So it's fine if my non-religious cult does it?
How exactly do you plan to make a non-religious cult?
Walsh's easy to follow guide to starting a cult:
First up, the whole point of a cult is having followers who obey your every command. Making such peopel is surprisingly easy. You need to aim to achieve a lot of secrecy, mysticism, and obedience. They all bundle up together. Having a heirarchy is good, both in organisational terms, and also in how close people can get to YOU the supreme leader. Ideally, once you have acolytes don't let anyone speak to you until they have been screened to an appropriate level by your existing acolytes. If any acolytes look promising, have them elevated to a higher status, and so on, installing as many levels as possible. As the number of levels increases make the lower levels more and more easy to join, while making the middle layers more demanding. You should aim for a gentle gradient of commitment, culminating in excessive commitment in the middle ranks. High ranks should be difficult to attain, but easy to retain except in competition from each other.
At this stage and in an ever increasing spiral ramp up secrecy surrounding what goes on. This will help make up for the patchwork nature of your beliefs ("I don't understand, but then I don't have sufficient clearance") and will also help isolate middle ranks from troublesome outsiders who ask too many questions, such as "Why am I strapped to this table?"
Pretty soon you'll find you have things ticking nicely along. Once you do the temptation to see exactly what your followers will do for you can be overwhelming. Just as a suggestion, have them break the human pyramid record. Extra points will be awarded if you can have some wear coloured robes, that spell out the word 'suckers'.