"Anonymous" Takes Scientology Protest to the Streets

This past Sunday members of the group "Anonymous" that has been running an attack on the church of Scientology took their battle from the tubes of the internet to the pavement of real life, staging a protest outside the central Phoenix Church of Scientology. "The protesters said they gathered Sunday in lieu of the birthday of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist once cared for by church staffers. Her 1995 death sparked media attention and a civil wrongful death suit against a branch of the Church of Scientology. A wrongful death suit by her family was a public-relations nightmare for the church for years until it was settled in 2004. The Church of Scientology declined to comment on the Phoenix protests. It did provide a news release calling members of Anonymous cyber-terrorists."

Comments

Re:Balanced view.

[nuzak]

> Something must be retained from death to birth

Never mind proof, what indication do you even have of this other than your gut feeling?

Re:Balanced view.

[JamesRose]

How do you take a balanced view of a religion that wont tell you it's beleifs before you've bought into it. Where did you get the information? How do you guarentee it's accurate.

Re:Balanced view.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the evil Lord Xenu and space ships that look like DC-9's?

Re:Balanced view.

[Swordopolis]

From Wikipedia:

"The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with aliens "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth. Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions[1] of his citizens together to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The spacecraft were identical to the Douglas DC-8 with the exception of having different engines."

The "origins" story of Scientology is total bunk that sounds like bad sci-fi written by a sleep-deprived crackhead. You can't even spin this as a parable like with Biblical accounts, etc. It's just plain trash that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

Does the author know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what the phrase "in lieu" *means*?

"...they gathered Sunday in lieu of the birthday of Lisa McPherson..."

Re:Balanced view.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you look at a religion, what's important is not how absurd the beliefs are (they all are otherwise it wouldn't be a religion). What matters is what the people (and especially high up in the hierarchy) do. And what the scientologists do is scary. Not that they have a monopoly on being scary, radical Islamists and especially the US radical Christians (that are no worse but have the power to do a lot more damage) scare the hell out of me as well.

Re:Balanced view.

[91degrees]

The "origins" story of Scientology is total bunk that sounds like bad sci-fi written by a sleep-deprived crackhead. You can't even spin this as a parable like with Biblical accounts, etc. It's just plain trash that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is a for-profit organisation masquerading as a religion, the secrecy, their aggressive legal tactics, their apparent refusal to ever apologise for any mistake they've made, and their underhand tactics to get and keep recruits.

Re:Balanced view.

[Atzanteol]

Wait... Which religion are you talking about again?

Re:what

[Spy der Mann]

Anonymous, eh? Cowards.

Funny that you mention that. Slashdot allows Anonymous Cowards to post precisely for the same reason: To protect them from retaliation.

Re:Balanced view.

[PachmanP]

Never mind proof, what indication do you even have of this other than your gut feeling?
He said he was an atheist; he never indicated that he was guided by reason/logic/scientific method.
Remember kids,
Atheist does not imply scientist/logician

A guarantee

[iknownuttin]

How do you guarentee it's accurate.

It's a religion; therefore, I guarantee it isn't accurate.

Re:Balanced view.

[WilliamSChips]

Most religions(the Vatican notwithstanding) don't withhold their most sacred texts, and you can find the Bible or Qu'ran or Torah or whatever Hindus read on the Internet, usually posted by their most ardent followers. With Scientology, you can only find them on places like Operation Clambake. (Actually, for that matter, the Vatican mostly withholds texts of other religions...)

Bad Actors

[Nom du Keyboard]

It says a lot about Scientology - and actors - that so many actors buy into Scientology.

These are the actors from the very same tiny group of the overall population who also feel they should tell you how you should be voting, how the war against terrorism should be run, and why their opinions matter more than anyone else's do, and deserve more airtime (and make-up) than any "ordinary" citizen. The people who drop out of college, and even high school - and are proud of that fact!

Re:Bad Actors

[vux984]

It says a lot about Scientology - and actors - that so many actors buy into Scientology.

No. It just tells you about Scientology. And people I guess. But nothing about actors.

These are the actors from the very same tiny group of the overall population who also feel they should tell you how you should be voting, how the war against terrorism should be run, and why their opinions matter more than anyone else's do, and deserve more airtime (and make-up) than any "ordinary" citizen. The people who drop out of college, and even high school - and are proud of that fact!

No. Actors tell us how we should be voting because we keep asking them. We ask them how to dress, how to talk, where to eat, how to vote... we pay them to entertain us. They aren't special, and they aren't born thinking they are. We train them. We put them on TV, we interview them. We follow the minutia of their lives.

