Slashdot Mirror
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."
Book 'em, Xenu!
--
Posting anonymously because the Church of Clams still uses vexatious lawsuits against their critics.
Call all your critics liars (and wife-beaters and child molesters if possible), send private detectives and Sea Org types to follow and harass them, sue them and anyone who supports them, cry religious persecution to the cops and govt officials, rinse, wash, repeat...
Read all about it, and more.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
It's not like the church you think doesn't need quotes is any more valid than this 'church' which you think needs quotes.
Talk about a mouse messin' with a gorilla! Go get 'em, boys!
How soon we nerds forget Scientology's war against the internet back in the day.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think it is deplorable that you would say such a thing.
It is an insult to piles of poo everywhere.
I am not a Scientologist and would never join a religion purported to be created on a bet.
The blog takes quotes from the Scientology post out of context. It talkes bout clicking on the report tag and what to write but ignores the this intermediary step;
4. Read the comment from people and pick the ones that fit the violation of the Code of Conduct.
Where the blog post states that the Scientologists are directed to report all anti-Scientology comments they are actually directed to report only the ones that really brear the Code of Conduct.
One final comment; Has the existence of this email been confirmed by an independent source? I would be suspect of anything reported by someone who has a bias against an organization without independent verification. That is one reason I generally don't read blogs; they have a tendency to be unverified and very biased..
How about "Auditing Process R2-45"?
Talk about a mouse messin' with a gorilla! Go get 'em, boys!
The beauty of this is you only need one jpeg image of the mask, rather than buying them by the container ship.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, there goes Tom's $1.00 donation to UNICEF this Halloween ...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They've done it before. They were pretty successful, too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It obviously violates the Slashdot code of conduct.
It is not related to bitcoin or raspberry pi, it is not a dupe and has links to multiple articles that have a lot of text per page, requiring very few, if any, "next page" clicks. It might fool some that it has merit to be on slashdot by being a rather lame story that might appeal to people who like getting pissed at reading stories they don't consider "news for nerds", but I am sure you will agree that that alone is not enough.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
We already did that. The internet won. The direct damage to the CoS was just a minor annoyance, but the social media saturation exposing so many of the sordid stories told by ex-members and leaked documents destroyed their reputation to the point that they are impossible to take seriously any more. It seriously hurt their recruitment efforts.
I'm a proud owner of the Xs4all & Karin Spaink vs. Scientology 1-0 shirt.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
No one I know or care about has talked to me about this outstanding and important event.
The censors got to all of them first, it seems.
The church of the Streisand effect
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The anons will really like this...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Censor me you assholes. Go on, i dare you.
The entire thing is a huge scam designed to suck peoples wealth dry with a bunch of lies.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not nary two years ago I stood upon a roof top in Clearwater FL as a superhero of justice (network engineer) alongside my sidekick (general contractor) and peered (as we setup a Clearwire cell site) upon all those that had dedicated 1,000,000,000,000 years of their existence to serving the word of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer of some modest renown. We, in aghast awe, watched as they boarded their numerous bus vehicles to travel far to partake in what we would call lunch. What manor of noontime evil feast, we could not imagine. For they looked grim and uninspired.
I bared my being to him at that time and allowed that for some short time in the early 80s I had once myself, this bastion of all that is right with network protocols, had fallen suspect to the siren cry of their teachings I related the trial and tribulations of having to buy their manuscripts and attend communication training (which, sadly, they did not impart the truth of a single RFC.)
Fortunately I escaped by the narrowest means of not having enough money to buy the next book. For ages (about 2 hours) I beat my brow over not having the manly integrity to fight through my engrams and discover the universal truths of the Xemu protocol (RFC-infinity) and thereby understand, just my laying the wires upon my tongue, the truth of every communication protocol in the universe.
But now that I've gone through deprogramming I'm much better.
Now just if we could get everyone that believes in sky faeries to take deprogramming.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Except Scientology isn't, its a pyramid/litigious scheme passed off as one..
At least a real religion has faith, these jokers only have cash and attorneys.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bogus claims of network abuse to try and falsely get people disconnected have been standard practice since the first day that the first scientologist got online. It's a dangerous cult, folks.
Well, I don't know what they're worried about. Apparently, the church's office of special affairs feels that
people [are] start[ing] to spread false datum.
