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Surprise Arrest For Online Scientology Critic
destinyland writes "An online critic of Scientology was confronted at a routine hearing Tuesday with surprise arrest warrants and thrown into jail. Six years as a fugitive ended in February. (After picketing a Scientology complex in 2000 over the unexplained death of a woman there, he'd been arrested for 'threatening a religion' over a Usenet joke about 'Tom Cruise Missiles.') But 64-year-old Keith Henson had been out on bail, and was even scheduled to address the European Space Agency conference on Space Elevators. He's a co-founder of the Space Colony movement, and one of the original researchers at Texas Instruments. In this interview he discusses both space-based solar energy and his war with the Scientologists — just a few days before he was arrested."
when you mess with dark lord Xenu!
Hail xenu!
...can you be arrested for 'threatening a religion' ?!
Threatening a person, yeah, but a religion? If I express a wish that Christianity or Islam die out can I be arrested? What happened to America's much touted freedom of speech?
If you all insist on voting for people because of their religious affiliations (and indeed, expressly WOULDN'T vote for atheists) then what did you expect? Vote for religious people, and they protect religious ideas. No matter how perverse they are. To allow you to deride Scientology would risk allowing you to deride born again christians or catholics.
Why is it okay for a religion to threaten me with hell, but not okay for me to openly state that I'm trying to bring down a religion? Isn't it my state-given right to work to destroy unfavorable institutions so long as I work within the confines of the law?
A law against "threatening" a religion is a violation of my right to freedom of speech.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As a Christian, I don't like seeing people criticize my religion, but I certainly don't want them arrested for it! WTF makes scientology so damn important? The same could be said for Islam. Why is throwing a koran in the toilet a hate crime, but dumping a cross in a jar of urine not?
I don't want to see people arrested for criticizing Christianity and I sure as hell don't want to see people jailed for criticizing other religions either! Why is the free speech of non-Christians important than that of Christians??
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No one expects the Scientology Inquisition!
Life needs more saving throws.
Is Henson the only person to ever have this happen to them? Has anyone had the same treatment for speaking out against christianity, islam, judaism, buddhism, etc?
If so, who was it and what happened to them? If not, why?
How long until people wake up and realize that scientology is not a religion but a dangerous, money-grubbing, control-freak cult/business?
Name one other religion that refuses to open its documents so someone can look at them WITHOUT you having to pay to see them.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The more and more I read about how they push people around, the more and more I think I should join up with the winning team. These guys seem to be acquiring the kind of power the Catholic church had before the Reformation.
The only thing stopping me is I always thought L. Ron Hubbard was a terrible writer, and I can't imagine having to read all that crap as part of my 'religion'.
Thankfully, they're a bit more tame in Pittsburgh. I don't even think the people working the store are in a high enough level to understand my "Xenu Built My Hotrod" tshirt. Or on Halloween when I went as Tom Cruise covered in thetans (condoms). I just got some weird looks that day.
Don't be hasty modding this a troll. Judging by the GP's number, he/she may not have been around for the scientology incident.
To answer your question, CmdrTaco was essentially forced several years ago to remove a comment from an AC that Scientology lawyers claimed was DMCA protected, namely a portion of their "sacred/copywritten" texts for OT3. The story is here.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
If you want to "ruin Scientology," don't approach it like that. Don't align yourself with anyone that might make you an easier target for their lawyers. Ask questions. Investigate yourself. Don't do anything mildly against the law. Present your findings to newspapers or publish them online, but do not turn to violent attitudes. If you expect to be taken seriously about it, don't joke about it and don't joke about things that people might take the wrong way.
These people have a lot of money and a lot of lawyers, you have to be smart and careful and cautious if you want to expose them for what you believe they are.
My work here is dung.
"The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu."
I hope that's short enough for fair use
The threat he posed was to expose their idiotic (and expensive) teachings, their lies and to illustrate what a malignant mind control cult they really are. This made him their enemy and they have been hounding him with nuisance lawsuits ever since. Unfortunately for him he made some throwaway remark on a usenet forum about aiming a missile at their HQ and they somehow managed to get him prosecuted for making terrorist threats as well as interfering with a religion.
