Is the only difference between a cult and a religion the number of participants?
>>679355
Yes, unless one of them is correct, then it's all but that one.
A cult has a central structure that exists to profit the leaders of it, and practices designed to extact profit for the leaders of it, ala Mormonism and Scientology.
A religion has either never had such structure or it has atrophied to the point where no single group of people can profit directly from it, and there are no practices that exist solely to generate profit for the cult leader(s), ala Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam.
>>679391
>Christianity isn't just a bunch of cults
>>679397
There's plenty of cults within Christianity, but not every Christian is a member of a cult.
Compare this to Mormonism wherein every member of the Church pays corporate executives to give them salvation.
>>679391
Those are some fairly loose definitions, anon. I've seen plenty of both that could easily be interchangeable there.
>What's the difference between a cult and a religion?
About 500 years. If a cult survives for about 500 years it gains enough gravitas and "ivy on its walls," so to speak, to become a real religion.
A religion is a cult that lives on after the creator who profiteered from it died.
>>679418
the word christian is a fluke desu, i personally believe that a lot of so called "Christians" in america are basically new age cult followers our something.
i mean those revival tent churches & what you see in mega churches are basically small cults, that use a already existing framework.
if not for the bible nothing would be able to be compared, fucking Sunni's and shia's have more in common then all these Christians.
The difference is one gets special tax status and the other doesn't.
>>679418
That's a very eloquent and succinct way of putting it way. Never thought of it that way.