What's one small little bit of information, compared to the bullshit spewed by Hubbard. I read on some anti-scientology site a while back that Hubbard suggested that inventing a religion would be a better way to make money than writing fiction.
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
They just didn't have the terms they needed to describe the spaceships and artificial alien insemination in Aramaic, so all we get are vague descriptions of "wheels with wings within wings and many glowing lights" and sudden miraculous virgin births.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
No, actually - any group with the power over a communication channel can censor. It doesn't have to be a government; it could just as readily be a broadcast network, a news paper, or even the self. All that is required is the ability to choose what may or may not be said. Censorship by any entitity, when there is a reasonable expectation of free communication, is egregious.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I wonder what the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will look like in fifty years.... Dun dun dun....
Comparing the two is silly. In Pastafarian, the holiest men are Pirates. In Scientology, they are Sea Captians. Hmmm....
Havoc Video
It's not like they had a positive image beforehand.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Suppression of information is pointless.
If people want it to get out, it will.
I don't believe that "information wants to be free" prattle. Information does not want anything. People want information to be free.
The US government can't keep its behaviour secret. Hugely rich football players in the UK can't do it either. Various criminal regimes around the world are trying to keep secrets to stay in power. In the long run, they will fail too and end up in the dustbin of history where they belong. It just takes time.
If they suppress one blog because of some stupid judge, others will pop up somewhere else. If they invent some automated system to look for references, someone will invent an automated system to flood the internet with such references and their system will bog down. It will get out there if people care...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
As the cults fall one by one, including the whore of Babylon itself aka the Catholic church, we maybe finally rid ourselves of the WORST human conception EVER, Religion.
I suggest we replace all churches with community aquariums.
I was there on Usenet when the whole thing started. They were not successful when measured against the huge amount of information that became available that cast Scientology in a bad light, and that made some of the worst of its nonsense well-known to people on (what eventually became) the web. On top of that, the people kicking off the church attempts to mitigate the problem were grossly incompetent and had no real understanding of the forum they were working with. They seemed to have no clue they were playing an impossible game of whack-a-mole, or that the harder they tried to censor, the more it pissed people off. People on the Net are kind of interested in free speech and being able to discuss whatever the hell they want on public forums. Other than using their usual litigious practices to shamefully hassle a handful of people, they may as well have called it the Church of Streisand for all the good their attempts really did.
Be careful about the word "censor". Only the government can censor.
I take it that you are only too eager to welcome your new corporate overlords?
Scientology believes that it can use the ubiquitous "Report this post as offensive" links to disrupt the free speech rights of others. I sincerely hope that it fails.
Does anyone make *positive* comments about the Church on Slashdot?
He's quite tweet active on the issue.
Of course I suspect he is just envious that there is another organization even more toxic than Fox News.
Why doesn't someone post all the secret Scientology crap there?
I was going to say "sad, little monkeys," but then I realized that would be insulting to monkeys.
Let's see if they can mod me into oblivion.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
You are right, but I want to point out that Wired magazine is frequently inaccurate, more interested in hype than reality, and shouldn't be linked to for the attention. Here are some other links.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, really, they weren't successful. That's according to Jurian Massena, who was Scientology's first webmaster and who left the cult when he found out that the people on the "other side" of that Usenet warfare were pretty nice people and the cult had been lying about them. (I met him about 10 years ago: he was speaking to student groups about cults and their dangers, having broken free of one himself.)
Most of us who jumped into that battle were protecting turf and free speech, and some of us were trying to block spam. (The cult sent 1/2 Terabyte of randomized, forged spam to the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology in about six months, and reman the worst Usenet spammers in history.)
We tracked them, we got their sock puppets kicked off ISP's, and eventually we got standard Usenet behavior changed to include the IP address of the sending host. We are the people who invented the word spam, and our battles with Scientology, while not lethal to the cult, helped establish political freedom of speech in the growing web. ISP's learned not to take cash and cashier's checks for modem access without any verifiable address because they *will* be abused by spammers and scammers, so the Scientologists actually gave us a great inoculation against even worse dangers. They were so clearly unacceptable that a lot of ISP's at the time finally enacted real policies against obvious abuse by their own customers, and they were so lawyer equipped that the ISP's did it *carefully*..
