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Church of Scientology Enlisting Followers In Censorship
DrEnter writes "Apparently, the recent very public divorce of Katie Holmes and devout believer Tom Cruise is reflecting negatively on the Church of Scientology. Adding to this are other recent issues causing problems for 'church' leadership. In response, the 'church' has decided to encourage its followers to censor online chatter and comments about the 'church' and the divorce. This Yahoo blog post sums it up nicely. In short, they are encouraging members to complain about people posting negative comments about the 'church' as violating the Code of Conduct' in the posting venue. I can only imagine they are hoping these complaints will just be rubber-stamped and respected without investigation, but I think the campaign deserves a bit more attention."
I'm glad Katie dumped his ass and is doing her best to protect Suri from that cult.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Name one other "religion" that charges you to read the "bible" and forbids you to tell anyone what they teach under pain of law suite.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This is false. They have been indicated in a number of murders and convenience suicides of people who speak out about either, or the Church itself.
They are, in short, very much like extremist Muslims, except without the benefit of their religion having been created far enough back that quasi-rational people might give it the benefit of the doubt as being legitimate.
It also helps that Islam doesn't have actual documents with its founders talking about making a fake religion to bilk people out of their money.
Why? They are both based on belief of the metaphysical and the scientifically un-provable.
Let me say first that I find Scientology repulsive and a particularly greasy form of pyramid scheme. However, compared to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic trinity, they are responsible for much less evil and far fewer deaths. Between those three religions you have tens of millions slaughtered in pointless wars over minor differences in doctrine. You have sexism that runs deep through the dogma of all three. You have churches who have officially sanctioned everything from genocide to sexually abusing children to slavery. This stuff isn't even in the distant past. I can find examples in the last century where each of these religions has committed terrible atrocities.
Scientology is easy to hate because it is so ridiculous, so absurd, and generally unpopular. It's an easier target than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. But if you really take a step back and look at the doctrine of those three faiths, they are equally as ridiculous.
All those other religions had a 2000 year head start on Scientology, so the Scientologists are way behind in the killing and other stuff, but that is irrelevant. Scientology is not a religion by any reasonable definition of the term. They only use the word church in their name for tax-avoidance purposes and so that they can claim "religious persecution" if anyone tries to challenge their absurd nonsense.
Scientology is a lot of things -- scam, dangerous cult, organized crime -- but one thing it is not is a religion.
Frosty Piss was unavailable to this poster as he has not reached OT$10M. His devotion is insufficiently funded, so he's basically darned to heck anyway.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"The difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own." — Frank Zappa
Then you haven't looked very hard. Big difference: Christianity doesn't require you to pay money before they will reveal all of the church doctrines. Sure, some Christian churches are pretty much scams, but even those don't take it to the egregious level of Scientology.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
How does all of these tactics, including infiltration of government, not qualify as terrorism?
The difference is that a religion is a large, popular cult, while a cult is a small, unpopular religion.
(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.)
... Christianity doesn't require you to pay money before they will reveal all of the church doctrines...
True, but once they suck you in all Christian organisations want your money and they want it tax free.
Also Christianity does not specifically target those suffering from psychological illness and to compound that target psychologists and psychiatrists and their professions with a vilification campaign in order to ensure people suffering from psychological illness will end up trapped with in the corporate for profit cult of Scientology. This corporate cult of greed also goes to any disaster event to target people at the weakest, people when they are most vulnerable with a scheme or providing aid only to try take everything those people own. Far better to be called the Church of Corporate Psychopathy a for more accurate description.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
... Christianity doesn't require you to pay money before they will reveal all of the church doctrines...
True, but once they suck you in all Christian organisations want your money and they want it tax free.
But it is still a believer's choice to give or not, unlike scientology. And you should be glad that they are tax exempt. That's the only thing that keeps them from being able to tell their followers who to vote for. Being tax exempt means they can only speak on the issues, not the candidates.
"In these times of economic struggle, the Government should just take away the Tax Exemption for Religions. It would only be fair and if the religions have a problem with that, then they can pray to their gods for help with money."
There be monsters in them there woods.
The REASON churches are tax exempt, is that we have a practical separation of Church and State in this country.
The reason we have a separation of Church and State, is that our Founders, through experience of very recent (for them) history, knew very well the consequences of either having a Government-run Church, or a Church-run Government. Either case ALWAYS (over the last 800-900 years or so) ended in disaster.
So they decided: government will stay out of Church affairs, and Churches would stay out of Government affairs. And it has turned out to be, in the long run, a very healthy way to run that relationship.
But once you start to allow Government to tax Churches, you must then allow Churches to have some say in Government ("no taxation without representation"), and you have just re-created the mess that everybody fought wars to get away from.
NO. No taxing of churches. And no influence by churches on government. No.
No. No. No.