What do all cults have in common, to varying degrees?

1. A strong central leader or founder.
2. Belief that the leader has access to special and exclusive information or has special authority. (In the case of financial cults, it’s the illusion the leader provides of freedom from the laws of economics. The “mark” is vulnerable because of their desire for a quick buck.)
3. A demand for loyalty oaths and obedience.
4. High initiation fee or other renunciative action geared toward making withdrawal difficult, such as a requirement to cut off contact from one’s family.
5. Rings and rising levels of membership, which reward strong commitment.
6. Intensive, often confrontational–yet uncommonly intimate social relationships.
7. Reinforcement of in-group and out-group differences. External threats actually benefit the cult by amplifying and solidifying interior control.
8. Make people feel special, loved, and accepted.
9. Often attract lonely or confused people who need direction and may have trouble fitting into typical career paths.

But the most important characteristic of cults, without which they could not exist is:

 

THEY NEED MEMBERS

 

Members provide the power. They are the cult’s life blood.

 

Without members, a cult leader would be just another delusional nutjob or con man. Without followers, the leaders’ loyalty demands or financial claims would sound downright creepy or fraudulent. Their wacky extremist philosophies would be seen in the same category as a homeless person shouting on the street corner. Early members provide the opportunity to hone and polish a more skilled presentation, develop wider legitimacy, and an illusion of popular support to budding sociopaths.

The first thing a burgeoning cult leader has to do is:

1. Create a mythology or backstory. In the financial cult, it’s fake case histories and success stories.
2. Create a mission to give the work a sense of exclusivity and desirability (the way Tom Sawyer got the other boys to paint the fence). Establish an inner circle willing to reinforce their authority (at least until the membership grows).
3. Acquire the skills to fend off challengers (as soon as members of the inner circle see the power or money start to flow, they will begin vying for it).

Most people don’t have the skills to manage a relationship with even one other person. We only have to look to the high divorce rate to verify this fact. Imagine what it’s like for a leader to meet daily challenges to his authority (without the normal reward/punishment system of money/loss of job). This is why a cult leader has to get used to saying “because I said so” with a straight face. He has to get used to doling out stern summary justice in the form of ostracism and outright dismissal. He has to learn to use member peer pressure to humiliate and corral troublemakers. It also helps to appeal to supernatural beings and endless divine missions. But it’s not absolutely necessary. The most important skill is an uncommon ability to connect with people (on whatever terms), and to attract and control members.  

Atheism is pretentious in the sense of claiming to know more than it does. It claims to know what belief in God entails, and what religion, in all its infinite variety, essentially is. And atheism is muddled because it cannot decide on what grounds it ultimately objects to religion. Does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged falsity? Or does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged harmfulness? Both, the atheists will doubtless reply: religion is false and therefore it is harmful. But this is to make an assumption about the relationship between rationality and moral progress that does not stand up. Atheism is the belief that the demise of religion, and the rise of "rationality", will make the world a better place. Atheism therefore entails an account of history – a story of liberation from a harmful error called "religion".

Some will quibble with the above definition. Atheism is just the rejection of God, of any supernatural power, they will say, it entails no necessary belief in historical progress. This is disingenuous. The militant atheists have a moral mission: to improve the world by working towards the eradication of religion.

Douglas’s theoretical apparatus allowed her to think in original ways about almost any topic. In a lecture earlier this year at the Young Foundation, she discussed "enclaves," the small groups which at their most extreme become terrorist cells. Where others emphasise their strengths, she emphasised their weaknesses: how prone they are to splits and sectarianism, and how hard it is for their founders to enforce rules. To survive, enclaves create around themselves what Douglas called a "wall of virtue"—the sense that they alone uphold justice, while all around them are suspect—yet the very thing that bonds them together encourages individuals within them to compete to demonstrate their own virtue and the failings of their peers. The only thing that can override this fragility is fear of the outside world—and so sects, whether political or religious, peaceful or violent, feed off the hostility of outsiders, using it to reinforce their own solidarity. The implication is clear for western governments: in the long term, defeating terrorism depends on ratcheting fear down, not up, dismantling the "walls of virtue" rather than attacking them head on with declarations of war.