In a weird way, I'm grateful that they were so very offensive and so abusive so fast. It brought *enormous* publicity to their critics at the time and helped expose the cult's inner secrets and abuses in a way that convicting Mary Sue Hubbard for faking bomb threats against Paulette Cooper did not.
Doesn't that imply that some things reflect positively on the "church?"
I know of no such war, at least within Christianity and Judaism. I'm no expert on Islam so I'll let them speak for themselves.
A lot of times religion was a proxy for tribal warfare. But it's more like different tribes had different religions. But it wasn't like the Irish were dying to defend papal infallibility by and large.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Scientology has/requires faith too. Do you think they have proof of Xenu? You have trust and have faith in Him.
While I applaud what you claim to have done, you did not invent the word spam.
"Apparently, the recent very public divorce of Katie Holmes and devout believer Tom Cruise is reflecting negatively on the Church of Scientology."
More negatively than the deaths Scientology has caused? That must have been some breakup.
It's the pseudo-science called Dianetics "tech" and accompanying scams:
Training courses = Bait and Switch
Auditing = Gold Brick Scam
Front Groups = Pyramid Scam
IAS (Ideal Org/Library Donations) = Boiler Room Scam
Members blissfully perform these scams without knowing that's what they are, and when they figure it out they stay in because of the Concorde Fallacy or Sunk Cost Fallacy
Pop scientology alt.support.ex-cult into Google groups search for some good creepy laughs. It's a shame it only goes back 4 years, the early 2000's saw many a scientology recruiter trolling that group.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
"Real religion" wins oxymoron of the aeon
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
"Now, it would be unfair to judge the founders by anything other than their historical context, but it appears that they were in fact wrong on this particular issue."
No, that's faulty logic.
Instead, look at how bad the U.S would be if they HADN'T done that. I think it's pretty damned clear that it would have been disaster.
It simply isn't valid to point at a law that says "you can believe anything you want" and call that the cause of people believing in Christianity. There are other forces at work.
Religion is defined by faith.
Any appeal to authority is ultimately an appeal to faith in said authority. "It must be right, because such-and-such said so."
So authoritarianism is inherently religious (based on faith), even if devoid of the trappings we associate with "traditional" religion, e.g. the supernatural.
What makes the supernatural in turn inherently religious (based on faith) is that nothing can be known about it from evidence, and so any opinions on it must be based on faith, and whoever you have faith in (as in, whoever's word you take as 'gospel truth'), you are taking to be an authority.
If you have faith only in things that come to you directly by some sort of inspiration, then you are simply taking yourself as the authority of your own religion.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Actually the word we came up with was "sporgery", for "spam forgery". I was a victim until I learned how to use PGP to sign my postings. What the $cienos did was to hoover up thousands of postings from white power, neonazi and other hate newsgroups per day, strip the headers and repost them with headers from legitimate critics' posts, so as to make it look like we were spamming the group with racist rants. Most of us learned to filter them out by not replying to them, and only looking at posts that had a PGP signature. Of course, they tried to "sporge" those too, but they didn't work (for obvious reasons).
They were also big at one time on teams of Usenet posters all using the same name (kind of the opposite of sock puppets). It was easy to figure out that 4 or 5 different people were using the same account to post from, given wildly different posting styles and differing levels of English capability, usually on the same day.
It was an interesting time, and I (virtually) met some interesting people.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
If the internet is populated with pondlife who can't remember even as recently as 2008, CoS has nothing to fear.
Project Chanology achieved almost nothing.
It brought to the attention of the US media that there are thousands of law-breakers in the world who don't like Scientology. Do you really think that was progress?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The money in traditional religions is a side effect, not the end-goal.
Now while i don't subscribe to any of them, there is a difference between why they exist.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is an excuse to bilk money out of people, not a belief. They should be outlawed and eradicated. Completely.
Furthermore, I have faith in NO ONE so don't put words in my mouth.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Then came a little thing called /b/, and it all went downhill for the supposed-religion.
Great Intellect...
Don't you think that's a little reductive?
