It's now been changed,/.'s front page summary had stated that Novak was "defending himself". It is now changed to "representing himself". Once again/. plays revisionist news.:)
Not really. They provide different functionality though. CDs are inherently limited in the fidelity they can produce by both sample rate and sample size. A single scratch in the wrong place can render the entire content unplayable. If CD was the ultimate format for music then we wouldn't have all this SACD and DVD-Audio stuff happening. Once they listen to these new formats, people are beginning to understand just how much fidelity CDs took away from them.
The big features that CDs have over vinyl are: small size, reliable random access, consitent quality from disk to disk and that the disk is relatively unaffected by dust and small scratches, but if you want to hear a recording that is closest to the original performance, a high quality vinyl recording is the way to go between the two formats. Granted, for most of today's junk music and indiscriminante listeners, vinyl is a waste of time.
Sound is analog by nature, it should be recorded to and played back from analog media for the highest sound quality. Or are kids now available with a digital/binary eardrum gene mutation?
Sure, I mean this isn't the industry that forced us all to transition to LP's from 78's
Nobody forced anything. The industry marketed well, and consumers decided time and time again to purchase the newly hyped technology and format, almost always for ease of use. Nobody ever came to my house and forced me to start buying cassettes instead of 8 tracks, or 33s instead of 78s. I don't recall any "format army" removing my tape decks and installing CD players.
Tapes were lower sound quality than vinyl, but portable and more durable. Convenience won out over quality. CDs, are another step in convenience: more music(ignoring the flaky 90m and 120m cassetes) in a smaller package and instant access to any portion of the content. Sound quality is arguably about the same as good vinyl and cassette(with DNR). DVDs offer extra content, better image and sound quality, and instant access to any portion of the content. Consumers are now starting to catch on to that and VHS content is begining to wane.
If at any of those transitions the public had, on the whole, simply decided to keep purchasing the old formats, the new stuff would have langished and died, or both formats would have endured for a long time. Arguably, the latter is quite the case for the most recent transitions. Most recordings are still available on cassette. Cassette players are still readily available and come standard in most systems. VHS still dominates the shelves and we're what, 6 years in to DVD lifetime?
But there are some failed conversions: Laser video disks (quality was outweighed by the inconvenience of flipping a disk in the middle of a movie) people stayed with VHS. Betamax: better technology (arguably), bad political moves: VHS came out on top. DAT: Smaller media size outweighed by wind/rewind delays: people stayed with CDs. In each case the consumers as a whole decided that the newly offered technology, though perhaps technically superior, was not easier to use and did not purchase it. I ignore cost as a barrier to adoption because all new technology is expensive initially.
If DRM offers the consumer some 'next step' in convenience that is preferable, then it will catch on and become the norm. Trying to make consumers believe the content provider's goal of "our content our way, or no way" is easier or better for the consumer will be a long, hard sell at best. Their best bet to get adoption is to play the cost game. Make the content in DRM format low cost and raise the cost for non-DRM version. Ex: Same album: DRM version $10, non-DRM version: $25.
You article is interesting. I do find it interesting that it mentions early on the nevessity of religous tolerance and that this is not a christian nation, yet proceedes to use christian morals as the norm. Often in the text morals are compared agains actions. Morals are personal, any given act may be moral or immoral depending on the interpriter of the action. The article tends to enforce a notion of global morality that simply does not exist.
First of all, I agree with you. I really posted that message as sort of devils advocate, I tend to get flamed when I post a messge along the lines of "you have the right to everything". An example I use is that you have the right to commit muder. The society also has the right, through laws, to make that act illegal and thus apprehend, charge, try and punish you for exercising your right to murder. It's a matter of whose rights take precedence. In this case a person's right to live is stronger than your right to kill them.
The supreme court, and many other courts have also ruled that you generally have no reasonable expectaion of privacy in an public place, or in your workplace. Pretty much that means that the only place you can reasonably expect privacy is in your own home(s) or the homes of others.
Thanks for the construcive comments. I am intimately familliar with the Bill of Rights, I read it several times a year. If you read article four, the tone is generally that of preventing the government from snooping in your private life wihtout cause. Have you ever heard of someone being sued or charged under the fourth amendment for breaking and entering? I haven't.
