Comment by onyango makagutu on February 12, 2013 at 12:18pm

Real estate

Comment by Dale Headley on February 12, 2013 at 5:44pm

Difference?

Comment by James Cox on February 12, 2013 at 10:36pm

Voting block!

Established schools/university.

Comment by SteveInCO on February 12, 2013 at 11:07pm

Four letters?

Comment by Pac Negative on February 13, 2013 at 4:01am

Making Prophets Into Profits 

Comment by Val Wuthrich on February 13, 2013 at 10:40am

Merriam-Webster definitions. According to these definitions it appears most all religions are cults of some sort.

1: formal religious veneration : worship

2: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents

3: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents

4: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator

5: great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad
b : the object of such devotion
c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

Comment by Doug Reardon on February 13, 2013 at 1:20pm

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Comment by Val Wuthrich on February 13, 2013 at 2:47pm

See definition 1...

Comment by Val Wuthrich on February 13, 2013 at 6:54pm

The Telegraph

By Our Foreign Staff 2:51PM BST 13 Sep 2011

The Pope and top Vatican cardinals have been accused of possible crimes against humanity for sheltering guilty Catholic priests, in formal complaints to the International Criminal Court.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based non-profit legal group, requested an ICC inquiry on behalf of the Survivors Network, arguing that the global church has maintained a "long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence" despite promises to swiftly oust predators.

The Vatican said it had no immediate comment on the complaint.

Comment by Rick Povero on February 13, 2013 at 8:38pm

Try this on: divide the notion of a religion into two basic components: 1) a set of (usually) supernatural claims, associated rituals, beliefs and 2) a set of self-financing and government tax-sheltered secular insiitutions capable exercizing great secular power.

Cults, usually novel or culturally alien, are religions in the first sense. Xianity and Islam were once quite minor cults, which became world mega-cults only over centuries.

For hundreds of years, xianity and the state were one entity. Catholicism is a state within a state in many countries including the US. Fundies -- through their allied churches, schools, colleges, seminaries -- also wield great secular power, elected and unelected.

Religious institutions and their god-proxies are a contiued danger to the US which is a secular state with an Open Society under assualt.

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