Talk:Cult

Template:Vital article

Falun Gong

I intend to delete the entire paragraph for two reasons:

1) Falun Gong is not a cult. The accusation that Falun Gong is a cult has been denied by academics and sociologists among them are Schechter, Noah Porter, Benjamin Penny and more [1][2][3].

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that doesn't have anything to do with politics.

In the cultural context of China, Falun Gong is generally described either as a system of qigong, or a type of "cultivation practice" (xiulian), a process by which an individual seeks spiritual perfection, often through both physical and moral conditioning. Varieties of cultivation practice are found throughout Chinese history, spanning Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian traditions [3].

Benjamin Penny writes "the best way to describe Falun Gong is as a cultivation system. Cultivation systems have been a feature of Chinese life for at least 2,500 years." [4]

Qigong practices can also be understood as a part of a broader tradition of "cultivation practice".

2. The articles from NBC, The New York Times and Verge, don't affirm that the Falun Gong cultivation practice owns The Epoch Times or NTDTV.

Those articles only affirm that there were Falun Gong practicioner who were working in The Epoch Times.

This information is not considered reliable to prove that The Epoch Times is owned by Falun Gong.

Going with that logic, we can say that The New York Times is owned by Judaism because their publisher, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, has a Jewish background. Or we can say that NBC is owned by Judaism becuase its president, Noah Oppenheim, is Jewish.

This is a wrong logic to decide that a business is owned by a religion or a belief just because some workers of that company have a sets of religious belief.

We can not use this kind of logic to prove a point and it would be unserious and unprofessional of us to claim that The Epoch Times is owned by the Falun Gong. This is not the reporting standard that we should be using here in Wikipedia.

The Epoch Times and NTDTV is owned by Epoch Media Group. The NBC report also stated that.

These are the reasons to erase the paragraph about Falun Gong from this article. Doritdi (talk) 14:43, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

@EdgeOfSpring: removed the section on Falun Gong, and @Username6892: restored it, saying "section was reliably sourced." While the section was indeed sourced, and I think EdgeOfSpring was overhasty in simply deleting the whole thing, I question whether The Epoch Times qualifies as a reliable source. It's associated with Falun Gong, but I'm not sure it's authoritative. Frankly, what little I've seen of it looks pretty biased if not flat-out batshit crazy.

What are the chances we can keep the material but get substantially better sources?

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 22:20, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@Septegram: The section itself is about The Epoch Times, but the links are sourced to NBC, The New York Times, and The Verge, all of which are considered reliable sources. Username6892 01:30, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. I misread the citations. Thanks, @Username6892:

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 17:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I think I misread that...

I probably need better reading glasses, I read "or by its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goat." ...which is also true...but... SteveBaker (talk) 23:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)