You have no privacy rights pertaining to private companies and individuals in The Constitution. The only privacy right granted to you by The Constitution is that of right of protection from search and seazure of your person and your home unless duly athorized by a court of law, or if a crime is in progress.
I'd really like to know (in the U.S.) where this notion of universal provacy came from. Whene people say "They violated my privacy", exactly what laws are they referring to?
Unless you stay in your home with the windows covered, you have no resaonable expectation of privacy.
Why drop the tank? I know it's empty but imagine leaving the external tank connected to the shuttle. Dock the shuttle to the ISS. Send the shuttle crew home on a fre Soiuze(sp?) return vehicles. Using the next few shuttle missions and dedicated American and Russian supply rockets, re-fuel the external tank on the docked shuttle with hydrogen and oxygen.
During this refuel, resupply stage a dedicated, unstaffed rocket is launched with a lunar lander module. The module is sent in to lunar orbit. The module would be launched with minimal fuel to get it to the moon and in orbit.
Finally, with one last shuttle mission load the stored shuttle with the space hab unit (not used much recently). Install a crew and send the shuttle to the moon for an extended stay. They meet up with the lander module, dock and fuel the module from the external tank. Then send down 3-4 people. to rove the moon. On return, the lander is left in lunar orbit, again fuel-less. The crew return to the ISS.
If they could get three people there for a two weeks or so with those small Apollo capsules, imagine what kind of crew we could send like this, and the science they could do. This mission idea also extends the ISS in to being the first interplanetary space dock (well, sort of).
We could then have two sets of on-going shuttle missions: One set from Earth to ISS. One set from ISS to the Moon.
P2P is not illegal. If it where, every web site would be shut down and the web browser would be removed from every desktop. The same for FTP and email servers. All are forms of peer-to-peer data transfer. Hell, LAN servers would need to go, as they are merely peer-to-peer with one server and lots of peers.
The contract/EULA is enforcable in that it only affects the parties of the contract: you and the software people. Via the contract you agree that any affiliate links you use will be replaced with ones for the software vendor. No money is ever redirected, the link is redirected. The most wrong there is possible copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is hardly something most users of these softwares should get up in arms about.
An iris scanner (or most any other biometric check) is flawed in a major way I think: It can only prove that the same person is at the scanner as was there to initially be recorded. If I were to walk up to a ticket counter with forged documents (passport, driver's license, etc) and then be allowed to use the iris scanner, the scanner would associate me with the claimed identity. In the future, as I became a frequent traveller it would be even faster and less risky for me to board a plane with my false credentials, as they would no longer be needed. If I have to show my fordged documents to a person each time, there is a chance that nervousness, or some problem with the documents may be caught and I could be questioned. Iris scanning s Will a 'frequent traveller' be put through a more elaborate background check before being allowed to board via the scnners?
Yes, but in the first 500+ years of its existence, Cristianity was considered a cult by the powers that be, just as in its now infancy the Church of Scientology is considered a cult by the powers that be.
For Christians to decry the Scientologists as a cult smells of hypocracy to me given the history involved.
Yes, this is yet another example of them not preventing something, but also not encourging it. All the tools are there but there is no direct audio CD copy function in the Mac OS X.
Here's a procedure to do it with iTunes:
1. Set the preferences to encode in AIFF (uncompressed format) 2. RIP the CD 3. browse by the title of the CD by entering the title in the search field 4. create a new playlist 5. drag all the tracks from the left library search pane to the playlist (use CMD-A to select all) 6. click the 'burn' button
Or use Roxio's Toast that has a direct CD copy function that I think works on audio CDs.
Won't happen. Photoshop, though compiled for x86 instruction set, also requires a lot of libraries and system calls offered by the Microsoft Windows operating system. Even if Apple switched to x86 processors you couldn't run the x86 native Photoshop directly, you'd still have to use Virtual PC. Of course the VirtualPC for x86 based Macs would have much better performance as it would just have to emulate the systems calls, and could directly run the machine language instructions to the CPU without conversion or emulation.