His unrelating persecution by scientologists to silence and even jail the guy show who the terrorists really are.
you beat enemies of free speech: religious fundamentalists, retarded ip laws, oppressive governments, etc. with more free speech
the only reason anyone would oppose free speech is if what they have to say would suffer if it had more scrutiny
scientologists have legions of zombie lawyers attacking anyone who infringes on their "intellectual property" and "religious principles" simply because if that crap got out in more general circulation, they would be revealed as the fascist ufo wackjobs they are
same with oppressive governments, same with ip lawyer whores
and so, in the spirit of the recent dmca take down notice on digg for a stupid numer, i would like to serve and support keith and attack the immoral, yet somehow, incredibly, legal basis for arresting him by serving his cause: posting stuff the church of scientology does not want posted
the digg number fiasco prompted wordwide press coverage. this should to:
it is the exact same issue
expand the digg number revolution folks. use everything that was used in the digg number fiasco and make it used again. weidl it as a weapon agains tthose who wish to censor in the name of fascist religious fundamentalism and corporate greed. let this revolution continue! let them fear us, not us fear them!
i will respond to this comment with another comment with text the church of scientology does not want known
slashdot may get attacked by me doing this, slashdot has been forced to remove comments before. i may be attacked too. i don't care, because i know i am in the right, and i know this is important, and i know i have support
the proper response to my post of the sensitive scientology information? post it some more yourself. post it and post it some more.
post it more, post it more, post it more. post it everywhere. post it a million times
scientology has legions of aggressive fanatical laywers, but we, who love free speech are yet legion more
i support free speech, do you? did the recent imbroglio over that stupid number on digg stoke your righteous indignation at censorship in the name of corporate idiocy? well this man was just arrested in the name of religious fundamentalism. you should be stoked at this too. it is the exact same thing. let's make the revolution over the digg number a permanent fixture on the internet. let's band together and in the same of social justice fight these censoring fascist assholes
the proper response to keith being arrested is bomb post every and all sensitive church of scientology material any of us can find. the more the material makes those fascist assholes squeal, the more it should be disseminated. digg, slashdot, fark, every and all sites you can find. bomb post away, bomb away, bomb away
this is important folks. if a man can be arrested for making a dumb joke on a newsgroup, any of us can. so all of us should band together and prove the futility of what scientology thinks they are doing: when someone is arrested for simply criticizing their stupid church then us on the internet will respond by hurting them where they hurt the most: the mass public airing of that which they deem so personal and sensitive
dear church of scientology and your legal whores: fuck you you fascist censoring pricks
this is war
fire away
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From Operation Clambake: http://www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/ ------------ Who is Xenu? I'm going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Right, then I'll begin. Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack. Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were over-populated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan. Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers). These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed. The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper). After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting". When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies. As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today. That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called "body thetans". And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these "body thetans" and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago. Well what did you think of that story? What? You thought it was a stupid story? Well so do we. Unfortunately this stupid story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years). We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains. Most of the Scientologists that work in their Dianetics* centres and so called "Churches" of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret "upper" levels of Scientology. It may take them many years be
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Only in United States you would get arrested for criticizing church of Scientology. In Europe at least many governments have understood that Scientology is not a religion but a business: i.e. Wikipedia article about them states that "Germany classes Scientology as a business, rather than a religious organization, and Belgium, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom, remain unconvinced that Scientology is a religion"
I also remember an incident from the beginning of 90's where a Finnish anonymous email re-mailer service was accused in US, actually in California if I remember correctly, on being a nest of pedophiles and Johan Helsingius the maintainer of service being a pedophile too. Actually if my member serves me good some California states legislator in public speach demanded that US uses to it's power to pressure Finnish government to crack down on service. Later it was found at that the church of Scientology was behind this campaign as a pressuring way and as a retribution Johan for not cooperating with them and disclosing information about on the users of service. Wikipedia has a small article about this in their section about Johan Helsingius.
Just have to wonder how on earth US government hasn't cracked on Scientology and hard.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
Look, I am sorry, but if you are charged with a crime, you show up in court, and plead your case. Any judge with half his brain tied behind his back would have recognized this guys actions as free speech, and tossed his arrest. Then, he would have had a great civil rights suit against the police officers and the city for violation of his rights. But no...what this guy does is he flees the USA, because he thinks the scientologists are out to get him: "I couldn't be employed while I was trying to hide out from them. They have agents inside the IRS, so when you use your social security number, they just pull it and come and get you." I mean, come on, this guy is a complete nut job...give me a break. IHMO, he should be punished for not subjecting himself to the lawful authority of the court...but not punished for telling it like it is about the cult of Xenu.
