Slashdot Mirror
Scientologists In Row With BBC
CmdrGravy writes "The Church Of Scientology is currently engaged in a row with the BBC, a result of an investigation by reporter John Sweeney. Sweeney is investigating the Church Of Scientology, trying to judge changes in the organization over the last few years; He's trying to discover if they've moved away from the questionable practices and secrecy they have employed in the past. The conflict centers around a YouTube video posted by the scientologists. It shows Mr. Sweeney losing his temper with a scientology spokesman. Mr. Sweeney's outburst came at the end of a tour of a scientology exhibition which attempts to portray psychiatrists as evil nazi type torturers entitled 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death' which is both gruesome and utterly unconvincing. The BBC appears willing to stand behind its reporter, in spite of the pressure brought to bear by the scientologist organization."
I'm convinced the Scientologists own SCO.
Why is this in YRO? I guess you could make some weird case for my right to have the BBC pick on Scientology...
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Why are wasting our time with a bunch of delusional cultists?
Their material calls that there's not a shred of "scientific" evidence that mental illnesses exist, instead it's all about the alien ghosts lord Xenu imprisoned.
I mean, for Christ's sake, people. Is there a limit to how ridiculous you can get?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Join scientology now and you to can talk to dead space aliens.
Special introductory offer - join now for just $360,000USD.
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
Better luck next time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5NPhtLI There ya go!
If there were ever devil-worshipping human slime, with a penchant for pederasty, it was L. Ron Hubbard.
Oh, yeah. Charles Manson was a Scientologist.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/02/why
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Slashdot has run afoul of these pricks before, and a lot of the /. community has very strong feelings about them. If free speech is considered a fair issue for /. then this is certainly within the scope.
Bad driving: Industry of Death
Thousands of people die in car accidents each year. All of them drove facing the steering wheel and front windshield of the car [showing big charts on the presentation screen to show some convincing statistics].
The bottom line: we should drive facing the rear end of our cars.
---
But damn, I'd rather drive my car sitting backwards than believe some alien sci-fi story since they just discovered there are bad psychiatrists, like there are bad professionals in every area of life.
Yes, Scientology is nutty, but that's about normal for a religion. Could be worse. They don't have a big pedophile problem, suicide bombers, or televangelists, like some of their competitors.
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." - L Ron Hubbard
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
How about having to pay to be a member? Scientology is a manipulative business, and that is put mildly.
Brainwashing and "disconnecting" people from your family doesn't float your boat, eh? Being swallowed by a cult is devastating for the families involved. So as long as these crazy people aren't hurting you you don't give a fuck, eh?
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
They don't have a big pedophile problem
Do a bit more research.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
... is that the interviewer lost his temper.
They teach something about reactions and self-control, but probably in their own spacey terminology.
Bottom line is that if the interviewer allowed the interviewee to provoke him, he "loses." Even if you think you're right, if the other guy pushes your button and you blow up, you've demonstrated a weakness which they will go on to exploit if they can.
Yes, Scientology is nutty, but that's about normal for a religion. Could be worse. They don't have a big pedophile problem, suicide bombers, or televangelists, like some of their competitors.
Nutty? So, Scientology is in fact a mental illness, which doesn't acknowledge mental illnesses.
What a cosmic irony.
I suppose in this case you're right, we gotta be more PC to Scientologists and their "special condition".
Sam: Dude, we're tainted by the souls of aliens blown with nukes by alien space invador from a galaxy far far away!
Jim: Man, you're a f***ing idiot or something? STFU!
Sam: No, I'm a scientologist...
Jim: OH! Oh... oh buddy, sorry I had no idea. I really had no idea.. but you'll be fine, yea.. you'll be just fine.
Here's why:
A key belief and practice of the Church involved "auditing" via the "E-Meter". The "E-Meter" is a bargain-basement lie detector. It works on galvanic skin response; it can measure (crudely) fluctuations in your emotional state. It can't measure much past that. So one person holds these two "tin cans" while somebody else tries to make them respond enough to flinch the needle.
The person being "audited" is practicing how to be emotionally non-responsive to whatever is thrown at them - and that can involve verbal abuse, shouting, whatever.
This isn't controversial or something the "church" denies.
What most people don't think about is the flip side: what is being learned by the person NOT holding the tin cans? The one trying to trigger a response in the other?
Yup. You guessed it. They become masters (eventually) at "pressing people's buttons".
So anybody not used to this sort of thing or who isn't expecting it can be made to "blow up", sometimes spectacularly. And I'd bet good money that's exactly what they did to Sweeney and for exactly the reason they've used this incident: to portray any opponent as an out of control loose cannon, nutcase, etc.
Don't go up against these guys unless your self control is rock solid AND you understand this technique. Be ready to say something like "much as you might prefer otherwise, I'm not being "audited", I'm not standing here with tin cans in my hand looking like an idiot, you're not going to get me to blow up". Turn it back on 'em, they'll start foaming at the mouth. If a Rondroid is trying to get you pissed, ASSUME there's a camera pointing your way.
but but tom cruise......i mean c'mon top gun people top gun
I also find it extremely hypocritical that this gang is going after mental health workers after their tragic record with the menatally ill.
More like he was trying to out shout someone who was misrepresenting something that he had said earlier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8hpHY9zDQ It doesn't seem so harsh at this angle and the scientologist is the one who starts with the voice raising. Sweeney just takes it to the next level. Obviously out of hand for a journalist, but quite satisfying to see.
The one characteristic that I've noticed is consistent across scientologist interviews I've seen is that they all have a creepy boneheadedness when it comes to answering any question, no matter how innocuous it may be. It's as if every moment in life has to be a confirmation of their beliefs.
But they do have Tom Cruise, and that more than makes up for the rest.
I don't therefore I'm not.
As Sweeney pointed out, Scientologists' comparison of psychology to Nazism is disgusting. That's why I wish Godwin's Law could be extended to the beyond the [forum|usenet|chat] world. Abusive display at a conference? You loose!
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Likewise, if you're in the UK, you can stream it from the BBC's website too.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology _Moscow_versus_Russia
This is a recent development - in April the European court of human rights decided that it was against EU law for Russia to deny Scientology religeon status - a judgement that applies to all EU member states including the UK and Germany (who have previously been quite outspoken against it).
May I draw people's attention to http://www.xenu.net/
Scientology - the cult pyramid scheme
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
When I was just out of high school, there was a Scientology office in my town. They always had a sign out front offering a 'Free Personality Test'. On a lark, a pal and me went in and had our personalities 'tested' just to see what they were hawking. When I was done, they compared the multiple choice questionare to their chart, and drew some lines through it. They explained to me that I was doing fine, and that I was already highly Dyanetic, or whatever they called it. They then thanked me for coming in, and told me to have a nice day.
I have never been quite sure how to take that. Maybe I should have sang them the leader song...Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Leader! Leader! Batman!
Nutty? So, Scientology is in fact a mental illness, which doesn't acknowledge mental illnesses.
What a cosmic irony.
Makes you wonder what happened to L Ron Hubbard to make him so anti psychiatrist.
And actually, lots of religions seem to have a sense of who their enemies are that require that they know the world view they espouse is wrong. E.g. if you're inside scientology, they hatred of psychiatrists seems quirky. But if you're outside, you can see that psychiatrists can deconstruct brainwashing techniques and deprogram scientologists so it makes sense that the religion considers them a threat. Just like if you're outside a cult, you can see that the cult needs to cut people off from the outside world as much as possible to stop them seeing counter arguments to the cult's bizarre theories, but if you're inside the cult and you believe it to the the truth, why bother.
I suppose in this case you're right, we gotta be more PC to Scientologists and their "special condition".
Why? liberalism isn't a suicide pact - you don't have to hold off cricising people when they're out to destroy it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
John Sweeney writes about his "harassment" (supposedly at the hands of the Church of Scientology), but this pales in comparison to that experienced by dissenters or those who bad-mouth other religions. As we've discovered in the last year, even publishing a drawing of Mohammed can lead to death threats and street protests the world over. Even writing, performing, or publishing a poem about Jesus, a character from "The Bible", can lead to prosecution and snitchery in the UK, a supposedly developed country. Note that in the linked case, Bakewell was "reported to the DPP by the National Viewers and Listeners Association."
Tu Quoque is not a valid argument you know, even when it's true. Actually the case you linked to is the end of a centuries old battle by liberals against Christian limits on free speech. I can't prejudge it, but my guess is that the liberals will eventually win and blasphemy laws will at some point be abolished entirely or neutered to the point where they are no threat.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
To whoever modded the parent as "flamebait" - you sir, are a jackass.
Do not fuck withe Xenu, Man !! Read 'em and weep !! Aces over Kings !! L. Ron Hubbard showed them !!
(You see, L Ron said he could start a religion to a pack of fellow nuts while playing poker, and that it would be based on aliens (yes, the outerspace kind) !! he won the bet.)
Stupid, stupid people worshipping their god. But those screwballs are not any worse than Nazis (Hitler), Islamic wackos (Alah), paedo-priesthood (Pope), etc.
