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Scientology Tries To Block German Documentary
eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."
Now I am interested in that film...
Regardless, Scientology is prohibited in Germany; So I doubt they will have much of a case for the german courts.
This is like the Streisand effect - it will only generate publicity. So thank you Scientology for making me aware of this documentary.
An organization as dangerous as Scientology must not be given a chance to prevent education. The are banned for a reason. I hope the courts will just laugh at them and send their lawyers home. And now i'd really like to see that movie.
Nope, I think you mistook me for someone else.
In Germany it is seen as a totalitarian anti-democratic organization
If only somebody in Germany had the guts to say the same thing about Catholicism, or for that matter Islam.
They did, 500 years ago, and it led to the Reformation.
There are, but there are also laws to protect people (and organizations) from libel and untrue reporting.
In short: if you don't claim something is a fact but only your opinion, you're pretty much free to say anything. If you claim sonething is a fact, and the subject of the fact doesn't like it, court might ask you to proove that you double-checked your "facts" first.
This news is nothing special. You're almost expected to go that route if you hear about bad news are to be published (and you employ a lawyer...) but considering the standard of journalism in public tv, scientology hasn't much of a chance to pull that documentary off the air.
bickerdyke
What ever happened to "live and let live"?
No atheist is stopping religious people from living. Check the history of all major religions and you will find out that religious people quite often did stop atheists from living, and in quite imaginative ways too. I am just giving my opinion, feel free to give yours and stop playing the "hurt feelings" card you big baby.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
In Germany it is seen as a totalitarian anti-democratic organization
If only somebody in Germany had the guts to say the same thing about Catholicism, or for that matter Islam.
The thing is, though, that they aren't. If you're a Catholic, no-one's going to try and make your life a living hell if you want to stop coming to church. People say horrible and untrue thing about Catholics and the Catholic Church all the time, but they don't try and abuse the legal system to stop them, because they recognise the importance of freedom of speech. You can get all of the advantages and privileges of being a member of the Catholic Church for free just by turning up; you don't have to pay to access any of its teachings.
To describe Catholicism as a "totalitarian anti-democratic organisation" and thereby making a direct comparison to Scientology is simply doing your own intelligence and critical thinking skills a disservice.
Pirate Party UK
... "Streisandeffect". Please.
Not to defend the history of religious oppression, but atheistic Leninist Russia had quite a habit of stopping religious people living, as does Communist China
The persecution of minorities is a feature of all totalitarian ideologies, religious or otherwise.
Are you saying that catholicism should be forbidden because of what happened centuries ago ? Next you'll tell me I should be apologizing to every black person I come across for slavery...
I don't agree with most of the Catholic church views, and it certainly has major flaws, but *nowadays* the leaders of this religion are not motivated by greed and power (if they are, they're doing a very lousy job at it). Scientology obviously is.
Fuck Scientology. I've never seen a larger collection of assholes ever.
Please do provide us with examples of democracy at work within the church. Or do you mean that though internally anti-democratic the church respects the democracies which harbour it so much that it would never try and avoid secular law via non-reporting of crimes, influence elections from the pulpit, lobby elected officials and the press... ?
Regarding freedom of speech (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_versus_blasphemy): "In 2005 Marithé and François Girbaud's parodied Leonardo's religious painting The Last Supper in a publicity poster. The Catholic Church initiated a lawsuit against the Girbauds, sparking concerns regarding freedom of expression and blasphemy.", for example. There are plenty.
As far as it still being a scientology-like racket, it clearly was in the middle ages and afterwards. Recent info is hard to come by, though the Banco Ambrosiano thingy hints at juicy stuff. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Ambrosiano).
The catholic church feels to me like a successful sect, no more, no less, no better.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Correction, millions were killed in his attempt to build a Communist society. Religion was an incidental thing in Communist ideology that barely gets a mention in the Communist Manifesto, except as one of the many things to get rid of as the new society is built. Orthodox Church in Russia was diminished by Stalin and many priests killed as part of a struggle for power between rival totalitarian ideologies. In other words, Stalin may have been an atheist but that doesn't mean he killed in the name of atheism. Big difference.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Germany doesn't know yet what Scientology is, a business, a religion or a cult.