HEY,
:)
When you summarize it like that it sounds insane.
RIAA, MPAA, NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS, Lawyers, Rich Scientologist perverts, corrupt, sold out congressmen/senators, AT&T, Verizon and countless more.
just reading slashdot is enough to chill one from head to toe.
Read radical news here
and the judge didn't allow him to introduce the bulk of his evidence ... he fled and claimed political asylum in Canada before sentencing ....I suspect you're wrong about the amount of the judge's brain tied behind his back.
Keith may be a bid odd, but he's not crazy - he realized he'd been railroaded by political pressure on the local DA - it's a small town in the desert dominated by a Scientology compound - the locals hate them and if Keith had been allowed to put the fact that it was Scientology he was picketing (rather than making it sound like a real church) the jury would have acquitted him
OT III
[Operating Thetan Level 3]
BODY THETANS
by L. Ron Hubbard
The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet - 178 billion on average) by mass implanting..
He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken - in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc was placed in the unplants. When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert.
The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development. One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.
In December 1967 1 know someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.
One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.
One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing.
You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.
Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error.
Good luck.
* * *
For the purpose of clarity, by BODY THETAN is meant a thetan who is stuck to another thetan or body but is not in control.
A THETAN is, of course, a Scientology word using the Greek theta which was the Greek symbol for thought or life. An individual being such as a man is a thetan, he is not a body and he does not think because he has a brain.
A CLUSTER is a group of body thetans crushed or hold together by some mutual bad experience.
----------
Character of Body Thetans
Body Thetans are just Thetans. When you get rid of one he goes off and possibly squares around, picks up a body or admires daisies. He is in fact a sort of cleared Being. He cannot fail to eventually, if not at once, regain many abilities. Many have been asleep for the last 75,000,000 years. A body Thetan responds to any process any Thetan responds to.
Some body Thetans are suppressive. A suppressive is out of valence in R6. He is in valence in Incident I almost always.
One can't run a human being on these two incidents since human beings are composites and would not be able to run the lot. Aside from that, non-clears are way below awareness required to even find these Incidents.
Huge amounts of charge have already been removed from the case and the body thetans by Clearing and OT I and OT II to say nothing of engrams and lower grades.
Awareness is proportional to the charge removed from the case.
Although a human is a composite being there is only one I (that is you) who runs things.
Body thetans just hold one back.
You will continue to be you. You, inside, can of course separate out body thetans and so solo auditing is the answer. How good do you have to be to run body thetans off? Well, if you didn't skip your grades, Clearing and OT II particularly, you. should be able to'command body thetans easily.
* * *
Incident II is over 36 days long. Capture on other planets was weeks or months before the implant. Tho
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
OT III Errors
.II and Incident I. They can also occur at 1 quadrillion, which is the Clearing course materials. They also occur at random dates for different reasons.
Amongst OT III errors are "a BT run on Incident I fails to blow". There are three reasons:
1. Auditor is trying to run a cluster with an Incident I. The right thing to do is date and get the character of the incident that made it a cluster and then run Incident Its on those left when it breaks up. Or get Dianetic auditing.
2. There is an earlier Incident I on the same BT. Find it and run it. The BT has a chain of them all by himself.
3. Another BT is copying the Incident I just run so it looks like it didn't blow. Failure to ever run Incident I can also cause a bog. Routine Dianetic auditing by a Dianetic HDC who is also on or above OT III using triple flows and LDN OT III also handles bogged OT III pre- OT's.
----------
Cluster Formation - Cumulative
In doing a cluster one is likely to find it is made up of other earlier clusters. This looks like this. 1898 impact horse accident. When engram 1898 run on R3R, that part blows. No F/N occurs, TA remains up. Remainder will grind after the blow. Earlier portion dates as 93,000,000 years ago, electric shock. When run on R3R, that part blows, no FIN. TA remains up, will grind if run further. Earliest portion dares as 72 trillion implant. When run on R3R, all blow, FIN.
