A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

You are arguing that it would be alright for Google to fire the cult members.

Parent comments argued that Google is liable for allowing the cult to discriminate against non cult members.

> Cults are not religions

There is no universal consensus on how to define the term "cult". There are multiple competing definitions.

In 1932, the sociologist Howard P. Becker introduced a fourfold classification of religious groups, into cults, sects, denominations and ecclesias (which was in turn an expansion of the theologian Ernst Troeltsch's earlier two-fold classification of religious groups as "churches" or "sects"). Cults and sects are religious groups with a high degree of tension with the surrounding society; cults have novel beliefs (in the context of that society), sects have traditional beliefs. Denominations are established religious groups with low tension with their society, but who do not dominate it. An ecclesia is a de jure or de facto state religion. By this set of definitions, cults are religions, if by "religion" one means "religious group". Many sociologists of religion continue to use Becker's definitions today; they are still part of the standard content of most university-level introductory courses on the sociology of religion – although not all sociologists endorse them, and some have put forward alternative proposals (such as Roy Wallis' proposal that the defining feature of cults is "epistemological individualism".)

In most sociological use, "cult" is a value-neutral, non-judgemental term; in colloquial English, it has become a derogatory term, implying the group is harmful or aberrant. Some psychologists have developed formal definitions of "cults" as psychologically harmful organisations – it appears those psychologists were ignorant of the prior use of the term in sociology (or, possibly, knew about it but didn't care.) Many evangelical Christians promote a theological definition of the term "cult", in which it essentially means "Christian group we judge to be heretical"–in some cases, the label "cult" is even extended to include all non-Christian religions.

You seem to be suggesting there is some legal definition of the term "cult", in the case law of some American states, including a legal distinction between "cult" and "religion". As evidence for this, you point to a newspaper article summarising the 1988 Supreme Court of California decision Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn. However, the newspaper article you cite never actually uses the word "cult" non-attributively–it is citing the use of the word by others, not using the word itself–and it is citing the use of the word by the plaintiff's expert witnesses and by activist groups, not the Court's justices as using the word.

And, if you read the actual text of the decision [0], while it cites a number of journal articles and books with the word Cult in their titles, it never actually uses that word itself. I am wondering if maybe you are projecting this binary distinction which exists in your own mind, between "cults" and "religions", on to case law in which that distinction is never actually drawn. On the contrary, Justice Stanley Mosk's decision assumes that the alleged "cult" (in this case, The Unification Church) is a religion, and the case turns on what are the legal standards for fraud and emotional distress claims against religious groups. The Court's judgement is that you can sue a religious group for fraud and emotional distress, by alleging deceptive recruiting practices, brainwashing, etc; and that such lawsuits are not barred by the First Amendment. The actual decision doesn't turn at all on any cult-vs-religion distinction, the same legal standard applies to all religious groups, whether "cults" or not. And it was not a decision on whether or not the Unification Church actually had engaged in any such activities, or whether they were a "cult"; it was simply a preliminary ruling that the case against them could proceed to trial. (Ultimately, the case never went to trial, it was settled.)

[1] https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/molko-v-holy-spirit-assn...

Thanks, didn't know this!

I don't doubt that unlikely clustering can innocently occur by chance. But you asked if hiring discrimination is alleged to have occured and it was very clearly alleged when the author uses the word nepotism in their original blog post:

>Cronyism and nepotism is not uncommon, especially in my line of my work, but it was unusual on this scale

You may say the author has jumped too soon to that conclusion but they nonetheless made that allegation. My comment stands.

You should also be aware that accusing someone of not reading a comment or article is both rude and against site guidelines. A more productive way of going about this if you think someone misunderstood or indeed overlooked or skipped part of something is to simply quote the relevant portion. That at least gives them the benefit of the doubt. It also goes a long way towards preventing responses that go on the defensive before even considering the merits of an argument.

The author implied that it had occurred, but did not actually allege anything specific. That would require describing how the cult members had been hired. The author seemed to have joined a department with a large cluster from this cult, and immediately assumed that nepotism and cronyism were responsible — he needs to be more specific.

To clarify one thing in your comment: innocent clustering isn’t likely occurring “by chance” here — that would be a dubious claim; I’m saying it often happens for innocent, legal reasons. There’s no context or facts for this specific case.

Regarding the “didn’t read my comment” bit, your comment did ignore the last half of my comment that describes plausible innocent clustering and talks about the need for specific facts. You can’t allege something based on “potential” because every perfectly normal situation could be construed as the potential result of a crime. If I was at a bar last night, and home today — can you allege that I drove home drunk? You would need more specific facts to make any kind of meaningful allegation (e.g. did I drive to the bar? Did I drink? Did I return home on my own with my car? Those would be the minimal facts required for even a suspicion). Perhaps I could have addressed this with less snark (and I apologize for this), but we’re also not talking about missing some fact buried in an article, we’re talking about 2/5 sentences in a comment.