They don't force themselves on us. WE chase them. Sure, at this point its become a bit symbiotic, they use the fact we can't get enough of them to further inflate their value and the activists among them spread their views, but the fundamental issue is US. If we the public could stop caring about them... if we treated them like any other professional like a bricklayer, electrictian, IT admin, PHB, or whatever, the constant media coverage would vanish. E!TV would go away. Tabloids would print something else. Etc.

So... bottom line. Actors are regular people who after spending years in the spotlight often develop some ego issues. But its we the public that first manufacture and then nurture their defective personalities. The industry surrounding them from the media circus, to the agents and publicists exists because -we- demand it.

Now, scientology KNOWS the public is obsessed with celebrity. So they court celebrities. They literally wine and dine them, and then take them back home to (mind) fuck. The CoS wants big prime-time A-list scientologists as evangilists, and they'll do or pay whatever it takes to seduce them. Plus, once solidly hooked, they have considerable funds and assets for the church to get its fingers into to fund its next celebrity acquisition, its legal battles, and so on.

So again, if we the public could stop obsessing over celebrities, CoS would lose interest in converting them. Or, more accurately, its interest would drop to the same level it has in converting the rest of us.

Re:I thought "it was all good"...

[Lemmy Caution]

"Gay" is a belief? You think it's not OK to criticize attempts to implement Sharia law?

What we don't criticize are identities, or assume that religious practices are reducible to a simple body of tenets. There is a difference between criticizing someone for being Christian and criticizing them for believing that the world is 6000 years old. Obviously, there is a relationship between the two, but that relationship isn't a simple one. What it meant to be Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, etc . has changed over the centuries of those practices, and I'm pretty sure that I have more in common with most Christians today than those contemporary Christians have with 5th century Christians. Likewise with Muslims, etc.

The "post-modernism" (or, really, post-structuralism - post-modernism is more a theory of cultural history) comes in when we observe that every act of making a statement - even a "true" or well-founded statement - comes with an agenda, says more about the reasons for saying, carries their own presumptions, etc. It is caught up in the idea that "even if they really are out to get you, you still can be paranoid." "Anything goes" is actually a very old idea, when really, you are talking about a well-founded hesitation to critique other identities simply on the basis of some of their explicitly stated beliefs, rather than addressing those beliefs historically.

Re:Balanced view.

[n9hmg]

Done, but I can't figure out how to prove to myself that there's anyone to prove it to.

religious hate crimes - impossible!

[Alain Williams]

The Church of Scientology says a group that has been protesting against the church are religious bigots that are merely perpetrating religious hate crimes

That can't apply to the Scientologists - they are not a religion, they are a business that conns money out of those who it brainwashes/fools.

Re:Balanced view.

[SashaMan]

Except by your method you are guaranteed to get an UNbalanced view. It's called sample bias. If you restrict your sample to only people who left the church, you are guaranteed to get a higher proportion of disgruntled (rightly or wrongly) views. After all, if you loved the church, you probably wouldn't have a reason to leave. Note this goes for many different types of groups. If you go to South Florida you would think that every Cuban despises Castro and communism. Of course, the Cubans who hate Castro the most have the biggest reason to leave, while those that love him stay in Cuba.

Hate crimes

[popmaker]

Scientology spokesmen accuse Anonymous of hate crimes. Has Anynomous hurt anyone yet, physically?

I'm guessing not, but the question must be asked.

Re:Balanced view.

[revengebomber]

If you don't derive your truth from logic and observation, nor from divine enlightenment, then...

Wait, so there's a belief system out there where you can just pull truth out of your ass?

Re:Consensual in the bedroom if fine.

[KublaiKhan]

The assertions of Anonymous are simple: that the Church of Scientology is harmful to its members (giving specific instances of those who have been harmed or killed by the Church); that these instances should be investigated; and that it should not have tax exemption.

And while none of the public means that have been used are "illegal" per se, many are extralegal--the filing of lawsuits, et al. Doing some research into, for instance, the testimonies of ex-scientologists will shed more than enough light on these things.

The people who accuse the Church of Scientology of all these things are not any particular age. And while truth is a defense against libel, it is not a defense against having to spend years of your time and thousands of dollars in legal fees defending yourself against lawsuits.

I would question, though, why it is that you're defending them so carefully--it's very rare to find someone online defending scientology who is not themselves a member.

Re:Balanced view.

[rickb928]

"Most religions(the Vatican notwithstanding) don't withhold their most sacred texts"

Before the Reformation and Gutenberg, getting a copy of the Holy Bible meant going to your local Catholic church, where the priests were more than happy to interpret it for you. Badly, I suspect.