A cluster or engram which is a cluster can repeatedly FIN as BT's blow. Dates as 778 million explosion. After run once or twice an FIN occurs as one BT blows. Run again to second FIN as two more BT's blow. Remainder blow with a wider FIN. The cluster has gone. This happens (repeating FIN) when picture persists and noter check reveals it is not a copy. It will be more BT's in same cluster. So above repeating FIN occurs when pre-OT is moved through it. Clusters are found by meter dating, listing for type of incident and run as an engram. Clusters can occur at Incident
* * *
I have lately been C/Sing a number of failed OT cases and have found them all running well on solo now. The errors are made as follows:
1. The solo auditor cannot audit, needs more training.
2. Cases are not well prepared with Dianetics.
The remedy for all of these is to:
1. Run the PC for at least a score or two of Dianetic items by R3R, done of course by a good HDC,
2. then do a GF 40.
And then repeat it until necessary auditing is complete. These two actions take care of the majority of difficult cases on OT
The real End Phenomena of OT III and OT IV is exterior with full perception. You can and should accomplish full stable exteriorization on doing the materials of III.
----------
Further III remedies:
3. High TA. This comes from not completing the Incidents I and II on body thetans.
4. The solo auditor puts too wide an intention on the BT and runs two or three when he is intending to run only one.
5. A cluster just won't break up. The remedy is a Dianetic session listing for impacts or incidents that would cause a cluster and doing R3R. The principle of earlier similar holds good. When this is completed, the solo auditor is sent back to solo to clean up the BT's shaken loose and to continue with OT III.
6. Rudiments go out on BT's. The remedy of course is to locate BT's who have out-ruds, put in the ruds and run Incident 1, at which the ST should leave.
7. A theta-bopping meter sometimes puzzles a solo auditor -on OT Ill. This means a BT is trying to exteriorize and can't. The remedy is to complete the partially run Incident 11 or Incident I or in extreme cages put the ruds in on the hung up BT.
8. One-hand electrode giving wrong TA read baffling the solo auditor with floating needles with a high TA. The remedy is to have two-hand electrodes handy and trim the trim knob so the one-hand electrode reads the same as two-hand electrodes.
9. A suppressive body thetan sometimes isn't auditable. The remedy is to run Grades IV
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My last two pastors were both stockbrokers who quit their jobs to preach full-time. They are both making far less money now than they did (One is even below the poverty line now). It's clear to me that they believe in what they are doing (which doesn't mean they are correct, it just means they think they are).
Of course, it's obvious that some people are using Christianity as a tool to help themselves. Ted Haggard is a loser and a hypocrite, but he pales in comparison to some 'Christian' pastors who embezzeled, molested children, or ran lynch mobs. But there are people who can latch on to any cause (good or bad) and abuse that power for their own ends. Whether it's embezzeling money from the United Way or trolling on slashdot, some people are just bastards, and the larger the group you're looking at is the more of them you will find.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
we believe when you die your soul gets thrown up on the roof and can't get down.
it's the space aliens that do it.
The Church of Scientology and its followers want you to believe that Keith Henson stated he would "have them bombed and the buildings exploded": This is utter fabrication, Keith Henson never expressed such threat, jokingly or not. He merely corrected someone who answered to a post in which someone else was joking about a "Tom Cruise Missile."
Here is his post in Google archives: http://tinyurl.com/3dgn4y
Keith Henson was picketing and trying to bring awareness to what he calls "depraved indifference" in the death of two young women in and around the Scientology compound. He was trying to bring awareness because he cared. This is directly from the doctrine of the Church of Scientology: "[People critical of Scientology] may be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed," from L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. This is the precise doctrine they followed to try and silence Keith Henson.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige included, have been promoting the murdering of other human beings. This is beyond irony that it is now Keith Henson in jail, just because he cared enough, while David Miscavige is free to go despite his graphical depictions of deadly violence against psychiatrists -- with thundering applauses from followers... (ref.: Evening Standard (London, Oct. 2006): "Tom's aliens target City's 'planetary rulers'" by David Cohen, Michael Leonard Tilse: "False Purpose Rundown") (http://tinyurl.com/24xfta)
From an article by Glen McGregor, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Wednesday, October 26, 2005
"Scientology is also the only religious group ever to be criminally convicted in Canada. It was found guilty on two counts of breach of the public trust related to a 1982 conspiracy to break into government offices. The criminal charges lead to a precedent-setting defamation case, known as Hill vs. Church of Scientology of Toronto, brought by a Crown prosecutor whom the church's lawyer had accused of criminal contempt. The Supreme Court in 1995 upheld the finding against the church, which became the largest libel award in Canadian history."