I started responsing to your points one by one and found myself repeating the same things over and over, so in general:
Nothing I wrote was anti-anything. There were no moral values assigned in any of my writing. If you think I hate RCC, Christianity, or Scientology or anything else I wrote about, then you are merely projecting your dislike of the things I pointed out that go/went on within those establishments of religion. The closest I come to assigning any moral or personal value to RCC or Christians is that I consider them to by hypocrites on many points, but there is no hatred, in whole or part.
Most of your rebuttals are indeed correct for the RCC of today. My comparisons are not of the modern church, but the RCC in the early years of development against the COS in its early years of development. Those "early years" in this case are separated by about 1200 or so years depending on whose figures you use. The RCC as it exists today is not the church that existed even 200 years ago.
In my opinion the only reason the RCC doesn't still use these more violent and controlling tactics is they've found that changing their rules and behaviours to be more lax will allow more willing converts and give them more political power from a vibrant and supportive constituancy. Keeping so many people under tyrany would lead to revolution within the ranks. Keeping people happy is the road to long-term sucess for any orginization.
No I'm not trolling, I am comparing the early development of two religions from the point of view of a dis-insterested third party. I think the fact that both religions involved seem to think I hate them and deny the legitimacy of the comparisons shows that I must have performed the task at least somewhat admirably. And no-one has yet rebutted my comparison except to use the "modern" RCC as the example. I would welcome any true rebuttals using facts about the RCC from lets say the first 500 years of its existence.
I've never been told by any member of the clergy to avoid reading anything else.
Except perhaps for educational materials on evolution, contraception, abortion, satanism? I'm not saying that you in particular have recieved such instruction, I'm just saying that I regularly see churches and their supporters on TV claiming that people should not read these things and that such material should be banned. Perhaps this is just a small over-vocalized fringe group of the religions, but he who speaks loudest speaks for all.
I've certainly never seen a high ranking curch officer handing out or encouraging the study of such material.
I thought I made it quite clear in one of my original posts that I am not a Scientologist, though I have read Dianetics. Just as I am not Catholic though I have read the Bible, not Jewish thought I have read the Torah, nor LDS though I have read the Book of Mormon. I am Atheist, and I write my own morals and rules. I'm not defending or atacking any religion.
Yes, there are problems with ALL religions. Hence there are problems with Scientology for that very reason.
Again, I see nary a distinction between the actions of the initial Catholic religion and the current actions of the inital Scientology Churches. The implimentation differs, the methodology is the same, both behave as the circus bouncer.
I think you focus on the modern term of 'religion' as being the belief in a single supreme being, not a method by which to live life, hence our differences. You perhaps should be arguing that Scientology is not a church. Like it or not, Scientology defines a method of living life by a set of rules and proceedures to achieve happyness and 'enlightenment'. That is squarely in the legal definition of a religion. Perhaps your grievance is that they chose a name that is not easly converte to an "ism"? Catholasism, Judiism, Buddhism, etc. (sorry, I'm not up on my "ism" spellings)
Again, I am not going to assign a value of right/wrong or good/evil to any of the institutions I've discussed. I'm merely pointing out similarities in the initial years of what many consider to be 'the one true religion' and what many consider to be 'a pack of lies and deciet'. Depending on your point of view, either may be either.
And how many people have been told that praying, laying of hands, exorcism and many other 'Christian' acts would heal them, when in point of fact evidence is quite the contrary?
You confess, and a person tells you you are healed of all sins and led to believe this was reliable proof that once repentant many, indeed most troubles would be solved.
Scientology is as much as religion to its followers as Catholosism is to its followers. If you are of a Judeo/Christian faith you should understand that you are in no place to be judging the acts of others.
Most churches are not religious in the spirit of their underlying beliefs. Looking at the teachings their Jesus and the words of their god in the Bible, there is absolutly no need for a curch, tithings, or anything of the sort. The church exists soley as a political institution to collect money and act as a symbol of power to aid in converting the hethens.
I've read the Bible and can't recall anywhere a demand from the god that priests should live in splendor despite a vow of poverty (yes it's a loophole that the church owns the goods, not the priests), or that followers of the religions should use the politial infrustructure to further their cause and legistlate their form of morality.
Actually I think the Mars failures where: A: statistically expected. MOST Mars missions from the US, Russia or anyone have failed B: Simple, stupid mistakes.
