> And no, I don't think HN is a cult or most startups are a cult.

On the contrary in the case of HN it fits most criteria perfectly

1. Elevation of someone to diety status (Graham, <startup founder of the week>)

2. Shunning outsiders (mocking redditors, another cult)

3. Enforced group think through shame rituals ("As a..." response posts, downvoting).

4. Belief that the HN system is superior to all other systems

HN, like nearly ALL modern startups, would qualify as cults. Remove the downvoting enforced groupthink and maybe I'd be inclined to agree with you. Until then, I refuse to. Upvote/downvote culture enforces the exact behavior required to punish and shame people with differing opinions into conforming. It's a sinister assault on human psychology and all sites doing this (HN included) should feel deeply ashamed. For being an alleged "libertarian/liberal" oasis in the middle of a barren internet desert, this place is far more like Jonestown than, for example, the philosophy department of a top 10 university despite seemingly every poster here believing truly they have 9e40 IQ and are one self help book away from unlocking literal gigabrain magic.

You're conflating the HN "hivemind" with the individual members. I doubt most HN users check all 4 boxes. E.g. I read Reddit and don't elevate startup founders to deity status. I'm also not ostracized for these views.

Sure, and the downvotes of this criticism make it obvious the hivemind thinks it's free. A classic trope of cults. They are the free ones and everyone outside is not.

Hilarious, really. It goes along with the almost metastatic, terminal, pseudo-intellectualism this site is known for.

Yes, some individuals out of the dozens who have read your comment chose to downvote. Just as other chose not to vote at all. Some may have even upvoted. Doesn’t that kind of prove HN is not a cult? The group is comprised of individual members all acting independently.

Most people don't vote. But I agree that downvoting can be an emotionally charged action - completely devoid of reason.

I tend enjoy downvotes that have no reason because they validate a touched nerve, but some will give a reason as to why they downvoted and open a dialogue. Thats a gold feature of HN I think.

A was an atheist most of my life but now see it differently. See it as a kind of philosophy embedded in a story (mythology)

People go to church once a week to try to align themselves with the most good they can. They take a hard look at their failing ask forgiveness and try to do better next week.

Contrast that with people than never try to do that, never have a time to reflect on deeper things, have no community that tried to help each other to do good.

All culture sit on a religious traditions, by throwing it away we don’t know what we loose, we are like the doctor of the 1800 that removed organs they didn’t know what they did.

As our culture go further and further away from christianity it is slowly disintegrating. We can no longer trust people and institutions, families don’t last, socials connections are eroding. I don’t think it can go on much longer until it crumble.

Now is there a ’God’ up there, I don’t know. But that’s not were the value of those things lie.

I'm sure some people use religion in the way you describe, but there is tautological induction in religion that makes it cult-like. For instance, you say people go to church to reflect on how they can do better at being "good" next week. Well what is "good"? "Good" is what the church defines, of course. And unsurprisingly "good" comes to mean something like oppressing those with different view points and spreading all the "goodness" of the church to others. This type of organization has a pathological tendency to spread via coercion and oppression, and that makes it cult-like.

Good mostly as you define it yourself. That’s why they say don’t judge others, that people will be judge by "God" There is also norms anchored in long tradition, like the commandments.

But yes, there is also a tendency to try to explain everything and reject what doesn’t fit in the explanation ex: homosexuality.

Good luck to you. This is a great comment.

> See it as a kind of philosophy embedded in a story (mythology)

This is tricky. You are sort of making an acknowledgement of the power of Christianity to shape culture without requiring a firm belief in its supernatural truth claims. I just don't think you can recover the one without the other. The fruits of a Christian culture were grown over many generations by people who knew that God is real and present in their lives. I for one find it quite difficult to sacrifice for a mere symbol or just a good long term cultural outcome.

> Now is there a ’God’ up there, I don’t know?

Why are you skeptical? As an atheist (or in between atheist) who can present such a clear eyed and charitable view of Christian communities, where do your current doubts stem from?

