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"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."
Scientology likes suing people for libel. Let's turn the tables on that. Maybe members of Anonymous should sue Scientology for libel for making accusations of terrorism.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
This was happening all over the world. According to wikinews (last time I checked), there were 9200 participants worldwide (although sadly, only 40 here in Nashville).
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
> Something must be retained from death to birth
Never mind proof, what indication do you even have of this other than your gut feeling?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Anonymous, eh? Cowards.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Like the evil Lord Xenu and space ships that look like DC-9's?
No obvious fairy tales?
These fools don't know who they are messing with, it's all fun and games until someone drops your ass into a volcano..... :)
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
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.
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
The video that they forced off of YouTube can, thanks to Gawker, be found here.
... I get a little frightened that people around me think like that. You may be able to argue that it's little different than Christianity or Islam but what I really fear are the people who are part of Sea Org or offshore from the states and may have given up their rights as a civilian & American to have some sort of special standing in this group.
... why are there so few publications attacking Scientology? There is definitely something scary about a very powerful organization and if they have people dumping money into them, I do not doubt they are capable of silencing anyone (unfortunately, even Slashdot).
As a non-scientologist, this is scary. Possibly the most scary part of it is the editing. I have no problem with people having convictions but when he talks about "fightin' the fight" and "people needing them" and "people depending on them"
Whatever the case, I will not ever affiliate myself with a Scientologist and after reading Have You Lived Before This Life, I will do everything in my power to convince those that I know and love to avoid Scientology.
The thing that concerns me about Scientology is that after reading some books by Hubbard about it, I have found very little criticism of it. A book & some articles with the most notable one being Time Magazine. It seems like such an easy target. It takes seconds to find books criticizing Catholics or Muslims
My work here is dung.
The linked article is pretty lame. Anybody got a link to better coverage of Phoenix?
There's an LJ Account from a participant in London that's a great read; sounds like something I would have been proud to participate in!
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
When you strip all that away, the whole house of cards falls apart (which is a measure how interesting it all is, i.e. zero).
...what the phrase "in lieu" *means*?
"...they gathered Sunday in lieu of the birthday of Lisa McPherson..."
Like the idea that Xenu, the giant space monster, trapped our real souls in a volcano? Plausible.
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.
Anon doesnt have an issue with the religious views of the church. They have an issue with the church itself which is why in one of there recent videos they talk about the "Free Zone" (People who follow the beliefs of the religion but are not affiliated with Scientology) which they have no issues with.
I am not a theist (atheist), but do think reincarnation is plausible. Something must be retained from death to birth, so that might as well be called a thetan.
Why do you suppose that "something must be retained from death to birth"? Other than energy being conserved, that is.
Much of the rest of Scientology seems like reasonable psychology as well--dualist, but without the supernatural
Dualism is supernatural.
Certainly no obvious fairy tales, like Christian, Jewish, or Islamic miracles.
Uh, what? Have you ever heard of Xenu?
I think the antagonism to psychiatry is the result of wanting to know what we don't yet--this aspect leads to unfortunate incidents such as this.
No, they just don't want the competition. It's bad for the bottom line.
If you strip away the secrecy and celebrity, there are some interesting ideas there.
Such as?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
"Much of the rest of Scientology seems like reasonable psychology" ... asking people to take a psychometric 'personality test' designed to lead them into buying into the idea and investing from tens of dollars for a book up to thousands of dollars for a course in the 'church' is far from what I would call reasonable.
... that wasn't an obvious a fairy tale? What do you think it was? A documentary?
As for that stuff about Xenu dropping neutron bombs into Earth's volcanoes from intergalactic DC-8s
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It comes from the fact that LRH was a high functioning paranoid schizophrenic. His first wife tried to have him committed. Plus, psychology actually, you know, has scientific experiments backing up its efficacy. This obviates the need for LRH's psycho-babble snake-oil.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Here you go sir. http://www.flickr.com/photos/23637168@N05/sets/72157603887577097/
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Interestingly, it's not the beliefs of Scientology that were being protested--if you read through some of the more recent Anonymous releases, you'll note that they emphasize that it's the organization that calls itself the Church of Scientology that's being protested, on account of its practices.
Anonymous has explicitly noted that the "Free Zone"--that is, the Scientologists outside the organization--are just fine and dandy.
O'course, the "Free Zone" doesn't charge for its teaching...
