Comment by cogman10

I'd disagree. Most religions don't love apostasy but they also don't actively tell their members to go out of their way to punish or avoid non-believers.

The reason cults severely punish ex members is to protect the flock. They don't want their members to learn from ex members real criticisms of the cult.

It's precisely so when books like mentioned in this thread come up, the cult can say "oh, that's just a bad ex member who's lying".

The idea of "forbidden knowledge" is pretty unique to cults. You won't find, for example, a Methodist church that tells you not to read exmethodist books (do they even exist?). Heck, they probably wouldn't even get upset if you read something like "The god delusion".