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Scientology's Credibility Questioned Over Video Channel
stonyandcher writes to share that the Church of Scientology has come under fire for some items on their recently launched video channel. Most notably, claims have been leveled that dignitaries in one of their videos were faked and at least one of the people featured in the video is claiming their statements were taken out of context.
Religious groups are well known for twisting the words of non-members to support the wacky claims. Some nut-case Christer fundies produced a movie that twisted the words of several well known Atheists.
What do you expect from groups that require that members first suspend disbelief and accept claims of 'eternal life'?
Blar.
did Scientology have credibility?
Besides among the easily duped?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Anyone else smell the desperation?
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
I'd be more surprised if the site launched and everyone found out it was entirely on the up-and-up.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Seriously, if there is *anyone* here criticizing Scientology, but believing the quaran or the bible, you are hypocrites.
Scientology is no more ridiculous than christianity, islam, or judaism. OK, spaceships that look like DC3s, OK, that's weird, but no more so than virgin births, 5000 year old flat earth, talking snakes, noah's ark, or killing your first born.
I usually don't bother questioning the credibility of anyone who's sanity I have questions about. It seems like a waste of time.
I'm sure they have plenty of credit with the financial institutions that they work with.
I think it rather self-evident that this church will burn baby burn. They're not needing any help at all from the rest of us. They're doing quite well on their own! Just sit back, grab some marshmellows and get ready to roast!!
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In other news... Professional wrestling found to be Fake!
TODO create witty sig.
Newsflash - you are not important. Slashdot was not designed to serve you. You are not paying for it. Yet you still take time to complain. Weird, uh?
And if you're that keen on only seeing specific articles - there's a billion filters you can apply. Might want to use the full site. Or are you not nerd enough to figure out filter settings?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Most christian churches do not charge their members thousands of dollars on compulsive seminaries. Tithing is voluntary, last time I looked.
Answer honestly. If the CoS suddenly decided to go donation only would you agree they are now a religion or would you move the goalposts?
I don't give a fuck if you believe in Xenu or Jesus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but the Church Scientology lies to and steals from it's 'believers', and does horrible psychological damages to people and their familes. No mainstream religion is remotely as corrupt and sadistic.
That is a very bold statement. I thought we were in the middle of a war against radical Islam...
"Written historical account". Given that pagan by definition means "of the country.", and in those times most people were illiterate, does it really surprise you that there was little written record to contradict what the Christians wrote? It's not like they have ever burned books or anything, either.
As a more direct rebuttal specifically to the Osiris resurrection thing, that was written in hieroglyphs. How else would we have known about it? It's not like there have been any native Egyptian speakers for a long, long time, so we had to learn about ancient Egypt through other methods.
But hey, why let the facts stand in the way of your chosen God, right? He's infallible, and if anyone that believes in him says anything about him, it must be true!
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Other religions have the benefit of time to hide their terrible deeds.
Well, I'm not an atheist, I'm a Pastafarian. But I don't hate you for not believing in His Noodliness. But we've already dealt with the fact that this isn't about whether a certain beliefs are true or false or even falsifiable. The issue at hand is about behavior.
And since you're now talking about behavior, let's continue to stay on topic. This thread is about the behavior of the Co$, not the behavior of other organizations.
The cult strives to spark this debate wherever it can, because most people don't recognize the logical fallacy of tu quoque when they see it. The Scilons depend on this. Don't fall for their tactics.
How can a religion have credibility when the entire faith is surrounded around a bad sci-fi writer from the late 1800's? Doesn't the very idea that souls came from aliens that were dumped into a volcano and sent to the neo-people of about 10,000 bc which created all of humanity. Whats not to love?
I lol'd a Jonestown, Waco, and all the others.
Well all those cults like to hole up in their little compound off out of our way.
This cult likes to convert celebrities and use them to evangelize their cult, spread itself across the country, and litigate anyone who tries to slow their acquisition of money.