The difference is that most nutty Protestant sects do not become as large and rich as the Church of Scientology, and they also have to keep some sort of attachment to a nominally Christian approach. They also have the problem that their followers do tend to be socially mobile - the fact of going to Church shows they want to "better" themselves - and with social mobility comes exposure to more educated people who may guide them towards mainstream Christianity. Scientology, on the other hand, is not a bizarre offshoot of a mainstream religion and there is no central tendency for its followers to gravitate back to.
There is too with cults an interesting anti-intellectual tendency. If you want to make authoritative pronouncements in, say, the Catholic or Episcopalian churches, you are probably fluent in NT Greek and can read the NT in the original. Cults contain less educated people, so they will do things like take a particular English translation of the Bible as being authoritative and solve the problem that way. Extreme cults can get a following from rich people who do not want to invest the time and effort needed to become familiar with, say, the Bible or the Pali texts. You can join something like - oh, say Kabbalah - and say pretty well anything in public without looking ridiculous, while a Hollywood actor who tries to sound knowledgeable about the Bible had better know his or her stuff because there are so many well informed people listening. A religion that does not let its sacred texts get out too much is at an advantage in this respect.
As a part time student of religious sociology, it's a pity I won't be around in 50 years to see if Scientology, like Mormonism before it, is evolving into a mainstream religion and gradually losing its bizarre baggage.
Pining for the fjords
...in NYC Times Sq. Metro. "Free personality test" they called it. Being in a generally good mood at the time (first day in the US no less), I though "why not" - the girl looked pretty hot, and it was an excuse to talk to someone. So I hold the tin cans, and the questions start coming; "how are you doing", and then "no really, how ARE you doing?", and then more like "I think you're insecure" and "This book can help with that" - despite my protests that I was actually OK. This pissed me me somewhat, as my good mood turned quite sour quite quickly and in fact, I left rather pissed off.
Anyway, the next day, I saw them again, and this time I was ready for them. I did the whole "Oh, I wonder what this is" type gaze, and sure enough they invite me over for another free personality test, and sure enough the same questions start. The needle was going no-where this time, and in fact the more the guy tried to convince me i was a mental train-wreck the more my confidence grew and the needle fell. Eventually I actually start laughing at the guy interviewing me, and he can't take it any more so hands me over to another fine looking female who tries a similar technique. At this point I'm chuckling even louder at their constant mental batterings, and people are starting to take interest in the commotion, at which point they try and sell me their book once last time.
I tell them quite clearly and loudly enough for the onlookers to hear that "when I'm as insecure as you lot, I'll buy your stinking book then and burn it". To which my awaiting friends added "Scientology is for losers".
That showed them.
throw new NoSignatureException();
photo of L Ron Hubbard "auditing" a tomato.j pg
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/tomato.
I'd say it still has a few thetans to go before it makes clear.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Ahh, wishful thinking. How quaint.
It really saddens me to rain on your utopian dream, but "it would work if we _all_ did X" _never_ worked. Never worked, doesn't work, never will.
By the same token, yeah, it would stop spam if we _all_ didn't buy that stuff, but there'll always be some idiots who do. Yeah, it would stop stock scams dead if we all didn't rush to buy hyped-through-spam stocks, but there'll always be some "smart" guys who think they can beat the system and do their own buying and selling just before it crashes. (It has been already proved to never work, but, hey, there's one born every minute anyway.) Yeah, it would stop unethical business practices dead if we all stopped buying from and investing in unethical companies, but, let's face it, you're a minority there; the majority just buys from whoever sells the cheapest, invests in whoever promises the most gain, and would even deal with the mafia perfectly happily. Etc.
And so it is with this kind of fucked-up cults too. Wishful "if we all started boycotting them" thinking won't work, because there'll always be a minority, no matter how small, who are fucked-up in the head and need some exotic, non-mainstream religion to give meaning to their fucked-up lives. And a cult doesn't really need billions of members to be profitable. If only as few as those who buy from spam links are also gullible enough to join your cult, you're already a rich guy. It's that simple.
So you'd literally need to get _everyone_ to join in your boycott for it to work. Not just "more", but literally "all".
In other words, the "allmighty buck" isn't that allmighty at all when it comes to righteous causes. And it tends to work against you every time.
What you need isn't self-righteous boycotts, what you need is laws and courts of law. You already have laws saying that (A) small excerpts _do_ fall under fair use, even if scientology doesn't like it, and (B) once they've made themselves a public figure, they can't really stop other people from talking about them, or even ridiculling them, and (C) they aren't supposed to use lawsuits just to silence their critics. See that those laws are applied. That's really the only realistic, working solution.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sweeney didn't lose it. He tried a different response after a solid week of total frustration and non-answered questions and attempts to exchange understandings of how outsiders view CoS and how CoS members view their detractors. I would have lasted an hour before the same. Interestingly the BBC have received legal papers from lawyers in Hollywood asking that their famous clients (i.e. Kirstie Alley) are removed from the report as I guess they don't want to be linked with the CoS. This of course is the CoS removing balance from the debate.... and I wonder why people them think they're barking.
They seem to be trying to silence Sweeney with "public" support this time.
If you look at the people who have posted negative comments with regard to Sweeney, a disproportionately large number of them seem to be those with Scientology interests or more interestingly, those who have just signed up after the incident.
As most countries recognize, Scientology is a purely profit-driven company. They got themselves the status of a church to simply reduce their tax burden in the US (they have tried the same thing in other countries, but obviously failed). However that does not mean they should be awarded the privilege of being called a church, just because they have that status in a single particular country.
So, please -- just stick to the shorter "Scientology" if you have to talk about them at all (..there is no bad PR).
Never heard of them.
Can't think of anything more damning to say.
here
Wow. The "spokesman" is pretty much a master of getting people extremely pissed off. You can tell in the tone, in the VERY precise words used. It puts you off at first by speaking down on you like a child, and then keeps attacking until you feel you have no choice but to raise your voice so you cannot hear them while refuting them.
...actually quite impressive, were it not coming from a religion.
I'm all for the 'Church for the destruction of the Church of Scientology'. Fight fire with fire. Anyone who doesn't agree that the CoS is an evil pyramid-scheme should be sentenced to death (or an atomic wedgie).
All hail lord Xenu!
This sig is intentionally left blank
This is a bit off-topic, but I just want people to know that you don't have to look hard to find scientologists pushing their beliefs on people. The Wikipedia article on scientology seems to regularly be edited by CoS shills who try and turn the article into a PR brochure. Just look at the talk and history pages for the culprits.
"Is this testing whether I'm a replicant, or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?"
Are they something like intergalactic pubic lice?
Intelligent Design.
Care to explain why we waste our time with that kind of delusion? Because the head honchos just happen to follow a religion that supports it?
It might seem unrelated, but I see a parallel. One claims that there's no mental illness and it's all some deity (or, if I remember right, its enemies) messing with your inner alien. The other one claims that, since you can't prove every single step taken from the beginning of the universe to the world as we know it now, it's all a bunch of fabrications and we should instead rely on magic detailed in some old book. Both call science bollocks and we should instead rely on some magical fabrication of some kinda god.
Could you point out the difference to me?
Religion is something wonderful, and if people need it for their inner peace and 'cause they got nothing better to do, ok, have fun. But don't mess with my life, and most of all, don't mess with science, dammit! Religion has no room in science. Science is about disproving things, not blind faith in them!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Damn, I've already posted a few messages here so can't use my modpoints now - a very insightful piece.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
But they are (as far as I'm aware), the only religion to insist that you have to pay in order to gain access to their sacred texts. And the only religion to believe that we all came here on Douglas DC-8's. I'd be interested to see how large a planet would have to be to support 178 billion people. No wonder Xenu decided to nuke the whole damned lot of them.
Well, technically that's the same here if you happen to be a Roman Catholic, you "owe" them part of your income. But compared to what Scientology wants from you, we're talking peanuts here.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The documentary "Scientology And Me" is being shown tonight (Monday 14/5/2007) on BBC1 at 8:30pm
Because most collisions occur in the forward direction, rear-facing seats are safer in all forms of transport. Impact is naturally dissipated against the seat back, and the head suffers a rear impact which distributes the force on the brain onto the curved rear aspect of the skull, instead of the nasty pointy injurious surface at the front of the skull.
If you could solve the perceptual problems with driving in a rear-facing seat, it would be safer for the driver. It's already safer for passengers.
//Damn Straight//
They should have cut out the part in the middle where he suddenly says something on a normal tone. That shows he was not losing it, it was just a shouting match. Either way, losing it to those creepy Xenu freaks is hardly gonna increase their credibility.
The Cult Of Scientology doesn't like Psychologists because they are people who know how to avoid CoS' mind games and tricks.
Scientology's hatred of psychologists is only a natural reation. It is fundamentally essential to the very survial of Scientology that they demonize and hate a group of people who are immune to psychological manipulation, psychological intimidation, and brainwashing. These concepts are the only things that allow Scientology to exist, and by demonizing the very people who specialize in undoing brainwashing, and are immune to psychological mind games, they are simply demonstrating a natural instinct to keep the church in existance by protecting, rather viciously, their Achillie's Heel.
In an interesting side note:
I wonder if Tom Cruise noticed the irony in the fact that he played the leading part in "War Of The Worlds", a movie where he has to defeat aliens who need to suck the blood out of human beings to keep their civilization alive, when CoS sucks the life ouf of anyone who dares to criticize them.
