Scientology: Cult or new religion?

Define "cult"

No fair using a dictionary.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius


It's "Bob" not Bob.

 

Cult. It is typically used in two contexts: religion and fandom. The meaning of the word is the same in both contexts! I'll talk about the latter first.

C-SPAN and it's creator Brian Lamb, has a cult following. Certain movies are cult classics. That a movie can have a cult following eliminates a charismatic leader from the definition.

The Branch Davidians were a cult. Catholics consider Mormons a cult.

The common elements seem to me to be the size of the following/flock and the orthodoxy of the subject matter. I'd say that an element of brainwashing is involved, and the connotation of the word "cult" raises the image (to me) of kidnappings+brainwashing=new members.

Given that there are millions of members of Scientology world-wide, it's not small enough that I'd consider it a cult (as in the Davidians). It has an actual belief system behind it, so it qualifies as religion.

It's a work in progress, though. At one point, all of Christianity was a cult, for sure. It's grown far beyond that, obviously. Scientology faces some of the same biases against it that early Christianity did, particularly conflict with States.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Max @ Jan 10 2008, 11:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>My Theory on Christianity is that when we were Mere Cavemen they beleived in Gods to explain unexplainable forces, Fire, Thunder that kinda stuff. And all the religions left are just what people Choose to beleive after the Unexplainable things were Finally Explained.</div>

We don't understand something so we explain it with something we understand even less. God did it.

 

God is as good an answer to the questions that science can't answer as anything else is...

There is scientific evidence of a Big Bang to start the Universe. There is no answer as to what caused it, or how the initial matter got there.

An equally interesting question is where all the hydrogen in the universe came from. Without it, there'd be no stars. It had to be there from the beginning, and in massive quantities.

 

The monotheistic god always did and always will exist.

When it comes to the universe, there was a big debate between a "steady state" universe, which is similar in concept - always did and always will exist. Of course, the Big Bang Theory is what is in vogue these days.

I have more obvious questions:
1) Scientists say they have a decent picture of milliseconds after the big bang. How about milliseconds before?
2) If the Big Bang occurred 15B years ago, then the universe should only be 30B light years across (it's a sphere) yet it's considerably larger.
3) If you stood at the edge of the universe and took one step outward, where would you be?

 

Max,

I envision it this way...

There's an infinite void, a true void. What we call the "universe" fills only part of it, and is growing and expanding to fill more of it. What we call space isn't a void, it's filled with "stuff" like particles and dust and radiation. The void would not contain anything like that at all, a true void.

So if you stepped out beyond the edge of the universe, you'd be in that void.

This is not consistent with the universe being bigger than 30B light years tho. If everything started as a singularity at the center of the universe 15B years ago, the big bang would send stuff out in all directions, in the shape of a sphere. It is accepted that the speed of light cannot be exceeded, so a radius from the center of the sphere would be 15B light years and the diameter would be 30B light years.

However, space/time is seen as a fabric that stretches. So it has stretched at the same time things are expanding, so from the very edge of it to the opposite very edge of it is considerably bigger than the 30B light years.

If this is possible, then standing on the edge and moving one step outward would simply expand the space/time fabric by one step.

Pick yer poison