But I don't think the antagonism against psychiatry is what you think it is--I think it's more a control structure (given that the auditing, in essence, imparts a codependent relationship between the auditee and the auditor (and by extension, the CoS)). Also worth noting is that the founder, Mr. Hubbard, had a very distinct antipathy towards the profession, and which created certain aspects of Scientology specifically to counter standard psychiatric practice.
I would note that, while not a member per se of Anonymous, I do think that their efforts against Scientology are a good thing, and were carried out remarkably peacefully and with remarkably good organization.
(I've also heard there's more planned for 3/15--beware the Ides of March!)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
http://xkcd.com/154/
I genereally feel scientology is as useless as any other religion.
But about 15 years ago they swindled a woman I know out of $50,000. She had inherited it when her mother died (fairly young), and she was quickly taken advantage of in her distraught mental state.
That told me all I needed to know about them. They're as bad or worse than any TV preacher asking for money.
no matter how much balanced you want to be, it doesn't stop Scientology from abusing its members. Even IF what Scientology claimed was true, does that give them the right to ask for incredible amounts of money to spread its beliefs, and killing/suing whoever opposes them?
I don't know man. It sounds legit.
THL phish sticks
Wait... Which religion are you talking about again?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
of course.. L. Ron only said they look like 1950/60's era cars and trains. They were reality-retconned, because Xenu is a psychic alien who can see the future.
;)
sheesh.. is it really that hard to work out?
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Xenu.net is a good place to learn about all of this.
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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
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Honestly, if I hadn't spent those modpoints on half-ass comments...
Religion is a man-made construct, social by definition and in nature. If you're looking for God, religion is a crutch.
Yep, L. Ron Hubbard, to be precise; sci-fi author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
Requiem for the American Dream
It's a religion; therefore, I guarantee it isn't accurate.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
She should demand a refund. No I'm not blowing smoke. Scientology promises full refunds if you ever wish to receive one on the basis that they didn't help. While not the easiest thing to pursue, there is a group out there (shouldn't be hard to find on the net) that assists former members with this process.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
As has been stated on the Raid Wiki, Anonymous is not protesting against the religion of Scientology itself, Anonymous is protesting against the organisations behind it, primarily the Church of Scientology, RTC and OSA.
I believe you mean DC-8's -- but without the propellers...
Oops! The DC-8 was and is a pure jet aircraft. No propellers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Easy. You talk to the people who've left it.
Voiceless
Thats one. There are hundreds, if not thousands, more. Including the niece of David Miscavish (the current leader of scientology).
Come on people, the information is out there. You can easily take a balanced view by READING the accounts of the hundreds of people who've been victimized. Look up Paulette Cooper. Shes still alive today to tell her story of being harassed and sued for 15 straight years.
.
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...)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Consensual in the bedroom if fine.
The problem starts when the cult practices brainwashing and attacking anyone who disagrees with them.
That is what Scientology does.
It may START consensual, but it is a FIGHT to get out.
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!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"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.
Something must be retained from death to birth,
NO! When you die that's it. Your mind is just software running on the hardware that is your brain. When you brain dies and rots away, that's it. Information is lost when you die, and that information is YOU.
Incidentally if Jehovas Witnesses/Mormons/Christians approach you with pamphlets, say this in the tone you would talk to a disobedient dog whilst looking them full in the eye you can sometimes see a flicker of doubt. Fear even.
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;
True, but there is one major difference between the confessional and an auditing session:
The regulations of the Catholic church are very strict that what is said in the confessional -stays- in the confessional under all circumstances (except for a -very- restricted few).
The Church of Scientology -says- that what is said stays confidential, but routinely uses any information obtained during an audit as either a method of coercing the auditee to take more auditing sessions, to refrain from leaving the Church of Scientology, or to attack the ex-Scientologist when they have left with blackmail, or ruining their reputation in the community.
This has been documented by nearly every ex-scientologist--sometimes, all three instances.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Well, you see...with $cientology, that's where the money comes into play.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Done, but I can't figure out how to prove to myself that there's anyone to prove it to.
To me, "vigilante justice" means "hanging".
I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing people exercising their LEGAL right to protest.
You can claim it is "hate", but that's just your claim.
Do the research and see the instances of abuse by Scientologists. Including brainwashing.
Sorry, but much of Scientology is crap - Hubbard's ramblings dressed up as scientific research.
Scientology claims Hubbard's techniques work all the time but they don't, and are actually quite a good way of siphoning money from the user. Scientology doesn't submit Hubbard's writing for independent analysis because the organisation in fact is deeply anti-scientific. Their claims of a scientific basis for Hubbard's techniques are about as strong as those of the "psychics" who write horoscopes for the newspaper. It impresses people who have heard of Science and think its kinda cool, but who have no idea what actual Science is.
