[butter999]

In every cult I've ever read about, it's pretty clear that the person at the center was creating a structure that enabled them to abuse people. I'm sure there were people involved who were true believers. But the cult leaders were engaged in something closer to cold reading than good faith philosophical inquiry, figuring out what lands with an audience and then leaning into it.

Your question about LDS is fair, I'm just not knowledgeable enough about LDS that I feel qualified to address it. What "successful ideologies" do you believe came out of cults, and why do you believe that?

[pfannkuchen]

Well I feel like if you’re not even familiar with the origins of LDS you probably aren’t interested enough in the development of ideologies to really engage with patterns in that data set. Thanks for your replies.

[butter999]

I think it's strange to assert that LDS is the only subject worth studying in this regard, and it's less that I'm disinterested than that I don't want to say something I don't have full confidence in about a very touchy subject, but okay, have a good day.

[pfannkuchen]

I just find LDS fascinating because it's such a cleanly documented entire lifecycle (minus death) of a religion, complete with messianic central figure, novel lore corpus, and notable physical territory. It's clearly not the only subject worth studying, I just can't imagine being interested in the area and not digging into LDS since it's such a unique specimen.

Are Mormons touchy? I haven't seen any touchiness from them. If anything I feel like they get made fun of so much in mainstream culture that they are kind of immune to it.