Does anyone here think there is too much religious entitlement here on DU?

[eomer]

444. Right, I think the more interesting discussion is about the substance, not the semantics.

The terms tend to obfuscate more than elucidate in this case, in my opinion. That's because the things of substance that we should be concerned about can occur in entities that may or may not fit into whatever definition we settle on for "cult" and "religion".

For example, there are men in our US military whose religion is the cause of them seeking combat duty in order to kill people. Some of them have used rifle scopes with verses of scripture on the lenses. It's also common to see bombs on which religion-inspired messages have been written, sometimes also by women and children. All these people are probably some minority percentage of the religion that drives them but because the religion is large then a small percentage is still enough to be a significant harm.

There are obviously other examples of religions that cause similar harm, both currently and historically. So in my opinion the distinction between cult and religion isn't so important. What's important to me is the aspects of religion/cult that can cause these kinds of harm.