddhism appears to be a technique or program for human
self-purification or self-fulfillment or self-negation. If the word
religion is attached to Theravada Buddhism, done so loosely as to
allow the differences from other religions to prevail.......
We don't exactly know what we mean by the word, religion. We don't
know how to use the word or what constitutes a misuse of the word. It
would be convenient to assume that by "religion," we mean the
fetishisms, animisms, polytheisms, and monotheisms of the known
historic religions. It would also be convenient to assume that all the
religions were like branches of a large tree, with a visible trunk. If
we looked hard enough at the tree trunk we could discover a common
structure of meaning that would lead to an accurate, comprehensive,
and convincing definition of religion.
If what was already said about the diversity of religions is taken
seriously, we would not think that religions are branches of a single
tree. Therefore, no single definition of religion seems possible.
Efforts to define religion according to conceptions such as "the
supernatural," the dichotomy of "sacred and profane," and "ultimate
concern," may clarify aspects of religious expression, but they are
hardly adequate to the meaning of religion itself. Buddhism does not
easily accommodate references to the "supernatural." Nor does the
sacred/profane dichotomy do justice to the complexity of religious
feeling, which is often a mixture of the two. And the phrase "ultimate
concern" suffers from such vagueness that it hardly qualifies as a
general definition of religion. [See W. Richard Comstock, The Study of
Religion and Primitive Religions (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). See
also Comstock's probing article, "Toward Open Definitions of
Religion," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52, no. 3
(1986): 499-517.]
Certainly this is true of Dewey's definition of religion as "the
active relation between the ideal and the actual," and Whitehead's,
"what a man does with his solitariness"; or Westermark's more wordy
rendering, "a regardful attitude towards a supernatural being, on whom
man feels himself dependent and to whom he makes an appeal in his
worship."[Cited in Bernard Meland's Faith and Culture (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1953, 1972), 107; Gordon W.
Allport, The Individual and His Religion (New York: Macmillan
Paperbacks, 1960), 65.] These and similar definitions suffer from the
old Greek philosophical practice of hunting for essences among a
welter of related particulars.
In some places, the context for our argument must be made. According
to some, there must be a clear definitional boundary between
philosophies and religions. In this view, a philosophy is a system
that lends perspective to human existence through beliefs and
practices derived from the efforts of human reason, introspection, and
community discourse.
For example, Robin Horton, ("A definition of religion and its uses".
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, p. 212) definition of
religion as "an extension of social relationships beyond the confines
of purely human society" is clearly an attempt to define religion in
such a way that he can advance a specific hypothesis about social
relations and discourse about spiritual beings.
The problem with definining religion has been that up until recently,
there was no cross-cultural contact with other groups and
religions/philosophies, thus, the definition of religion had always
been somewhat narrow within this perspective. For example, Albert
Ellis has what he calls "Secular religions", (see his 1982 book),
which means that secular viewpoints that are defended with religious
zeal.
To examine this issue further, we shall look at one of the most
important founders of Communism, Moses Hess, the "father of German
socialism" who played the major part in winning Marx and Engels to
communism. He left religion from a Rabbi, and tried for the rest of
his life trying to get away from religion. Yet, in his own words, he
was never successful. In his diary, he writes:
"I worked without rest to rediscover my God, whom I had lost.... Nor
could I remain a skeptic for the rest of my life. I had to have a
God--and I did find him, after a long search, after a terrible
fight--in my own heart."
His new faith of choice was Communism. According to him, Christians
invest their hopes "in the image of...heavenly joy.... We, on the
other hand, want this heaven on earth."
Hess's socialism was of a piece with other new ideas flooding out of
German universities in the early 1800', and Isaiah Berlin tells us
that this was "to find in art or science the path to individual or
national salvation which the orthodox Christian churches seemed no
longer capable of providing for critical minds."
During the French Revolution, the Christian calendar was temporarily
replaced by one in which the days, months, and seasons were renamed
for plants and animals and types of weather. The Cathedral of Notre
Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason. Yet, Will and Ariel Durant
note, "a thousand superstitions survived side by side with the rising
enlightenment." Superstitious pseudo-religions and movements
popped-up, a crass mix of enlightenment and nonsense. (An example from
Britain is the church-like Halls of Science who held Sunday meetings.)
Diderot confessed that he could not watch religious processions
"without tears coming to my eyes." Emund O. Wilson said in his speech
upon receiving the 1999 Humanist of the Year Award that:
There is no doubt that spirituality and religious behavior of some
kind are extremely powerful and, it appears, necessary parts of the
human condition.... The inability of secular humanist thinkers to
satisfy this instinct, even when evidence and reason are on their
side, is surely part of the reason that there are only 5,300 members
of the American Humanist Association and 16 million members of the
Southern Baptist Convention.
