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Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous"
Anonymous writes "A circuit court judge has denied the Church of Scientology's second request for an injunction against protests by the internet group "Anonymous." The Church sought to prevent Anonymous from protesting on the birthday of the Church's leader, the late Ron L. Hubbard. The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing."
I win!
Get out there, show how fed up you are with these people. It's not hard to protest; just show up, wear a mask, and stand on the sidewalk.
~ C.
Yeah, all those ex-scientologists coming out of the woodwork telling their tales of abuse because they felt empowered by the actions of Anonymous sure don't mean a thing. The mounds of leaked documents and emails exposing the illegal conduct of the "church" aren't worthy of comment. Or exscientologykids.org popping up to tell the tales of the children of cult executives who grew up inside the organization is kind of a pointless story. And the massive amount of public awareness of all of those things, all as a direct result of Anonymous showing support to those trapped inside a horrific cult is just a bunch of hooey. Oh, yeah, and those who have gotten out of the cult as a direct result? Pshaw.
Yup, you're right, might as well not even try.
We're never going to give them up, never going to let them down.
We've had anonymous groups for decades- Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous, Marijuana Anonymous, Anonymous Anonymous.
An "injunction against protests"? In the US? Wow! They must have really touched a nerve. Keep it up!
Of course CoS had any sense at all they'd just ignore the whole thing until it blows over... but I'm counting on CoS to blow it way out of proportion. Which is exactly what Anonymous wants.
This could be an interesting showdown, especially if the protests continue to be disciplined and, well... funny!
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
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I would have a hunch, that the "Church" itself is causing the problems on the page. First The war starts. They impose there beliefs and pull web pages from Google. I have seen a few things that they have done to try and put "Anonymous" in a bad light. I wish I could find the link, and maybe someone out there knows it. It is of a group of protesters getting arrested. The "Church" said it was "Anonymous". This was quickly debunked they the comments around the article, and found that the pictures where taken from a real protest elsewhere, and not an "Anonymous" protest. All and all i think the "Church" is a bunch of bull and don't play fair with others.
I'm now prepared to get buried by the "Church" for my negative comments against them.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
In Germany, scientology is not called a church, but a company. I think the greed parameter built into scientology makes it a company. /AC
Actually, I would say that the Church of Scientology is both less plausible of a religion then those you mentioned, and less of an actual religion (and more of a business).
Bypassing the obvious science fiction elements of Scientology, there is this simple fact.
You have to pay (out the nose) to be a member in good standing in the Church of Scientology. While other religions have practices of tithing and/or charities, they are not required in order to progress in the understanding of the faith.
In Scientology, you have to pay to take the courses that ultimately give you the Xenu/volcanic explosions/thetans story. You have to pay many thousands of dollars before you get access to this "knowledge".
Show me the secret books of the Bible or the Qu'ran that only the followers who have ponied up tens of thousands of dollars get to see. You can't. There aren't any such books.
IMAO, Scientology is at best, a business designed to empty the wallets of the gullible. At worst, it is a scam and an extortion campaign.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
You are aware of Operation Freakout, are you not? Wherein, among other criminal activities, Scientologists basically sent bomb threats to themselves with circumstantial evidence incriminating an author, Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book which was critical of the Church of Scientology?
I'm not saying that any or all of the death threats that the Scientologists are receiving are bogus, but there is already an established history of them attempting to manipulate the courts against people critical of them.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Second: The technical, traditional meaning of "cult" strictly refers to the priests and priestesses of a god or goddess in a pantheon. Aphrodite had a cult, Isis had a cult, and, at one point, your friend and mine, Jesus had a cult (he had about three hundred followers on a commune at one point, if I recall.) By contrast, a religion may include more than one god and encompasses those who simply believe as well. The media term "cult" generally refers to what academics call a "dangerous NRM" (new religious movement). "Dangerous NRM" supports your statement that it is a real religion and not something fundamentally different, but it is important to note the "dangerous" part. Wicca is a non-dangerous NRM. Heaven's Gate is a dangerous NRM. The difference is best related through a number of techniques that dangerous NRMs frequently use:
Another strong indicator of an NRM is the presence of a single, charismatic leader figure, like David Koresh or Jim Jones. (Both of whom eventually killed most of their followers, but were extremely well-respected by them. Jim Jones was even respected by main-stream Christian religion during his life time.) For this reason, and possible other reasons, Christianity actually satisfies both the traditional and modern definitions of "cult" (although whether that is a dangerous or non-dangerous NRM is another topic entirely.)
Books are great like that.
"The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing.""
OMG! I think I get it now!
RIAA is run by the church of scientology!
That explains everything!
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Why did the Scientology cult get the status of a church there? If you are an american, you should ask your politicians, what can be done to undo this error.
I'm not normally a summary-nazi, but it's L. Ron Hubbard. Not Ron L. Hubbard.