Same thing!! A cult is a business that makes money and gains power from people with a small schizophrenic delusion that partially detaches their inner model from reality. And a church is just a cult that’s officially accepted by the powers that be (e.g. Government). Which happens, as soon as they catch themselves enough politicians.
Organizations like these are by definition immoral, since they exploit people who need help. And control their lives with nasty social engineering. There is no good about it...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
> I don't know of many other institutions that attempt to bully a national government, you know?
I take it you're not a member of a union?
Cults need not be profitable. Take a look at the history of Charlie Manson and his cult. And no, here are some differences between cults and religions. These include the cult tendency to focus around a single, charismatic leader whose word is absolute law, and their tendency to conceal their genuine inner beliefs in layers that each must be struggled through by new initiates, and each is further divorced from the beliefs taught at the outer layers. This is part of what helps separate the cult inner core from the outer world, and helps bind them together among others who have learned to share those new increasingly bizarre core beliefs.
It's not uncommon: there have been a _lot_ of cults in history. There used to be a pretty good organization for publishing information about cults and helping people get the facts and support from former members, called "Cult Awareness Network", but they got sued to bankruptcy and their assets taken over by Scientology, so now they're a pro-cult organization.
Communism and its variant Juche are 100% religions in everything but name. They have their rituals, clergy, scripture. They fight infidels and are highly proselytic. You have portraits of the Prophets everywhere. There are holy sites, and sometimes pilgrimages (like to Lenin's corpse). And I really can't notice a modicum of difference between 1st May processions we used to have in Poland and catholic Corpus Christi ones we have now.
It's quite strange that Juche tends to be quite often named a religion, yet the Soviet and Chinese versions are not.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
...Nitpicking about the cause...
But the cause is exactly what we are talking about. There are about 18,000 homicides annually in the USA. I'm sure there are some where the murderer happened to be an atheist and the victim was religious or vice versa. But those are not relevant to our discussion because their beliefs had nothing to do with the cause of the murder. Stalin sent thousands to gulags or to firing squads, not because of what they believed about God (after all, surely he killed just as many if not more atheists than religious people) but because he perceived them as a threat to his power. This is quite different from say religious laws in Islamic countries today, and Christian countries in the past, which have, for example, a death penalty for things like blasphemy, apostasy etc because those penalties are proscribed very clearly in the Bible and the Koran and are an integral part of their religion.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
He also purged homosexuals, intellectuals, scientists, entrepreneurs, communists, anti-communists, foreigners, foreign-sympathises, oh, and other atheists. If you want to obsess over one minor part of the purges, that speaks more to your agenda than Stalin's.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Well you start by confiscating children of believers, in the name of preventing "brainwashing", move on to imprisoning believers for "anti-revolutionary activities", and then start killing millions. You might also set up state approved alternatives that gradually remove spiritual elements. You also mandate "atheism lessons" for all school children.
It's what the USSR, PRC, and DPRK did.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I feel most sorry for the mislead idiots doing the dirty work for Scientology higher ups. They dont know they are following a Scifi novel, a pretty lame one sadly. Written by an utter bastard that once said, "If you want to make a little money, write a book. If you want to make a lot of money, create a religion."
He did...
HTTP/1.1 400
You atheists seem to be a very hostile and angry group yourselves!
Really?
When is the last time you saw an atheist fly a plane into a sky scraper? Or shoot a doctor dead, because some invisible man in the sky didn't like the LEGAL work the doctor was doing? Have any ministers, reverends or priests (even the PEDO ones) been assaulted by bands of roving atheists? Are atheist groups campaigning en masse to deny rights to homosexuals and legislate bigotry?