DMCA take down? So is this a religion or a business?
If its a religion i say they forfit their IP rights. If they are a business, they need to forfit any benefits they get claiming as such.
Shouldnt be able to have it both ways, regardless of how silly they are ultimately, this 'dual protection' really should stop.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's fair use, but I received a letter from the cult's lawyers for putting precisely that quote on my website. They don't sue to win, they sue to shut people up.
http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk/stolgy_14.htm
Atheists range from the "Everyone who believes something different than me is an idiot" crowd to the "People who believe something different are probably wrong, but most of them are nice people I respect" crowd. Unsurprisingly, the same came be said of Christians...
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
(For non-UK readers, Panorama is the BBC's flagship investigative journalism programme)
Panorama
Monday 14 May
8:30pm - 9:00pm
BBC1
Scientology and Me
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
As opposed to, say, the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...
if Keith had been allowed to put the fact that it was Scientology he was picketing (rather than making it sound like a real church) the jury would have acquitted him
This implies that its acceptable to picket Scientogoly(a fake church) while it is wrong to picket a "real" church, ie real as in christian? Just what kind of bigoted ridiculousness is this, no matter what church it is, it is acceptable(ie constitutionaly protected) to picket and protest its presence.
I dunno it sounds like a really good blurb for a science fiction book, that hubbard guy should have tried his hand at fantasy.
And other religions aren't pyramid schemes and cults?
I have no lost love for organized religion but name me another one that charges you money to learn the church doctrine. And I'm not talking about a collection plate. Name another religion that was started by a guy that came out and said "Starting my own religion would be a good way to make money".
If the Catholic Church operated like Scientology they would have a copyrighted version of the bible and charge you money to read it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't get it either. We are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to protest has long been protected. No individual or organization has the right to not be offended. Shouldn't his action have been protected under the First Amendment? I would personally have looked into having my accuser prosecuted for violation of my civil rights.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Some atheists are kinda militant, but if it keeps that "intelligent design" bullshit out of science classrooms, I'm all for it. We've progressed past religion dictating education (they called it the Dark Ages for a reason, kids). Discuss it in theology, discuss it in other classes, but it has no place in a science book or classroom, because it's not science. But the ten commandments in a city park? Meh. No big deal, as long as the taxpayers didn't pay for it, and aren't paying for the upkeep, and I could theoretically fund a statue of Baron d'Holbach with a plaque saying "There is no God" in the same way. What is that, I can't? Guess there's still disparity then.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
L. Ron Hubbard was mostly likely insane, I'm not a psychologist, but I have spent much time helping mentally ill people recover, I think he was Schitzophrenic. Paranoid delusions, delusions of power, fear of psych meds... Why would he hate Psychatry so very much, unless he had contact with them? One disturbing thing I've seen is that Scientology activly recruits from mental hospitals!
Schitzophrenia has two sides, sometimes you feel terrible, like the entire world hates you; sometimes you feel like a god, immortal and wonderful. and when you are in each state, you can't even conceive the other one. I've seen people off their meds go from laughing giddy, to believing that they have never been happy in the space of 15 seconds.
If you take your meds, you lose the Highs, but also the Lows. because you lose the Highs, and are having paranoid delusions, it's common to think that the medications are bad, and the doctors are trying to poison you. (a belief of L. Ron's) Because of the auditory hallucinations, you may think your body is occupied by multiple entities (a belief of L. Ron's), and come up with a bizzarre world-view that attempts to explain the world that you are perceiving (Scientology or TimeCube)
One possible trait of Schitzophrenia is a difficulty producing 'normal' emotional responses, aka 'Flat Affect'. people with this symptom may appear emotionless, and disinterested (like the VT shooter, as he was decribed before the shootings). My personal thought is that someone with this symptom, if they are very smart, may be forced to 'fake' emotions in order to interact with others. this self-training from a young age could make someone a VERY good actor, as they have essentially acted their entire life. I suspect that Tom Cruise and possibly John Travola may be in this situation. Unfortunetly as they aged they may have started showing other signs of Schizophreneia, were urged to take medication, rebelled, and then joined a cult that supported their decision... Think about Tom on Oprah and a 'giddy high'. I think Tom Cruise is intelligent, and a great actor, but without meds he may get progressivly less sane.