So are you protesting the church or the organization? If the former you are not allowed. If you don't agree with the church, don't participate it is that easy. If the latter then by all means, protest the organization but remember to separate the 2.
As a matter of fact, according to Jewish Halacha Law, it is ILLEGAL to charge money for the teaching of the Torah. The knowledge this work contains belongs to the whole world.
Are you stupid or drunk? It should be obvious by the context what exactly I'm protesting. If you're not capable of basic reading comprehension I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to you.
I will, however, waste my time insulting your intelligence. Because that's fun.
That pretty much describes all religions. Read up on religious history, money and power almost always flows to the church.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Yes, that's actually one of the things they do -they video tape everything and then comb through the footage looking for anything (identifying clothes, distinctive features, license plate numbers) they can use to identify their Suppressive Persons (ie their critics).
:-/
Posting anonymously to prevent an IRL karma hit.
And they usually don't apply lie-detectors on you.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Except, and here's the thing some of you are failing to grasp: Scientology, at its core, is abusive. It's structure is such that it systematically strips its followers of their free will, and thus their cash.
I'm a god-hating atheist too, but as much as I dislike traditional religions (for different reasons) the abuses of Scientology, in this day and age, are almost as bad as the Inquisition in its day. The difference is that, again, in this day and age, we can do something about it.
Just saying "it's just as bad, oh well" is a lazy cop out.
Besides, this isn't about their beliefs, this is about the abuses they perpetrate. The "fair game" policy, the special tax exempt status, the disconnection policy, all of that stuff adds up. They're worse than you think, especially if you're still at the "meh, they're silly" stage. They're much, much worse.
Yes, fundamentalism is bad, we're all aware of that. But most fundies aren't near as bad (when all aspects are considered) as the CoS. I'll concede that those that kill for their religion are more reprehensible -- but then again so would most regular people who are in those religions. In the CoS, Hubbard's way is the only way. It's an enitre religion of fundies who want to "clear the planet" -- and this includes you, by the way.
No. You missed the point of designed. Others have eveolved toward that direction by the fact that inherently greedy people gravitate toward structures and manipulate them, but SciFientology was designed as a scam.
There are also plenty of fascinating documents in the Vatican Library, including the Dead Sea Scrools, which are not available for public review. The "Kabbalah" also involves keeping interesting secrets from the uninitiated.
Sydney protest footage here.
Actually, it is quite OK to mock the scientology "religion". It's even allowed to ridicule Christianity and Jesus.
There is nothing magical about religion that makes it exempt from attack and ridicule.
It is NOT good that you can't attack something because it is a "religion" and would ONLY for that reason deserve respect. People's deeply held beliefs are not OK just because they are deeply held beliefs, they can just as well be ridiculous, and wrong. The fact that you ridicule them isn't even necessarily respectless, not challenging people's delusions, and leaving them with these ridiculous beliefs can be much more respectless.
And before you ask, yes, I'm a religious man, and I wouldn't mind at all if you mocked and attacked my religion.
I'm not Christian, but I don't see much reason to attack Christianity as a whole. I do occasionally challenge some denominations and churches, or just single people's interpretation.
Scientology on the other hand, I mock completely. You can say dianetics is the basics of the religion, and the church is a seperate thing. I don't thing I have to tell you why I attack the church. So that leaves dianetics. I see no reason I couldn't mock it, it's just pseudoscientific psychological nonsense. It's a lot of stupid ideas and conclusions mixed with some interesting ideas. It's not worthy of respect just because it's claimed to be religious.
(I claim this post is a basic religious text of my religion, it represents my deeply held religious beliefs. It was directly inspired by God and therefor it's content is unchallengable religious dogma, and absolute TRUTH. You cannot deny it.)
You miss my point. Yes, there may be books that only the Pope is allowed to read.
Those books are not "required" to be a good Catholic.
The Church of Scientology has a carefully organized series of classes that are required (and increasingly expensive) in order to progress through the ranks of the church laity (any person not a member of the clergy).
You have to spend many thousands of dollars in the Church of Scientology before you learn about Xenu or what thetans "really are".
How much money do you have to spend to read the Bible?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I've been on the net since gopher was cool and I'll tell you that the Scientology virus is the *worst* infection it's ever gotten. The hell with RIAA or the MPAA, they've done nothing compared to the trampling of net ideals the Scientology jerks have done.
They started by taking down anon.penet.fi, and they've been getting worse every year. The hell with all their supposed abuses, and cult like activity. It's messing with the geek stuff that pisses me off.
Get off my f*ckn net! On my f*ckn net we don't tolerate: censorship, copyright abuse, trademark abuse, bogus DMCA notices, intimidating lawyer letters, or stripping our anonaminity for no good reason.
People have been scared to fight back for nearly 20 years. No more!
* Posting anon not because it's cool, but because these jerks still scare me enough not to use my nick.