I seem to recall something in one of those holy books that said "take the log out of your own eye, before you attempt to remove the speck from your brothers eye"
And no, here are some differences between cults and religions.
True. A religion is a cult that is tax exempt.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You could well be right. My point wasn't to suggest that somehow atheism was bound to result in mass murder, it was to say that a simplistic reading of history that condemns religion for the past, can also condemn...well, just about any group, including atheists.
There seems to be little consideration that the religious abuses of the past were more political than anything else. Though they do emphasize why mixing religion and politics is such a terrible idea: politics corrupts religion ;-)
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
As a citizen of Europe, I'm going to have to point out passionately how full of neutering all such "Constitutions" are.
For example, in Germany I cannot freely:
- State that only 1,000,000 Jews died in the Holocaust: utter bullshit, but if the above clause has any effect, I must be allowed to do this, lest the principle leading to the exception is used to restrict me from legitimate review and criticism of policy based on established scholarship;
- Parade with swastikas: fairly stupid, but if the above clause has any effect, I must be allowed to do this, lest I am restricted from parodying a government going where it's gone before ("we're not like Nazis - we ban the swastika!").
Also, such exceptions inevitably ride the slippery slope to encompass the restriction of far more freedoms. I'm sure the CoS will explain why their detractors are "like Nazis" oppressing religious freedom, their speech thus outlawed - enjoy that hurdle.
No, not stretchable at all. A legal entity cannot have personal honour. This is limited to natural persons.
A major difference to the US , which seems to be on the verge of granting corporations citizenship.
Lenin was a true atheist, Stalin... I don't know. But their motivations were a bit different than just 'stopping the religious from living'.
They did not stop religious Muslims from living, they were going after Jews, but not for religion purposes, they just needed a distraction, and Jews were always a good one.
The main point was to get rid of the Orthodox symbols and rituals because that was the religion of the Tsarist Russia. They needed to get rid of the 'old' and it also was a good way to get rid of the competition.
With Lenin this was not as obvious as with Stalin, he really saw religion as competition to the new religion, the Communist Party with Stalin being the leading character, Christ or something to that order.
Consider that old churches were turned into vegetable stores and morgues and that Party had very strong symbols of its own, the colors, the sermons (ceremonies of the party meetings on TV, so called 'plenums'), the insignia, the icons (Mother Russia, voloneters).
This was not a society of atheists, this was something else.
You can't handle the truth.
Person <> organisation. Very, very, very important.
According to the law of my country (Belgium) and Germany, Scientology is not a religion.
In order for anyone to expose that they are not a religion, you do indeed need dissenters, not die hard fans.
I think you owe the people in Germany an apology for that last comment you made but hey, it's your karma (and I don't mean /. karma).
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog
It looks like you have a case of selective reading. The GP discussed how one TV station is funded by public money and thus isn't scared of programming like this. That hardly proves that they have "blind faith" in anything. It definitely doesn't mean these people have a blind faith in government! Why? For the same reason your other point is bunk. Government run media outlet? The GP specifically said that this station answers to "nobody not even the government." Maybe if you had taken the time to disprove his assertion that this station is free from government control, your second point would stand. Either way, your first point is just stupid.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Please do provide us with examples of democracy at work within the church.
People are free to leave at will if they disagree.
The only sanctions taken internally for unorthodox views are withdrawal of offical positions (as a recognised theologian for example - as with Hans Kung).
Monasteries/convents elect their abbots/mother superiors, and a number of religious orders (such as the Jesuits) elect their heads. The latter include some of the most powerful roles in the Church (such as the Jesuit "Black Pope").
influence elections from the pulpit, lobby elected officials and the press
That's called 'freedom of speech'. You are entitled to call air your views, so is the church.
The Catholic Church initiated a lawsuit against the Girbauds
Did you see the verifiability note on the article? Citation needed.
In the Middle Ages it was the norm for feudal societies to be dictatorial - wow, some things have improved since then! On the other hand, the church did a huge amount of good throughout its history from opposing the use of gladiators to playing a part is loosening slavery into feudalism, to preserving intellectual life in the dark ages, to education, to medical services.
