Talk:Cult (religious practice)/Archive 1

Request for editing help with "Bahá'í Faith"
Currently the editing of the Bahá'í Faith entry (and related entries) is dominated by Bahá'ís, who take the opportunity to downplay criticisms and in general slant their information in predictable directions. Please consider this a call for non-Bahá'í editors to come have a look at the site, and help ensure balance. Thank you. Dawud 10:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * ...but the same could be said of Roman Catholic Church etc etc... --Wetman 20:31, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * ...or of Latter-day Saint or as you said, etc. etc. etc. ... Rick Boatright 16:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I see what you say about the Bahá'í page, but after battling this same thing with the Nation Of Islam and the 5% people it becomes a case of people stubbornly wanting to get a point across, they are going to stick to it and edit, edit edit until it refelects their view. I guess this is the weakness of wiki.

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CAUTION *** Psychological War Zone *** Newcomers __ http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Caution.htm

Bahá'í fundamentalists are highly adept at manipulating and controlling information / disinformation and public perception, on and off the Internet.

I caution you that appearances are deceiving on Wikipedia, talk.religion.bahai and alt.religion.bahai, as elsewhere in Bahá'í cyberspace, BeliefNet, Talisman9, "unenrolled" Bahá'í Yahoo Group, the DMOZ and Google directories, and so on, all of which have been prime arenas of Bahá'í propaganda and used to identify and manage dissent.

For a historical perspective, "The Bahá'í Technique": http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/technique.htm

Shunning & Slander > Menu http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Shunning.htm

Also see comments regarding talk.religion.bahai on Usenet http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Usenet.htm

Bahá'í-apologetics & BCCA (Bahá'í Computer and Communication Association) http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/BCCA_Ap.htm

-- Frederick Glaysher The Bahá'í Faith & Religious Freedom of Conscience http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/
 * This is someone who hasn't read the article. --Wetman 22:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Rendering the definition meaningless
"By extension, "cult" has come to connote the total cultural aspects of a religion, as they are distinguished from others through change and individualization." "Total cultural aspects". This is just some individual's blurred impression. If the meaning of cult is this broad, it is without useful meaning at all. Cult=cultus. This person misconnects it as a synonym of culture. Can we eliminate this assertion? --Wetman 22:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation Fix
Can someone help me fix the vision link in this article.

Its not visual perception like most of the articles I've fixed.

Its one of hallucination, precognition or prediction but what term would be most suitable?

Thanks in advance FlyHigh 19:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Cult Centers
Some discussion of cult centers, cities in which the cult of a particular deity were centered, is warranted in this article. I am not qualified to contribute much, but I have started a subheading that can be further elaborated. 70.144.30.122 (talk) 13:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Get rid of Cult infobox.
Why in the world would we simultaneously include the Cult infobox, and at once say at the article's beginning "This article... does not discuss religious or sociological cultist groups" 198.49.180.254 18:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC) Um, how about.... because it doesn't say that? Way to read.Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 14:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

okie dokie
hilarious...

"Among the observances in the cult are rituals, ceremonies, liturgy or audits, which may involve spoken or sung words, and often involve personal sacrifice. Other manifestations of the cult of a deity are the preservation of relics or the creation of images, such as icons (usually connoting a flat painted image) or three-dimensional cultic images, denigrated as "idols", and the specification of sacred places, hilltops and mountains, fissures and caves, springs, pools and groves, or even individual trees or stones, which may be the seat of an oracle or the venerated site of a vision, apparition, miracle or other occurrence commemorated or recreated in cult practices. Sacred places may be identified and elaborated by construction of shrines and temples, on which are centered public attention at religious festivals and which may become the center for pilgrimages."

if that passage doesn't describe a cult then i don't know what does —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.70.62.80 (talk) 23:43, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * How can we word this article clearly enough so that the simplest reader gets the meaning of "cult"?--Wetman (talk) 13:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Possible Solution?
This article is plagued by misunderstandings of the word cult, as well as a lack of content. What might solve both of these problems is a description of several cults of antiquity. Specifically, ones which would not fit into the modern-day definition of a cult. I would provide examples, but all I'm coming up with are Bacchanalia, who were pretty fucked up people, and probably wouldn't help. :P 68.102.237.253 (talk) 03:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The Bacchanalia is a rite or festival, not people, etiam ecfututi, diffututi, confututi. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * "Hey, guy. Despite not having anything to contribute to the discussion at hand, I'm going to whine about something you said." 68.102.237.253 (talk) 06:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

opinion and suggestion for new definition
I believe a relevant issue here with our user base on wikipedia is the feeling that we, free-source contributors, are limited by other dictionaries and other encyclopedias when defining terms. Let us create a new definition for the word "cult." Such a new definition does need not be so far different from the common definition but could be more specific, logical, and so true to its etymology.

