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."
And being attacked for criticizing Scientology is something that could have happened to you. For, let's say, talking bad about those Sons-of-a-Bitch here on Slashdot.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
"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.
I really hope the BBC wins, and shows that nothing has changed. We have to nip this "religion" in the bud, it's disgusting.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
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
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.
Ridiculous, yes... but have you seen the messes those crazies who believe in Transubstantiation have made over the last couple thousand years? Just as they're settling down, we've got some newer upstarts wanting to go all David Koresh and Osama bin Laden on the world. Where's Janet Reno when you need her?
In one big way, these people are worse than previous cults striving to be religions - ironically, our ability to detect mental illness helps the CoS get crazier. This cult specifically recruits and attracts those who modern science has said are mentally ill... and we're surprised when they pull particularly crazy-assed shit?
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I think it's kind of ironic that if you want to look at the downside of Scientology, you only need to look at their celebrity converts. E.g. Tom Cruise going increasingly off the rails now he's not allowed to see his shrink or take prescription drugs, or John Travolta forced to deny his homosexuality. If they weren't Scientologists, you get the impression they'd be happier. Richer too probably.
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;
Got the same impression. Poor guy. I mean, you should in that case simply turn of the camera and explain it during editing (after all, when cutting your tape you have full control of what goes on screen and what doesn't)... But I know that religious types (let's define religion broadly) can really pull the blood away from under your nails. Any exchange between a religous person and a sane person is inherently unfair. The religious person believes in things that are made up, in fairytales that are easily shown to be fiction. By nonetheless believing those they show that their mind is like ROM. It's litterally like talking to a brick wall. There is this part of them that parses enough of your sentences to generate an inadequate answer, but no information actually gets past their mental firewall.
John Sweeney, I support you 100% on this one. This whole incident probably says more about Scientology than about you.
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
Even before it began, the 'psychiatry is evil' story is f*cked from all angles. What is 'normal' and 'sane'? 'Sane' in our society has not the same definition in other societies, cultures and social networks. So the goal of a psychiatrist is to guide his patient towards behaviour considered nomal by the society he lives in... yet who in our society can define "optimal normal", especially when we worship the most eccentric amongst us?
The goal of Scientology is the very opposite of psychiatry - it wants to split you from society (to better 'form' you), not help you work better with it. The things most 'evil' to any religion are things a threat to the religion itself.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
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).
Reading the details of the case, it seems the Russian situation was quite different from that in the UK or Germany, in that an unregistered church is legally prevented from doing several things that could be considered necessary to running a church (e.g., "renting premises for religious ceremonies and worship" or "receiving and disseminating religious literature") which can be performed legally in the UK and Germany without being a registered church. Because of this factor, refusal to register effectively constituted banning them from spreading their beliefs, which is (IMO) unacceptable unless done in full view of the world, with proper democratic process (rather than via beurocracy as was done here). Not considering them a religion in (say) the UK simply means that they do not acquire a number of taxation benefits that they might otherwise be entitled to. I don't think this would be considered a violation of their human rights.
I'd be very careful about what you read into the conclusions drawn in the "case law" section of the article you link to, BTW. Wikipedia has a strong scientology community, and in this case I believe they have rendered the article rather biased. As an example:
The decision of the Human Rights Court in the Moscow Church of Scientology case mandates that States cannot intervene arbitrarily into religious matters and are strictly prohibited from evaluating or reinterpreting the internal validity of religious beliefs genuinely held by individual believers or religious communities like Scientology.
This is introduced as an interpretation of the court's conclusion that "the autonomous existence of religious communities is indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society and is thus an issue at the very heart of the protection which Article 9 affords. The State's duty of neutrality and impartiality, as defined in the Court's case-law, is incompatible with any power on the State's part to assess the legitimacy of religious beliefs." While it is a valid interpretation of the last sentence, if taken out of context, I'd say the previous sentence (and sentences earlier in the paragraph) limit the scope of the "incompatibility" noted by the court to matters which relate to article 9.
Specifically, article 9 states "Everyone has the right [...] either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance."
Also worth considering is that the court did not consider any public health issues in making this decision (because the basis of the decision that the Russian government made against Scientology was not made on those grounds), but article 9's scope is "subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society [...] for the protection of public [...] health". This means that the courts decision is not incompatible with one where a country introduces a law preventing religious practices that are considered psychologically harmful, for instance.