For the recod:
I welcome our Thetan overlords!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The UK is referenced because we STILL can't have stores be open more than 6 hours on a Sunday because of some fictional character in some fictional pile of cod-swallop from 2000 years ago
Just wanted to let you know that the primary reason behind current sunday-trading laws is actually "protecting the family" and not religiously motivated. Religious concerns dictated the choice of sunday as the day, but the primary motivation was purely secular.
>>because we STILL can't have stores be open more than 6 hours on a Sunday
Thats England, come north of the border Badboy. Mind you that's if we can get our Parliament
members to talk to each other..
Now mod me me offtopic/pedantic!
Acid House saves Souls
Very good points regarding the impartiality of sources, especially Wikipedia, when it comes to reading up on Scientology.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
I agree with a lot of your points, but I will certainly not concede that Scientology is a religion. It has all the hallmarks of a cult, and the actions of its members do nothing to change my opinion on that.
Most religions have roots that emerged so long ago they simply cannot be traced back far enough through reliable records to accurately observe how they came to be, and to what extent they may actually have been divinely influenced. For this reason, we respect that they have at least some chance of being truthful, and we allow people the right to fully integrate those beliefs into their daily lives without the government interfering. Scientology does not have mysterious roots. We know exactly when and how it was created, and anyone who spends a little time doing some research will stumble upon enough evidence to see *why* it was created as well. Hell, several of Hubbard's quotes have already been posted here, and they paint a pretty obvious picture.
If Scientologists want people to respect their beliefs, they need to respect other peoples' basic freedoms to investigate and comment on their establishment. But they don't. They threaten and bully individuals who object to their practices and who try to express those objections publicly. Sure, most of the information you see about them is negative, but that's basically all people have to work with! Anyone who apparently sees some merit in the organization has probably spent time as a member themselves, and a good portion of them are now wondering what the hell came over them, and where all their money is. (See countless "What was I thinking?" webpages and blogs.)
No, they aren't a religion. At least not according to what I have to *hope* is the popular definition of that term.
Don't remember any priest or nun or even a lay worker coming round to my house and demanding money. Basically if you want to give to a religion then you do if you don't then you don't.
Yes I do know about "tithes" which was a sort of acceptable charitable giving based on your income to the appropriate church, temple, synagogue or mosque but this form of giving was practiced and sometimes enforced by nearly all religions.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
they all have a creepy boneheadedness when it comes to answering any question, no matter how innocuous it may be
With beliefs like that, do you blame them?
L Ron Hubbard was just a sci-fi novelist, and not a very good one at that.
Now if Iain Banks would try something like that...
Why, yes! I AM new here.
>a lay worker
Is that the latest PC term for a prostitute?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
>Now if Iain Banks would try something like that...
I'd sign up! Well, you'd have to, wouldn't you?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
...if a Scientologist ran for president.
Cruise has done Top Gun in the cockpit, TG behind the wheel, TG behind the bar; TG in the pool hall; TG in the Far East: how about TG in the oval office?
The critical point is the choice of VP. The only movies where he's tolerable are the ones where he's got a Hoffman or a Newman or a Nicholson to pull him out of the snotty American twit rut. Billy Connolly in The Last Samurai died early, but did a splendid job that carried Cruise, through sheer Scottish badness. Props.
Seriously, though: how removed from your own personal affirmations can a candidate be without triggering an internal lack of confidence?
Would you prefer an atheist to a Scientologist to a Hindu to an Amish candidate?
Given the fact that the political system is a meat grinder, does the question matter? How many leaders retain a recognizable link to their beliefs, anyway? Do politicians treat God the way heavy metal bands treat Satan, some kind of marketing device?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Seems to me after reading your excellent comments that perhaps the protections afforded to religions in general need to be revisited. Why churches are immune from standards that the rest of society have consented to is beyond me.
> ..actually quite impressive, were it not coming from a religion.
Because... It isn't coming from a religion. Scientology isn't a religion. Its a profit oriented company disguised as religion. I'm actually quite suprised there are not more of them, considering how easy it seems for the scientologists (and in fact most other religions) to leverage religion laws and make money out of it.
I sincerely don't think any of the scientologists believe in any of the stories about Xenu and his hidden star ships, the same way FSM people dont believe in their flying spaghetti monster. What they both have in common is that they emulate the patterns of real religions to the point when they are reckognized as one under the law. They differ in that the FSM community is in this game for fun, and Scientology for money, and..... for some kind of... I don't know, PURE EVIL!
a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion
In which case, I'm going to start the First Church Of Slashdot.
The 3 Commandments of Slashdotism are:
1) Thou shalt not read the article
2) Thou shalt not read the article
3) 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Obviously, the above is copyright, so anybody who criticizes the church or uses any of the above commandments in an unapproved manner will be on the business end of a DMCA takedown notice.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
You all disgust me. None of you ever met or know anything about Ron Hubbard.
No one ever has achieved as much as Ron in the whole history of human existence. Astronaut, brain surgeon, Nobel Prizewinning biodynamicist, philosopher, painter, statesman, travelling salesman, charlatan, truck driver, leopardskin accessories - you name it and he did it better than any man had ever done before him.
"Light peace and universal karma to you all. L. Ron has passed into the clouds of unknowing where the Self is Unself and the mind is as unmind and all that sort of thing. L. Ron may have melted from the earth like snow, but, one thing lives on. His money. Please send cheque to address below."
The marharishi Veririshi, The Cayman Islands
"Light, peace and all the same sort of thing as from the other one with the beard. You've got to hand it to L. Ron - when it comes to pulling the wool over the eyes he was in a class of his own. I only wish I had a piece of his action.'
The Bhagwash Rujrish
Somewhere in India
(Address withheld on request)
"Life is both river and mountain, forest and sea. To know life is to be part of life. Give me your cheque immediately."
-" These words written by the greatest genius who ever lived. L. Ron Neasden, totally encapsulate the whole message that L. Ron was trying to put across to mankind.
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion. The Church of Scientology disconnects its members from their families so they have nowhere to go when they leave, and brainwashes them under hypnosis to keep them from wanting to. The Church of Scientology is also the only "religion" to keep its core beliefs secret, to be run for profit, and to have its own paramilitary[1] and counter-intelligence[2] operations.
There may be a Scientology religion, but that is NOT the same as the Church of Scientology. Separate the religion from the organization which practices it, and you will see that the organization is so thoroughly corrupt that it cannot be allowed to continue to exist in its present form.
(Posted anonymously for my own protection, as everyone else who casually criticizes Scientology should.)
[1] http://www.xenu.net/archive/so/[2] http://www.xenu.net/archive/go/index.htm
If one is to believe what can easily be found all over the internet, the 'Church' of Scientology is simply a criminal organisation hiding behind a 'religious' facade. If you read about L. Ron Hubbard here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_Ron_Hubbard, and compare it to what you can learn from this book http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF written by Hervey Cleckley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hervey_Cleckley, I think you will reach the same conclusion as I: Hubbard was a fairly classical psychopath who founded Scientology as a scam, to put it simply.
Calling them a church or cult is probably being too kind.
No other religion keeps its teachings secret no matter how idiotic they might seem to non-believers. Why is CoS different?
That's what makes it a cult in my book
But they are (as far as I'm aware), the only religion to insist that you have to pay in order to gain access to their sacred texts.
Well, I recall another religion that kept all its scared texts in a language that most of the population did not understand (Latin) and if you wanted to hear the texts you had to attend an organised reading on Sunday. And God help you if you didn't contribute your 10% tithe to the church.
In fact, in many countries you still have to pay a % of your tax to the church.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Scientology is a religion like any other, it is not (and cannot be - by definition) a cult.
But Church of Scientology is a cult. There is absolutely no doubt.
http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/faq.html#cult
Therefore it deserves no protection whatsoever.
Other stuff to read is anything about the sort of tricks that Derren Brown gets up to - he has done a 2 DVD pack with card tricks of which the second one is mostly about psychological manipulation like how to make people think of one particular card in a full 52 deck.
Study, and be amazed as to just how easy it is to put someone on the wrong track. The "church" (bit of an insult to the word) makes full use of this. Start an argument on false premises and then walk away, witter away at one flaw in a story to invalidate the whole story .. hey! Where did I hear that before?
Insert
Are you sure you aren't a Scientologist? I'm surprised at people's willingness to let them off so lightly. Obviously you haven't researched the group's history.
c ult.html
We have people who have been killed by Scientology. We have people who proteest it and end up bankrupted by lawsuits. My lawyer friends tell me they read quite a bit of case law having to do with Scientologists just because they litigate so frequently.
Don't you wonder why they aren't litigating against the Pledge of Allegience or In God We Trust, but instead to protect their "secrets"?
Repeat until it sinks in: NO other religion charges you money to believe. Or to find out just WHAT you are supposed to be believing in.
Scientology is a cult. A cult has a specific meaning in this case. It isn't a smaller (vs. Christians) persecuted (aren't they all?) religious (it might not be) group. It's a brainwashing group which keeps you from leaving. And other things.
With its plethora of lawyers and infiltration into the IRS and other governmental branches, Scientology has gone from being a harmless cult to a "religious" mafia.
Take the recent example: A misdemeanor which wouldn't normally be enforced gets you a year in jail. WTF? I'm worrying.