Scientology the organisation is paranoid, litigious, deceitful, cruel -- sharing many of Hubbard's personal characteristics -- and is ultimately a blight upon humanity. This is the aspect which Anonymous is targeting. Scientology kills people, it harasses, it's a bully who will plant fake evidence on you and then call the cops. It drives its members insane - and runs a forced-labour camp called the RPF.
The antagonism to Psychiatry is because it's a competitor to Scientology in the "healing the mind" market, and because Psychiatry, proceeding according to actual scientific principles, is in probably the best position to know what nonsense Scientology is.
Scientology, like many cults, preys on peoples' need to be part of a group. They use standard cult tactics like smothering new members with attention and building up of dependence upon the group. Bait and Switch is used to increase income from services as there is always another course which needs to be done, or some "urgent" problem in the member's psyche which needs to be "handled" (for a price). The auditing process provides the member with the desired "fix" of attention, and the probing personal questions of a Security Check provide Scientology with excellent blackmail material.
Finally, if you were wondering about my handle ... no, I've never been a Scientologist. But they threatened to sue me, and so I investigated them, and was disgusted by what I found. This is an evil organisation if ever there was one. Calling myself 'elronxenu' is just a small thing; they're very sensitive to the name Xenu and often self-censor it, so they'd probably refer to me in their dossier as 'elron****'. Yes, they do keep dossiers on people who criticise them. Mine is probably pretty thin, as they'd probably consider me only a minor nuisance, unlike a full-blown enemy such as
David Gerard.
And when there is lack of evidence and conclusions are drawn from other evidences, you have faith, or a form of it. Faith in that the conclusions in the absence of evidence are correct or will be. But it isn't just the faith like that I am talking about, it is the people who believe it is correct because it is science and science is the true way, not because the other evidence leaves little doubt.
And yes, you can find people like this quite often on slashdot. Just look around.
I'm curious as to what "most sacred texts" you think the Vatican is hiding.
The Vatican has secrets, yes (and its own top-secret archives, full of holy materials like financial records and correspondence), but salvation is only found in [the Church's interpretation of] the Bible. The end.
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.
Sure, schizophrenics may have a more accurate view. And most schizophrenics aren't high functioning. But that doesn't apply to LRH, who was, in techincal terms, crazy as a shithouse rat. And on LOTS of drugs, meth mostly.
Psychiatry does not only deal with what is normal. Read up Abraham Maslow and Humanistic psychology. Sounds like you're stuck back in the bad old days of Freud and Skinner. Psychology has come a long way since then, and is no longer all about getting people to fit in, but to reach their full potential. And it has scientific backing. Studies show whether or not techniques work, and therapists change techniques based on what works.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How comes so few are interested where does Anonymous come from.
And so many are so misguided as to Anonymous motives.
If your mother was drowning, Anonymous wouldn't move a finger. He might laugh, or throw rocks. Anonymous is the motor force behind raids on Habbo Hotel, against random journals on DeviantArt or LiveJournal, they aren't interested in any political agenda. They are a Horde, a bunch of random people interested in spreading chaos and observing its results. They dont' give a shit about Church of Scientology. They just picked it as a commonly disliked target (so attacking it will likely draw support to them) and raided it the same style they raid Habbo, except IRL. Noisy, disruptive and creative, deep chaos that has some artistic feeling to it, and they got to make a lot of fuss about it. But don't be mistaken, they could have raided Mormons, IRS, Public Transport department, Citybank or anything they'd feel like raiding, no political agenda whatsoever. They prefer extreme, weird, mysterious targets but that's not because they really hate them, that's because the public will be more interested.
Yeah, that should mark me as Fair Game to Anonymous. Rules 1 and 2 not broken though.
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Ran into a guy once who was in debt to Scientology. Apparently for a massive amount of money. It was very important to him to pay this off and to give them even more to "advance" within Scientology. I did not ask him but from everything I have read the story changes as you advance. These factors, in addition to what was mentioned above combine to separate Scientology from any major religion (in their current forms).
It should be trivial to separate Scientology from real religions. Whether or not you give genuine religions a tax break on property based on this is another story and one I don't particularly care about.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The ghost IS the machine. Grow up. Dead is dead. Gone is gone. It's your choice whether you want to face reality or not. Religion is s form of self-medication. Free mental opiates. For the fearful. For fools.
