Day 2 of my theological blog and already I have received comments about calling Buddhism a cult maybe I touched a raw nerve. I do not mean to offend or provoke, just to invite reasonable discussion. If you take cult to mean new religious movement in the sociological sense then the word is accurate. True it has negative connotations, but I was contrasting it with the mainstream religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
It seems with the advent of Post-Modernism that language has become divorced from ultimate meaning. To quote Nietzche, "To get rid of God we need to get rid of grammar." Again, Jacques Derrida, that language has no ultimate reference point, or "transcendent signifier."
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I think the term cult in the way you are using it may also be incorrect in the sociological sense. Last time I looked buddhism was described as a 'world affirming' faith
ReplyDeleteI bet most people, and a great many linguists too, would agree that the term cult to describe a faith group is insulting.