Random people attempt to define cult:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c09.html
http://www.ex-cult.org/General/identifying-a-cult
http://www.cultfaq.org/
Disclaimer: I'm Christian, so maybe I'm just offended at being lumped in with these people. I think my rights are more endangered when Scientologists' rights are being protected. At least as they've been protected so far.
No religion deserves any protection whatsoever. The individuals practising it have a right to live free of violence, threats, etc. inspired by their beliefs as much as anyone else has a right to pursue a hobby that doesn't hurt others (e.g., a person who's nasty to someone because they believe in something silly is a nasty dickhead; if he beats them up, he's a violent motherfucker who deserves to be locked away). But there should be nothing to stop anyone from laying into a belief system. I'm even less than an atheist --- don't have any religious inclinations at all --- and I don't see any good reason why these Clubs of Mysticism and Superstition should be afforded any more protection than association of fly-fishing enthusiasts.
If it was not religion inspired it could have been more sane. ie one or possibly two holiday per person, the holiday could be anyday. The current trend of having sunday for everyday is bad. Because a holiday does not mean a rest day, and rest is forced on a person who would like to go shopping on his holiday ;-).
Neither Scotland, England nor Wales are countries. They don't exist.
The country is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Deleted
No I don't.
All hail lord Darwin.
http://www.badpsychics.co.uk/ - they also have a sister site now, http://www.badghosts.co.uk/ . Good articles IMHO :)
My web domain.
I mean, let's face it; most previous times Scientology has come up on Slashdot, it's been as the subject of jokes rather than The Unfunny Truth behind it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The problem I have with CoS is that they hide everything away. Their materials are copyrighted. Thus there is little scope for any public debate. Doesnt' that strike you as odd?
As far as I know, CoS is unique in this. Again, AFAIK, the CoS is unique in charging for all materials. Other religons tend to be welcoming to anyone regardless of their credit status. Yes, they do ask for money, but this is not (AFAIK) ever a requirement.
Any other religon can be questioned. I understand and accept they other religons don't always appreciate being questioned, but whilst some elements on the fringes do react badly, it is possible to find people higher up within a religon who are willing to have an intelligent, educated debate.
The CoS doesn't seem to be like that. If anyone questions them, they will *very* *agressively* counter argue that they are being unfairly treated compared with other religons. Interestingly, I don't believe other religons typically use that arguement; if I were to question Islam or Christianity, they fight their own corner -- they don't say "...but you don't question them, blah blah..."
NOTE: I really would like an answer to my first point in particular! Any CoS sales reps. in the house?
Yeah, I got rejected from my interview with the Scientologists. I think it wasn't long after I asked when I would get my lazer zapper to go after the space aliens, because I was really good at Nintendo.
Maybe I should have told them I play Halo too?
I'll admit that the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jerry Falwells of the world certainly don't give Christianity a very good image. If you blast them in the press, though, they don't try to destroy you personally or professionally. They live life under enough of a microscope that they can't get away with quite that much.
Scientology is not open. It's secretive and dark (the non-GPL'ed "religion"). If you write about them, they may sue you for copyright infringement (since L. Ron's books were originally published as bad sci-fi). Their temples are labyrinths according to a friend who went in for a "stress test".
It's pretty scary and their ability to manipulate the system makes it moreso.
Regards, Ian
Err, no. The idea is to protect the family. That means the ability for multiple people to meet together. That means multiple people having hoiliday at the same time.
.. they can not claim it isn't a religion. The church of scientology will fight tooth and nail claiming religious discrimination and they will win.
So rather than claiming that scientology isn't a religion, what can be done to avoid having to give these fraudsters tax benefits and possible government funding?
Simply stipulate that only "open" religions can be given these benefits. That is, only religions in which all the religious texts are freely reproducable and the religious services are open to anyone without payment, will be given full benefits.
This would help against a whole host of other cults it would be easy to argue that only open religions can be considered charities.
he primary reason behind current sunday-trading laws is actually "protecting the family" and not religiously motivated
Nonsense. "Keep Sunday Stressful" has nothing to do with protecting the family and all about protecting a minority religious belief.
If the goal of "protecting family time" was real, the shops would be closed during the day (so that people could spend family time during the day) and then let people shop in the evening. Making it so that people have to rush around shops in such limited daytime hours does nothing to help family cohesion, all it does is add stress to peoples lives. It's also grossly unfair to the large percentage of the population who are not in traditional family units and gain no benefit at being unable to shop.
The only people who support the archaic shopping laws are christians.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Theres one minor problem with calling it a religion after the whole "Aliens are causing our problems" thing. Its a for profit organization unlike every other major religion. If you read the story on the BBC website it says that it is not recognized as a religion in Britain because of that reason. I wouldn't be surprised if other countries had a similar view.
The idea is to protect the family. That means the ability for multiple people to meet together
How does not letting people shop "protect" the family? Can't people meet up together in Tesco? The family that shops together stays together.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
They don't really even fit into that catagory - I would describe them as a pyramid scheme using the religeon angle as a tax rort and a way to make it more difficult to jail those running it.
I think they cop a lot of crap from people. Why wouldn't they be guarded when asked a question?
Really, you gotta admire them. How they flagrantly keep their absurd beliefs and survive as a member of society. It's simply amazing.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion. The Church of Scientology disconnects its members from their families so they have nowhere to go when they leave, and brainwashes them under hypnosis to keep them from wanting to. The Church of Scientology is also the only "religion" to keep its core beliefs secret, to be run for profit,
All very true--though your definition of cult is interesting. I would define a cult as an organisation that requires its adherents to place it at the centre of their lives, bar nothing. Given that definition, I would argue that most (all?) religions aspire to be cults, and that cults are the most successful of religions. But then, I would also argue that religion is institutional and communicable mental illness (as they systematically undermine their adherents' ability to think rationally--a fundamental requirement and definition of sanity). Regarding your last point, however:
and to have its own paramilitary[1] and counter-intelligence[2] operations.
The Mormon Cult (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) also has had (and still has, in various forms) its own paramilitary and counter-intelligence operations (c.f. the "Council of Fifty" and Church Security apparatus). The CIA and FBI have in the past recruited heavily from the LDS church, something that should send chills down everyone's spine given the power those organisations wield today.
The Mormon church has been known to tap the telephones of members and ex-members trying to get free of the "faith." People have died under suspicious circumstances as recently as the 1990s. So while I agree with your characterisation of Scientology as a cult, they are by no means the only cult with its own paramilitary and counter-intelligence operations. Having said all that, Scientology is, without a doubt, at least as dangerous as the Mormon church, quite possibly more so.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Historically, Modernism was cultural revolt against Christianity in particular, and religion in general. Humanism, Socialism, and Liberalism (in the original European meaning of the word) are all Modern ideologies.
Some watered down versions of Christianity are "compatible" with "modern liberal democracy", but there are similar toothless variants of Islam. You can't really compare whole families of religions like Christianity and Islam with a closed organization like Scientology. You can compare it with the Catholic Church, which is also at odds with modernism and democracy. Currently, the Catholic Church is trying to write itself a role in the institutions of the European Union, meeting some resistance from protestant countries and the secular France in the process.
We're judging the behaviour of a (supposedly) religious organisation in the 21st century by comparing it to the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the 12th?
Um, why? Doesn't that just prove how backwards the Church of Scientology is?
Row, row, row your cult
tempestu'ly 'cross the pond.
Warily, warily, warily, warily
deal with the El Ron.
> Its a profit oriented company disguised as religion.
Is that like a "government law enforcement employee disguised as a policeman", or maybe like a "professional crop grower disguised as a farmer"?
Thanks for dropping by. Your decision to post anonymously indicates that you are probably a scientologist sent here to astro turf.
I guess this will post will give you a discount during your next dianetics session.
First a few facts:
1. No religion in existence goes after dissenters the way the church of scientology does; yes, it is true that in some third world countries and in the middle east, turning away from islam can get you killed. But in the west and in most westernized nations, there is the rule of law and the law protects people from being targetted by proponents of their religion. But CoS is able to pervert even this system of law in western nations to target even influential dissenters via harassment, and even death.
2. Scientology is perhaps the only religion in the world where the only way to get to its "cures" is by paying a lot of money. Any other religion - Islam, Christianity etc - it is possible to become a muslim or a christian without paying any money.
3. Scientology is also the newest religion on this planet created by Ron Hubbard - a known criminal. LRH's views on using harassment as a way of quelling dissent is well documented.
4. Scientology also copyrights its "scriptures" - the only religion in the world to do that.
In short - you guys are just scamsters trying to pass off what is really a scam as a religion; scientology was created by LRH with the explicit purpose of scamming people.
This amuses me. You're welcome.
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
In a ten minute TV interview on Sunday morning, the editor of the Panorama series gives some background, including describing some of the techniques the Scientologists used to harass the BBC film crew. Transcript here
www.weird.co.uk/martin
Isn't that the norm? Our state church gets a couple of percent of our income, collected by the government tax authorities. I thought non-state churches just collected their membership fees themselves.
not really, especially if you're stuck on a checkout. It's about preventing the abuse of people who have no power, because they are so desperate that they'll do almost anything for money.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The BBC should have connections to enough comedic talent to ridicule Scientology into the ground if anyone can. On the other hand, they will have to be watchful for email trojans that pop a rattlesnake onto their screens.