You can't hate God if you're an atheist, because if you're an atheist, then you shouldn't believe in God in the first place.
Goodbye. Hand you card in on the way out...
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
No. Non-violent, lawful protest is the best way to go about it. If you start harassing members of the CoS personally, you are no better than they are and, more importantly, you would lose an important defence in court: that you have the right to peaceful protest. If that's all you are doing, legally they can't touch you.
As soon as you start harassing them, you lose that important benefit. This is why the protests were strictly peaceful and calm. If anything, a peaceful protest hurts them more because there's nothing they can do about it, and it looks to the world like the Scientologists are unable to defend their "Church"'s system from a bunch of people from the internet.
Yes, but you don't necessarily have to PAY to get access to them; you either have to have the necessary scholarly chops (ie, a doctorate in literature or theology) or you have to be high enough ranking in the church. Generally, neither of these require you to pay money to the Catholic Church (high-ranking priests, in fact, have a salary); though they might require that you have some sort of insurance or pay a safety deposit (in case you damage/destroy the document).
But the laity in the Catholic church does not have to read those to understand the Catholic dogma. They aren't required texts in the same manner that the OT courses in the Church of Scientology are. And the CoS charges many thousands of dollars for those classes before you can officially learn about Xenu and so forth.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Photograph them. Follow them. Follow them home and photograph them entering and leaving their houses. Keep shouting "Murderer!" at them, if you can. Harass them. Make their lives hell.
For every one person you can find to do this, the CoS can find five who have many more years experience of behaving like this and getting away with it. And the people who the CoS find won't stop at following you home and photographing you.
Eventually the Scilons can't keep it up and it'll collapse.
You can't know much about how religions work then..
Did you know for example that it now appears that early Christians, far from being blamed for Rome burning, weren't even considered relevant, and many 'confessed' and were punished simply in order to obtain their martyrdom?
This was a big deal for them, since it meant all sorts of rewards and stuff in heaven. Apparently the Roman administration weren't at all keen, but a confession is a confession, so they were executed.
The point is, religions, even really stupid ones, thrive on the kind of treatment that would make normal folk think twice about carrying on.
Yeah right, you can imagine the meetings - ... no, wait !?!
... dammit !
My names Smoker2 and I'm anonymous
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please give me a list of the really "smart" ones, the ones based on truth and integrity, rather than lies, superstition and greed.
You got me..
Actually, note that I said really stupid ones. My default position is that all religions are stupid, or at the very least anachronistic in modern times. They served their purpose in prehistory (holding Egypt together for several millennia), but we just don't need such social control systems any more.
They persist because they give some people a means to power which otherwise they would not have, while to others they give a framework within which they can at least claim to understand the world/universe.
Both reasons provide more than enough motivation to disregard the reality, i.e that they are worshiping an imaginary friend, whose proof of existence, even if it were true, is only available via a process of chinese whispers from thousands of years ago.
Make sure you be careful: they have cameramen staked out at public transit locations to try to photograph people with their masks off; they'll try to match you by your clothing, identify you, and harass you to no end. Some guys in London found out the hard way. Their practice is always to stay under the threshold of proof. If they can throw a brick through your window and if you can't prove they did it, they'll do that.
They're planning on disrupting the protests with staged violence by anons. Make sure you catch it all on camera if you attend.
Religion also offer hope for people, especially regarding the afterlife. Also, most modern religions are based on the idea of charity/peace/social harmony/etc (some interpretations may vary from this). [/Devil's Advocate].
On the flip side of the coin, religion is also a powerful method of control (as you pointed out). Atheists are probably the most important element, as they provide a strong, effective safeguard against any exploitation. For this reason, I think that in a perfect world, religion and atheism shouldn't be in conflict. Moderate religion requires atheists (and moderate sensible theists should realise this), and moderate atheists have no natural quandary** with religion - science doesn't merit it's claims on their popularity.
** If there weren't mitigating factors, such as socially/legally enforced one-size-fits-all morality. YMMV.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Let's compare the bible and Battlefield Earth. One is a disjointed and confusing work of cult propaganda. The other is Battlefield Earth.
You can hate the idea of God. It's offensive to me that we should worship a wrathful dictator, especially a fictional one who occasionally relays his wishes through a select few.
Scientology is a lightweight compared to Synanon in its heyday in the early 70's. It went from a respectable drug program to a wacky cult. Everyone was compelled to shave their head and they were also compelled to change sex partners every night and then the next day report on what it was like.
These are the people who put rattlesnakes in the LA DA's mailbox. I think the Synanon founder was sent to prison for attempted murder on that one.
They also at one time had over 100 attorneys working for them and would sue anyone just like Scientology. They even won a lawsuit for defamation or libel against Hurst Publishing. It had never been achieved before. They had a tactic where in lawsuits they would depose people for hours asking them stupid questions like "what has the consistancy of your stool been lately?"
