Can some one explain it to me?

I like your screen name . . . Really, by definition, a cult is a gathering of people who have beliefs that are not accepted by all others. So, in essence, there is no difference. You might even say that people who shop at WalMart are a cult, because I don't believe in shopping there. Or maybe it is I and other non-WalMart-shoppers who are the cult. Regardless . . .

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Cults charge money and phsically restrict freedom. Religions ask for money and instruct you not to exercise freedom.

how's that? anyone who doesn't want to make the tired point that religions and cults are the same thing want to try their hand at an answer to this tricky question?

Cults tend to be very secretive about belief systems and their interworkings where as religions are not. Most new religions are considered cults until more is known about them.

How's that for an answer that does not reek of hostility to all religions?

triciebird, that's an excellent distinction.

I guess, then, all religions start out as cults? Then, after we get to know them better, we upgrade them to religions.

um, no, not if what i and triciebird say are true. Care to offer refutations of our distinctions?

Really, i am not a believer in ANYTHING supernatural but i think it is the height of lazy and cynical thinking to claim that cults are the same as religions. I know of PLENTY of religions--in fact, just about all of them--which treat their congregants with respect. My family is Catholic, and I have friends who are Episcopalian, Lutheran, Jewish of the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform types, Buddhists, and even a friend who goes to a Unitarian Universalist church. And though I tease my Baptist friend that her religion is very cult-like, with its restrictions on dress and drinking and its counter-rational fundamentalism, STILL I know that her church leaders respect her as a human being. Cults do not, and everyone knows that. People who claim that religions are the same as cults are simply trying to make an antireligious political point. Anti-religious points may need to be made, but the points ought to be true. A cult is a separate problem from the problem of religion, and everyone knows that.

I truly believe that most of the laypeople involved in religion/church-going efforts are good, decent, non-cult type people. However, in my own personal studies of religious histories, there is a great deal of secrecy involved within the workings of them--either in their establishment or in their maintenance that ordinary people--the GOOD people--are unaware of. It's the sad truth. The only thing we can do is go on being good, in spite of what some of the religious "leaders" may have done (or continue to do) in the name of their religion.

Do members of Scientology believe they are Christians?

Rhainnon, please tell me you are joking...

I assume Rhainnon is not joking. There's nothing shameful in being ignorant of Scientology's bizarre precepts.

To answer the question: No, not at all. They got their own crazy thing going that has nothing to do with the Bible or any other religious tradition whatsoever.

I don't know if upgrade is the right word to use but essentially yes. And there are many cults that never become religions because they refuse to let anyone really know what's going on. It's really at that point that they are continued to be viewed as cult like, when an attempt is made by outsiders to know what is going on inside and they can't or worse they do learn what inside, perhaps by clandestine means, and are threated if they were to reveal it.

Keep in mind too cult is often used as a put down on certain faiths, even though they are well know though the world.

A cult IS a religion. It may or may not be a religious denomination -- if you take the difference.

Traditionally, the term "cult" did not have particularly negative connotations -- just referred to a sub-culture within the broader religious society. In the Catholic Church, for example, there were many cults dedicated to the veneration of particular saints, etc.

In the more modern use of the term, it is usually applied to those groups -- which may or may not exist as formally organized religious entities, that set themselves apart from the broader society. Of course that is a subjective call, as to some extent, nearly all religious organizations in some ways set themselves apart.

In the more negative connotations of the term, it often involves highly authoritative leadership, whose membership accept that authority over their whole lives.

The terms "cult" and "religion" are obviously quite personal. "Religion" as we know it are an established set of dogmas and beliefs by a culture. It grew organically based on the needs and goals of the group in question: Jews in Israel, Busshists in India, whatever the case.

A "cult" generally means an inorganic designed set of rules and goals with an aim, traditionally to gain money from the followers or achieve a cataclysmic event like an apocolypse.

On the topic of Scientology there are many arguments but I would side with calling it a cult. While it can be looked at in terms of an increasinly secularized society needing modern answers derived more from alternative established science like new theories on psychology versus the needs of an ancient and outdated people, its clear pyramid structure suggests a larger purpose: money. Anything we have traditionally viewed as a religion would take in any willing member who could prove their adaptability (race based religions would put an overemphasis on the latter). Scientology does not: if you are poor, you cannot be a Scientologist, plain and simple.