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Ah, so that's it -- you're one of those frightened bio-chauvinists who's comforted by the idea that the current human condition is necessary (and desirable) for sentience; that our wetware brains can't be transfered to more efficient self-modifiable substrates because of consciousness depending on spooky quantum effects.

Biology isn't destiny.

--

The sites are /.ed, but after reading the intro, it all sounds like those Heaven's Gate people... they didn't need a real spaceship in 1996 when they all took off on the Hale-Bopp comet.

> However it is important to explain to people that an activity used in religious ceremonies doesn't make it a religious activity when used out of context. I don't readily see how you could defend relaxation techniques as being particularly 'religious', but it would be a fun debate.

That's true, and I admit that certain forms of meditation may be benficial as relaxation techniques, or even simply for the spiritual benefits, but it's not TM the technique I take exception to so much as TM the institution, and their excesses - in this case, crackpot science.

> As for part II, what's that all about?

This part is a lot of fun. At one point I was also very excited about Hagelin and NLP because they had gathered a few neat ideas - and hey, when was the last time we had a president with a PhD? If he's the developer of the most successful Grand Unified Field Theory, even better, although I have more on this below. Also among his credentials is his position at MUM, the Maharishi University of Management - Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy.

The first connection that I made between Hagelin and TM was in the NLP platform on crime, where they claim that TM is scientifically proven to reduce stress, and claim that stress is the leading cause of crime, which are both possible. However, I'm the kind of guy that likes to hear from the opposition as well.

trancenet.org is the opposition. There is plenty to read here, but the only article immediately relevant to what I'm discussing is from Dr. Dennis Roark, who used to work for the Maharishi at MUM back when MUM was MIU. The following quote from Roark is especially interesting:

While Chairman of Physics at M.I.U., I was asked to develop a quantum theory, a unified field theory, which would incorporate consciousness in such a way as to explain the "flying" technique as non-ordinary and which would give to the subjective experience of meditation a fundamental role in physics.

Sound familiar? Is Hagelin still employed because he was a good scientist, or because he was a good lackey?

It's speculation until I actually see Hagelin's work, I admit, but the past insanities of TM are too much for me to do anything but distrust the Maharishi and his cohorts. I wouldn't advocate voting for John Travolta, a known Scientologist, either. At least not without evaluating the nature of his involvement with them - that's some code I'm going to want to look at before I run it on my country!

The Skeptic's Dictionary is another good source for this kind of thing.

> I never heard of that and would like to better understand it so I can rebuff it. (if it is rebuffable, that is...)

It certainly is rebuffable, iff you know enough about Hagelin's theory and my speculations aren't accurate.

> However it is important to explain to people that an activity used in religious ceremonies doesn't make it a religious activity when used out of context. I don't readily see how you could defend relaxation techniques as being particularly 'religious', but it would be a fun debate.

That's true, and I admit that certain forms of meditation may be benficial as relaxation techniques, or even simply for the spiritual benefits, but it's not TM the technique I take exception to so much as TM the institution, and their excesses - in this case, crackpot science.

> As for part II, what's that all about?

This part is a lot of fun. At one point I was also very excited about Hagelin and NLP because they had gathered a few neat ideas - and hey, when was the last time we had a president with a PhD? If he's the developer of the most successful Grand Unified Field Theory, even better, although I have more on this below. Also among his credentials is his position at MUM, the Maharishi University of Management - Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy.

The first connection that I made between Hagelin and TM was in the NLP platform on crime, where they claim that TM is scientifically proven to reduce stress, and claim that stress is the leading cause of crime, which are both possible. However, I'm the kind of guy that likes to hear from the opposition as well.

trancenet.org is the opposition. There is plenty to read here, but the only article immediately relevant to what I'm discussing is from Dr. Dennis Roark, who used to work for the Maharishi at MUM back when MUM was MIU. The following quote from Roark is especially interesting:

While Chairman of Physics at M.I.U., I was asked to develop a quantum theory, a unified field theory, which would incorporate consciousness in such a way as to explain the "flying" technique as non-ordinary and which would give to the subjective experience of meditation a fundamental role in physics.

Sound familiar? Is Hagelin still employed because he was a good scientist, or because he was a good lackey?

It's speculation until I actually see Hagelin's work, I admit, but the past insanities of TM are too much for me to do anything but distrust the Maharishi and his cohorts. I wouldn't advocate voting for John Travolta, a known Scientologist, either. At least not without evaluating the nature of his involvement with them - that's some code I'm going to want to look at before I run it on my country!

The Skeptic's Dictionary is another good source for this kind of thing.

> I never heard of that and would like to better understand it so I can rebuff it. (if it is rebuffable, that is...)

It certainly is rebuffable, iff you know enough about Hagelin's theory and my speculations aren't accurate.

Most of the clientele disagrees with you. And the media certainly does.
And the media is right because?
I disagree that it's a majority of the clientelle. There are a few idealogues who are very vocal, but overall there is still a great deal of non-linux content of moderate quality.

Look at how the frothing GNU wackos come out in droves anytime something does fit into their regime.

But that does not make it a linux site. Just because the TM (Transcendental Mediation -- see this site )people try to take over sci.physics doesn't mean that sci.physics is a TM newsgroup.

Look at how the moderators autoinc anything that's for the FSF or GPL or Stallman or Linux, leave BSD neutral (unless it's against Linux), and autodec anything that's about making money or Microsoft or Bill Gates

Yeah, some moderators do, some don't (see my point above). It's basically just a really powerful minority... mostly because they are more involved than the Mac/Amiga/Win/BSD people here. The other are here but seem to do less moderation and meta-moderation.

Do you even know what an SP (Suppressive Person) is?

Dude, by responding to me you are violating the rules of scientology. If you are on staff you could be RPF'd, if your not you could have to go to costly additional auditing to prove you are not a PTS (potential trouble source, I believe that's right anyway).

Since you are already in so much shit, I would recomend going to Xemu.Net the place this article is about or trancenet.org which has some material about the Co$.

There is a lot more to the church of scientology than you think. And it ain't pretty at all.

While I don't think that the Co$ is should be banned, they have routinely done illegal things. They have defrauded you and every scientologist.
They are a pack of petty thieves and liars.

I highly recomend that you take a look at Xemu.net, since they have documents showing some of the horrible things that religion has done.

I seriously hope that you decide to leave as soon as possible.
RobK

And there is a pending request to ban the scientology organisation ... Let's hope scientology will be banned here.

Is this really what we want? The people who joing this cults tend to be 1) more intelligent than average, 2) very idealistic, 3) want to help solve the world's problems. [I'm going to have to a blanket reference here to The Margaret Singer Foundation hopefully still there, this has been found in several studies of former cult members.]

The individuals in a cult are not nescessarily evil or bad. Some of the things they do are evil because they are in essense brainwashed. In other words, the members aren't evil individually, collectively they can do a great deal of harm to other individuals and to communities, governments and so on.

But do we want to ban them? Do we want to cross the line that Hitler crossed?

If so, how do we prevent non-Cult religions from being banned because they practice "strange and bizarre rituals"? (mediation, chanting, ritualistic canabalism...{ahem}...and so on, an important question to myself, a Buddhist).
We need to reach a balance between preventing harm and religious tolerance.

Disclaimer: My brother started trancenet.org , a cult tracking website. He is the one who first raised these concerns to me.
Also, according to discussions I had with an anon scientologist in '95 I was declared an SP (suppressive person) sometime in '94-'95 due to my participation in alt.religion.scientology... but I have no confirming evidence...

(So if you are a scientologist, you are currently out-tech just by reading this post that is trying to be tolerant!)