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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.
Bears' woodland sanitary habits
Pope's Nazi youth
Apple enthusiasts' devotion....
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Do they have any cool vids of Xenu and the starships? Volcanoes? That could rival the Sci-Fi Channel.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Calling Scientology a "religious group" stretches it in my books: they are a scam that hides behind being a cult which promotes itself as a religion.
Shh.
Prior to that screwup, they were a vast reservoir of credibility.
I'd be more surprised if the site launched and everyone found out it was entirely on the up-and-up.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Impressive. Two posts into the thread and someone's already trying to turn it into a debate over all religions. I'm not accusing you of being a Scilon - merely pointing out that it's a tactic the Scilons try to cultivate, because it turns the entire discussion into a debate about theology, effectively distracting everyone from the main issue.
Were this a thread about religion, for instance, it'd be fine, but the Co$ debate isn't about theology.
Organizations that use barratry ("The purpose of a lawsuit is not to win, but to harass") and violence (consider the similarities between the mysterious fates of Judge Swearinger's dog in 1998, and the fate of an outed anonymous protester's cat earlier this week) as a matter of policy are not religions.
The whole point of a religion is that whatever's at the top isn't a person.
Most christian churches do not charge their members thousands of dollars on compulsive seminaries. Tithing is voluntary, last time I looked.
No sig for the moment.
I am certain this has been stated many times, but here I go anyways, cause I'm new and want karma... For me it is not necessarily what they believe. You could believe that the waffle I toasted this morning is the 'Supreme Being' and bathe in maple syrup (thanks Canada!) as part of your religious rituals and I could care less... What gets my goat is that you must pay to pray, so to speak. If I wanted to learn about the beliefs of Christianity, Islam, Wicca, or even Voodoo, there are books out there and for the most part, a 'holy person' you can throw questions at. They won't ask for cash if you want to advance your knowledge of their belief system. Scientology requires that for you to become a more true believer, you pay, and through the friggen nose (I think the CoS has more to do with this than their individual adherents). I could be wrong, who knows.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
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.
Please read for a start:
http://www.exscientologykids.com/
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
"Nietzsche is God" - Logic
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No true. I'd say that the RCC is the exception, not the rule here. If I remember correctly, there is no eccleasiastical hierarchy in Islam, which already accounts for about 1.5 billion people. There is no formal hierarchy in Judaism either, and many Protestant denominations are also made up of autonomous local congregations that associate on a voluntary basis (e.g. the SBC in the US). Even those denominations that are more organized do not usually have a "central point of authority" as the Pope to Roman Catholics.
A phrase that gets passed around: Calling Scientology a 'religion' really is an awful lot like calling Dunkin' Donuts a 'restaurant'
Schnapple
Belief Systems Classified by Time Since Inception
0 - 0.5 years : Eccentricity
0.5 - 10 years : Scam
10 - 100 years : Cult
100 - 5,000 years : Genuine theology that reflects the true nature of being and the foundation of our civilization
5,000 + : Myth
Why should that be important. Hell, the Anglican Church had an Archbishop of Canterbury who doubted the divinity of Christ. Does that mean the entire Episcopalian movement no longer qualifies as a religion?
The chief difference seems to be that a successful religion is a sect or cult that manages to get near-universal acceptance as a religion within the societies that it exists. Scientology is seen by most of society as a crazy-ass money-hungry cult with a pack of swirly-eyed true believers who pay their money and believe any and all nonsense that Hubbard and his heirs shove down their throats.
Mormons were in the same boat for decades. They were seen as sexually deviant heretics. Fortunately for them, in those days a cult could basically seize control of a large, unpopulated area and grow relatively undisturbed for decades, and by the time the greater society finally met them head on again, they're numbers were sufficient that they had to be dealt with as a religion.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Scientology and the Internet explains the history.
In brief:
- attacks on USENET involving forged rmgroups in 1995.
- attacks on USENET involving Hipcrime-style spam for many years since then.
- legal attacks that resulted in the compromise of every user of the anon.penet.fi anonymous remailer in 1996.
- Angry about copyright term extensions? What we jokingly refer to as the 1998 Mickey Mouse Protection Act was passed into law as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. By a staggering coincidence, Sonny Bono was a Scilon.
- Angry about the DMCA? The Mickey Moust Protection Act wasn't enough of a legal club, and guess who was one of the first organizations to use it in mid-1999?
- And guess who was behind the DMCA attacks against Google in 2002.
- And last but not least, guess who was behind the DMCA attack against Slashdot itself in 2001.
Sorry you haven't been paying attention for the past decade, dude, but this is news for nerds, and it is stuff that matters.
When I was down protesting on the 10th of February, I realized something disturbing. I had always thought of Scientology as something of a cult that suckers dumb people into believing that they are sick, and need to pay money to get better.
To some extent it is that, but there is a much creepier aspect. From what I have seen, Scientology seems to be more of a social club for wealthy people who are interested in learning how to use aggressive psychological attacks such as hypnotism.
I started reading Dianetics, and it really does seem like a manual for using psychological attacks. A thetan is like a soul, but also like an influence. Non scientologists are infected with alien thetans, and once you are "clear" of them, you can become an "operating thetan". Then you can begin infecting the minds of others. Before it had always confused me that non scientologists have to rid themselves of thetans, but scientologists refer to eachother as thetans.
It was pretty sickening to realize that so many scientologists know exactly what it is all about. They develop new psychological attacks. Then they train their followers. The followers then use those attacks to manipulate those around them so they can become more successful in their careers, and increase the size of the church. This money is then reinvested in developing new psychological attack methods.
Someone please correct me if any part of this is inaccurate.