Just wait. Scientology will eventually get nutty enough to do something similar to the rattlesnake bit and then they are done for.
Look. Some of us have been battling Scientology online since 1994. They are not the fucking rotary club. They are the largest cult in the world and they kill people. They extort their members for all the money they can get so as to finance lawsuits against anyone who points out that they are the largest cult in the world and that they kill people.
They were also the first ones to use the courts to try and get a web page taken down. Depending on who you ask, that may or may not be worse than the fact that they are the largest cult in the world and they kill people.
check out this firehose story, and click the + top left to give it your support so the /. editors write it up!
;o)
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=573326 "Church of Scientology violates Federal Law"
You'd never guess who might be voting THAT one down
There is nothing magical about religion that makes it exempt from attack and ridicule.
It is NOT good that you can't attack something because it is a "religion" and would ONLY for that reason deserve respect. People's deeply held beliefs are not OK just because they are deeply held beliefs, they can just as well be ridiculous, and wrong. The fact that you ridicule them isn't even necessarily respectless, not challenging people's delusions, and leaving them with these ridiculous beliefs can be much more respectless.
I agree with your post. I assume you live in the US. Since the majority of the Slashdot seems to be there. I found it interesting because it touched an issue that is hot right now in The Netherlands. Where there is a law that makes an offense to mock religious belief. People are right now, trying to strike it down, but the "Christian parties" are against.
Since the prime minister of the country belongs to one of these Christian parties, it is still uncertain whether this will work out.
I found it quite funny to discover that, since it makes ridiculously hypocritical all the talk about having Mohammed in comic cartoons that took place in Europe. I mean, everybody was "pro" support for freedom of speech, but now two major political dutch parties (including the prime minister) seem to see this law as an entirely different story.
Funny, eh?
You can find a very detailed explanation here. Basically, questions like what is scientology, what is the e-meter, and last minute news about scientology, can be found there.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You've given no compelling reason why these are sacred cows. Religions are, in addition to many other things, supposedly guides for life. Why is in "not cool" to attack this guidance being offered?
Well, perhaps not that many. But if you look at their history of harassment of Paulette Cooper, the author, for whom Mary Sue Hubbard and her personnel got convicted for planting fake bomb threats to discredit Paulette, you get the idea of how far they will go. It's a bad game to play, because it lets them pretend that you really are evil for harassing them and plotting against them.
This troubles me about "Anonymous". Threatening a vindictive bully with vindictive bullying can just encourage them.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Also, it's possible that the judge was aware of Operation Freakout, where, among other things, the CoS sent bomb threats to themselves, but made it appear as though an author, Paulette Cooper, was responsible for them. You see, she wrote a book that was critical of the Church of Scientology... so that made it "fair game" to ruin her life.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
No, Anons stated goal is the exposure/downfall of Scientology as a business. More specifically the church itself and the Religious technology center.
They don't really give a damn if you want to believe in the bullshit. They just don't like how people have to pay to get to see the bullshit.
You mad
The anon raids are against the church as an organization, not individual members themselves. Anon offers no opinion on the actual belife,, they just don't like business side of the church.
You mad
Strange, the first thing that comes to my mind when reading "us vs them" is "Democrats and Republicans"...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I once used to agree with your view on religion as well. However your view lacks many other aspects that you really need to look at. Before you can throw religion to the curves maybe you should study religion a bit more from a sociology point of view. You will find that religion is not only empowering of the "leader" but empowering of the members. Check out the works of Weber. Yes it will be difficult to accept that religion is needed however that is where all the studies point.
No, other religions have expunged the part of the record that shows they originated as a money making venture.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Well, it wouldn't be 'cool' in the James Dean/rockstar sense because it's so utterly overdone. Yawn. Protest christianity. It's such an utterly safe and mundane practice that doing it means nothing.
No christian churches label you an 'oppressive person' and send their office of special affairs after you. No christian churches will rile up their congregation over real or percieved insults. You won't see them screaming in the streets, holding signs that say 'death to those who insult christianity.'
You won't even get punched by a believer if you stand in front of a church screaming jesus was a zombie.
Protesting christianity is about as cool as yelling at the old dog laying in the corner because he dug a hole in the back yard. The offense you protest is barely worth mentioning and the dog isn't going to be affected by your protest enough to even get up.
Now, is it 'cool' to protest christianity, as in 'okay'? Sure. There's just no point.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Japan's history is replete with examples of Buddhist sects battling each other, including Zen Buddhism.
There's a pilgrimage around Shikoku visiting 88 numbered temples plus a dozen or two unnumbered temples (I did parts of it by bicycle a few years back). There are two temples claiming to be #30, with the government choosing one then the other depending on the political mood. Other temples have waged war with each other over the years (the pilgrimage started 1200 years ago, I think)
Infuriate left and right
Personally, I'd like to see ALL religions lose their tax write off. They have all become soo political that I don't understand why the religion of ? should enjoy tax benefits when others pay. If the donors don't get to write it off, I suspect funding for all religions might drop like a rock. I also think the churches should have to pay prop taxes etc. Most these "dream" churches have millions of bucks in property, buildings and in the case of the mega's, planes, schools, etc. Let them pay like for profit. I can't tell the difference between non-profit/for-profit anymore except a couple of "praise god's".