I find your lack of faith...disturbing. =)
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
Scientology spokesmen accuse Anonymous of hate crimes. Has Anynomous hurt anyone yet, physically?
I'm guessing not, but the question must be asked.
In Hinduism there isn't a text that is a must for its' followers. One can get to Eternal Bliss(tm) without reading the sacred texts. The Vedas are arguably the oldest sacred texts that are still used.
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?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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Actually, It might have also been for the lulz.
You mad
The Scientology organization is not a religion. It is a deceptive, dangerous cult worthy of as much hate as anyone could possibly throw at it. The Scientology organization defrauds people -- not even for a 10% or 20% tithe, but for hundreds of thousands of dollars, for as much money as it can take. The Scientology organization actively prevents people from receiving life-saving medical and psychiatric care. It tells people that their money is better spent on more e-meter auditing than on chemotherapy. When people try to leave, it harasses them, follows them, libels them, and not infrequently murders them. When people leave the organization and try to find others to practice their beliefs, the Scientology organization sues and attacks them.
Yes, there have been other religious organizations that have done things like this. And we stop them whenever we can.
You dismiss the objections to Scientology only because you have either not read them carefully, or you are being paid by the Scientology organization to dismiss them.
Your words are quite obviously not those of someone who has tried to leave Scientology, and you are deeply wrong.
Yes, I believe they call it politics.
The article practically insinuates that a church that was originally started as a tax shelter has been involved with some sort of misdeed! But that's just ridiculous. I can practically feel my Thetan levels rising!
"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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
[This comment is no longer available due to a copyright claim by the Church of Scientology International]
Your linked-to video voiceless surprised me. I didn't expect to cry.
Years and years ago, I was heavily involved with the Co$. I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I thought I had the ultimate answer to everything and I was willing to fight for that with my life.
I endured grueling 12+ hour workdays and virtually no pay for a chance to save the world. I practiced how to lie effectively (they call them TRs) and due to my "get it done" attitude, shortly had an office in the International Administration Headquarters in Hollywood, the Flag Command Bureau, as a member of the Sea Org. I had a nice office with a window seat overlooking downtown Hollywood, and I wore a uniform that looked sharp and military, with epaulets on my shoulder!
It's hard to explain just how intoxicating it is to think you have the 100% right answer to all the world's problems. And, as a die-hard Scientologist, that's exactly what you think you have. You can create a beautiful world free of drug abuse, crime, insanity, and war. You just have to apply the tech.
You are on the side of freedom, of knowledge, of truth, of unlimited personal power. And anybody who gets in your way needs to be shut up and rendered powerless by any means necessary. It's that simple!
But, something just wasn't quite right. No matter how hard I tried, I could never quite do enough, or do it right enough. I had trouble getting the books and tapes to fully make sense to me. When I disagreed with what I read, I was sent to endless word clearing where we looked up every single word in the dictionary, one by one to try to find the "MU" or "Mis-Understood [word]". I had trouble getting up on time in the morning. I got sick from time to time, which is proof that I was "PTS" and needed ethics handling. I went through endless "ethics conditions" despite my very, very best intentions. They were very careful to keep me convinced that the problem was me.
It's hard to explain how frustrating it was, to be surrounded by people who are apparently "getting it" and not being able to be one of them, despite having a tested genius IQ, and being able to read just about anything *ELSE* just one time and get it immediately. I thought there was something wrong with ME. I often cried before going to sleep at night.
They had the tech, but who could explain me? When I got to work, I got lots and lots done. I was routinely commended for job well done, for quality work, for "stellar levels of production". It seemed that, when I worked, everything I touched turned to gold. Yet I couldn't make the most amazing technology in the world just make sense to me. I could read a book on mathematics, or aeronautics, or software, and turn right around and do it without any problem. (which is their test for comprehension: can you read it, and APPLY the result immediately?) But I couldn't do the same with Scientology. Something was wrong with me.
So began my fall from greatness. Slowly, surely, over months and years, I lost all my former glory. My job title drifted from the international scale on down through the organization until I finally ended up at the very, very, very bottom.
The RPF.
AKA the Rehabilitation Project Force. It's like prison for Scientologists. You are a bad, bad, dude, or something is very, very wrong with you.