They apparently believe in statistics. I went into a center in Worcester MA in the late 70s to see what they would do. They gave me a not-too-long "Free Personality Test", went and scored it, then came back with the results. They showed me a line graph, with connected points (!) illustrating my score on each of about 9 things. Of course, a first question would be how can you rate 9 distinctly different attributes on one scale? You probably can't, so if you bother to look at the Y axis, you see that it was a Z-scale - or normed values. So it merely shows you where you fall in a group for each of those things, regardless of the actual units. But the really cool trick was that besides being all normed values, the Y-axis was scaled to your results' high and low, not +-3z or full scale. So they circle the lowest point, and tell you they have a course to "fix" that. Only $495 or something like that. Great! I can fix the worst thing in my life for a few hundred bucks! Sounds great! But guess what? In a scaled Y-axis, there's always going to be another "low" that magically appears, and well, shouldn't you just go and fix that one too? Repeat ad nauseum, ad bankruptcy.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_and_slander
... is that it's a mish-mash of pychological and psyciatric methods of the first half of the twentieth century, mixed in with some (small) biology, and, oh yes, the e-meter.
But then, the truth is that aroudn 1951, L. Ron Hubbard and several other science fiction writers were hanging out, and they made a bet as to who could create a religion. There was also, on the side of L.Ron, being tired of writing for the pulps for a penny a word, and wanting to make more money. And that *is* where Dianetics came from, which begat Scientology.
In 1968, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding/Analog for something like 30 years, told me and some others that over the years Hubbard had varied in his own mind between "it was for real" and "it was a great scam".
Let me also note that Hubbard spent the last ten or 15 years of his life on a yacht, outside British waters, since he was wanted in the UK for tax fraud (and a fake religion).
mark (Real sf fans know this, which is why Scienterologicalists
tend to avoid us in droves)
America's Al Qaida seems to be getting it's claws into Britain something fierce too. I just read about some police official hobnobbing with them at the opening of some building that they were able to build in London. And apparently even MP's were calling the reporter to complain about this piece the BBC is doing. I expect that the famously ruthless British tabloid press will be in there next now that there is blood in the water and nuclear war won't stop them from reporting on this.
But anyway, this video might look bad on the surface, but so far most people who watch it just say, "Oh well he blew his top in an emotionally charged argument. Who hasn't done that?" Scientology loves the cowardly attack the critic with lots of people and in lots of ways approach. They really are scared of exposure, yet they flaunt their wealth in their buildings and such. It's very odd and rather schizoid. In this case Scientology's attack the critic fails. Sometimes it works, but it fails in the following situations.
1. The critic has nothing to lose. His bosses won't fire him because they won't just take the word of creepy strangers calling them about the guy, and his neighbors could care less about his personal life.
2. The critic is well known or famous. This goes with the BBC reporter as well as say the guys who did south park.
3. The critic has already broken every taboo society has to offer. Again South Park. People already know the guys who make it are weird and so they just shrug at whatever story the Co$ shills make up about them.
In the first case, they are just wasting their time and money bothering the protesters. Most people don't pay attention to protesters anyway. They might stare a little as they go by, but most people have other business to be about and will forget the protest within five minutes of it being out of sight.
In the last two cases in particular, their tactics only make things worse for them. People see this reporter screaming and wonder, "Wow, what the hell got him so riled up?" Now they will be sure to go watch the program just to see what the controversy is. With South Park, the whole act of it being "banned" just made people want to go see it. Nothing inspires people to go do something more than to tell them it is forbidden, especially if the action is something that any reasonable person would find harmless. In this case, watching a show. Parker and Stone knew this when they did the episode. They knew this would happen. They counted on it. The whole row with Tom Cruise and the guy who did Chef and the episode being pulled after the first showing gave them more exposure than showing it at half time during the Super Bowl. They knew You Tube and a dozen other sites would host it, it would be on the torrents and there is no way it will ever vanish now. All of it is labeled "BANNED!" which is like putting lights and sirens on it. People see that word and will jump to watch or download it.
You know, the Catholic church learned this lesson a long time ago. I mean you used to have torture by the church to shut people up. Now they realize that only creates Martyrs and pushes dissent underground where they cannot see it or get at it. When Divinci Code came out as a movie, I saw an interview with a bishop who simply said, "We've learned that making a fuss only gets things like this more attention." The church was quiet and the movie came and went with really no noticeable impact on the church itself. Of course the Co$ is really just a criminal enterprise, but hey, even that requires some degree of being inconspicuous. That's why you don't see the Mob running businesses openly. You get too big and too loud, and you will see the 1930's happen all over again with these guys when the people get fed up and the government has to finally respond.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Bollocks it was. That was just a transparent excuse to justify appeasing a tiny minority who practise a certain religion at the expense of a great majority who do not.
This is abundantly clear when you consider who actually works in the affected stores at weekends (or during the evening shift, or doing logistics overnight). Just take a look around your local supermarket or garden centre next time you're in on a Sunday. Many of the staff are either kids trying to earn a bit of spending money by doing some decent work, or older folks who have perhaps retired from their main career but still want to earn a little money. Neither of these groups loses any more family life whether they work 10am–4pm on a Sunday, or 10am–4pm on a Saturday, or 5pm–11pm on a weeknight. In fact, for the kids who are still at school, the weeknight option is almost certainly worse for their education and family life.
By all means have some generic laws to protect work-life balance so the big supermarkets don't wind up forcing people to work all weekend or give up the job. But please don't pretend that Sunday trading laws are anything other than an anachronism that remains to appease a small but highly vocal minority of the population who want to impose their own moral values on everyone else.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Alternatively, you could say I was comparing an organisation less than 100 years old (Scientology today) to one that was over a 1000 years old (Catholic Church in the 12 Century). Besides, that was the heyday of the Catholic Church's power, so isn't it a good idea to steal a tried and proven method? ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Never seen a 24/7 tescos have you? :P
I've never heard of this 6 hours bullshit before.
I like muppets.
From the description of those religions, a farmer would pay something, usually in goods to the temple administrator, go to a room, screw one of the priestesses and pray to some god for a good harvest. There, the guy paid something, did something, and expect to receive some benefit.
Scientology sure has the PAY part, the DO something part, and they sure expect to get some benefit out of the stuff they do.
I'm not sure it's fair to say they got fscked by the government.
For one thing, if you recall, they were right. The problem was that at the time, they couldn't prove it sufficiently to defend themselves. But history has shown that they made the right call, and it's entirely possible that they knew they were making the right call at the time but didn't back it up to avoid compromising their sources.
For another thing, although the two top guys stepped down — effectively "doing the decent thing" and taking the hit to protect everyone below them — they left with crowds of hundreds of BBC staff cheering them outside the building, and hundreds more sending them personal messages encouraging them not to go. Name me any other organisation in the world, on the same scale, where the staff publicly show that much loyalty to the guys at the top. Can't? That's why the culture at the Beeb is special in a world full of cookie-cutter journalism and commercial advertising.
Oh, and did we mention that almost all of the other staff who were directly responsible for the original reporting in that case are still working at the BBC in the same or similar roles? Just because they cut the head off, doesn't mean the rest of the beast is dead.
It's a shame they are tending toward "celebrity journalists" like Nick Robinson and Evan Davies these days. There's certainly been a lot of Blair worship in recent days, with some very rose-tinted views of the results of his ten years in power. Bring back Andrew Marr, I say!
But that's about the limit of their political compromise, even now. If it ever comes down to Hubbard vs. Paxman, I know which side I'll be betting on.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Is that John Sweeney was reprimanded so heavily for "losing it". When I read his description of what they had done to him as he was trying to report the story, I concluded that I surely would have lost it too.
Reporters are supposed to keep their emotions out of the picture when reporting on a story, and normally you would expect an outburst like that to result in a reprimand at the least.
But in this case, the subject of the story chose to blur the lines between the journalistic process and impinging on somebody's right to a modicum of privacy. The CoS had a dozen people stalk and follow the journalist - that's beyond "creepy", that is a downright illegal attempt to harass and threaten.
Fuck Scientology, and a wholehearted round of support to all those who would expose them for what they are - a cult of absolute thuggery that believes in a ludicrous fantasy that makes the Judeo-Christian tradition look entirely factually plausible in comparison.
Thay only hav Tom Cruise because Chuck Norris hasn't rescued him yet.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
It is called bullbaiting as is part of the indoctrination of Scientology members. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditing_(Scientology )
It doesn't appear to me that the BBC reporter 'lost it' at all -- it seems like he's using the same shouting technique on the Scientologist that the Scientologist was trying to use on him. Shouting, appearing angry, then stopping and asking if he understands in an effort to shock your opponent into listening while at the same time appearing reasonable. I'm not saying the BBC guy wasn't angry, but it seemed like he was in control of himself. Rational but loud.
steampunk web design
Normal: check a dictionary. pretty easy. In General it refers to somebody that acts in general terms pretty much as everyone else. No, Goths are not abnormal, no matter how much I would like to class them as such.
