Merriam Webster defines it as “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious”. Although I think that it’s peculiar that a smaller group with beliefs no one has heard of may be regarded as a cult whenever a large more historically established religion with some claims just as outlandish are accepted and respected. It’s human nature, but it is glaringly obvious to me that we’ve just become culturally sensitized to so much that we hardly question it.
I think that people taking what they read and establishing anecdotal experience as fact “ god helped me get a new car when I had no money”, “ he cured my sons cancer” etc. are spin offs that humans have themselves implemented that really make me question their sanity. Not that I’m trying to be down putting, but is it not surprising that we live in a society where it’s taboo to ask someone to explain, through reason, how their god helped them with an everyday event?
I suppose that ‘cult’ to me is a group of people who love and praise a particular object or idea of an entity and consistently make claims through which they deny reason or get offended when asked to explain their claims of what this object or entity performs through reason. And that to me explains most religions to a reasonable degree.