You have exactly 7 hours to sleep in a crowded, slummy, cockroach infested triple-bunk in the basement. You wear black jump suits with colored arm bands. You eat only left overs. You get 1/4 the pay of normal staff. You perform grueling, hard, disgusting work from the time you get up until "personal enhancement time", where you have 2.5 hours of time to read Scientology books and tapes until bed time. You are not permitted to talk to staff "in good standing", though they are free to bark orders at you. You are not permitted to walk. (No kidding!) You must run everywhere you go, and if you are ever caught walking you are made to do push-ups or worse. You must be c
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.
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.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.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.
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes; but, it's reserved for the highest members of any religious organization. : )
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Because this "bullshit religion" causes real, physical harm to the citizens of the country. It's not just people believing what they want, they actively enforce punishments against people in their "religion" for not following dogma, and against people outside of the religion for ever saying anything bad about it. Live and let live is a fine idea, but Scientology isn't doing the "let live" part of that bargain.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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
Reading your post triggered a little tangent in my head.
Is it just me, or does the entire Scientology construct simply seem like a really really expensive, poorly written sci-fi based MMO that is ridiculously expensive to unlock new content and with which you are directed within instead of interacting with?
Explains why actors are into it, they can afford the next expansion.
Ice Cream has no bones.
The Xenu story is revealed only when the scientologist has paid enough to get to OT III level (OT stands for operating thetan). It's not until you get to OT VIII (which very few ever do) that you learn:
For tons of fun and some incredibly bad science-fiction, you can read all the top-secret Scientology documents here. They were released as part of a court case.
They were outside of Seattle's Scientology building also. http://forums.enturbulation.org/viewtopic.php?t=1806&highlight=seattle
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Well, yeah, you're right (and I knew this, growing up Catholic). The Church interprets the Bible as requiring faith and good works in order to achieve salvation. If you're not following the Church's interpretation and related doctrine, sorry, no salvation for you (although not necessarily an automatic ticket on the bullet-train to heck, either, unlike some flavours of Protestantism).
... 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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Let me guess... the IQ test was designed and administered by Scientology?
I believe you mean DC-8's -- but without the propellers...
Oops! The DC-8 was and is a pure jet aircraft. No propellers.
Good catch dude, in addition to be being a bad writer a crook and racist, L Ron Hubbard was also ignorant of airplane propulsion. That's it! The whole sick structure will now collapse.
By the way, the racism link would probably comes as a surprise to all the Hollywood stars who donate to Scientology.
http://www.solitarytrees.net/racism/deny.htm
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;
So, don't just laugh at this.
Get involved.
They can sue a few people. They cannot sue EVERYONE.
So join protests. Write your legislators. Stuff like that.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The short answer is no it's not just you, I know some people who are addicted to WOW and I've heard of some that are addicted to Co$, the biggest difference is WoW addicts tend to know WoW is fantasy and the Co$ tend to think Co$ is reality.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Background: The Church of Scientology successfully threatened Slashdot into removing a post containing the text of a copyrighted "holy" text, and further links to the text.
Hypothesis: The Catholic Church wants to suppress its own holy text, the New American Bible. The NAB is the officially authorized translation of the Bible for use by Catholics in the United States.
Conjecture: If a Slashdot poster posts an excerpt from the NAB, along with a link to the full text, the Catholic Church will threaten Slashdot, and Slashdot will remove the post.
Experiment: I am posting the first 10 verses from the book of Genesis, Chapter One.
1 1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. 3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. 5 3 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day. 6 Then God said, "Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other." And so it happened: 7 God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. 8 God called the dome "the sky." Evening came, and morning followed--the second day. 9 Then God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear." And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared. 10 God called the dry land "the earth," and the basin of the water he called "the sea." God saw how good it was.
The full text of the NAB is available at http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/
Wait for priests to show up with their three chief weapons, fear, suspense, a fanatical devotion to the Pope... Can we come in again?
*crosses fingers*
I dare anyone to reproduce this experiment and get a different result than I did.
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
They were in Las Vegas too... Drove by this on the way out of town... maybe 30 people out...
Since I don't care for Scientology (or any other religion), I honked.
Had a great time in Vegas though, I got married!
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Why the masks?
Every mask you see is the face of a victim in whose place we stand to speak. It is the empty place where a life should be that is no more. It is the absence of a friend, a neighbor, a loved one. It is the missing critic, who cannot speak or show his face out of fear.
We are the faceless. We give voice to the voiceless. We step forward to speak for those who cannot.
For every voice silenced through criminal intimidation and the tactics of personal destruction, we step forward.
For every troubled soul who seeks solace but is left with only a treasury of lies, ruin, and loss, we step forward.
For every mother silenced for fear that her words will endanger her child still within the cult, we step forward.