Sane: anybody that is not sick.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There's too much criticism of Scientology. It may seem weird and wacky, but then so does Judaism. Or Islam. Or Christianity. Why should the mainstream semitic religions get the monopoly on wacky beliefs? Let Scientologists worship whatever aliens they want to. You think modern science is any less weird and wacky? Physics is all theoretical, which is why it keeps changing every generation. Nothing is "proven" except what is observed, and then some physicist comes along with an arbitrary explanation that fits the observations. But modern science takes as much faith as Scientology or semitic religion or Buddhism or Hinduism or paganism. And atheism is dry and meaningless and unfulfilling. Scientology could lead to some bad science fiction stories like Battlefield Earth, but then how many Catholic stories have been all that great? Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves? Please.
The Scientology guy was just using the "Broken Record Technique" which is spectacularly annoying, to great affect. The problem for the BBC guy is that he was not prepared for this, and lost it completely, and loses face, which means that he is still a way off OT III, I reckon.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
In principle you are right. In practice I think the difference (protect the worshippers v.s. protect the religion) is extremely small. Yes, I did forgot to mention "do not hurt others", but I think if you do, then it no longer is a religion than rather a cult. I certainly do think that fly-fishing enthusiasts must get proper protection from harassment etc, even more so than a religion. Unless they start to fight against ice-fishers :-)
Have you been to a Muslim country?
I had.
Several as a matter of fact.
The immense majority of Muslims do not give a tosh about Salman Rushdie, lead peaceful lives and are not hostage to religious fanatics.
In places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey most people see Islam as their religion, yes, but not as the only major overencompassing thing on their lives.
You have countries like Saudi Arabia or perhaps Iran (not sure about this, most Iranians I know are perfectly persobale people) in which you could make a case that a cult has taken hold of the full country, but to describe Islam as a whole as you have done is a comment born out of the most monumental ignorance.
And before you ask, I am an atheist.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The argument of the validity of Scientology as a religion is different than whether or not CoS is a cult. Christianity is a religion, yet, Jim Jones and the dead members of the People's Temple in Jonestown were a cult. Suicidal nutjobs do not debunk a belief, if they did Islam and Christianity would've been gone long ago replaced with Kabbalism.
I didn't want to leave this blank.
'a farmer would pay something, usually in goods to the temple administrator, go to a room, screw one of the priestesses and pray to some god for a good harvest'
No, the farmer would bring his wife and let temple administrator screw her.
Re:Old Greek religions with a sci-fi twist
davecb5620@gmail.com
Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, has been for many years a very tolerant country, where different faiths have coexisted.
The fluke bombs by extremists do not make a whole country a nest of jihadists. They are nut jobs like Timothy McVeigh or some other of that ilk.
You also have Turkey, a secular country, and Malaysia, a Muslim country that accepts diversity (you can see girls wearing mini-skirts, beauty pageants and casinos, all normally associated with non-mulsim behaviour).
And we had Iraq of course, which was a hineous dictatorship, but that can't be accussed of promoting Islamism, as anyone bothered to check the facts knew before Bush and Blair started their little crussade.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
but i would love to see their bunker complex where the words of Hubbard are transcibed onto titanium plates for posterity.
I was about to write something really nasty about Scientology in this post, but as my fingers hit the keyboard I noticed black sedan drive up and park across my street. The driver watched me for a while, while I watched him. I typed this post instead of the nasty one and he drove off. Anyway, I just wanted to add: let's keep the Scientology bashing to a minimum, guys - I'm sure the Scientologists, their suspicious profit motive and their plans to eliminate psychiatry and dupe the mentally ill are mostly harmless. I'm through with this article - anybody up for an online personality test?
Who think England is a country. It isn't. The same is true of Scotland.
There's some irony in the Scotland or England football/rugby/athletic teams competing in international tournaments given that neither is a true nation. Course in rugby there's the British Lions so that at least is correct.
Deleted
Why shouldn't religions pay taxes?
We live in a country where mega churges with tens of thousands of members, build massive structures that contain shops, restaurants and movie theaters. Other groups charge members for "knowledge". Still others use their holdings to invest in hundreds of millions worth of real-estate.
All these practices *decrease* their regional tax bases, forcing others to pay higher taxes.
It's time to pay taxes. If the net revenue of your "religion" exceeds a certain % in growth per annum -- you should be deemed a "for profit" enterprise.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
We should probably be grateful the ATF didn't assault the Scientology compound in Los Angeles instead of David Koresh's in Waco.
As of 1707, the United Kingdom is the country and what were previously separate nations became simply provinces.
Legally, England, Scotland and Wales don't exist as nations. All of the citizens of those territories are simply citizens of the United Kingdom, which is the legal entity. It says so on all of the legal documents; passport etc. Crucially they are not citizens of Scotland or England or Wales... They can't be because Scotland, England and Wales are not countries or nations.
Deleted
How does preventing somebody from working on a Sunday protect them from abuse? Does it protect them for the other 6 days in the week? And what "abuse" is potentially happening in the first place?
What if working on Sunday suits a person - surely denying them the right to work is an abuse?
"So desperate that they'll do almost anything for money" is nonsense, working on a checkout is a far cry from prostitution, drug dealing and robbery. Look at the people working in a supermarket, most are young kids looking to make some extra cash, not desperate slave labourers trying to survive on minimum wage.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It's interesting that BBC is showing the actual clip in their news coverage, it just goes to show that they are not affraid of taking flak for this. They do kind of laugh it off, but they discuss how, with cheaper video equipment, the interviewee is able to turn the tables on the interviewer, something that was not possible in the past. We are able to see both sides of the story, for better of for worse.
... they are qualified as a religion. It would seem to me that the second you start SELLING your services, you are now a business (self-help business?).
(Capcha was "paranoia")
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
I felt shaky watching that video and about 10 minutes later I'm still feeling it. That was clearly a man under extreme stress who had clearly been frustrated at every turn. The BBC doesn't employ just anyone. It would take a lot to do that to a man. If anyone can do that, the character in the dark glasses could.
Whatever you want to call it (brainwashing has been mentioned) the techniques used by the scientology character were certainly very effective.
-1 not first post
Bob: Dude, we're always being watched, every moment of our lives by some guy who created us in his own image. And we'll be punished for eternity if we displease him. Oh, and did you know... (1) He had a son and we ritualistically eat his flesh / drink his blood every Sunday? (2) His prophet married over 11 women, consumating his favourite wife at the age of 9? Jon: Man, you're a f***ing idiot or something? STFU! Bob: No, I'm a (1)Christian / (2)Muslim ..
Jon: OH! Oh... oh buddy, sorry I had no idea. I really had no idea.. but you'll be fine, yea.. you'll be just fine.
But Sweeney wasn't throwing chairs, was he?
In at very least the U.K. Scientology is not a religion. Germany too. Why are we so gullible in the U.S.A.?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Murder them all. This is why God invented pogroms.
This is definitely the one thing that struck from the videos posted on Youtube. Tommy Davies was ice-cool under all situations. When he blew outside and he told Sweeney how mad he was, he was in total control. Every word he said, you could very clearly understand. There was no foaming at the mouth, no contortion of the face, nothing. There was no emotion in his face, even if the words coming out of his mouth were all about rage and justice and righteous indignation.
If there are only a few people more like him in the upper echelons of Scientology, they're gonna be around for a long time. There's a word for people like these, and it's sociopath. And judging from the success of another group of sociopaths (CEOs), I suspect we're gonna have to deal with Scientology for a long time. I wonder if it's gonna take something like what happened to the Knights Templar to deal with Scientology.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Imagine
by John Lennon
End of Line.
I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing the right thing, but I'm just saying that it won't stop the bad guys. Or not by itself. Ever. Yes, people should vote with their wallets, but not imagine that they're stopping anyone with that course of action. You're doing that for your own conscience, nothing more.
Being a good guy is good and fine, but it doesn't make the bad guys realize the error of their ways. It just makes them think you're a sheep to be sheared, or if that's not possible, then out-maneuvered and ignored.
And plans of the caliber of, "well, then we should all shun them" just don't work. There'll always be someone who is deluded, or uninformed, or plain old doesn't care. Whenever a plan starts with "well, if more people would..." that should be your clue that that plan won't work, never work, can't ever work.
And it's not about culture, it's about being realist enough. About 1 out of 30 people (at least for the USA) is medically a sociopath. Culture and shiny happy "we're all born good and doing the right thing" thinking don't work against them. They don't give a fuck about culture or about what the rest of the community thinks or does, except maybe in as much as it gets in the way of their plans. There's no amount of caring and being the living righteous example that will make them realize the error of their ways, because they're just not wired for that. You're just an unimportant dime-a-dozen NPC to them, and who the heck cares what an NPC thinks or does? You either keep them in check with fear of consequences, or, yes, they run amok.
And such "well, I'm not buying their stuff any more" one-man protests, well, it's good that you do that, but don't delude yourself that it'll stop Scientology or any other scam. On an efficiency scale it's on par with going and sulking in your room. Yeah, that'll show 'em.
Even if you take the "You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem." philosophy, there are simply too many who are part of your problem there. _Those_ are why such idealistic plans don't work.
Voting for the president works because 51% of the votes are enough to stop one of the candidates. Voting with your wallet _doesn't_ work, because even if you got 99% of the "votes" against a scam, the remaining 1% is _plenty_ to keep most scams going. Less than 1% keept spam or 419 scams perfectly profitable for a whole decade.