All the stuff people on Slashdot sprout about the Catholic church, and religion in general, sounds rather like listening to Microsoft on Linux: it sounds very convincing unless you actually start checking facts, or have direct experience.
While I agree hinting to the war is unneccessarry, his point is valid: An independent media is absolutely necessary to keep the power of government in check. When government is running the media, a huge conflict of interest exists. This problem is unfortunately not being taken seriously by the people in countries with government-run media (most of Europe, maybe?). It's even worse here in Norway, where the government operated media dominates TV and radio - only in newspapers is there some diversity and even most of those depend on government subsidies.
The problem is Scientology doesn't work the way other religions work, with respect to fanaticism. With Christianity (or Islam, or Judaism, or most traditional religions), you get a fair amount of fanatical individuals. You get the people that shoot doctors providing abortions and you get the suicide bombers.
As far as I've seen, the fanatics in Scientology are all high up in the organization and are smart enough to at least try and be circumspect about what they do. They're better organized than individuals or small groups. They're slicker and know how to sell their product.
That's the real problem here. Other religions may inspire some fanatics, but Scientology is run by fanatics.
As an agnostic (and ex-Catholic) I'm no defender of the church by any means but asking the other poster for examples of "democracy at work within the church" in an attempt to refute that the Church and Scientology are very different in their treatment of people is patently absurd. I might as well as you to provide us of examples of "democracy at work within a corporation" and then contend that a corporation is as dangerous and abusive as Scientology - which, of course, we know is for the most part incorrect. ;)
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OP was responding to GP's statement that "No atheist is stopping religious people from living." OP wasn't the one who limited the debate to purges of religion by atheists, GP was. OP was merely responding within the confines of the debate established by the GP, not promoting his agenda.
My great-grand father was a pastor, my grand-mother and mother are protestants, but after going to sunday school and such I've become an atheist when I was a teen (for the reason you cite), and no one pressured me into reconsidering it. IMO the problem is the bigotry of the families you speak of, not that particular religion. BTW, there's "going through hell with your parents" and then there's "being harassed constantly and having your private life thoroughly investigated for dirty secrets to try and get you fired, jailed or institutionalized".
Speaking of my great-grand father, he was the kindest, most selfless man I've ever known (hid jews during WW2, helped develop a small pacific island, ...). He most certainly never pressured his parishioners into giving him or his church money.
Anyway, my point was that despite all the crooked priests and bigot followers, mainstream religions are much less greedy and evil than cults like scientology. For example, you can get the bible for free or at a very moderate cost, and without giving out any personal information. Same with the Qur'an. Try acquiring scientology "courses" for free or anonymously...
Logical fallacy.
Just because I have the unmitigated gall to point out that atheists aren't suicide bombers, I am clearly in favour of atheist states like the Khmer Rouge.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Every time there is any Internet forum discussion critical of Scientology this same meme pops up. It's not true. Elevating Scientology to the same status as established religions with thousands of years of history is an attempt BY SCIENTOLOGY to legitimize itself. Just look at how a discussion about Scientology and a "docudrama" about it spawned this sub-thread plus discussions of Atheism vs. Theism, Christianity's historical abuses of believers and non-believers, political power struggles of one dogma vs another, the current state of Islam, etc.
Any other org is fair game so long as negative attention is diverted from Scientology.
Keep your eye on the ball, folks.
What is the body count for Scientology?. Ok.
Now, what is the body count for christianity, islam, and judaism?. Aha ...
Obviously we should be fighting both, then.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This is only because Scientology was invented relatively recently. The level of critical thinking on new things is significantly better now than it was in the past (although it may not seem like it...). We also have much better record keeping practises, so it's easy to identify where Scientology came from, how it started, etc. That's why Scientology is having such a rough time of it. It's a heck of a lot harder to start a religion now than it was centuries ago. As a result, it has to be more aggressive as well, although that's (finally) starting to backfire on them.
