Its been said in similar words before.

I don't remember who said it,

"The difference between a religion and a cult are the numbers of members"

Trite comments aside, serious researchers never use the term “cult” due to the negative connotation. The accepted term is “New Religious Movement” (NRM here after).

The distinction is important to social scientists as there really is no single thing that would make a “cult” into something meriting individual attention.

In the general public view, the word cult is associated with the concept of a group being dangerous in some very vaguely define way. However, there is a problem with this. How do you define an injury to an individual in the sense that it was done in the name of religion (NRM or old line belief)?

Let me offer three ideas and see how they stack up:

1. 1. Being “brain washed” into a cult. Honestly, the idea of brain washing is not an accepted medical term. NRM research uses the term “influenced” to remain somewhat neutral. That much being said, NRMs are often observed to use fairly subtle techniques that may take many months to soften up an individual. Often this may take a couple or three years to get the sucker ready to swallow what the religious leader has as an agenda.

    

2. 2. Being “deprogrammed” out of an NRM. This process is rarely, if ever subtle. It is usually brutal and takes, at the most, a few weeks. If there is such a thing as a psychic form of shock, this would be far worse that the process that gets someone sucked into an NRM.

    

3. 3. Being raised from early childhood into one of the old line religions. Excuse me but these are the ones that are probably the most dangerous. People take what they are given because they have never known anything else. If you are told lies from the time you are on your mother's knee, how are you going to even hope to have the intellectual tools to determine that they are lies?

Seriously, I have met ardent RC members who seriously believe that there are Satanists in the world who use the fat of unbaptized babies to make ritual candles. In two of those cases, the specific people got to check number 666 and tore it into small bits on the grounds that nothing good can come from paying the phone bill with that particular check.

When I realized that I was getting close to that check myself, I pulled it out early and sent $20 to the Continental Association of Satan's Hope. They provided specific instructions to make all checks payable to C.A.S.H. Just to be a rude fuck, I spelled it out the long way with the C.A.S.H. Bit in parentheses at the end of the line. I am sure that 70% of the people who may have looked at that check were scaldalized and the rest got a chuckle over the matter.

Even so, I would submit that the greatest injury to a person will be option #3 followed by option #2. Option #1 will be trailing despite the idea that there is a public perception that Option #3 is reasonable and option #1 is dangerous.

I will also mention that option #3 is the one that has the reputation for buggering small boys.