Earlier you insinuated that scientology was small,
No I didn't. I said scientology isn't a cult. My reasoning was that it's too big. You're just bad at listening.
You claim that this is because it's bad to have a word for a secretive group whose members lose personal autonomy or is otherwise particularly abusive
No I don't. You really need to work on your listening skills. I'm saying that using an already existing word, which already describes a set of marginalised groups, as a slur is bad. For example, suppose white Christians went around saying that "person of colour" means criminal. That would be horrible, right? Do you understand why? It's because using a term that already describes vulnerable people as a bad word is bad.
A cult is a small religion. Scientology is big. The new definition platforms ahistorical biases that attack smaller religions, particularly those with hundreds of years of history as cults, through linguistic association with abuse. That's bad. It perpetuates satanic panic dogma.
In Star Trek Voyager, pilot Tom Paris creates a custom shuttlecraft called the Delta Flyer. Tom's a history geek who spends his holodeck time repairing antique muscle cars from the 20th century. So naturally, he designs the Delta Flyer with lots of analogue switches and dials instead of the usual Starfleet Okudagram touch screens. He thinks they're much better.
You're using a definition invented whole cloth by Christian pastors in the 70s with absolutely no basis in historical tradition, which was created solely with the intent of confusing people in order to push a political agenda.
That's a measure of the abusiveness of a religion and has nothing to do with its size. I already explained in depth in another comment the political motivations for creating a second, fake definition of the word cult. If you consult Merriam Webster you'll see the first definition of the word cult is "a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious", and none of the definitions mention abuse, because your claim is ahistorical myth.
The Cult Awareness Network presented itself as a source of information about "cults"; by 1991 it was monitoring over 200 groups that it referred to as "mind-control cults". It also promoted a form of coercive intervention by self-styled "deprogrammers" who would, for a significant fee, forcibly detain or even abduct the cult member and subject them to a barrage of attacks on their beliefs, supposedly in order to counter the effects of the brainwashing. The practice, which could involve criminal actions such as kidnapping and false imprisonment, generated controversy, and Ted Patrick and others faced both civil and criminal proceedings.
Gee, I fucking wonder why they lost that lawsuit. Scientologists are evil, but so was the Cult Awareness Network. You're not going to convince anyone that those assholes were doing the right thing. You can't expect a bunch of kidnappers to have a good opinion about what is and isn't a cult. Scientology is a large scale religion, which makes it much worse than a cult. Now I don't want to hear you defending the Scientologists by calling them a cult again.
Were you paying attention earlier in the thread when I said cults are small, or are you expecting me to investigate Scientology and find that surprise, they're actually very small and don't have many members?
You can do science on any made up word and reach genuine conclusions with flawed premises. Look at phrenology and scientific racism. If you ignore the question "is this thing real?" and skip straight to "what are the associations with this thing", you'll find something. It'll be nonsense, but it'll be there.
For example, suppose I look at the habits of clowns and roofers. I don't question why clowns and roofers are associated, I just assume they are and check the data. The data I find will be the overlay of two different trends. I'll reach all sorts of conclusions about clowns that are only true of roofers, and vice versa. The data will say clowns love a good beer after being outdoors all day, and roofers visit party stores a lot. That's nonsense, but if I don't question the association, the data will show it.
Associating small religions with abusive religions is the same mistake. The data will tell you all sorts of things about small and abusive religions, but it won't tell you which trend belongs to which group, and people will make all sorts of wrong assumptions based on the wacky data.
I believe in water mountain. Just one of it. And it's round. That's why ships always disappear the same distance away if your height is the same, and why they disappear further away if you're higher up, again with a predictable relationship. The water mountain surrounds two thirds of the earth, and goes all the way around the round earth.
That's a myth perpetuated by Christian mums during the satanic panic. Back in the 60s the hippie movement was in full swing and young people were abandoning Christianity to follow pagan religions like Wicca and Hellenism. Christian pastors felt threatened, so they came up with a conspiracy to take the word cult (which up until then had meant a small religion) and make it a bad word by association with abuse. That's why all the historical examples of cults that predate the 60s have no association with abuse. You take an example like the Cult of Dionysus and there's no pejorative meaning to the word.
I don't think Trump's delusions are paranoid. In fact, he's remarkably unbothered given the very real dangers he faces. If he suffers from delusions, I would say they're the opposite - confident delusions.
Psychosis refers to a mental state characterised by hallucinations and paranoid delusions. Are you saying Trump hears voices in his head he thinks are real?
Well, no. When you're talking about the kind of massive institutional power of the kind that buys politicians and institutes theocratic dictatorships, that kind of power is exclusive to larger religions. You won't see that kind of thing from a cult. Now a cult may well have beliefs just as vile as a religion, and it may ruin lives, but it doesn't have the institutional power it takes to crush all opposition like you see from MAGA and Christianity.
To convert the image of the ID to text and read the date on it.