Overall, once the missions ended unsuccessfully everyone went in to CYA and "point the finger" mode. What we got was a set of issues that cused the least funding loss, and was the easiest to 'fix'.
You are comparing a mature and settled RCC against a young COS. I think it would be much more appropriate to consider the actions of the RCC in the dawning years, a time when if you didn't show up for mass, didn't tithe a large enough sum, or violated any rules you where cruicified or stoned to death. If you where lucky, you would just be harrased by your peers until you moved away or took your own life.
When the RCC was started, it was laughed upon and its members scorned. Slowly the church grew in power through monetary donatios, political intruige and war. You ask me not to compare the two, yet the comaprisons are undeniable and plentyful.
Perhaps this is a common starting point for what will become the 'great religions' on the future. Maybe it's common for new religions to force themselves upon the masses, at least until they reach critical mass in members and mindset. Those that don't are destined to languish as a minor player in the spiritual arena. In 1500 years, perhaps some new 'cult' will be coming to power and the COSers will be saying 'but we've paid for our crimes'. Only time will tell.
Finally: you can be a Buddhist and anything else as the same time. But then I always use hte more universal definition of religion that defines the word as a set of tenets used to shape ones actions and goals in life. Buddhists do not worship Buddha as a god, but I think few would contest it as a religion. To my knowledge the teachings of Buddha are not incompatible with any of the major religions of the world.
All I know is that in the end we all die. Only then is the truth about all this known... or not.
Neither. I was not attempting to assign value to the comparison. Religion is a personal choice and is itself the basis for most people's assignmen of value of other religions. RCCers might think COS is evil, COSers might think RCCers are evil. Both are right, both are wrong in thier own eyes.
There is no such thing as universal 'good' or 'evil', as is often restated: Everything is relative. Unfortunately most people can't or won't step outside their own views to evaluate something from another point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
It's now been changed, /.'s front page summary had stated that Novak was "defending himself". It is now changed to "representing himself". Once again /. plays revisionist news. :)
THe man can't be "defending himself" if he is bringing accusations. He is representing himself is more along the lines of what is happening here.
No, the worst was in "Office Space" where a virus written on a Mac that was running an OS more like Windows was installed on a Mainframe.
Not really. They provide different functionality though.
CDs are inherently limited in the fidelity they can produce by both sample rate and sample size. A single scratch in the wrong place can render the entire content unplayable. If CD was the ultimate format for music then we wouldn't have all this SACD and DVD-Audio stuff happening. Once they listen to these new formats, people are beginning to understand just how much fidelity CDs took away from them.
The big features that CDs have over vinyl are: small size, reliable random access, consitent quality from disk to disk and that the disk is relatively unaffected by dust and small scratches, but if you want to hear a recording that is closest to the original performance, a high quality vinyl recording is the way to go between the two formats. Granted, for most of today's junk music and indiscriminante listeners, vinyl is a waste of time.
Sound is analog by nature, it should be recorded to and played back from analog media for the highest sound quality.
Or are kids now available with a digital/binary eardrum gene mutation?
Nobody forced anything. The industry marketed well, and consumers decided time and time again to purchase the newly hyped technology and format, almost always for ease of use.
Nobody ever came to my house and forced me to start buying cassettes instead of 8 tracks, or 33s instead of 78s. I don't recall any "format army" removing my tape decks and installing CD players.
Tapes were lower sound quality than vinyl, but portable and more durable. Convenience won out over quality.
CDs, are another step in convenience: more music(ignoring the flaky 90m and 120m cassetes) in a smaller package and instant access to any portion of the content. Sound quality is arguably about the same as good vinyl and cassette(with DNR).
DVDs offer extra content, better image and sound quality, and instant access to any portion of the content. Consumers are now starting to catch on to that and VHS content is begining to wane.
If at any of those transitions the public had, on the whole, simply decided to keep purchasing the old formats, the new stuff would have langished and died, or both formats would have endured for a long time. Arguably, the latter is quite the case for the most recent transitions. Most recordings are still available on cassette. Cassette players are still readily available and come standard in most systems. VHS still dominates the shelves and we're what, 6 years in to DVD lifetime?