To this day, IIRC, your Catholic priest would prefer you ask him what it means. And a careful reading of the New Testament could leave you with the impression that the Catholic Church is, in fact, not practicing Christianity.

And to be fair, neither are many if not most TV and other Evangelists. It's so simple, unless you're asking for money.

Written by a Christian. Trying to keep it simple.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[fonik]

And if you are looking for meaning, God is a crutch.

other cults

[sentientbrendan]

What's really disturbing to me, is that neither the state nor the federal government does much about Scientology or other cults.

In Washington we have these LaRouche cultists all over the place
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche
  but especially at colleges, and especially at the UW. They show up on school property rain or shine, and organize various brainwashing events. What's worse, is that they try to make themselves look like some kind of political organization, but actually they're just trying to brainwash you, try to get you to drop out of school, and scam you out of your money.

Instead of doing something about it, the government and the school let them use school facilities to hold their brainwashing sessions, and let them stay on campus harassing students day in and day out.

In California, where the Scientologists are powerful, I'm told that there's a similar situation. The organization is powerful enough that the government would rather look the other way, lest they suffer some kind of smear campaign.

Re:I thought "it was all good"...

[rossifer]

in this post-modern society, i thought it was wrong to attack anyones bullshit beliefs.

IMHO, post-modernists are highly-educated, effete, self-contradictory nihilists.

According to Lyotard, post-modernism can be defined as "incredulity towards metanarratives". Where metanarratives are attempts to order and explain knowledge and experience. Simple enough, I suppose. Unless you happen to notice that that definition of post-modernism is itself a metanarrative, albeit an entirely negative metanarrative.

So post-modernists should be skeptical of metanarratives (including this one). Leaving nothing to say. As such, post-modernism is an entirely worthless branch of philosophical thought. The only logical behavior that can be directed as a result of post-modernist thought is to avoid making any assertions at all.

Scientologists can believe whatever they want. Attacking their beliefs is the same as attacking Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Budhists, what ever.

Sure, they can believe exactly what they want. It's when they harm people and/or prevent free exit from their organization that it becomes very important to object and object loudly.

There's no universal right or wrong in a post-modern world.

Your assertion may be correct, but it does not substantiate your previous point. There are behaviors that more right and more wrong than other behaviors. Judged by me on the basis of their behaviors, Scientologists are more wrong than the Methodists (to just pull a random name from a hat full of religions).

Actually, IMNSHO, Scientology is pretty much as close to evil as can be observed. They do nothing but destroy.

Scientology's perfectly free to offer Balance

[billstewart]

Of course you're getting an unbalanced view by only talking to people who left and not talking to people who stayed. But the people who stayed aren't talking. Sure, they're saying that it's really helpful and gives them the weapons to win on the battlefield of life, and you can find out a lot of their entry-level beliefs by reading Dianetics (Buy it! Read it! Use it!), but they're basically not talking.

Now, there are other religions that are esoteric, but most of them don't pretend to also be scientific, and most of them don't have a ladder of charging you cold hard cash to get them. There are Buddhist teachings that the lamas will only teach you if you're a sincere Buddhist, and there are teachings that only make sense if you've spent a few years meditating and will otherwise distract you from the more important practices. There are Yoga positions that you really really shouldn't try unless you've been doing yoga for a long time, and any clueful teacher will tell you not to try them because you'll just tear your shoulder blade muscles. But the price isn't cash, it's practice. And there are mountains that guides won't take you to if you don't have the experience and physical strength to climb them safely - those guys *will* charge you money, but you've still got to have the skills, and they'll be happy to show you *pictures* of the mountains and recommend that you climb some smaller mountains first. Scientology doesn't want you to see the pictures of Xenu The Evil Space Alien and His DC9 Fleet until *after* your bank account's been tapped.

There are also other religions and similar types of groups that want cash up front. Transcendental Meditation wants whatever their current fee is to give you an initiation and your own personal secret mantra (which is picked from a simple list, not actually customized for you), plus you've got to offer fruit and flowers to their guru and his gods (not to the Maharishi, who just died this week, but to his teacher.) But they'll still tell you what it's about.

There are many religions and preachers that teach that you should give some fraction of your money to the church - some of them want it to help feed the poor, while others of them want it so the preacher can have a big house and a Learjet, and some of them teach about loving God and your neighbors while others mostly teach about Prosperity and how You can get it if you just Believe hard enough. Some of them are Christians, some of them are New Agers, some of them are Buddhists, and you'd think you could pretty much tell which kind are sincere, but a lot of people go in for the bogus ones anyway. (That's of course separate from whether the groups ask for some money to fix the church building's roof or pay the meeting-hall's rent or hire a full-time preacher at a not-very-high salary; if you're going to have an institution you're going to have institutional expenses.)