If It had been started a couple thousand years ago like all the other major religions when ignorance was the norm, then we would all be praying about Xenu.
You'll notice that all major religions were created a long time ago, when superstition was rampant and science as we know it didn't exist. It's very difficult to eliminate something that's been so firmly entwined in cultural memory. Combine that with the human tendency to resist change, especially regarding beliefs taught to you since childhood (when, incidentally, you are genetically programmed to suck up any and all knowledge fed to you, hook line and sinker), you can see how something so nonsensical can somehow manage to keep going for so long.
There is nothing more amusing in life then watching two sides of intolerant try to explain to one another how intolerant each is. Thank you slashdot for another amusing idealogical flame war.
First: Correlation doesn't imply causation.
Any organization: religion or otherwise can be taken as the mean of actions. To try and blame religion for the crusades, torture, etc at the time is statistically irrelivant. Those tactics were used with the same impunity by non-religious organizations at the time. The Dutch trading companies, merchant leagues, feudal lords, etc.
The capacity for evil is universal in humans. The very fact people can throw out secular versus non-secular violence simply states a fact that violence has little to do with and one particular idealogy. People kill in the name of XYZ because it is a source of justification. No different the killing in the name of greed, pride, honor, land, food, etc.
Crusades religious? That is nonsense. The holy roman empire was just that an empire. No different then Rome. When Ole' Rome invaded and took out the Goths was that a Holy War by Zeus or Jupiter? It's a war over land the "backing" is irrelivant. France's revolution was a secular vs religious blood bath. Athiests, Agnostics, Religious, and other idealogical classifications are statistically insignificant regressors when it comes to the analysis of violence.
Islam is statistically no more violent then Christianity or Aethiests. The lead indicators in violence is education and poverty levels. After that comes access to fresh water and crop land.
The crusades was a land grab. No different with the Moorish invasion. The "decorations" of war no different. Any organization\idealogy will attempt to grow it's power and supress dissent. It's human nature. Democrats, Republicans, Masons, Boy Scouts, your local Sigbap, Eve Corp, or WoW guild all have the same basic behaviors. Violence, war, indoctrination, etc are common behaviors.
It's just a statistical echo that religious organizations were successful enough organizations to escalate to that level of control. e.g. It's not the fact they are religions but rather the fact they were successsful control structures (Which mind you most governement models are based from.) President = Pope, Congress of Cardinals = Senate, etc.
So go ahead and butt intolerant heads but I hate to break it to both sides, is because human behavior, not a particular belief structure. God didn't invent the atom bomb, scientists, people, humans did. The only thing I see is a world in which people love to blame "the other side" for the problems rather then realize the reasons for our darkest side is universal. Evil is universal, it's just easier to try and subscribe a demographic to it rather then deal with the real root causes.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
When is the last time you saw an atheist fly a plane into a sky scraper? Or shoot a doctor dead, because some invisible man in the sky didn't like the LEGAL work the doctor was doing? Have any ministers, reverends or priests (even the PEDO ones) been assaulted by bands of roving atheists? Are atheist groups campaigning en masse to deny rights to homosexuals and legislate bigotry?
It's probably a bit too convenient (and dishonest) to take a "religion" that is widely known to be radical and violent as a prototype for typical religion while ignoring the obvious existence of radical atheists. It's also abundantly clear that there exists people who are not mentally well, both religious and otherwise, and such people are prone to do violent, immoral, and insane things. Ignoring that most people on earth (especially in the U.S.) are religious, a dishonest (or naive) person would extrapolate and conclude that religious people are more prone to violence than atheists, or even that religion causes such violence. You're above such naivety, aren't you?
It's also a clear cheap shot to decree that others are hypocrites when they try and fail to live up to higher standards (or even just different standards) than you yourself willing to accept as providential. But hey, I get it. Playing for the anti-religion crowd is an easy karma boost. To hell with intellectual honesty as long as you get the karma, right?
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.