But there are some failed conversions: Laser video disks (quality was outweighed by the inconvenience of flipping a disk in the middle of a movie) people stayed with VHS. Betamax: better technology (arguably), bad political moves: VHS came out on top. DAT: Smaller media size outweighed by wind/rewind delays: people stayed with CDs. In each case the consumers as a whole decided that the newly offered technology, though perhaps technically superior, was not easier to use and did not purchase it. I ignore cost as a barrier to adoption because all new technology is expensive initially.
If DRM offers the consumer some 'next step' in convenience that is preferable, then it will catch on and become the norm. Trying to make consumers believe the content provider's goal of "our content our way, or no way" is easier or better for the consumer will be a long, hard sell at best. Their best bet to get adoption is to play the cost game. Make the content in DRM format low cost and raise the cost for non-DRM version. Ex: Same album: DRM version $10, non-DRM version: $25.
>Heck you can even run Linus' OS (I forget the name)
Not to start another platform war here, but Linus T. does not have an OS, Linux has a kernel.
BSD is an OS, GNU is an OS, Linux is a kernel.
You article is interesting. I do find it interesting that it mentions early on the nevessity of religous tolerance and that this is not a christian nation, yet proceedes to use christian morals as the norm. Often in the text morals are compared agains actions.
Morals are personal, any given act may be moral or immoral depending on the interpriter of the action. The article tends to enforce a notion of global morality that simply does not exist.
First of all, I agree with you. I really posted that message as sort of devils advocate, I tend to get flamed when I post a messge along the lines of "you have the right to everything".
An example I use is that you have the right to commit muder. The society also has the right, through laws, to make that act illegal and thus apprehend, charge, try and punish you for exercising your right to murder. It's a matter of whose rights take precedence. In this case a person's right to live is stronger than your right to kill them.
The supreme court, and many other courts have also ruled that you generally have no reasonable expectaion of privacy in an public place, or in your workplace. Pretty much that means that the only place you can reasonably expect privacy is in your own home(s) or the homes of others.
Thanks for the construcive comments. I am intimately familliar with the Bill of Rights, I read it several times a year.
If you read article four, the tone is generally that of preventing the government from snooping in your private life wihtout cause. Have you ever heard of someone being sued or charged under the fourth amendment for breaking and entering? I haven't.
You have no privacy rights pertaining to private companies and individuals in The Constitution. The only privacy right granted to you by The Constitution is that of right of protection from search and seazure of your person and your home unless duly athorized by a court of law, or if a crime is in progress.
I'd really like to know (in the U.S.) where this notion of universal provacy came from. Whene people say "They violated my privacy", exactly what laws are they referring to?
Unless you stay in your home with the windows covered, you have no resaonable expectation of privacy.
I've always wondered this:
Why drop the tank? I know it's empty but imagine leaving the external tank connected to the shuttle. Dock the shuttle to the ISS. Send the shuttle crew home on a fre Soiuze(sp?) return vehicles.
Using the next few shuttle missions and dedicated American and Russian supply rockets, re-fuel the external tank on the docked shuttle with hydrogen and oxygen.
During this refuel, resupply stage a dedicated, unstaffed rocket is launched with a lunar lander module. The module is sent in to lunar orbit. The module would be launched with minimal fuel to get it to the moon and in orbit.
Finally, with one last shuttle mission load the stored shuttle with the space hab unit (not used much recently). Install a crew and send the shuttle to the moon for an extended stay. They meet up with the lander module, dock and fuel the module from the external tank. Then send down 3-4 people. to rove the moon. On return, the lander is left in lunar orbit, again fuel-less. The crew return to the ISS.
If they could get three people there for a two weeks or so with those small Apollo capsules, imagine what kind of crew we could send like this, and the science they could do. This mission idea also extends the ISS in to being the first interplanetary space dock (well, sort of).
We could then have two sets of on-going shuttle missions: One set from Earth to ISS. One set from ISS to the Moon.
P2P is not illegal. If it where, every web site would be shut down and the web browser would be removed from every desktop. The same for FTP and email servers. All are forms of peer-to-peer data transfer. Hell, LAN servers would need to go, as they are merely peer-to-peer with one server and lots of peers.
