discuss

this conversation made me a) remember how much i love my friends (not that i forget, but u know what i mean), b) wish i was in grad school, c) or at least outside somewhere with coffee and cigarettes, actually having the conversation in person, with some guest appearances and opinions from my other intelligent and equally as prone to these types of disscusions, friends.



MATTY: yah i'd really like to get an honest opinion about what differentiates a cult from a religion...is it simply the amount of people who believe in it?
ME: ha
ME maybe
ME there is a fine line
ME i was gonna say maybe it has something to do with history
ME like the documents and so forth that support the major religions, are mad old
ME but
ME then there's the mormens
MATTY: hehe i was about to say that
ME and some weird hick in upstate ny just invented that
ME so yeah
ME what makes mormens not a cult?
ME is it just how far you deviate along the "accepted" spectrum?
ME they come pretty damn close
MATTY: i guess so...has never made sense to me tho...i find it so funny how these religious sites will have these articles about cults saying how insane they are...and then the next article will be about how the virgin mary showed up in a coffee stain...open ur eyes assholes
ME lol
ME read the first paragraph of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
ME that makes it seem like it really is just about numbers
ME if u have a lot of ppl, then it must not be taboo, if u don't, ur crazy
MATTY: yah it does seem to indicate it has to do with both membership and length of time
ME so like the mormens were a cult, but they just stuck
ME and grew
ME and now they're a religion, that no one really respects or understands
ME so they're still half cult like
MATTY: this entry seems to be grappling with the exact question we were tho...in terms of what makes a cult different...and is it necessarily negative
ME rt
ME according to the one theoligical definition
ME then judiasm
ME is a cult
ME as is islam
MATTY: this is the definition most americans adhere to...tho it's the 6th one listed... A religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader;
ME yeah but even that is such a fine line, what defines something as unorthodox can be so subjective
ME as is conventional society as that's fluid over time
ME and, every religion has charasmatic leaders
MATTY: true dat



so? comments?