As another poster states, Buddhism and many of the other Indian and Far East religions would be up there for integrity and non-greed. I would have said Taoism which has less legacy in the stack and enables somewhat more open implementation and criticism. Many of the tribal animism religious frameworks lack the interfaces to express greed.
Depending on how one defines truth, lies or superstition, all of the major religions could be viewed as being deficient in the scientistic sense of cause and effect. I would argue that the sanctioned availability and relative accessibility of the entire runtime documentation set to the lay practitioner, combined with the freedom to implement appropriately localized versions without impediment from the issuing bureaucracy, would provide sufficient conditions for a religion to be considered truthful in practice.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
They served their purpose in prehistory [...], but we just don't need such social control systems any more.
;)
Yep, gotta love this enlightening age of ours where every one takes care of each others, politely circulates around with smiles and eager to help you if you have car troubles or need to know the time. Everyone has a meaningful life. No more social problems, poverty or hunger.
Funny thing is, it's after having a Scientologist boss (applying personality-crushing method in the workplace) that I realized that perhaps Christianity has a lot of bad in it's history, but also a lot of good. I rather have a Cristian neighbor, friend or boss than a scientologist any day.
Even many Agnostics (like me) has a life goal to amass money and power (big jobs), they evaluate life thru big houses and what you drive.
I think you are wrong saying "we just don't need such social control systems any more". Do you really think this is because of the way we teach kids in school and at home? Get out a little, try to get to the level of the poor, the lost, the uneducated and you might realize they are looking for meaning. Leaving churches pushes a lot of people into worst things like Scientology.
My father in law is a big religious man, extremely kind and generous, and often get exploited for it (never refusing to do an unpaid service), but he is a very good man at the core. A few years ago I would have laughed at him, but today I realize he does more to create a better world than I do. His values transfered into his daughter is why I am with her. (Even if I still hate to stand in church).
Truth is, their is good and bad everywhere, religious or not; life is what we make of it as a social group, and the current education system we have does not create a decent social environment.
Note that I am not offering any solutions, that's not for a few paragraph on a forum
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#44
although I'm not clear what he means by 'all who pleaded guilty', whether that refers to pleading guilty to setting to the fires or just pleading guilty to being a Christian.
Discordianism. WE at least know we're all full of shit, and revel in it.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
First off, Scientology isn't a Church. They charge admission, and they're a for-profit organization. They're not recognized as a real religion in Belgium, Russia, Canada, Greece, France, Germany, the United Kingdom. It's respected here in the US because anyone with enough money to purchase a free ride gets one in this society. CoS have loads of power.
I was talking about the Catholic Church with someone the other day, and they were arguing that you can't condemn the religion as a whole. I maintain, however, that if the Pope gets to tell you you're not Catholic, it's organized enough to criticize as a whole.
What I think you CAN'T criticize is an individual's drive for spiritual growth. If their religion involves slandering people and destroying their lives (CoS) or protecting child molestors (Catholic Church), then please, criticize them. In other words, while the person's spiritual practice may be above reproach, the dogma is just a set of ideas and ideals just like any atheist would have. For example:
(I'm not really picking sides, just giving examples)
Religious - God says you should be nice to poor people
Nonreligious - The best interest of humanity dictates you should be nice to poor people
Religious - Abortion is wrong because God says so
Nonreligious - Abortion is wrong because it's unnatural to kill your own progeny
I think that what people call religious belief is just dogma. And atheists have dogma too. If dogma is above reproach, we are in a world of shit, my friend.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Funny; we have similar laws here in the Australian state of Victoria. Christians generally oppose them, largely because it has made it harder for them to state their reasonably-held opinions of Muslims. (I mean, if you believed in one God the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, then surely you think Muslims are wrong, don't you?)
It's worth noting that free speech doesn't exist here except inasmuch as it's politically difficult to pass laws banning certain forms of speech. The state of Victoria has a charter of rights which merely states that the Parliament must consider such issues, and the Australian federal government has nothing even remotely similar.
Yet we join forces invading Iraq and Afghanistan saying we're giving them freedom.
This experience has cemented the view in my mind that there's no such thing as "god-given" or "constitutional" rights; the only rights we have are the ones we make sure we keep.
(To our credit, we were one of very few democracies that made it through the first half of the twentieth century without a disruption to the process — including changes of government (whichever party was in power in (September) 1914, 1917, 1940 and 1943 all lost the election); even the UK suspended elections.)
Look out!
They served their purpose in prehistory (holding Egypt together for several millennia), but we just don't need such social control systems any more.