I feel that I am on path of some sort, was raised Catholic (but we didn’t really believe: Québec, one on the most catholic place that become one of the most atheist in a very short time) I was mostly scientific atheist nihilist, searching for meaning.

I discovered to my surprise the logic, usefulness and truth in our stories through Jordan Peterson biblical lectures. But now through the explanation of Jonathan Pageau and some reading of the bible it seem I can go a bit further.

I am trying to communicate what I now understand to other fellow atheist that there is value in our foundational stories, I see that it’s the foundation of our culture and that as christianity fade our culture is crumbling.

I don’t know exactly what I believe at this point, I am trying to move forward, use the bible as a guide, it’s hard to communicate my way of seeing to atheist or religious people. Saying that those are story is a reduction of the truth. I don’t have better words to communicate exactly how I think.

I can see the same pattern with scientific thinking, we have a model (plants use sun human eat things) and we confuse our mental model for reality until we discover that our pattern is reductive (we use UV to make vitamin D and infrared to keep inflammation under control (recent discovery))

So I think those who believe completely are also immunized against a kind of scientific totalitarianism, the idea that we know completely, it’s very seductive as it save us to expend mental energy.

I am also seeing more way to understand the bible, the catholic way: simplified, don’t read the bible, we will do it for you, protestant: communities with each their own flavor but against a central authority and now orthodox who seem to see it more as a patterns, as path to emulate, to become god ourself or at least try, than actual physical truth, truth on another level.

What do you think, what is your perspective?

I'm just an ordinary Catholic. My story isn't particularly exciting.

I understand the view you are articulating with the phrase 'reduction of truth'. I can't be 100% sure from such a short description but I think that view aligns closely to my own.

More and more I find my perspective tracking with these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAcZaBhEuE0

As you wrestle with the deeper questions about God and Christianity, you mine as well wrestle with the most well educated proponents of that view. The Dominican Friars who put those videos together certainly check that box.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

People attend church for a wide variety of reasons and it’s good not to over simplify them. Plenty of people with widely varying amounts of belief still attend for a wide variety of reasons.

Some attend to keep peace in their families. Or because it is a social group with which they have a long history. Or because the emotional support of a pastor helps them. Some attend because it would break their parent’s hearts if they didn’t.

For most religions, one can be crazily all in, or just showing up for the donuts afterward. You can’t tell just by looking.

One might complain about how that is inauthentic or just putting on a show, but even that is too simple.

Human motivation is deeply complex and oversimplifying it doesn’t do justice to our humanity.

All the reasons you listed sound like a cult.

“I can’t leave the cult, my family will disown me.”

“I can’t leave the cult, everyone I know and care about is in the cult.”

“I can’t leave the cult. I need the leaders emotional support.”

I think you are both broadening the definition to the same level as the original blog author and also narrowing what the commenter said to make any religious community a cult, I think that fails to consider hat the common understanding of what a cult is. So things like: “Keeping peace in the family” != “my family will disown me”. “I am part of a community” != “Everyone I know and are about is in a cult”. “My pastor provides me counseling” != “I need the leaders emotional support”

It

I disagree. I may have used hyperbole, but those were then reasons listed: my family wants me in the religion, my social graph is based around the religion and its rituals, my emotional support comes from the religion. That’s cult-like.

I think the main reason we don’t considered religions a cult has nothing to do with the behavior or the participants or their reasons for attendance. We generally consider cults to be small, which is incongruous with mainstream religion.

You missed “the donuts are good” reason.

And the detail about varying levels of belief.

Emotional support from a caring ear is hardly cult like. “I have friends there” is hardly cult like.

Your hyperbole works well as a rhetorical strategy, but eliminates all the nuance I was trying to add. Just like as if I had said, “an occasional cookie doesn’t make one fat” and you had replied, “Chowing down on cookies and ice cream actually does make you fat”.

It might be true, but it is no responsive to the argument.

As I write this I’m be route to a family gathering that excites me not at all, but it will make certain members of my family happy. That’s not cult like, it’s making compromises to get along in the world.

So organized religions are not cults because some people just show up for the donuts?