cult: 1617, "worship," also "a particular form of worship," from Fr. culte, from L. cultus "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," pp. of colere "to till" (see colony). Rare after 17c.; revived mid-19c. with reference to ancient or primitive rituals. Meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829.

Perhaps the word 'cult' should be defined as 'the care or cultivation of.' As a past particable of Latin "colere," which means "to cultivate," "cultus" meant "did cultivate." Being that cult is from cultus, such a definition should be that cult means 'the care or cultivation of' in a past tense; how ever, as there is no present such tense other than the word 'care,' whose past particable is currently "cared," cult can be a unique word--both of past and present tense.

The agricultural meaning, between cult and cultus, may have been long ago lost, forgotten through ignorance and inhibition, but may be still used (though considered archaic). As many ancient forms of worship involved animal worship and other nature worships, exempli gratia sun worship and moon worship, (and may be studied with wikipedia's "animal worship" article), I do presume that such is the reason for the current connection between cult and religion.

Distinguishing between the words 'cult' and 'religion,' I would propose religion to be the same as cult, where one cult would be less established than a religion. Where a religious sect(ion) is a theo-/philosophically unique sub-religion, a religious cult is a less established theologically unique sub-religion or less established theologically unique religion. By my definition, Christianity was a cult of Judaism until it became so established and unique that it was able to be considered a religion; Mormonism was a cult of Christianity (of which section, or denomination, I am not so much aware or concerned), and is considered to still be by a majority, until it became so established and unique that it was able to be considered a religion; Anglicanism, also known as English Catholicism, is not so theologically removed, unique, from Christianity to be considered a cult, as much as it is theo-/philosophically unique and so may be considered a sect of Roman Catholicism--a sect of Christianity, the most simplified and old cult of Jesus Christ. Anglicanism, how ever, is so established that it is now considered equal to Roman Catholicism as a sect of Christianity and so much be considered, while catholic, the Church of England, not English Catholic.

Ancient cults such as Indian and Greek cults idolized an animal or God separate and perhaps above or removed from other animals or Gods that were also the subjects of such religions. Current cults of religions may also revere an other above others or even an out side influence, being a development of that master religion. Cults of cults do not usually exist due to the relative unestablished nature of that potential master cult; two separate cults of one master religion, though, are much more usual. As a religion is merely an established religious cult, a religious cult an unestablished religion, an unestablished and unique religion with no master religion, (not a sub-religion), would be considered merely a cult. The barrier between establishment and obscurity, whether kept by the need or desire for secrecy, by the hate or misunderstanding of extraneous persons, may keep a cult one. An example of such aforementioned religious cult, in modern context, is the Church of Scientology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WiZeNgAmOtX (talk • contribs) 09:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a place for personal essays: see the guidelines at Original research.--Wetman (talk) 17:01, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Hegel
Hegel should probably get a section here, but I don't have a basis of knowledge to attempt such a thing. But see this. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete this whole page
As is stated on the the main Wikipedia page for this term, the word "cult" has become a derogatory term used to describe beliefs which the writer does not approve of. The word "cult" is rarely used when discussing religious practices any more, except among a small group of comparative religion professors and their devoted graduate students. The word "cult" is not a scientific term, it is a judgmental term.

Using a derogatory word to describe religious practices other than your own is not acceptable neutral language in an encyclopedia. Even if I do not practice Islam, I would be wrong to describe it as a cult on Wikipedia, as I would be wrong to describe Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. as a cult.

Let's just describe people's religious systems, practices, doctrines, and structures as accurately as we can and stop using this outright judgmental and hostile word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.239.73 (talk) 23:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I agree, right after we delete the gay article, because the word is overwhelmingly used in a derogatory sense, even overwhelmingly so among teenagers. Good luck with that, or with any kind of such hack-and-slash approaches to lexicography. --dab (𒁳) 09:21, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse
— Assignment last updated by Nikpapageorgio (talk) 19:21, 14 July 2022 (UTC)