I'm not so sure about that. Without God, you must explain moral codes in practical terms. The most basic (lie, cheat, steal)are easy enough. Some of the less obviously explained moral codes are both very important and not easy to explain the practicality thereof. (Envy, gluttony, etc.)
Humans are not fundamentally morally superior now as compared to 5,000 years ago. The only thing that has provably changed in that time is the societal indoctrination methods, and churches are the majority of those methods.
Churches, God, and Sin are ways of imposing codes of behavior that have been show to be successful over several millennia. The concepts of 'God' and 'Sin' are necessary to impose these codes of behavior, because you can't argue with God and you better do what he tells you.
If you were once again a child, or once again a teen, or once perhaps still are, how often do you recall arguing with your parents over some matter? That you were unconvinced by their stance?
They had at least two decades more of life experience than you to learn life lessons, and perhaps you might remember they were correct much more often than they were wrong.
But you still argued with them, because you didn't understand the value of their experience and you had to learn some of the same lessons the hard way, just as they did.
Well, assigning the most basic of these life lessons as commandments from God, with whom you may not argue, and who will punish you eternally for consistently failing to obey him, removes them from the 'negotiable' list completely. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not murder. Don't try to screw your neighbors wife. Don't make babies with someone you're not committed to. Don't be envious, etc.
Any one of these things, when broken, will gain the perpetrator a momentary advantage that is plain for anyone to see. In the long run all are detrimental to both the perpetrator and the society around him. Convincing everyone that God would burn you in hell for eternity for doing any of them made folks decide that the momentary gain wasn't worth the fire.
Much less obvious is the long term benefit to society when everyone obeys these rules. Both explaining the full logic of why that is so, and getting the student to accept your and societie's experience is a damn near impossible task with an empty slate of a child or a hormone-driven teenager.
Further, there are countless adults who fail to grasp the utility of the religious rules and traditions we live by. If they are religious, they may yet follow the rules and their lives will be satisfactory, and their impact on society a net positive.
If they are not religious, and do not accept that those traditions and rules exist for reasons they do not grasp, then they will behave as they see fit- leaving ruin in their wake, as lessons learned hundreds or thousands of years ago are tossed out as the baby with the bathwater.
So, allow me to try to summarize if you've made it this far:
Religion is a way of passing down millennia of hard-learned lessons in a way that leaves no room for argument.
I would go into the lessons besides 'don't lie, cheat, murder or steal', except you might argue with me about those topics, proving my point while convincing yourself I'm anachronistic.
Western civilization lies atop a massive carefully-built structure of unnatural behaviors that enable the tremendous intellectual and material wealth we enjoy today.
That behavioral structure is so carefully crafted and re-enforced that we forget that it is unnatural, and in forgetting that, we disparage the tools with which it was carefully built and must be maintained.
We are not naturally better than folks 5,000 years ago. We are only better because of the methods our ancestors derived to make us internalize their hard-learned lessons early in life.
Incidentally I do believe in God, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the anthropology.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Whenever I complain about lack of privacy in modern Europe, people have often said abuses like you describe would never happen, but if it did, OOOOHHH, there would be so much trouble, OOOOHHH, governments would fall OOOOHHH.
Well, when it became public that all European financial transactions logs were being leaked to the US. There was not that much of a big deal, there was a judicial order for it to stop (from Belgium's supreme court), they didn't stop, a point from which the issue was said to move to a "legal grey area".
Not the wacky California fake Zen, the real thing (which can be hard work). Greed is contrary to Zen. Lies are contrary to Zen. Superstition is contrary to Zen. Personal truth and integrity, and the search for direct perception of the core of things - that's Zen.
I would also add the Episcopalians, the Reform Jews, the Sufis, the Quakers and the Unitarians, all of which have a history of attracting very intelligent people, but Zen was the first.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You assume that these rules are compiled with the purpose of benefiting most of us. That is not necessarily true. Many religious rules (or civil laws) we have were written to, for instance, maintain status quo, which in many cases is nothing short of "Cleptocracy" (e.g. "I, the king/high priest, and my buddies will take as much as we can from you the peasants").
The book Collapse by Jared Diamond is filled with data about systems of belief being drafted with lots of different purposes.
No, but of course, If I do not brand these people as babykillers and psycho cultists the rest of Slashdot brands me a troll and flamebait.
Im just sick of the massive groupthink of Slashdot, and I am willing to not immediately jump upon the hater bandwagon.
The reason I ask is, 'cause you kinda make a similar argument.
C'mon, this one's a no-brainer. Take the seven deadly sins for example.
Every single one of them, you're probably better off not doing.
So there's an "evolutionary advantage" to behaving a certain way. Those individuals who behave "ethically" generally have an advantage over those who don't. Now some of those situations are debatable, like, for example, in the short term, if we're in the middle of a famine, there's an (at least in the short-term) advantage to me if I steal your dinner.