Marx shares the history of the Bible perfectly. It's a tale of
redemption that divided time into three epochs: a distant past of
primitive contentment, a present of suffering and struggle, and a
future of harmony and bliss. It linked mankind's salvation to a
downtrodden class.
This begs the question though. Wasn't Marx a rabid atheist? No, he
wasn't. In his play, OULANEM, Marx admits that there is an eternal
life, except it is an eternal life of hatred. The chief object of
Marx's hatred was made clear in the "poem," "Invocation of One in
Despair":
"I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above." As no one
can hate, or desire revenge, against someone he claims to believe does
not even exist, Marx's suppressed writings clearly indicate that he
really believed two things about religion: 1. Marx believed in God. 2.
Marx hated God.
There's more to it than that. In early youth, Marx was a Christian.
The first of Marx's known works was entitled, "Unity of believers in
Christ according to the Gospel of John 15:1-14: Unity's meaning,
unconditional necessity, and influence." He writes:
"Union with Christ is found in a close and living fellowship with Him
and in the fact that we always have Him before our eyes and in our
hearts. And at the same time that we are possessed by the greatest
love of Him, we direct our hearts to our brothers, with whom He bound
us closely, and for whom He sacrificed Himself."
He continues:
"Therefore, unity with Christ internally exalts, comforts in trials,
and makes the heart open to love people, not because of our pride or
thirst for fame, but because of Christ."
He writes in his work entitled: "Thoughts of a young man before
choosing a profession":
"Religion teaches us the Ideal to Whom we all aspire. He has
sacrificed Himself for all mankind. Who will dare to deny such
assertions? If we have chosen a profession at which we may give our
best to mankind, then we won't falter under its burden, because it is
a sacrifice for all."
His high school diploma had it written that he knew a great deal about
christianity and its history. Captain Reese, who visited the Marx
house, looked for someone to talk to about Marx. He found a servant
who said: "He was a man with the fear of God. When he was very ill, he
used to pray alone in his room before burning candles, wound round his
head was something like tape."
Marx was heavily religious, Communism is really a disguised religion,
Marx could never hope to reconcile the contradictions between theology
and secular sciences, but perhaps by instead of making them seperate,
making them into one coherant unit, a new religion could be born,
called "Communism".
Norman Birnbaum, a sociologist, put it best: "Socialism in all its
forms was itself a religion of redemption."
To show what I mean, let's look at Francis Fukuyama's "End of History
and the Last Man", p. 373, f:2-3:
'Ernest Gellner, ("Nations and Nationalism" p. 1) "Nationalism as a
sentiment or as a movement, can best be defined in terms of this
principle [, that the political and national unit should be
congruent]. Nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by
the violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused
by its fulfillment. A nationalist movement is one actuated by a
sentiment of this kind."
This footnote corresponds to p. 214:
"The desire for recognition is also the psychological seat of two
extremely powerful passions -- religion and nationalism. By this I do
not mean that religion and nationalism can be reduced to the desire
for recognition; but the rootedness of these passions in thymos is
what gives them their great power. The religious believer assigns
dignity to whatever his religion holds sacred -- a set of moral laws,
a way of life, or particular objects of worship. He grows angry when
the dignity of what he holds sacred is violated."
In other systems of distinguishing between religion, it's not the
difference between religion and philosophy that is important, but
rather the difference between religion and magic. This leads to Emile
Durkheim's definition of religion:
"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to
sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs
and practices which unite into one single moral community called a
Church, all those who adhere to them."
Durkheim's ideas about religion meant it put four things together, a
set of collective beliefs, rituals to enforce those beliefs, the
sacred, and the Church which makes those things social. The last part,
the inherent nature of religion to be social, is the mark that
Durkheim uses to distinguish it from being a mere form of magic. In
short, the context of what the author defining "religion" is trying to
use will invariably change what that definition is.
This article is taken from these resources, in no particular order:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/judaismcomments.htm This has some good
quotes by Jews about Karl Marx, but some of the sources of information
are less-than-reputable.
http://www.crosscurrents.org/whatisreligion.htm That article is
available online, partially reprinted here.
http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/taem02j.htm
http://www.wyzwanie.com/deists.htm Offers a good general overview of
Deism.
http://www.cultsandsociety.com/infoserv_aff/aff_termcultp1.htm
The original article that this appeared under is no longer available,
one of the irks of using online resources. To find it, look under a
webcrawler that uses a cache system and type this in:
http://pears2.lib.ohio-state.edu/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/herbre.htm
www.avetra.org.au/abstracts-papers/07_brown.pdf
http://www.forerunner.com/predvestnik/X0013_Karl_Marx.html
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/courses/207/ 12-Definition-Durkheim.pdf
(Special thanks to Ole Wolf for some of this information).