I have criticized the use of the concept of "cult". Now I would like to present an alternative view. Cult puts the emphasis on the religions responsibility for the problems of some (really a minority) of its disgruntled members. Albert Ellis, the origniator of Rational/Emotive Behavior Therapy focuses on the neurotic tendencies of people who are devoutly religious. People have to be a little "nuts" to take religion seriously.
Here is a taste of what Ellis has to say in
"THE CASE AGAINST RELIGIOSITY"
(quoted from Albert Ellis Reader 1968 Citadel Press Book)
Ellis presents traits of a mentally healthy person and then shows how devout religiosity affects the person.
Self-Interest
Rather than be primarily self-interested, devout deity oriented religionists put their
hypothesized god(s) first and themselves second - or last! They are so over concerned about
whether their god loves them, and whether they are doing the right thing to continue in this god's
good graces, that they sacrifice some of their most cherished and enjoyable interest to supposedly
appease this god. If, moreover they are a member of any orthodox church or organization they
feel forced to choose their god's precepts first, those of their church or organization second, and
their own views and preferences third.
Masochistic self-sacrifice is an integral part of many major organized religions, as shown,
for example, in the ritualistic self-deprivation that Jews, Christians, and Muslims must continually
bear if they are to keep their faith. Orthodox religions deliberately instill guilt (self-damnation) in
their adherents and then give them guilt-soothing rituals to temporarily allay this kind of self-
damning feeling.
Self-direction
Devout religionists are almost necessarily dependent and other-directed rather than self-
sufficient. To be true to orthodoxies, they first must immolate themselves to their god; then to
the religious hierarchy that runs their church or organization; and finally to all the other members
of their religious sect, who are watching them closely to see if they defect an iota from the
conduct that their god and their churchly leadership define as proper.
Social interest
Devout, deity-inspired religionists tend to sacrifice human love for godly love and to
withdraw into monastic and holy affairs at the expense of intimate interpersonal relationships.
They frequently are deficient in social competence. They spend immense amounts of time, effort,
and money on establishing and maintaining churchly establishments rather than on social welfare.
They foment religious fights, feuds, wars, and terrorism in the course of which orthodox believers
literally batter and kill rather than cooperatively help each other. They encourage charity that is
highly parochial and linked to god's glory more than to the alleviation of human suffering. Their
altruism is highly alloyed with egotistically proving to God how great and glorious they can be as
human benefactors.
Tolerance
Tolerance is anathema to devout, divinity-centered religionists, since they believe that their
particular god is absolutely right and that all opposing deities and humans are positively and
utterly false and wrong. According to orthodox religions shalts and shalt nots, you become not
only a wrongdoer but an arrant sinner when you commit ethical and religious misdeeds, and, as a
sinner, you become worthless, undeserving of any human happiness, and deserving of being
forever damned on earth (excommunicated) and perhaps eternally roasted in hell.
Acceptance of Ambiguity and Uncertainty
If one of the requisites for emotional health is acceptance of ambiguity and uncertainty,
then divinity-oriented religiosity is the unhealthiest state imaginable because its prime reason for
being is to enable the religionist to believe in god-commanded certainty. Just because life is so
uncertain and ambiguous, and because millions of people think that they cannot bear its
vicissitudes, they invent absolutist gods, and thereby pretend that there is some final, invariant
answer to human problems. Patently, these people are fooling themselves. Instead of healthfully
admitting that they do not need certainty but can live comfortably in this often disorderly world,
they stubbornly protect their neurotic beliefs by insisting that there must be the kind of certainty
that they wrongly believe they need.
Flexibility
The trait of flexibility , which is so important to effective emotional functioning, is
frequently blocked and sabotaged by profound religiosity. For the person who dogmatically
believes in god and who sustains this belief with a strong faith unfounded on fact - which a pious
religionist does- clearly is not open to many aspects of change, and instead sees things narrowly
and bigotedly.
If, for example, a man's church scriptures tell him that he shalt not covet his neighbor's
wife- let alone have actual adulterous relations with here- he cannot ask himself, "Why should I
not lust after this woman, as long as I don't intend to do anything about my desire for her? What
is really wrong about that? " But because his god and his church have spoken, there is no appeal
from this arbitrary authority. He has brought himself to unconditionally accept it.
Any time, in fact, that people unempirically establish a god or a set of religious postulates
that supposedly have a superhuman origin, they can no longer use empirical evidence to question
the dictates of this god or those postulates, since they are, by definition, beyond scientific
checking.
The best that devout religionists can do, if they want to change any of the rules that stem
from their doctrines, is change their religion itself. Otherwise they are stuck with its absolutist
axioms, as well as their logical corollaries, that the religionists themselves have initially accepted
on faith. Again we may note that, just as devout religion is masochism, other directedness,
intolerance, and refusal to accept uncertainty, it also seems to be synonymous with mental and
emotional inflexibility.
Scientific Thinking
In regard to scientific thinking, it practically goes without saying that this kind of
cerebration is antithetical to religiosity. A host of philosophers of science, including Betrand
Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hans Reichenbach, Herbert Feigl, Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, and
Michael Mahoney, Have pointed out the main requisites of the scientific method: scientific
theories must be stated in such a manner that they are at least partly confirmable by some form of
human experience, by some empirical referent; and scientific theories are those that can in some
way be falsified.
Deity-oriented religionists contend that the superhuman entities that they posit cannot be
seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt , or otherwise humanly experienced, and that their gods and their
principles are therefore beyond the realm of science. Pious deists and theists believe that the gods
or spirits that they construct are transcendent, which means, in theology or religion, that they are
separate or beyond experience; that they exists apart from the material universe; that no matter
what science says, they are indubitably true and real.
To devoutly believe in any of the usual religions, therefore, is to be unscientific, and we
could well contend that the more devout one is, the less scientific one tends to be. Although a
pious religionist need not be entirely unscientific (or, for that matter, neither need a raving
maniac) it i is difficult to see how such a person could be consistently scientific.
While people may be both scientific and vaguely or generally religious (as, for example,
many liberal Protestants and reformed Jews tend to be) it is doubtful whether ehey may
simultaneously be thoroughly devout and reasonably in touch with social reality.
-end- of quotes (not end of article)
Ellis also goes on to consider the effects of religiosity on Risk-taking, Self-Acceptance, Commitment, Acceptance of Social Reality,
The problem is not of defining "cults" but defining and encouraging mental health.