It's not a vote, it's a case where you'd need 100% of the "votes" to work at all. And noone got that in any election or on any issue. (Even the communist elections in most communist countries were realistic enough to claim reelection with only 90-something percent of the votes. Even to them it was blatantly obvious that 100% just doesn't happen naturally.) _That_ is the flaw in that idealistic plan.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion.
Did you know in Islam the punishment for Apostasy (abandoning Islam) is death?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Freedom of religion has gone too far when it protects scams and cults. It is time for religious freedom laws to be reformed. If that requires a constitutional amendment, then let's do it.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I have it on good sources that some of the highest revelations in the Scientology scripture follow a theme of (no joke - and I'm wondering if this may cause a repeat of /.'s earlier posting issues):
You have come the complete master of your existence. You are clear, know how to self-sufficiently remain clear, and can clear others by your simple interaction. Your next goal is to realize the immortal self and to prepare for the journey to a better planet, one more suited for entities like you.
Scientology has been preparing for many years, at every level of almost every institution, to construct all the equipment and execute the programs to move humans off the planet. Although your physical being will not reach the destination, they have developed technology which can contains your cleared soul in a beautiful state for this journey.
Regarding outreach, Scientology must only grow. Once a tipping-point of membership occurs, programs that we may struggle to complete will fall into place. This is in every Scientologist's best interest, and is a matter of your soul's life or death. Nobody wants to remain in this foul environment forever; souls must exit - there are larger tasks to achieve than simply success on Earth.
To combat the negative perspective of Scientology in some populations, you must stress the overwhelming strength and power granted by reaching the high-level status you currently hold. You can, and must, describe how your perspective of the world is crystal clear, how difficulties around the globe stem from ignorance of Scientology's basic tenets, and how your path was difficult but in the company of loving friends. This journey must be completed by as many people as possible, since only then will we change the world towards the goals outlined above.
The costs of progressing through Scientology are more than worth it. Any organization requires operational funding, but your everlasting soul should not be denied it's rightful place in the eternity of Scientology's master plan by spending its funding on material goods, which are fleeting and useless. There's no question about it, all the toys in the world will be dust as your soul rejoices in our collective state of bliss, on a planet we have captured and rebuilt into our very own home - a home like we had so many millions of years ago.
Congratulations again on your arrival at this level. You are ready to hear any and all concepts within the realm of the Scientology organization. Remember that this knowledge only causes harm and slows our achievement if delivered to people not ready to hear it. But you have proven repeatedly to be able in your participation of these goals and perceptive in their dissemination.
Continue to focus on your soul-level goal setting, and remember - our collaborative work is the only path that allows for eternal success.
Remember when Scientology tried to remove the entire alt.religion.scientology group from Usenet. See also Blinding Me with Scientology Nov 2001
"I'm not trying to. I have no reason to think that gods exists, just as I have no reason to think that three-headed monkeys exist."
Ultimately, you are, by definition of atheism. Otherwise you are an agnostic.
Here are some other exercises for you.
Does Love, Hate, etc. exist?
Really? Prove it.
If I asked you the question "do you hate joe smith?" or "do you not hate joe smith?" would you be able to formally prove such things?
"bring me one I will happily believe; but it's up to you, not me."
If you believe in love or hate, emperically prove it exists and I will believe (sarcasm).
Problem is that you are the one spewing infantile rhetoric based on your own beliefs, those which you say you cannot prove (while at the same time deriding others for not proving it).
Some would say that's a bit on the blatant hypocratic side.
Sounds like Randroids too.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
There is a movie about scientology. It is called "The Bridge", it can be found on torrent networks around the globe, since the author was threatened into withdrawing the movie off the internet him self, scientology did use the usual stuff, lawyers, private investigators, tap the phones etc. I recommend it for all those how want to figure out for them selfs why scientology is dangerous. But scientology appears to have the clear agenda to be come a dominant on this planet. Far as I can tell from the info I currently have, scientology appears to have a military brand like structure, with generals, commanders, etc. I have concluded from that scientology is not only a dangerous cult, it is a cult with militant objectives. I like the rest of the world, don't know what these objectives are, but I am sure that they are up to no good.
If Bush is looking for terrorist, he should crack down on scientology sooner rather then later. Since later might be too late for all of us.
you can even choose to (gasp) not pay the 'church tax'.
Yeah, 1) swiss guards
2 Jesuits
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Ok, if ID is not strictly Christian, let's declare the entity that created the universe to be Allah.
What would be the chances of that being equally mentioned along with the Christian god?
(don't bother. The answer is nil)
IDers harmless? twisting reality, littering the minds of young people with regrets about their body, creating racism towards people of different sexual behaviour is harmless???
I dated a woman who underwent this procedure (she was very very hot, blame me...). Her personality changed. She lost the raging outbursts, but she also lost some spontaneity. She became much more compliant and less demanding. Quite agreeable but also less interesting. She let me see her as long as I wanted without much commitment demand.
One would think this was the ideal situation, but as I could not bring myself to wed her, I found her presence in my life prevented having full relationships with others, so I (alas) had to break up with her. I also started to feel bad for her and my use of her time.
I'm not sure if I liked the new person she became. She was a wonder in the sack, alas...
I read all these posts bashing, yet the LDS religion gets a free pass?
* You have to pay to play.
* They made up the religion, and bring people into it who are dead and or never want to be a part of it.
* There is no full disclosure, the church hides half or more of the religion from non-LDS, and historians.
* You can be your own GOD and have a planet, just tithe enough and have enough kids (and wives).
* And I couldn't attend my friends wedding in the "church" because I'm not LDS.
* "Family First" - Unless your kid is gay, then by all means take away his car, college money, and put him out on the street at 17 (still in HS).
* Oh... and once you fall out of favor or question anything, good luck getting anything out of the support system, that you have been required to tithe into for your entire life.
I know, I'm crazy, and someone will flame me, but I'm ok with accepting that I don't know exactly how the world works, and therefore don't need a God to explain it all away.
Um, no. And for the fourth time you provide more evidence for my supposition; atheists and theists are alike in the respect that they both feel the need to make others see the world from their single "correct" point of view.
"My way of thinking is the one 'true' way."
Honestly the more you try to claim atheism is not like theism as I've suggested, the more you support my argument. Which, for the last time, is: atheists and theists are alike in the respect that they both feel the need to make others see the world from their single "correct" point of view.
Why you've decided to bring Capt. Kirk into this is quite frankly bizarre and somewhat amusing. The simple fact of the matter is the more you attempt towers of logic to disprove God, the more you support my argument.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
1. Now that Scientologists have shown they don't have a problem with posting video of a person at one of their weakest moments, hopefully we'll see many videos being posted of Scientologists behaving foolishly. There must be plenty of great examples.
2. The BBC should announce that they're paying for John Sweeney to see a psychiatrist to deal with his anger issues.
Sorry to tell you, but your prophet is dead. And unlike the Christian one, Lennon didn't come back. His wife keeps popping up tho.
Not so much fun when it's your "religion" under the axe, eh? Though it's not "religion" to worship Hollwood or music industry constructs...just the fanaticism without the possibility of eternal salvation.
..it's a fundamental mis-application of logic.
"There is no evidence for x, therefore x does not exist."
When, in actuality: "There is no evidence for x" simply means "there is no evidence for x" and cannot speak for or against the existence of x itself.
The two positions are the same in that they rely on belief (note, I said belief, not towers of logic). All you can argue on those two sides is *why* you believe what you believe in terms of personal experience and faith; any "towers of logic" are meaningless.
I've always liked this quote (from someone who believes):
"If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside of the universe-no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house."
-C.S. Lewis
(in other words, you cannot prove or disprove the existence of something outside the system completly within the system, or tools of the system itself)
There is of course not just one Greek text and any modern edition of the NT has many comments and comparisons - I have two editions and they differ in many places as to which version to choose. But compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the later fragments that exist of the Testaments, the NT is remarkably homogeneous. As you would expect from people for whom the exact words are sacred. In arche estin ho Logos!
Pining for the fjords
Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't -- but they should all at least be on equal footing in this regard, right?
Latter-day saints is classified by most as a religion nowadays, and they started about the same as scientology. Thats my only reason for calling it a religion.
If it really doesn't matter, then try to have it moved to Wednesday.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The BBC is a much loved (and derided) institution in the UK. You can tell that we love it because we complain about it constantly.
The Scientologists have picked the wrong target if they want a fight. We'll send them our best irony and sarcasm. If that fails we'll make a comedy program about it.
Ricky Gervais must have enough material for a whole series from this one episode.
Scientology religon IS the same as the Church of Scientology. Only a delusional 'ex-scientologist' that still believes the core beliefs instead of admitting they were taken to the cleaners can even try to make a statement such as yours.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
...and I am very worried by its contents. Not the reporters outbursts (which were covered, along with profuse apologies), but the behaviour of the Scientologists, who, at times, acted like some form of Gestapo, attempting to stifle debate on the issue and sending stalkers out to harras the intimidate the reporter. The show should have been on longer, and perhaps focussed more on the contorversial anti-psychiatrist angle, and those families isolated from their loved ones by Scientology practises. Freedom of speech is one thing, but this cult should be closed down.
My web domain.
