Apologetics and Evidence

There are many ways to consider this question, because there are several facets to the question itself. Often when we hear the word,  cult , we think of something bad, or downright evil, based on our own experiences which possibly came about through watching the Children of the Corn [1]  or something to that nature.  Sociologically speaking, a cult is “a religious or semi-religious sect or group whose members are often controlled or dominated almost entirely by a single individual or organization.” [2]  This lens of understanding is different than say, a theological perspective.  Theologically speaking, a cult is any religious belief system that has its origins in another established religious belief system. If you picture a tree, for instance, the trunk of the tree is the lineage of a religion through time, and the branches that stem off of that trunk are the cults of such a religion. From this perspective,  Mormonism  is a  cult of Christianity ...

I attended a Race Unity Day event put on by the Baha’i faith community at our local city park and had a conversation for about 3 hours with several followers of Baha’u’llah. One of them discussed things with me more than the others, but not at first. Since it was Race Unity Day for the Baha’i, we eventually started the conversation with the idea of whether or not world peace was the thing that mattered most in the world. Baha’i are extremely motivated to promote world peace. They think that the problem with the world is that it lacks unity, which would ultimately provide world peace. This first part of the conversation was with Doug (names changed for privacy). Doug implied that world peace mattered more than anything, but I reminded him of the problem of suicides where we live. I asked him if this is why they commit suicide, because of the lack of world peace. He reluctantly said, “Probably not,” but then I offered a better solution to what is wrong with the world, which is...