Basically, Scientology has a much greater chance of affecting me or someone I know than any of those other cults. Mainly because those other cults were actually "cults" run by some crazy messiah-delusion leader, while Scientology is a deliberate scheme for accruing vast amounts of wealth and power in the guise of a cult.
The enemies of Democracy are
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
There must be some reverse psychology going on here! Everyone, mod me down!
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Lying to and stealing from is positively passive compared to molesting, murdering (see crusades, witch hunts etc), forbidding life saving medical treatments, forbidding condom use and the list could go on and on. It says right in their book that gays and back-talking kids should be stoned to death! As kooky as Scientology is, they don't hold a candle to mainstream religions in terms of violence and all around nastiness.
You don't get it. Scientology will never go donation only. It's not a system where you go once a week, sing songs and pray. You go in regularly to what is essentially some odd ball therapy session where you literally hold on to some tin cans attached to a lie detector (what they call 'auditing') and you in turn pay to achieve higher states of reality. Religion is about your personal relationship with a higher being. Scientology is about turning you into the higher being. Comparing Scientology to a religion is quite honestly absurd since none of it has to do with religion. They only call themselves a religion in order to enjoy tax free status and the benefits of separation of church and state. In other words, all they want is your money.
As a Buddhist, I have never given any amount of money to any Buddhist temple or member.
Scientology is not a religion. Get that through your head. Once you do you'll realize that the arguments of "well, if they become donation only will that make you happy" are so completely absurd and have nothing to do with what is being critized about Scientology. In other words, this discussion does not fall into the easy safe world of a black and white argument.
Oh, and there are organizations that do follow the "teachings" of L-Ron and believe that the information and benefits contained within Scientology should be freely available.
Answer honestly. If the CoS suddenly decided to go donation only would you agree they are now a religion or would you move the goalposts?
Most people wouldn't have a problem with the CoS if they were 1) donation only, 2) totally open about their beliefs and not trying to hide everything, and 3) didn't try to keep their members locked up inside the church, while cutting them off from outside influences like family. When was the last time you heard about someone that had trouble leaving any church that wasn't considered a cult? Oh, that's right, never.
If they want to call themselves a religion, so be it. But their tactics are sickening and THAT is what most people have trouble with. That is also why most people want the "religion" monicker removed from them.
Because they're like SCO, except more vile and heinous, and at a personal level.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Radicals are just that: radicals. The very name implies that they do not represent the religion as a whole.
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
I have never heard of a real religion that gets upset when anybody exposes the beliefs of that religion.
LOL! Yes. YES IT IS! :)
:)
That was my WHOLE point.
Your faith in me being Satan is perfectly "OKAY", and by that you probably mean "All right", which also means correct.
All faiths are EQUALLY correct. Correct means:
Free from error or fault; true or accurate.
In order for something to be correct you must base that on logical proof, material evidence, etc. This means that all "Faith" is equally based on nothing tangible in this world. It does not matter how many people share it, or if is only a faith of one person. They all have the same foundation!
Now to ACT upon your faith is a whole different story altogether........
I don't find the claims about Jesus to be one bit more believable than Scientology's mumbo jumbo. By the same token, I don't find the story of Gilgamesh any more believable than the story of Jesus. A fabrication is fabrication, no matter its age.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You have some old records of a man who claimed he was God. That doesn't make "He was God." a fact. The only thing that those papers prove is that there once was a man who said he was God. You could go to an insane asylum and hear much the same.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
You hit the nail on the head. Authenticity does not equal veracity. However, it is a prerequisite. Anabaptists claimed that their religion is the one started by the apostles. Catholicism claims the same thing - however, evidence discredits Anabaptism in favor of Catholicism.
analysis over historical records regarding the New Testament can only confirm us that the words in them were actually what the man called Jesus said - and not an invention made by a group of fanboys. But from that to affirming that Jesus is the son of God, that is up to the believer.
In other words, we cannot confirm that religion is true based only on ancient manuscripts - however, we CAN confirm that a religion is NOT true based on ancient manuscripts, if they disprove what the religion claims.
In the particular case of Scientology, physical evidence disproves Scientology's numerous claims - starting with the e-meter.