• IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    451·
    13 hours ago

    “I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”

    • George Carlin.

    Cults are built on the power of belief and the more people who believe in a movement the more powerful it becomes.

    If ten thousand cult worshipers claimed their leader walked on water, how would you go about convincing them otherwise, even if you had proof.

    Look at Islam or Christianity or Judaism, they influence the world but they’re all only built on the power of belief.

    And you can equate religions and cults because the only difference between the two is time.

    • Isoprenoid@programming.devEnglish
      8·
      10 hours ago

      And you can equate religions and cults because the only difference between the two is time.

      There is more difference than time. Cults require a charismatic, authoritarian leader, religions do not. One can be religious and autonomous in practice.

      Religions can be open source and decentralised, cults cannot.

      • Magiilaro@feddit.org
        5·
        9 hours ago

        At least both Christianity and Islamic religions started as cults and became religions. Christianity was even a sect of people believing in the coming of the end times, that’s what the revelation in the new testament is for.

        A sect or a cult is always the root of any new religion and often new sects or cults are the offspring of an older religion. Religion, cults and sects are as concepts interconnected.

        • Isoprenoid@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          Religion, cults and sects are as concepts interconnected.

          Oh, for sure. These ideas are related, but to claim that they are only separable by time is disingenuous.

          • Magiilaro@feddit.org
            1·
            7 hours ago

            Oh no, I never said that they are only separable by time but that one is the predecessor or root of the other and that religions can spawn new cults of their own.

            It can’t only be time that transforms the one into the other, because otherwise we would have 100th of religions right now from all the sects and cults that have existed in the past.

    • spamfajitas@lemmy.world
      2·
      7 hours ago

      As authorized by the House of Apostles of Eris, I’m a card-holding genuine Pope. So are you and so is everyone who reads this message, if they so wish.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        5 hours ago

        My favorite example of this is the idea of money and finance.

        There are trillions and trillions of dollars worth of imaginary wealth everywhere. None of it can be backed by actual product or material … it all exists because we all collectively believe that it exists.

        It’s our modern day religion and we all believe in it and worship it daily … All Hail Money!

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          2·
          3 hours ago

          True, although most wealth is held in the form of things other than money, which represent a legal right to power over various things, like who can live in what house, and what thousands of people at a company will spend their time working on.