However, a community/population/tribe that behaves "ethically" has an ENORMOUS advantage over a tribe of sociopathic anarchists (for example). So those tribes that behave in a way that we'd call ethically, when they go to war with that hypothetical tribe of sociopathic anarchists they kick ass and take wallets.
Nothing mysterious here, just natural selection/evolution. There's no reason to assume that religion is necessary for a society to develop an ethical code.
Hold the train there, we might be "morally superior" to our ancestors from 3,000 years ago when armies would invade and slaughter entire populations (although I suspect that the residents of Dresden or Hiroshima or Fallujah might argue with you on that claim), how 'bout comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancestors?
Pre-agriculture societies generally tend to have values more similar to what we'd call today "democratic values" like equality and freedom and all that good stuff. Plus, they generally won't do things like let someone die for lack of medical care if somebody lacks funds the way we will today.
I guess what I'm saying is, given the history of the 20th century, when 100 million humans were killed by other humans, (about 60% of them civilians to boot) you're on very shaky ground to assume that humans in our current form are "morally superior" to anything.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
My first introduction to their practices was a Time magazine article my friend dug up from 1991, when I was trying to figure out what they were all about. It won an award, and is worth a look for those folks to don't understand the vitriol. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
You'd better substantiate how they "kill" people.
Limina.Log
I'm confused, what I think you're saying is "People follow the rules more easily today because they think god is going to send them to hell"?
Well that doesn't make sense, I would say less people today believe in god than they did before. Although I would go on to say that we're morally better off now than we were back then. We don't stone people to death, we don't chop limbs off thieves, we don't have slavery anymore.
You also seem to assume that people are still afraid of the fire. I don't think that's true anymore, especially considering the church sex scandals. If the clergy isn't afraid of going to hell, then who still is? Plus think of all the religious people who end up cheating on their spouses, although what's morally wrong with having sex with multiple women? According to biblical moral codes it's a sin, but if my wife doesn't care that I have sex with the neighbors wife where's the harm?
I would say that religion was created to keep people in line (they were more easily afraid back then so when you told them they were going to hell for sinning they really believed it.) Although as a moral code for today it's no longer working. Especially considering that the pope just released a new list of sins, and the church is guilty of at least two of them (excessive wealth and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.)
No, you don't. You can easily have moral dogma without religious dogma. Didn't your parents ever tell you to do something "Because I said so!"
At a certain point, you do, because the person will outgrow "what Momma said", but people can also outgrow "what God said." So you'll need to understand in practical terms, anyway.
Envy and gluttony are easier to explain, I think, than lying, cheating, and stealing. Envy is just going to make you unhappy, or cause you to do something stupid, especially in the case of a woman, where there are plenty of women you could chase who aren't already in a relationship.
Gluttony is even easier -- if you are a glutton, you'll become fat, and you probably don't want to be fat -- if only out of vanity.
But what about lying? Or cheating? The only way this can work is if you can make a case for the Golden Rule, which is tricky. Since you seem to be talking about indoctrinating children, they're not going to get empathy until about age six or so.
And stealing only works because of the possibility of jail time -- again, without the Golden Rule.
Not at all. My parents did that to me, both as a child and as a teenager, and I turned out alright.
Now, they did start with saying it's "bad", but no connection was ever made with religion. The only things that they told me to do because God told me to were religious things -- my Bar-Mitzvah, for instance -- and even then, an alternate explanation was ready (tradition) in case I questioned the religion.
But seriously, even explaining the consequences to society is absurdly easy. "What if everyone littered?" And if they don't listen to you about that, they won't listen to you about God, either.
And considering how some of these lessons are no longer relevant -- and, indeed, some of them have been dropped completely -- I still don't see it.
One example: Pork is not kosher, perhaps because of certain -- worms, I think? -- which used to be a real problem. In the modern world, we can keep most of our food reasonably clean, so I see no reason to continue that tradition. But the problem is, since the only reason we got was "God said so," we don't really know if that was the reason -- so the only way to preserve that knowledge is to also preserve the ignorance ("The world is flat! ...Ok, it's round, but it's the center of the universe!") because, after all, who are you to decide what part of what God teaches is false?
And that's another problem with religion -- why not just pass down the lesson with the reason? After all, if you say "Do as I say because God said so, and no arguing," you've lost as soon as the person decides to argue -- which means that those who leave religion are almost certainly going to lose a few of those lessons.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
* Largest hospital system in the country, accounting for over 20% of visits in 20 states. 5.4 million patients, 100 million visits (15 million of them emergency room). Includes some amusing trivia like "treats more AIDS patients in NYC than anyone else"
* Largest non-governmental primary/secondary education provider in country. Educates about 2.5 million students (including about 320k non-Catholic kids), many of them poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Routinely outperforms local public schools, but subsidized almost entirely from those donors, not from the public purse.