The price of Scientology auditing is a lot higher than the cost of office space and training volunteer quack psychiatrists to listen to you. And even if they keep some of their teachings secret until you've had the training you need to understand them, that doesn't mean they need to keep their organizational structure or finances hidden.

Re:Balanced view.

[jmccay]

Have you tried to read Dianetics? I tried. It read like a lot of double talk. Have you ever read any Scientology documents? I got to once--before the site was shut down. It was overseas I think. It read like a Science Fiction novel. It was a weird, and these people believe this stuff. Any religion where most of it's documents are shrouded in secrecy and mystery is really a cult. Plain and simple. Scientology happens to be a very rich cult. Ever hear what happens when you publish one of their secret documents on line? You get your computer taken away from you. The use the money they suck out of Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and everyone else to keep it a secret. What do they have to hide? Now, take a look at the majority of the other major religions. You can go to a bookstore, buy a book (or two, or three), and after reading it, you can know most of what there is to know about that religion. It doesn't mean you will be an expert or completely understand the teaching, but you have access to the teaching openly without having to join. That goes for Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Frankly, Scientology appears to above the law in most countries because they can buy their way around the countries. Personally, I think L. Ron Hubbard flipped his lid and started to REALLY get into his characters while working on a story, or two, which was soon followed by believing it completely. Did anyone else notice that the Scientology took a page from the Liberals play book:

'Anonymous' is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry," read the statement.

That sounds similar to stuff I have heard from liberals when they couldn't debate the facts. It reminds me of HIllary's "vast right wing conspiracy" comments during her husband's presidency. Maybe Scientology should publish all there material. I don't blame these people for staying anonymous! I would too if I was boycotting Scientology. I would like to keep my stuff and not be harassed!

To clarify further..

[NeutronCowboy]

... the current protesters do not lie, do not threaten and do not file frivolous lawsuits. Scientology does. As a result, what Anonymous is doing is NOTHING like what Scientology is doing.

Unless the grandparent wants to argue that picketing a for-profit organization is like running the Mafia. In which case, I can't help him. Non sequiturs are impossible to argue against.

Wrong question

[IdahoEv]

Until you can answer the question of what was there before the big bang ... that is a debatable statement.

I am not a physicist, but as I understand it, contemporary physics considers the dimension of time as having come into existence at the big bang along with the familiar dimensions of space. If so, "before the big bang" is a meaningless phrase.

Yes, that's weird and hard to comprehend, and outside what human brains are built to grasp. But so is much of physics; the human brain can't really get a handle on the particle/wave duality, relativity, or quantum tunneling, either. The best most of us can do is represent it symbolically with mathematics - and few enough of us can do that.

Anyway, as counterintuitive as it is, "what was there before the big bang" may be as meaningless of a question as "how far do I have to walk on the earth before I get to the end?" We don't need religion to explain what was before the big bang for the same reason we don't need religion to explain what's past the edge of the (flat) Earth.

Re:Fox expose on "Anonymous" from last summer

[Zorque]

Let me guess... the IQ test was designed and administered by Scientology?

Re:I never really thought of myself as a victim.

[flyneye]

Hard to believe anyone who is literate and not a scientologist modded this "I never really thought of myself as a victim." post down.Even if it was by an Anon Cow.This kind of story is the REASON for Anon Cows.
Pissed? Bitter? Damn straight I am. I belong to a flying saucer religion that CAN'T get tax free status. Diff is; Subgenii pull the wool over their OWN eyes and know it.
Hard to tolerate carnies like Elron Hoover who couldn't even write decent Sci-Fi being the bleedin'Jesus of a Tax free scam when he doesn't even amount to a wart on J.R.Bob Dobbs ass.
Somebody mod that poor Anon Cow up.I don't give a damn how you mod me.I got eternal slack.
Scinustology casualties got a fucked up life. Give em a little slack you pink bastards!

not really

[phorm]

There are plenty of ex-members of a given religion who do not feel threatened by leaving it. I myself was baptized Catholic when I was younger, but though I don't feel much respect for the policies of that particular church, I don't feel overly threatened by it either.

The stories of many who have left Scientology are quite different, and rather chilling.

So yeah, of those that left, many would likely be disillusioned. But it's like leaving the mob, it takes a lot of guts to do so, and overall it can be a pretty dangerous proposition.