The Pros And Cons Of Cults

A cult leader, who preached madness to the everyday people, was arrested because of his association with criminals and the people’s belief that he was going to do something violent. His name was Jesus Christ (Epstein 4). A cult is a religious group that is viewed as sinister or evil. According to Professor Peterson of Islamic studies and a member of The University of Utah's Council for Religious Scholarship, says that "People join cults because they want meaning and purpose and don't believe in the views of mainstream religions" (Akl). Most cults start out fine. But Sometimes a cult's ideals can spoil, such as the doomsday cult that committed mass suicide in the 1970s (Akl). Not all cults spoil, though. There are about 3,000 destructive cults in America (Hassan 74-77). There should be laws restricting cults actions because of there are cults that do bad things, the methods they use for recruiting could be unethical, and there are citizens that are hurt in the fight between the cults and the government. Cults should be able to practice what they want without any restrictions. They are the essentially the same as religions because they started out small and faithful (Thompson). Even some cults make it to religion
At the age of 19, therapist, author, and former Moonie, Steven Hassan was invited to dinner with three attractive women and two weeks later he believed that WWIII would happen in 1977 and followed the "messiah," Rev. Sun Myung Moon (Hassan 74-77). After cults recruit their members, they have to control them. Some of the ways a cult can control their followers is by behavior control, information control, thought control, emotion control, financial control and extreme leadership. Scientology is a cult (some people believe it's a religion) that uses some of those methods. In 1952, science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard created Scientology (Kirchick A16). There are a lot of people