No matter how smart you are, with a mental disorder warping your perceptions and emotions, eventually something bad may occur by doing something that seems entirely appropriate at the time. If your 'Angel' is telling you that someone is trying to kill you, and your angel is never wrong, shouldn't you attack them in self defense first? If your uncle has lung cancer, and you can 'see' where it is, shouldn't you take a kitchen knife and cut it out? A good friend of mine came to these conclusions, fortunetly nothing seriously wrong happened, and he's now on medications instead of prison for attempted murder, or worse. (like the VT shootings, where my conclusion is the guy went insane, and detached from society... without support of others he rereated into paranoid delusions that ended in a pre-emptive attack, which in his mind was fully justified)
Unfortunetly, it's difficult to seperate 'Mental Illness', from 'Religion'. So some mentally ill states have gained some protections under the law; I've read that in the Soviet Union, when they were being critisized for imprisioning to many people for disagreeing with the Party, they redefined mental illness so that disagreeing with the Party could result in your being declared mentally ill, and being locked up in a hospital; because any 'sane' person agrees with the Party. As much as the idea amuses me, I don't think voting republican should be grounds for be declared legally insane.
Scientology, However, is not just using the law as a Shield, they are using it as a Weapon, and abusing the process. This is entirely wrong, and needs to be stopped. Like false rape accusations damage the chances of real justice for real victims; if Scientology keeps abusing their position as a 'religion' it will harm other genuine religions.
I hate to make digs at the Roman Catholic Church, but once upon a time, it was against Church rules for laymen to read the Bible. Only the Priests could do so.
Fair enough, but as I said in another post of mine, I don't think that past excesses or abuses by modern religions justify the practices of Scientology. We should oppose their actions regardless of what other religions have done in the past.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This implies that its acceptable to picket Scientogoly(a fake church) while it is wrong to picket a "real" church, ie real as in christian? Just what kind of bigoted ridiculousness is this, no matter what church it is, it is acceptable(ie constitutionaly protected) to picket and protest its presence.
Just because you call something a religion doesn't mean it is. Scientology is a money-making scam, nothing more. That is not to say that there aren't any believers, but every scam has its believers.
But, yes, fake religions, real religions, real presidents, it doesn't matter, you should be allowed to protest it unless you are being a danger to the public safety (which this guy wasn't). For a nation that protects freedom of faith to such a degree the US is pretty poor at protecting freedom of protesting/speech.
Just because you call something a religion doesn't mean it is
OK, so what does make something a religon? What's the definition? I'm not disagreeing with you that Scientology is at best rather absurd, but I don't see any clear way of distinguishing it from other more conventional religions other than by number of belivers or age - neither of which seem fair ways to judge legitimacy to me.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Let's just be clear about one thing: Scientology (the "applied religious philosophy") is indeed a 100% valid religion. The question is whether or not the Church of Scientology (the transnational corporation) is a religious organisation or not.
The main thing that distinguishes CoS from just about every other religious organisation that I can think of is that you have to pay them money to find out what they actually believe.
The overwhelming majority of mainstream religions will be happy to tell you. You ask a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu or a Buddhist what they believe, and (assuming they're not busy right at that moment) they'll be happy to fill you in or tell you who can. Or you can go to any bookstore and buy books describing their beliefs and practises in some detail.
There also still exist, in the world, "mystery religions". Mystery religions have an arcanum, some body of secret wisdom that is only revealed to initiates. I'm a bit dubious about these, personally, but still, the main differentiating factor between traditional mystery religions and the CoS is that in the CoS, the revealing of the arcanum is directly tied to the handing over of money.
The other thing that distinguishes the CoS is its aggressive behaviour in attacking critics and splinter groups. It clearly doesn't act as if it believes in freedom of religion. Therefore it's not a religious organisation.
"the Romans really did require everyone to return to the town of their birth to be taxed around 5 B.C." Nah. There's no evidence the Romans were that stupid, none at all. Or perhaps you can provide a link for this nugget of religiously believed disinformation? What would be the point of counting people where they were born rather than where they are now? And how would you know people went to the right place anyway? Why does only *one* of the four gospels mention it? It would have caused massive disruption for no good reason. And such a bizarre and irrational act would have left loads of traces in the Roman civil records and other literature. There are none.