You're only trying to add "nuance" because you're intimately familiar with organized religion. When you look at other cults, you say to yourself "obviously that's a cult because they're all zealots." But is that likely to be true? Probably not. Humans always have a wide variety of motivations for the things they do. I'm sure many people have joined cults because they're lonely or hungry.

As for your example with the homeless shelter, it would be a cult if you and the other members were part of the homeless shelter based off of a shared philosophy that was given to you from birth that involved practicing arcane rituals worshiping an ancient deity.

The donuts example is that some people go not for any shared belief, but for a material benefit that cynically uses the group’s goodwill. But your choice of sarcasm and “boy isn’t this ridiculous” rhetoric shows that you aren’t even attempting to steelman the argument. Therefore I’ll end with this one last post.

And rereading your very first response, I should have caught this earlier:

My arguments I haven’t once made the claim that these bigger religions aren’t cults; I haven’t made any claim in that department.

My claim are about why people attend. More specifically, that there is a wide variety of reasons that aren’t because they aren’t believers.

> that involved practicing arcane rituals worshiping an ancient deity

Adding this seems to betray your intent. While worship of a deity might be a practice of some cults, not every cult worships a deity. Conversely, not every religion that worships a deity could be a called a cult. You including it makes it the defining factor in your example above, beyond the standard common features present in many communities and organizations of people.

You're cherry picking here. Worshiping the deity was one of the characteristics, the rest being: ritualistic meetings, social fulfillment, familial pressure to be a member of the group, indoctrination from an early age, and emotional support from group leaders. If you pick any of these characteristics individually, you could easily say "not all cults do X, and not all religions are a cult." But taken together, they suggest that many religions are cults.

> You're cherry picking here.

I think you did exactly that in the prior comment. You opined that if from birth the people serving or socializing in the homeless organization incorporated some sort of supernatural element it would be a cult. It feels to me like there is a prejudice against religion with your comments. Bear in mind, I am not criticizing an opposition to religion, just that religion on its face != cult. Narrowing it down to a single element dilutes the definition of a cult.

There is a far cry of difference between the Peoples Temple and the Branch Dravidian’s from the local Lutheran and Methodist churches down the street. The two former being commonly understood as a cult, where the two latter would not be commonly understood to be a cult. But all four had that “ancient deity” worship component, but two of them were unequivocally dangerous where two are essentially harmless organizations.

> But blindly following a ceremony your entire life ...

I mean this in the most honest and genuine way. What if you are simply incorrect in your perception of why a Catholic would attend mass? I bet if you found a knowledgable Christian and asked him why he attends you would find a very different set of reasons.

> I saw throngs of people out to attend Sunday mass.

Maybe I was one of them. In fact I go every Sunday without exception. But I don't recognize myself or my reasons in your characterization of why people go.

As a sibling poster says, why don't you ask them? I converted to Catholicism after weighing it up against pantheism, atheism, and other forms of Christianity. I think I have very good reasons for believing in God's existence with a very high degree of confidence (not just "look what I experienced" reasons, but philosophical arguments that appear sound to me). And I teach my kids about it because if I let them "make up their own mind", they'll fall for whatever persuasive argument they first encounter. Of course I want them not to believe anything "blindly", and to make sure they test the reasons they're given for things, and to think through the arguments logically, etc.

This seems like mental gymnastics to justify joining a cult. You realize that your kids only know what you tell them. It takes a very long time for them to even understand analytic thought. What you’ve said is essentially “I chose to join a cult and indoctrinate my kids from birth so they don’t believe anything else, even when presented a compelling reason to do so.”

If you really want them to make up their own mind, give them the tools to evaluate ideas, don’t stack the deck because you’re afraid they’ll come to a different conclusion than you. Of course you won’t do that because you believe in God, so you’re afraid that they won’t believe in God unless indoctrinated as a child. That’s what you meant by “if I let them "make up their own mind", they'll fall for whatever persuasive argument they first encounter.” Right? The alternative to believing in God is not believing. So you’re afraid they won’t believe in God if presented with a compelling argument unless they’ve already been indoctrinated.