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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."
And then look up there, at comment 40570443, at 6:28PM, where another AC posts as soon as the 10-minute window is up:
Hello, Scilon operative! Welcome to the Internet. (Don't worry, we won't bite. In fact, when you finally blow, we'll be here to help.)
The internet is a big place, with millions of other threads for Theists-vs-Atheists, and Global Warming-vs-Deniers, and Obama vs. Romney, or whatever you'll be posting in your next round. But this isn't one of those threads. This is a thread about the abuses your organization has been conducting against free discourse on the 'net for the past 20 years.
And no self-respecting theist, atheist, environmentalist, nor climate change skeptic, will fall for this classic attempt to threadjack the discussion. (Next time, try Apple vs. Microsoft, or emacs vs. vi. You'll still fail, but you'll provide us with much more amusement on your way down.)
"Standard Scientology Practice" indeed.
"Then why'dja bring up climate change in a thread about Scilons?" :)
If I mistook you for one, please accept my apologies.
Those of us who've been in the trenches have seen this before. Basically, when something comes up that's embarassing to the cult, the cult tries to make it about anything other than the topic at hand. The easiest way to accomplish this is for the Scilon to pick a similar inflammatory topic, about which many people hold sincere and impassioned beliefs, and to sit back and munch on popcorn as both sides of the (climate change | abortion | religion-vs-atheism | emacs-vs-vi | mac-vs-PC ) debate jump in on their respective sides and tear each other apart. (There's a guy a few posts down who tried to drag Israel-vs-Palestine into it, and for bonus points, he mentioned abortion, LOL!)
As long as everyone's talking about that, nobody's talking about the cult, and the cult wins.
To give a non-Scilon-related (and therefore off-topic!) example, governments use the same technique; the PRC has the 50 Cent Party, Russia has Web Brigades, and I'm sure our adversaries have their own word for the web equivalent of VOA. But I'm not interested in talking about those. At least not today.
This thread is about how Scientology is enlisting its followers to report discussion of its practices as "off-topic" and/or "abuse" in order to sway the perception of Scientology on discussion forums. Not about the practices of other groups, however repugnant.
Not exactly the same, but pre-reformation Catholicism almost fits the bill. They just had all their texts in latin, and forbid translating it into any language the common people knew. The only people who had the time or opportunity to learn latin were the priests, so the reading and interpretation of their holy texts was exclusively the domain of the clergy. They didn't have law suits back then, but they did issue legal bans against the translations.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
... 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.
Ya, except some church's go on and on about giving, and Give to God and God will Give to You. tithes and offerings, and tithes means like 10% plus you got to give more for offerings.
They badger you so much on Sundays and if it was a holiday like easter or Xmas that pulled people in, omg, they would keep harping about it. Sort of like when you get them "free" vacations but you have to listen to them timeshare seminars while you are there? It is exactly like that.
That of course, was like 30 years ago when I was forced to go to church. Has it changed since then? I doubt it. It's a way of some Christians to feel even better about themselves because they give to the church and are religious.
What I do know is, the pastor bought a new car ever 6 months (caddies of course) and most the upper church management lived very very very comfortably.
Pretty good for a bunch of people who used to be drug addicts and "got religion".
In case anyone wonder who am I talking about, I'm mostly referring to Christian Faith Center in Seattle, and the red headed paster, Casey Treat.
I could tell you stories about them and their fake beliefs. Life how they would have someone speak out in "tongues" then someone "randomly blessed by god" with the interpretation of what they said. One day, some guy says the interpretation of it, and I see by the look on Casey Treats face, that this guy isn't supposed to be talking. So what does Casey do? He says that god just told him that wasn't the interpretation we were to hear and then one of the deacons (and good buddies of Casey) said what the interpretation of the tongues where. Apparently they think I'm stupid as the rest of them, because I'm supposed to accept the blatant lie that just went on?
Ya, fuck that.
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.
Be seeing you...
"As always, most of my contempt falls onto the suckers. Entirely there fault. Just like people who respond to spam."
While as a generalization I would be inclined to agree with you, it doesn't so much apply to this church. And here is why:
The church leadership -- especially early on, including Hubbard -- were very, very good at PR and BS. That's why they established a completely separate part of the church for rich and famous people, where they get treated completely differently than everybody else.
As a result, you have lots of rich and famous people thinking it's a GREAT institution, and telling everybody about it. But those who fall for all the hype, and aren't rich and famous, get bled of their possessions and shipped off to a work camp.
As I say, if it were just up to individual judgment, I would tend to agree with you. But they have this very well-engineered PR machine set up to make people believe.
Morally, that's fraud and deception. So far, they seem to have avoided legal consequences.