Greetings,
What an interesting question.
Difficult, though, as there is no standard definition of religion, and if you tell someone they're a member of a cult they probably won't like it. Scientiologists, for example, think of themselves as adherents to a religion, whereas for outsiders (well, in my view, anyway) they are members of a fraudulent and systematically extortionate cult. I think the wikipedia quote sums it up quite well, although I think size has a lot to do with it too. Christianity was certainly considered a cult in its early, formative stages - I wonder if the same is true of the other major religions?
As for the Islamic practices of dog-banishment and baby-shaving, I can't see any logical worldly reason why those would be good things for people to do. I think this thought sums it up very well:
format_quote Originally Posted by mlsh27
I pretty much always get the answer "Just trust Allah. He probably does this just to see if you will follow." But to me I generally follow logic, and question things that are illogical.
That's the kind of vague answer I get from Muslims whenever anything like this comes up. "It's a test", essentially. But the question I always have at the back of my mind is: maybe there
was a valid reason for these rules in a particular set of historical circumstances, and people have carried on following them out of tradition. Like eating pork, which would have been difficult to preserve in the seventh century, and which would therefore have posed serious health risks, whereas today people can eat pork perfectly safely.
A god who is very concerned about whether you have dogs in your house
as well as managing the day to day functioning of the universe seems a very improbable being to me.
Peace