
The Cult of Reason - opaque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason
======
stared
I though it will be about Less Wrong.

(Discussion with a friend, who identifies with the crowd: "Is it a cult? Yes,
but a good one!")

~~~
opaque
There was also an "atheist church" in London
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21319945](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21319945)

I wonder if they were aware the concept has quite a history.

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jlpom
From the article:

> It's a nice excuse to get together and have a bit of a community spirit but
> without the religion aspect

> It's not a church, it's a congregation of unreligious people.

Seems more a gathering of same-minded persons than a real cult.

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throwawaymath
What's the jumping off point at which a gathering of like-minded people
becomes a cult? Can "cult" be used to describe religious groups (or very
zealous factional groups) without the pejorative connotations of the
colloquial term? Or is "cult" basically a universally negative appellation?

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erikpukinskis
No, a cult is like a mental disorder... by definition if it's not causing harm
in the person's life it's not a disorder. Many cults disguise themselves as
religious groups.

Here's some more differentiators, but you can search "warning signs for a
cult"... there's no standard list that I'm aware of.

\- Separating people from their outsider friends&family

\- Over time absorbing all of member's financial assets

\- Punishment for leaving

\- Members discouraged from questioning orthodoxy

\- Non-volunteer or otherwise coerced unpaid labor

\- A culture of hiding information from outsiders

\- The leader has exclusive claim to ultimate truth

\- Regardless of harm, the leader's behavior is justified

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checkyoursudo
For me, the biggest warning signs are separating us & them, especially when
the _them_ are family outsiders, and punishment for leaving (or other normal
behaviors, like associating with outsiders, etc).

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NikolaeVarius
It is interesting in the footnotes that it indicates the name originally
doens't have the negative connotations it seems to have in english

``` The word "cult" in French means "a form of worship", without any of its
negative or exclusivist implications in English; its proponents intended it to
be a universal congregation. ```

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enqk
"Culte" is neutral and "Secte" is the negative word.

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desdiv
Wouldn't "the Sect of Reason" be a much better English translation then?

"Culte" in French and "sect" in English are neutral.

"Secte" in French and "cult" in English have negative connotations.

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enqk
I briefly considered it, however "Sect" does suggest (from its root) that it's
an offshoot of some larger religion, which isn't the case here.

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otakucode
It seems profoundly weird to me, though this might just be due to not
understanding the sociology of the time and place, to actively attempt to
force a belief in reason through coercion. It seems self-defeating. I can
understand a longing for reason to spread and gain acceptance... but to
conclude that this desire justifies overriding the individual thinkers freedom
to decide for themselves would be an unsupportable argument. The furthest I
could see going would be to forbid indoctrination of the youth in unreasoned
ideologies since children have limited ability to challenge what they are
being taught (at least they did at the time). But if you are 'persuading'
people to believe in ideas which claim objective, reasoned basis through
abandoning reasoning with them and resorting to force, it would be right for
all to reject you as a hypocrite.

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yters
"A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost
everything but his reason." \- GK Chesterton

~~~
throwawaymath
What's the context of this quote? When I search it on Google one of the front
page results is actually this HN comment. It's hard to find more information
about GK Chesterton's broader point.

~~~
tim333
Here you go [https://apologetics315.com/2013/04/g-k-chesterton-on-
arguing...](https://apologetics315.com/2013/04/g-k-chesterton-on-arguing-with-
the-madman/)

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tim333
>Many contemporary accounts reported the Festival of Reason as a "lurid",
"licentious" affair of scandalous "depravities"...

Sounds a bit like Burning Man

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jlpom
I studied the Revolution as part of the national curriculum of 1st year of HS,
and this "religion" was as crazy as the description of it sounds, and part of
the ambient madness of the following years. It seems to me to be more the
expression of collective madness than Lumières's ideals.

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opaque
It wasn't covered in any detail by my school curriculum, so I've been catching
up. I had no idea they "reformed" so many aspects of civci life, including the
calendar
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar)

~~~
touart
"They" being the revolutionaries, not the members of this cult.

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notthegov
Thomas Paine also started a deistic religion during the French Revolution-

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilanthropy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilanthropy)