For every business owner intimidated into silence, we step forward.
For every victim locked within an armed compound or re-education labor camp, beyond the reach of law and justice, we step forward.
For every death, we step forward.
For every injustice committed, our numbers are multiplied. For every critic silenced, every reputation falsely tarnished, the truths we speak are made more brilliant. For every child lost, our hearts grow more resolute. We step forward for others who cannot.
Every mask you see is the face of a victim in whose place we stand to speak. It is the empty place where a life should be that is no more. It is the absence of a friend, a neighbor, a loved one. It is the missing critic, who cannot speak or show his face out of fear.
We are the faceless. We give voice to the voiceless. We speak because they cannot.
That is completely wrong, and likely an attempt to Karma whore with a quick uninformed search.
That is just a classification, 'Sruti' essentially means those scriptures that have been passed down directly from God to man, while 'Smriti' would be collected ancient wisdom.
There are a number of books holy to Hindu faith, primarily the Gita, the Vedas, and the Upanishads.
~IAA Hindu
I'm pretty sure you'll find that once your dead all your energy goes to feeding the worms and fertilising the soil. A lot of people go on about this when they try to justify the "something" which might happen when you're dead but they also think people have some sort of non physical energy which power them and that it is this which is then conserved, unfortunately I don't think we have ever discovered any such energy.
...there are a lot of things we haven't discovered yetWithout having discovered these undiscovered things yet, what indication do you have that there are many of them?
'Atheism' (as is 'agnosticism') is a label stuck onto us, who would just rather be left alone by the religious types, who cannot for the life of them be convinced that other people don't need a god or an extra label in their existence. To label yourself as such means that you're playing *their* semantic game. Or it may mean that you haven't yet understood what their label-sticking is all about; it's about having fill-in forms with a caption 'Religion' on it. So that *they* can fill in something (and feel proud and confirmed), but also so that *you* have to fill in something. And if you feel bad about that - even if it isn't because you 'miss a god' but because you just don't want to be labeled or because you simply don't know what to fill in there, then they've scored another two points. Reason like this: Am I an atheist ? No. Do I believe in God or am I otherwise religious ? No. Good - now I've confused them.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
what?
Concealing the ideas destroys their truth. Only lies require the kind of secrecy that surround their teachings. Liars, crooks, thieves, scoundrels the lot of them.
In fact, why bother flying them to Earth (or "Teejeeack" as the texts call it) to kill them at all? Why not just fly them into space and depressurise the transports and eject the corpses? Is it wrong that I am thinking of a more practical way to commit interplanetary genocide?
Is it wrong that I am thinking of a more practical way to commit interplanetary genocide? Nope, it's never wrong to find flaws in other peoples made-up, for-profit religions.
You can't take the sky from me...
That was a name that was given to them by Fox News about (18?) months ago to describe the people on anonymous image boards and/or *chans, IRC nets, and such that were griefing people IRL and online (Tom Green, Hal Turner, MySpace and LJ hacks, and so forth).
This name had been taken on in pride by its adherents as a banner of unification among these Internet communities. This war with Co$ is their latest and most ambitious project. It has also drawn in people from the sidelines who might have not agreed with their earlier tactics but would like to participate now that target is deemed worthy, one can suppose.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
then how can we quantify it?
By making shit up.
Thats how all the religions got started, no?
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=3445882&page=2
Quote: After 9/11, the church received a commendation from the New York Fire Department for its relief efforts, but critics accused it of applying therapies such as rhythmic massages that some mental health professionals considered medically dubious.
"The public needs to understand that the Scientologists are using this tragedy to recruit new members," Michael M. Faenza, the president of the National Mental Health Association said in 2001. "They are not providing mental health assistance."
In Minneapolis, the group said it's working with the Red Cross. Yet members of the Red Cross working at the disaster zone questioned by ABC News weren't aware of the Church's assistance.
They show up, use the fact that they show up to make themselves look good, and proceed to basically get in the way and hand out Dianetics, pamphlets, and generally intercept you before you think about going to a mental health practitioner to handle the shell shock. It's really slimy, like ambulance chasers.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
But how many upper level college science classes have you actually participated in? I've taken a few especially in astronomy and it's mostly made up malarkey. We have white dwarf stars, but the universe isn't old enough for them to exist. Where did they come from? There are multiple examples of a such occurrences to disprove almost all science. If you can't give me a mathematical formula for it, it doesn't exist. And yes there is a mathematical formula to prove the existence of God.
21st Century Renaissance Man