Club

A park people go to masturbate and do sex stuff in... Dogging, Cruising, nature baiting.

Philosophy debate club with no membership

Community.

They're all groups of people with some kind of shared purpose or values. Cults are harmful and power based. Communities are helpful and consent-based. Religions can fall either way, or somewhere in the middle.

Everything doesn't have to have an opposite, you know.

Religion and cult is basically the same thing with different connotative subtext.

Your scale is off there.. it should probably be more like: cult(-100)...religion(-80).................atheism(0).................?'

A group of people that is very serious about what they believe in, no matter how illogical it is.

It's pretty easy to invert that statement: a group of people that is very unserious about what they believe in? That would be folks like DIscordians, the Church of the SubGenius, Pastafarians, etc.

What's the difference between a cult and a religion?

About 100 years.

Not everything has an opposite. That is a trap of binary thinking.

Cults and religion are the same. The only thing that differentiate them is time. If you have a systematic set of illogical beliefs that have been around for a few years or decades or even just one lifetime, it's more likely to be called a cult. Give that group a lot more time and it will be called a religion.

As for your question .... I don't think it's anything the opposite of religion / cult but rather which belief system. I think as humans, we will always come up with some sort of belief system because we will always want to. We're just wired that way.

And to me the best belief system is one where we value one another no matter what, who, where, why or how. That includes honoring, respecting even those who don't believe what you do. A belief system where we honor all life, human, animal and organic. A belief system where we do our best not to harm one another or any life around us.

If we could that, then following a religion wouldn't be so bad because the belief system would be used to actually benefit all life.

Logic.

Science

A cult is basically just a religion that is not large or old enough to force people to take it seriously. It just so happens that small, new religions are also extremely volatile and unstable and prone to extremely stupid decisions

Your scale is off. Religions and cults are the same thing. The only difference is how accepting society is of them. There is no third option.

Intellectual freedom, with an appreciation of philosophy and scientific inquiry.

The opposite of an oppressing group believing in farytales is atheism. It's weird there's a name for not believing bullshit, but there it is. Every religion is a cult, they are just of different scales.

A cult is simply a religion that's too small to have sects and too young to have legitimacy.

When people started worshiping a guy nailed to a torture device and said he was God, the Romans thought they were lunatics, because that's genuinely unsettling. The eating his body thing doesn't help either. It's just that the Christians won.

Atheism.

Technically speaking, all religions are cults. The definition of "cult" is just an organized practice of religion.

An individual who thinks and acts rationally and who doesn't try to manipulate others.

Philosophy?

My friendship.

It's full of love, support, and it's free.

Freedom.

A community in which everyone has equal power and acts in solidarity with one another

At the far end of the spectrum, with no judging and only help, is a food bank.

Normal society

Ska band?

Cult is just what the big congregation calls the small congregation

Bowling league

The key difference between religions and cults, is the level of restrictions on outside information.

On that scale cults are at one end, religion in the middle, and science at the other end.

Belief , like the traditional cult of the ancestors in China, where you have no "priest" or "guru", it is just a bunch of people relying on elders to mimick the rituals, but in fact nobody remember it well, it is all disorganized, and nobody is really checking for "correctness" as much as checking if the commitment is done with intent. So the opposite of having a strong vertical domination by one person (cult) or an organized institution (religion) is a weak control of the rites by anyone (belief)

Normal lol

book reading club?

I don't think this is smth that is to be put on a scale.

You can force the matter by choosing a narrative.

I mean you could argue for self deification, science, totalitarianism. Anything could be forced to make sense.

Now from your angle, where a groups beliefs offer predominantly positive benefits, eco restoration groups, foss folks, creative commons collective etc.

I think of cults as more of systems of control. MLMs, jobs (Theranos), large-group awareness training (nxivm), political groups (Maga), exercise groups (CrossFit), fandoms, book clubs, families, online groups, etc can all be cults.

I suggest the podcast IndoctriNation⁠ by Rachel Bernstein to see many ways these "systems of control" as she calls them can manifest.

I personally think that cult behavior is just normal behavior taken to the extreme so there really isn't an opposite. Maybe being alone with no relationships.

The various types of groups we are on family, friends, work, recreational, etc have various controls on how you act and speak. This isn't necessarily bad. You probably want to be a little different with family than with your hobby group. I explained the broader meaning of cults to my Dad and he said the Marines have those aspects. I think an important part to know if a group is probably fine is if you can leave with no issues. If there are consequences to leaving the group that's a huge red flag.

I suggest looking at the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. Which is a useful tool to check if a group is a cult. You can read up on problems with this tool, but it's still a good starting point.

Edit: No one joins a cult. They join groups for positive reasons and then those groups either turn into cults or as they get deeper into the group the control parts are introduced.

We all probably brushed up against cults without knowing. You could go to an exercise/spiritual/hobby/other group and what you don't know is if you had gotten more involved and took the special classes, or volunteered and became a part of the in group you could have become a part of a cult.

Philosophy or science?

ITT: no cult scholars. I am not one either.

I watch a lot of Knitting Cult Lady's content and I've read her book. From that I have a pretty good idea of what a cult is, which is an extreme form of group.

So I guess the opposite of a cult would be a solitary individual.

One point I keep seeing in these comments is religion. Religion isn't a cult, it's an idea. That ideology can be used by cults, but the idea itself isn't a cult. You can believe the idea all by yourself you don't HAVE to be part of the group.

Yes [insert religious group you're thinking of] is probably a cult. But it isn't one because of the idea, it's one because of controlling behavior and exploited labor and a bunch of other reasons.