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Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

In summary, every religion.

One criteria that's fairly defining of a cult, by my definition, is major operational secrecy. People who join don't know what the higher-ups are doing. Indeed, they often don't know the fundamental doctrines of the cult! E.g. people who join Scientology don't get the whole "God is a space alien" package dropped on them until they're many, many $10,000s down the hole already.

Now, let's take Catholicism, probably the major faith most often accused of cult-like behaviour. It certainly has some of the most political structure and (pardon the pun) orthodoxy of the major religions. But Catholicism is also extremely open. There are no fees to join. There are no mandatory payments. There are no doctrinal secrets. They're entirely open about everything they believe, up front. You don't get whacked with some dark secret ten years in. They also don't really attempt to control most, let alone all, domains of of members' lives. They go about careers, etc. as they see fit. They're also tolerant of internal criticism and dissent; you've got some Cardinals in favour of gay marriage, and some of the loudest voices about the systematic sex abuse problem (one of the biggest reasons one might call them a cult) are coming from adherent Catholics, who aren't automatically excommunicated or given other traditionally cult-like handling for their dissent.

Such difference seems very significant to me. And I'm an atheist and decidedly anti-religious, for what it's worth.

> Now, let's take Catholicism ... They also don't really attempt to control most, let alone all, domains of of members' lives.

Really?

"The Catholic position on contraception was formally explained and expressed by Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae in 1968. Artificial contraception is considered intrinsically evil, but methods of natural family planning may be used, as they do not usurp the natural way of conception."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_birth_contr...

Having a strong stance in one domain != moral totalitarianism. Some branches of Jainism recommends brushing the sidewalk ahead of you so as to avoid destroying any insects unnecessarily. A totalitarian religion controlling all aspects of life? Or just a profoundly intense moral doctrine that, naturally, has ramifications throughout many aspects of life if you accept it?

This is a doctrine that's famously ignored by most practicing Catholics. I could write paragraphs of criticism of the Catholic Church, but it's not really any more cult-like than lots of other organizations that people belong to (the most obvious example being the organizations that they work for).

>Such difference seems very significant to me.

Thank you for your honesty. As a Catholic it's interesting to hear the perspective of an atheist on this topic.

Christianity rejects at a philosophical level any sort of dependence on 'secret information'. The teachings of the Catholic Church should stand up to scrutiny and there is nothing to hide.

> every religion

The world's beliefs are many and varied. There are plenty of religious groups that provide a foundation for a healthy life instead of insisting they are the only means to achieving it.

You'll be hardpressed to apply this list of grievances to the average Buddhist community, for instance. Sikhs, Jains, Baha'i, Quakers -- many more come to mind.

You know, I was just thinking about how closely the Baha'i communities I knew fit this definition. #1 and #6 apply to Baha'u'llah, of course, but since he's been dead for quite a while it's less of an issue. More concerningly, they could plausibly be applied to many LSA, NSA, and UHJ members: there are explicit injunctions in the writings against using the secular legal system to resolve disputes among Baha'is, and in most communities there are people in the LSA who the LSA will definitely never rule against in any dispute. In general, criticizing members of the LSA, NSA, or UHJ is strongly discouraged as "creating disunity", even more strongly than publicly criticizing other people.

#2 and #3 are pretty extreme. If you have social contact with a Covenant-Breaker you are likely to lose your voting rights.

#4 is of course somewhat true because most Baha'is know someone who has been imprisoned or killed (in Iran) for being Baha'i, or at least know someone who knows someone. You'd have to be pretty irrational not to be somewhat paranoid under those circumstances.

I'm not sure what is meant by #5, but shame of course has a prominent place in the Baha'i faith, as in any religion.

Going through the list, though, I think that to a significant extent it's just a rough definition of "religion" or "culture", plus elements of leadership. Is Thomas Jefferson "above the law"? Is Muhammad? Of course they are, you can't prosecute them. Is the US Government? Yes, it has "sovereign immunity". You'd be hard-pressed to find any culture that didn't consider itself superior to the outgroup, yet vulnerable to attacks from it, or that didn't enforce some degree of ideological conformity, or that didn't shame deviations from its norms.

This may be a fun r/atheism tier quip, but most eastern religions don't fit this mold, being too vaguely defined/unorganized for any cult analogies to apply.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2MD3NMLBPCqPfnfre/cached-tho...

What I like about this article is that the author suffers from the very phenomenon they are describing, demonstrating how ubiquitous and hard to detect in oneself it is.

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