QUOTE (Voodoo dog @ Apr 22 2005, 12:55 PM)
I have to disagree with you. I think there is only one difference between cults and religions, and this is it.
Religions are accepted by society.
Cults aren't.
And I guess I'm going to have to disagree with
you. My own opinions on this are posted above. To address your individual points...
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The only reason the church does not do this is because it doesn't have to. It has had all the members its needed for centuries.
Hahahaha. You try telling a hardcore Catholic priest that the Church 'has all the members it needs'.
![tongue.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
(oh god these smileys are hideous)
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They DID however try to get people to come to them and their way of life when they were starting out. And they didn't do it by knocking on doors and passing out leaflets, I tell ye that.
They didn't do any of that stuff when they were 'just starting out', because they were poor and lowly losers persecuted by the Romans (and Christianity wasn't a religion at this point, just a philosophy). They didn't become a religion until after Jesus was martyred, and I doubt that Jesus had anything to do with the mass-killings and forcible recruitment that happened after Christianity really took off. As I said, his future followers are always doing nasty things to people who don't agree with the way they see things. Most religions have this in common.
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To this I have to say - monks. Monks and nuns. Not only are these people asked to give up their sexual lifes, but depending on the order they joined, they can also be asked to cut themselves off completely from the outside world, staying in the monastary or convent for the rest of their lives.
Firstly, to me monks and nuns are not generally considered part of 'the flock' in general. They're more like recruiters. My main reasoning behind this is that the flock give money to the Church each Sunday, and the monks and nuns just cater to them in order to get it. Incidentally, this is indeed a trait that the Church shares with cults (manipulative money extraction), but they do use at least *some* of it to help their flock, which is distinctly uncult-like... and the main goal of the Church is to accumulate 'souls' rather than cash (although some certain sections seem confused on this). In terms of the flock as a whole, the 'give up sex' part still relates to their behaviour
in the community. As does the 'pray to God on a daily basis' part, and the 'persecute gays' part.
Incidentally, you seem to have a major issue with the no-sex teachings of the church, more than any other.
![tongue.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
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Oh, and as for the big J being a humanitarian, you are obviously not familiar with the following extract from the bible.
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. " -- Luke 14:26
I hope you'll excuse me if I don't take a stand-alone Bible quote too seriously. See, I'd interpret that passage to mean, "If you aren't a bitter, twisted, miserable old cunt, then there's no point in my telling you how to be happy and nice (because you'd already know)", rather than "I encourage you to reject your family and adhere yourself to me alone". I don't have a Bible in this flat, so I can't check the context, but as it stands, you can't say I'm wrong, and I can't say you're wrong. As I'm sure you're aware, the Bible is utterly open to interpretation, and pretty much anyone can twist a passage around to prove a point. I've had people quoting passages that 'prove' Jesus hated gay people (I'm sure you have too), and I bet I could find passages to prove he hated trees and rocks if I look around enough.
As far as I'm concerned, Jesus and Buddha had pretty much the same philosophy. Buddhists have just generally interpreted it better.
And since you didn't address it, I'll put it to you again why it's so important for you to prove that the Church is a cult. If you just want to discredit them, you don't have to change their label... I'm interested to know what your take is on this.
Also, on the topic of that irritating HTML... is this happening to anyone else? Do you have some class of virus or something...?