* 9th largest charity in country is closely affiliated
* Second largest donor to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, after government.
* Various other accomplishments which you could fill a book with. Universities, museums, immigrant rights lawyering, food banks, conservation programs, urban renewal, subsidized housing, child care, adoption, foster homes, yadda yadda yadda.
That's just the Catholic Church. Yeah, some of the property the Church owns is worth gazillions because it was cheap to buy stuff in downtown Chicago over a hundred years ago. And the Church certainly isn't immune to mismanaging money. But would you really want to spite them just to win a few points against Scientology? And, non-trivial question, if you successfully caused the donations to the Catholic Church to drop like a rock, are you willing to pay to educate those kids, patch up those patients, and feed those hungry? Because all of them are going to end up backstopped by public assistance, and the bill for that goes to you, not to me.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
(-1, Uninformative.)
I know several people who have used the Vatican's library, none were Catholic, all were doing proper academic work (i.e. not God's work), all had access to manuscripts 500-1000 years old.
The "Kabbalah" mostly hides in plain site; there are plenty of publicly accessible places to buy texts that been considered heretical even by most Jewish mystics throughout the centuries, if you know where to look. Jewish mysticism's tradition of hiding relies less on lack of publication and more on illiteracy in rabbinic Hebrew/Aramaic, ignorance of traditional law and homily, ignorance of the multifaceted and particular use of the preceding in allegory. Most modern day "mystics" are plenty happy about writers like Crowley and Berg (well, they don't like Berg the man, rather the nonsense he peddles) because it keeps the curious masses away.
Oh, and knock yourself out with the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're not in Italy. You can review almost all of it now. The secrecy rule disappeared almost 40 years ago. They're also kinda boring.
Admittedly, a cheap printing of the whole thing as text would be nice, but any decent university library will have DJD.
So, pretty much, there was nothing correct in your post.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
Well, not anymore, anyway. I seem to recall this thing called the Spanish Inquisition. Nowadays no one expects it, but at one time it was the "office of special affairs" for the most prominent Christian church.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
>Churches, God, and Sin are ways of imposing codes of behavior that have
>been show to be successful over several millennia. The concepts of
>'God' and 'Sin' are necessary to impose these codes of behavior
The truth is that religion and morality have nothing to do with one another and never have. If they did, this would be a very different world considering how common religion is, and how uncommon morality is. Religions give lip service to morality, but the truth is it never goes any further than that.
If you consider most of the violence that's going on in the world right now, it is led by religious men preaching that murder and mayhem are good things. You can say that they don't represent the "true meaning" of their religion, or that their religion is different than your religion, but they are representative of how religion is practiced in the real world.
It's easy to be a saint in a rich country with police that *enforce* the law, when you don't really have a choice, and in those places you often see holy men positioning themselves as defending public morality (although what they consider public morality is often ridiculous). In regions of the world that are chaotic on the other hand, holy men are always the first to rally a mob and start some violence.
This is true of Islam, and of Christianity. No one who has studied any European history could claim that Christianity has promoted morality, or that it has ever been about anything more than power.
The true source of morality is reason, and the true source of public order is the law and the police force to enforce it. Without those two things, everything goes lord of the flies pretty quickly, whatever your religion is.
Suffering will exist with or without religion.
M'personal spiritual beliefs compel me to try to ease some of that for those around me, while acknowledging that I can't save the world from suffering. No control freaks needed.
"Religion" does NOT have to be a power-mongering scam....
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Sigh.
Please stop posting.
Just because you can't google image search for every text you'd like does not mean they are inaccessible. Sometimes, if there is no facimile edition of the text, or reputable printing, you actually have to go to the library where they are held and work. Shocking, I know. It's called scholarship. I also can't help but notice that you have shifted your argument from the current state of affairs to a "long, long history."
In any case, I suspect you like things with "secret" in the title, so perhaps you should order this? Should you actually want to try some real work, fill out one of these out and go to a reading room.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
I met Paulette Cooper in the mid-'80s after she wrote an article about COS for Reader's Digest. The Scientologists made her life miserable, and even my tangential association with her led to problems for me that, I suspect, were caused by the COS. The harassment and persecution of her would be called terrorism today.
And decent poetry! If you'd like to really charm a date, the "Song of Solomon" is some pretty hot material, even if it is a bit risque for a first date.
OK
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Islamic Council of Victoria sued a Christian group over things they said during a service; I don't know what the Muslims wanted to get out of it, but apparently five years later the result an agreement that everything was all happiness and roses. I'm not aware of any other attempt to sue under this law, but in this particular case the law was much more divisive then just letting religious people speak; after the Islamic Council began to sue Catch the Fire Ministries, various Christian groups turned up to Muslim services to try and find any possible cause for them to sue in response.
On the other hand, under federal law Albert Langer was sent to jail for describing a way to vote in federal elections that was valid at the time.
Look out!