The contract/EULA is enforcable in that it only affects the parties of the contract: you and the software people. Via the contract you agree that any affiliate links you use will be replaced with ones for the software vendor. No money is ever redirected, the link is redirected. The most wrong there is possible copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement is hardly something most users of these softwares should get up in arms about.
An iris scanner (or most any other biometric check) is flawed in a major way I think: It can only prove that the same person is at the scanner as was there to initially be recorded.
If I were to walk up to a ticket counter with forged documents (passport, driver's license, etc) and then be allowed to use the iris scanner, the scanner would associate me with the claimed identity. In the future, as I became a frequent traveller it would be even faster and less risky for me to board a plane with my false credentials, as they would no longer be needed. If I have to show my fordged documents to a person each time, there is a chance that nervousness, or some problem with the documents may be caught and I could be questioned. Iris scanning s
Will a 'frequent traveller' be put through a more elaborate background check before being allowed to board via the scnners?
Yes, but in the first 500+ years of its existence, Cristianity was considered a cult by the powers that be, just as in its now infancy the Church of Scientology is considered a cult by the powers that be.
For Christians to decry the Scientologists as a cult smells of hypocracy to me given the history involved.
Me thinks you replied to the wrong message. No-one in this sub-thread stated anything about Gateway or their DRM support.
Yes, this is yet another example of them not preventing something, but also not encourging it. All the tools are there but there is no direct audio CD copy function in the Mac OS X.
Here's a procedure to do it with iTunes:
1. Set the preferences to encode in AIFF (uncompressed format)
2. RIP the CD
3. browse by the title of the CD by entering the title in the search field
4. create a new playlist
5. drag all the tracks from the left library search pane to the playlist (use CMD-A to select all)
6. click the 'burn' button
Or use Roxio's Toast that has a direct CD copy function that I think works on audio CDs.
Won't happen.
Photoshop, though compiled for x86 instruction set, also requires a lot of libraries and system calls offered by the Microsoft Windows operating system. Even if Apple switched to x86 processors you couldn't run the x86 native Photoshop directly, you'd still have to use Virtual PC. Of course the VirtualPC for x86 based Macs would have much better performance as it would just have to emulate the systems calls, and could directly run the machine language instructions to the CPU without conversion or emulation.
Still, it won't happen.
I started responsing to your points one by one and found myself repeating the same things over and over, so in general:
Nothing I wrote was anti-anything. There were no moral values assigned in any of my writing. If you think I hate RCC, Christianity, or Scientology or anything else I wrote about, then you are merely projecting your dislike of the things I pointed out that go/went on within those establishments of religion. The closest I come to assigning any moral or personal value to RCC or Christians is that I consider them to by hypocrites on many points, but there is no hatred, in whole or part.
Most of your rebuttals are indeed correct for the RCC of today. My comparisons are not of the modern church, but the RCC in the early years of development against the COS in its early years of development. Those "early years" in this case are separated by about 1200 or so years depending on whose figures you use. The RCC as it exists today is not the church that existed even 200 years ago.
In my opinion the only reason the RCC doesn't still use these more violent and controlling tactics is they've found that changing their rules and behaviours to be more lax will allow more willing converts and give them more political power from a vibrant and supportive constituancy. Keeping so many people under tyrany would lead to revolution within the ranks. Keeping people happy is the road to long-term sucess for any orginization.
No I'm not trolling, I am comparing the early development of two religions from the point of view of a dis-insterested third party. I think the fact that both religions involved seem to think I hate them and deny the legitimacy of the comparisons shows that I must have performed the task at least somewhat admirably. And no-one has yet rebutted my comparison except to use the "modern" RCC as the example. I would welcome any true rebuttals using facts about the RCC from lets say the first 500 years of its existence.
Editors:
PLEASE! When you link to a NYT article, link to the anonymizer page for it instead.
Except perhaps for educational materials on evolution, contraception, abortion, satanism? I'm not saying that you in particular have recieved such instruction, I'm just saying that I regularly see churches and their supporters on TV claiming that people should not read these things and that such material should be banned. Perhaps this is just a small over-vocalized fringe group of the religions, but he who speaks loudest speaks for all.
I've certainly never seen a high ranking curch officer handing out or encouraging the study of such material.
