General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am not religious. Can you please categorize Atheism into a "race"? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)fashion? A thing that encourages some people (though not all) to gather in a building once a week? Something that people give money to, to support the entity and its goals? An organization that often (not always, but often) does community outreach, helping the needy, feeding the poor, that kind of thing?
In USA, if you can get the tax exemption, you've got yourself a religion! If the IRS can call some conglomeration of people who believe they're the spawn of aliens a religion, who am I to judge? USA has a reputation for "religious tolerance" and "religious freedom" and I've never thought there was, or should be, a rule against behaving in a way that some people find stupid or outlandish.
There's certainly a "pecking order" in the minds of people as to what is a "good" religion, and what is an "inferior" or "cult" or "scam" religion, and in the case of most religious people, the "good" religion is their own. The Catholic finds the Catholic religion best, the Baptist prefers their brand, the Muslim prefers the Muslim faith, the Mormons think they are right and everyone else is just stupid, and the Scientologists think they're the bee's knees and better than the rest. Generally speaking, the newer the religion, the less 'respect' it gets from other religions. The older religions tend to clump together and back each other as "better" than some of the newer ones.