I found a free version of their $495 personality test here... https://www.cchr.org/
l ogypq7.jpg
I'm still behind hounded to go in to discuss my results - which if you're interested, I have uploaded to imageshack. http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scientlo
Please be warned: some of the content is GRUESOME. http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/
My web domain.
I am getting a bit freaked out looking at the text comments on Youtube of the most popular version of the Sweeney clip. They are almost disproportionately of two types: either a fairly sophisticated-looking blast of propaganda along the lines of "Here's proof of BBC being an anti-religion Marxist propaganda machine" or a quick sock-puppet seconding the sentiment -- "OMG oh yeah LOL he's a lunatic and should be fired". It seems almost calculated to goad the random passer-by to feel the same way on a simple gut feeling.
Statistically, the distribution is worryingly skewed. There doesn't seem to be a single piece of support for Sweeney, and my fairly reasonable comment stating that I feel for him as I know how frustrating it can be to try to reason with a cultists and have lost my temper at them a few times too, didn't make it past moderation. At least I didn't see it there last time I checked. Does Youtube censor comments that are supportive of Sweeney?
I would assume there would be a LOT more people who feel like I do, or at least would see where he is coming from. I trust Sweeney is a man of intellectual integrity, and it sounds like he snapped at exactly the same sorts of things that make my blood boil too when way too much fallacy is being pushed down my throat in the name of being "tolerant" of some person's faith in, say, Xenu. Of course it makes you look bad when the other side then starts playing victim and pointing fingers, but I don't count that as an argument.
Sometimes being red in the face like a tomato and shouting like a jet engine is a sign of passion for the truth...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Your argument on Kirk is a textbook example of a straw-man argument. You have factually provable evidence on Kirk so it becomes simple for you to make an analogy and "knock down" the oppositional position by setting up a laughable example.
"it is not their responsibility to demonstrate it to be true"
You intrinsically make an oppositional claim without proving it to be true either; hence you are in the same boat.
The idea that only one side must prove a claim is an intellectual cop-out.
To make it easy for you, logic does not say:
"There is no evidence for x, therefore x does not exist."
The most you can say is: "there is no evidence for x, therefore I cannot make a supposition about x." (which is the agnostic position)
This is a very subtle difference you are failing to grasp.
Take this example:
"Global warming does not exist because people have not proved it does."
Logical fallacy.
Boo for proofing only after hitting "submit".
I believe they call it "bull baiting" or something like that. Go to Operation Clambake or xenu.net or something if you want all the details, but they practice not reacting while people shout at them, etc. (and, of course, someone like that person interviewed would likely have been one of the shouters, more than once, in all probability).
I think it's... TR 0 or something like that? It's been so long since I wrote that report on them. Anyhow, they're pretty practiced about doing crap like that, although some celebrities may have less control because I think they get preferential treatment and may not get put through the ringer quite so hard (e.g. Tom Cruise).
To watch an episode of Panorama from 1987 about Scientology, go to http://www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_433614/ BBC_World_News_Panorama_Scientology
Basically, the story is pretty much the same, just that the narrator isn't being or shown to be constantly harassed. Particularly interesting to me was the facsimile that the FBI obtained that read (timestamp ~31:47)
Item A: Make Money
Item J: Make Money
Item K: Make More Money
Item L: Make other people produce so as to produce money
Also of interest is the geography of how money was/is transferred (38:07)
Religeous Research Foundation (Chartered in Liberia)
to Clearwater, Florida
to an account in Toronto, Canada
to Luxembourg
to Liechtenstein
Apparently the accounts in the last two places amassed over $200mil. Also, the heiarchy of all of the associated groups, organizations, and corporations leads to a for-profit corporation.
"Really, you gotta admire them. How they flagrantly keep their absurd beliefs and survive as a member of society. It's simply amazing."
Hmm..No.
Religions have been doing this for eons. They only change the names to protect the guilty, nothin' really new here.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I watched the Panorama program last night - given the lead-up to this incident, I can't blame John Sweeney for one second for losing his head - in his position, I would have brained Tommy Davies or worse. Sweeney was followed and watched all the time he was there, every time he interviewed someone Davies would show up and present him with a dossier on their background, would never answer a straight question, would talk over Sweeney and generally be a royal pain in the ass.
[FUCK BETA]
It's a mind-war-zone out there. Though I agree with Tom Cruise; but don't go to his 'church', nor the church of psycho-cia-try, nor to the BBC - for a 'security blanket' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_blanket . OK, call me a psynic. All you need is time and money, as they all want both and I have too little of either.
Remember the woman who drank so much water that it killed her, all for a Nintendo Wii? That's an abuse of power because she was so desperate to win it for her children that she paid the ultimate price.
We all know plenty of people who work Sundays, and very few of them I know would say it "suits them". The would mostly say they don't have much of a choice really. The point about the abuse is that no-one should have to work 7 days, and yet if the opportunity is there many people will, and many will feel they have no choice but to work 7 days a week.
You talk about kids earning extra cash, but that just doesn't ring true in my experience. Maybe in a small town with one or two shops, but not in a major shopping centre with hundreds of shops, or a megamarket. In Europe fortunately, we have quite strong laws about what hours people can work, how many consecutive days you can work, and how many days off you get in any 14 day period, but when people have to hold down more than one job, to make ends meet, then those protections are hard to enforce. I don't know what the laws are like in the US, but I'd be very surprised if they were anywhere near as strong.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Scn's enemies are labeled SP which means supressive persons and they'll do anything to get you to back down. Remember, scn will NEVER defend, they will ALWAYS attack! That gets the heat off them. If you want to fight them, remember that! I would not be surprised if scn goons will research all posters who have been critical of scn here. Scn is very dark, and very sinister. Remember who you are dealing with! LRH wrote that pretty much anything goes when dealing with detractors and they'll stop at nothing to discredit those who attack them.
That's an abuse of power because she was so desperate to win it for her children that she paid the ultimate price.
That's not an abuse of power, that's simple human stupidity.
We all know plenty of people who work Sundays, and very few of them I know would say it "suits them".
No we don't - very few people often work on Sundays, or Saturdays which is why it's called the weekend. Which is why having the retail shops open is important as it's about the only time a working family has to go and do all the shopping. Not just food shopping, but all the other shopping that crops up due to normal weekend activities (such as DIY emergencies).
You talk about kids earning extra cash, but that just doesn't ring true in my experience. Maybe in a small town with one or two shops
I wouldn't call London a small town.
yet if the opportunity is there many people will, and many will feel they have no choice but to work 7 days a week.
Then why are only retail workers protected? The laws only deal with shops - every other business can carry on as normal (I know, I've worked all weekend on several occasions - and I'm glad I had the opportunity as the overtime was a nice bonus.). Not only that, but Sunday trading laws would not be enough to stop a retail worker working 7 days in a row, all the current law means is that the hours spent serving customers on Sunday might be a bit shorter than usual - they could still be working a full day on a Sunday if they start doing stocktaking.
In Europe fortunately, we have quite strong laws about what hours people can work, how many consecutive days you can work, and how many days off you get in any 14 day period,
Which is why we don't need a specific day set aside.
I don't know what the laws are like in the US, but I'd be very surprised if they were anywhere near as strong.
What does the US have to do with this? This is about a religiously mandated inability to shop on Sundays, in England and Wales. It's also about the Christian Taliban propping up the antiquated shopping laws by masquerading their real motives by saying that the laws protect family and workers, when they do no such thing.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Oooh really, can you drive traffic to one of the cult's websites ?
And show me that *snigger* scientific chart of your personality.
Sorry, got to go, I just snorted milk up my nose.
Honest question here: Why does the BBC refer to any problem/conflict as a row? Are they in a boat? Are they in columns and rows?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Aww come on, just say it aloud. You know you want to...
Having read this http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/fishman/ot3.html (written by their founder), it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of LSD was used.. Also, how much did that guy with the dark glasses resemble Tom Cruise? -- SCARY MAN :)
Let this me a lesson to you all - DRUGS ARE BAD!!
A couple of cheeky ones at the weekend, and who knows; you too could become a cult leader.
http://www.bbcpanorama-exposed.org/
My web domain.
Its a for profit organization unlike every other major religion.
You mean *exactly* like every other major religion.
Go look at the assets of the Catholic Church and consider why priests are not allowed to get married.
For all the yelling and screaming, the months of documentary filming, the counter-response produced by Scientology, the 800-post threads on pro-blogs... that was a really poor documentary.
Scientology's major flaws were glossed over and in many ways they were pandered to as the journalist fell for their obvious, 40-years-documented, exposed-on-the-last-Scientology-Panarama tricks (Tone 40, bullbaiting, other TRs) and devoted most of the documentary to it, and attempting to justify itself based on their attacks (being "reactive").
Absolutely nothing new came to light, despite several new developments since the last major documentary on Scientology (e.g. the "Super Power building" fiasco, Lisa McPherson, the recent pop culture references, closing Orgs and dwindling stats). It didn't even really have a point -- over half was spent arguing over using the term "cult" and even that wasn't explicitly defined nor Scientology matched to the definition.
I didn't come away with any substantial feeling about Scientology... if I were completely ignorant of the subject, I probably wouldn't even bother to google it after viewing. The YouTube clip teapot-tempest was the most interesting part of the whole thing, and that's regrettable.