I thought I made it quite clear in one of my original posts that I am not a Scientologist, though I have read Dianetics. Just as I am not Catholic though I have read the Bible, not Jewish thought I have read the Torah, nor LDS though I have read the Book of Mormon. I am Atheist, and I write my own morals and rules. I'm not defending or atacking any religion.
Yes, there are problems with ALL religions. Hence there are problems with Scientology for that very reason.
Again, I see nary a distinction between the actions of the initial Catholic religion and the current actions of the inital Scientology Churches. The implimentation differs, the methodology is the same, both behave as the circus bouncer.
I think you focus on the modern term of 'religion' as being the belief in a single supreme being, not a method by which to live life, hence our differences. You perhaps should be arguing that Scientology is not a church. Like it or not, Scientology defines a method of living life by a set of rules and proceedures to achieve happyness and 'enlightenment'. That is squarely in the legal definition of a religion. Perhaps your grievance is that they chose a name that is not easly converte to an "ism"? Catholasism, Judiism, Buddhism, etc. (sorry, I'm not up on my "ism" spellings)
Again, I am not going to assign a value of right/wrong or good/evil to any of the institutions I've discussed. I'm merely pointing out similarities in the initial years of what many consider to be 'the one true religion' and what many consider to be 'a pack of lies and deciet'. Depending on your point of view, either may be either.
And how many people have been told that praying, laying of hands, exorcism and many other 'Christian' acts would heal them, when in point of fact evidence is quite the contrary?
You confess, and a person tells you you are healed of all sins and led to believe this was reliable proof that once repentant many, indeed most troubles would be solved.
Scientology is as much as religion to its followers as Catholosism is to its followers. If you are of a Judeo/Christian faith you should understand that you are in no place to be judging the acts of others.
Most churches are not religious in the spirit of their underlying beliefs. Looking at the teachings their Jesus and the words of their god in the Bible, there is absolutly no need for a curch, tithings, or anything of the sort. The church exists soley as a political institution to collect money and act as a symbol of power to aid in converting the hethens.
I've read the Bible and can't recall anywhere a demand from the god that priests should live in splendor despite a vow of poverty (yes it's a loophole that the church owns the goods, not the priests), or that followers of the religions should use the politial infrustructure to further their cause and legistlate their form of morality.
Actually I think the Mars failures where:
A: statistically expected. MOST Mars missions from the US, Russia or anyone have failed
B: Simple, stupid mistakes.
Overall, once the missions ended unsuccessfully everyone went in to CYA and "point the finger" mode. What we got was a set of issues that cused the least funding loss, and was the easiest to 'fix'.
You are comparing a mature and settled RCC against a young COS. I think it would be much more appropriate to consider the actions of the RCC in the dawning years, a time when if you didn't show up for mass, didn't tithe a large enough sum, or violated any rules you where cruicified or stoned to death. If you where lucky, you would just be harrased by your peers until you moved away or took your own life.
When the RCC was started, it was laughed upon and its members scorned. Slowly the church grew in power through monetary donatios, political intruige and war. You ask me not to compare the two, yet the comaprisons are undeniable and plentyful.
Perhaps this is a common starting point for what will become the 'great religions' on the future. Maybe it's common for new religions to force themselves upon the masses, at least until they reach critical mass in members and mindset. Those that don't are destined to languish as a minor player in the spiritual arena. In 1500 years, perhaps some new 'cult' will be coming to power and the COSers will be saying 'but we've paid for our crimes'. Only time will tell.
Finally: you can be a Buddhist and anything else as the same time. But then I always use hte more universal definition of religion that defines the word as a set of tenets used to shape ones actions and goals in life. Buddhists do not worship Buddha as a god, but I think few would contest it as a religion. To my knowledge the teachings of Buddha are not incompatible with any of the major religions of the world.
All I know is that in the end we all die. Only then is the truth about all this known... or not.
Neither. I was not attempting to assign value to the comparison. Religion is a personal choice and is itself the basis for most people's assignmen of value of other religions.
RCCers might think COS is evil, COSers might think RCCers are evil. Both are right, both are wrong in thier own eyes.
There is no such thing as universal 'good' or 'evil', as is often restated: Everything is relative. Unfortunately most people can't or won't step outside their own views to evaluate something from another point of view.