This is a dead end, because this implies everyone who accepts any kind of authority is doing so on faith. Even atheists and skeptics acknowledge authorities; the logical fallacy you're thinking of is "appeal to unsuitable authority," and the first person to state this fallacy was a catholic scholastic, Thomas Aquinas.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Ignorance will only bother a person when they realize they are ignorant. You don't, as is obvious by your post. If you ever decide to walk out of the cave and look around, you will probably become first physically ill. After your eyes adjust, you will start to feel better. As you begin to see, you will know how wonderful the world really is, and you will despise the time you spent in the cave.
People have been trying to seal off the entrance for a very long time, and at the rate things are progressing you don't have much time left to get out.
Those words probably make no sense to you. I sincerely hope people like you would wake up and start trying to get out, instead of being content to live in a cave.
Those words are not as much a metaphor as you initially think.
By the way, I freely admit my ignorance. I don't know nearly as much as I should, and continually seek the truth. The task is extremely difficult since people want us in the cave.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There are plenty of ways to lambaste scientologists (with all of the ways graciously provided directly by them), but this? Yeah sure, the divorce of a Hollywood couple is so unusual, I can see how that would reflect negatively on any group associated with it.
Of course they want it tax free. I want my donations to be tax free. I don't want the level of church service available to me to be lessened by the amount of a tax. I already paid income tax.
A long time ago, it was decided that churches (and other non-profits*) provided social utility. As long as that holds true, an argument can be made for tax exception.
Of course, my church has a lay ministry, and doesn't hire clergy. (I suspect those that do have to pay income tax.)
*(Yes, there are for-profit churches; not many, but their income is taxable.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Religion is defined by faith.
Don't you think that's a little reductive?
I don't see why "reductive" has to be a bad thing, but beside that point: how else would you define it? Religion isn't synonymous with morality or ethics, as some would make it out; there are rationalistic moral or ethical systems as well, and religions make all kinds of factual claims about the origins and structure of reality too. Religion isn't synonymous with ritual either, as there are all kinds of secular rituals people observe all the time, from morning tea to Superbowl Sunday. Religion isn't synonymous with philosophy either, though I would argue that they are on the same level of abstraction and have a similar domain and range, but their methodologies are really quite antithetical (yes, despite the existence of plenty of religious philosophers; people are capable of doublethink).
What all religions have in common is the assertion of things, not only without reason, and not necessarily always against reason, but with the claim that reason is unnecessary: "Just believe it, because I say it's it's true", or at least "I just believe it, because I know it's true".
Any appeal to authority is ultimately an appeal to faith in said authority. "It must be right, because such-and-such said so."
This is a dead end, because this implies everyone who accepts any kind of authority is doing so on faith. Even atheists and skeptics acknowledge authorities; the logical fallacy you're thinking of is "appeal to unsuitable authority," and the first person to state this fallacy was a catholic scholastic, Thomas Aquinas.
Atheists and skeptics acknowledge "authorities" in a different sense than in the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. We may point at some notable figure as the source of our belief, trust them to have good reasons for their claims, and defer to them for more in-depth explanation of those reasons. For example, I believe lots of scientific facts because I have read about them in what I consider to be reputable sources, and if questioned on them beyond my own ability to defend them I would defer to those sources for further argument. I might make a claim about black holes, point to Stephen Hawking as my source for that information, and defer to the paper of his which I read it in for a full defense of that claim. But I would never say "Stephen Hawking said so, therefore it is true", and only that is an appeal to authority. "I don't really know, but I trust Hawking to get it right, here's his paper if you want to argue the point with him further, let me know how that goes" is not.
Any appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, though I wouldn't put it past a religious thinker like Aquinas to qualify that with "unsuitable" (much like the Chinese constitution guarantees all kinds of rights, so long as they don't 'threaten the stability of the state' or some such catch-all nonsense excuse).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
You're all brainwashed. Tom has a master's degree from a Scientology university. He did his thesis on the evils of psychiatry. So, he knows much more about this stuff than we do. He even has superpowers. If you get hurt in a car accident, don't call for a doctor, call for Super Tom.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
It had begun... Pastafarians, once, could laugh with you... Now they already have their followers out down-modding me Troll
The future is here
"Died a little"?
The proper reaction is instant scorn and contempt. So fucking what if they are entertainers? That just means they are good at entertaining.
If they are superstionists, that also means they are lunatics in at least one respect.
When you pay for entertainment you buy a product, not the actor.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."