Ask your difficult questions about religion here

They are following the Yeshua example. He insulted people every time he opened his yap.

 

No, it is a genuine question, over and over you see petty insults being thrown around, you and I were able to have a sensible conversation without insults, why do so many of your fellow religious have to use petty insults? Do they think their god would be proud of them, I do not understand why the religious result to that behaviour when discussing their religion.

 

It's because they want to be known as being religious without actually practicing the religion.

 

Before I go any further, are you assuming that cult is a shortened version of occult?

 

OK, what I said does look circular. However, what Jesus is recorded as having said does amplify ideas of importance today - our duty to others (the Samaritan), forgiveness of others being required before the possibility of our own forgiveness, stewardship, the directive to the rich man wanting to go to heaven, etc.

Also, we could probably make progress by being better able to recognize consistencies between proposed policy and religion. Or at least we could better understand what is seen as conflict.

 

No.

 

Sure let's check definitions, then.

Nothing there excluding the use of magic. But let's go on.

I can think of numerous individual churches that qualify by that definition. But let's not stop there.

A good list of various religions.
The military recognizes over 200 religions.
Here's another comprehensive list of various religions. There are denominations of Wicca that I didn't realized existed.

And what exactly is the difference between a religion and a cult? Let's see.
https://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/articles/difference-religion-cult.html

So just because a religion uses or allows magic, it is not automatically a cult, nor is it disqualified as a religion. At this point you need to support your idea that because of the use of magic it must be a cult and not a religion.

 

You may have meant it as genuine, but that doesn't guarantee that it won't come across as trollish. Lacking the audible and visual cues can lead to a lot of misinterpretation. And while I can see, personally, that you are for the most part not being trollish, I can also see how many of your comments can appear as such. Additionally I see just as many petty insults coming from atheists as I do from theists, both here and in other places. Neither group is immune to having such arses among them. Sadly, the bad ones are the ones that get the most visibility.