Fascinating but disturbing read - Scientology

[Cerb]

From this weeks New Yorker.

Long but very very interesting.

Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology : The New Yorker

 

[Raven]

A very sinister organisation but I can't see that much difference between Scientology and some of the extreme Christians in America.

 

[Ch3tan]

Stolen the link, very good. Sooo long, only on page 3 so far.

 

[Cerb]

Stolen the link, very good. Sooo long, only on page 3 so far.

Haha yeah I'm only on page 17 myself. I Haven't finished it yet but it's creepy as hell.

 

[Ch3tan]

Going to read it on my kindle I think, far too much eye strain trying to read that on my pc.

 

[megadave]

I still can't fathom how people are retarded enough to go a long with Scientology, I guess the desire "to belong" to a community or whatever is pretty strong amongst some people.

“A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. “Then, as now, the materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation.” Xenu decided “to take radical measures.” The documents explained that surplus beings were transported to volcanoes on Earth. “The documents state that H-bombs far more powerful than any in existence today were dropped on these volcanoes, destroying the people but freeing their spirits—called thetans—which attached themselves to one another in clusters.” Those spirits were “trapped in a compound of frozen alcohol and glycol,” then “implanted” with “the seed of aberrant behavior.” The Times account concluded, “When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.”

 

[Cerb]

Just finished it. Grim at times. Brilliantly written and he asks questions with some real teeth towards the end.

Idiotic madness it seems to me:

"But hadn’t certain derogatory references to homosexuality found in some editions of Hubbard’s books been changed after his death?

Davis admitted that that was so, but he maintained that “the current editions are one-hundred-per-cent, absolutely fully verified as being according to what Mr. Hubbard wrote.” Davis said they were checked against Hubbard’s original dictation.

“The extent to which the references to homosexuality have changed are because of mistaken dictation?” I asked.

“No, because of the insertion, I guess, of somebody who was a bigot,” Davis replied.

“Somebody put the material in those—?”

“I can only imagine. . . . It wasn’t Mr. Hubbard,” Davis said, cutting me off.

“Who would’ve done it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t think it really matters,” Davis said. “The point is that neither Mr. Hubbard nor the church has any opinion on the subject of anyone’s sexual orientation. . . .”

“Someone inserted words that were not his into literature that was propagated under his name, and that’s been corrected now?” I asked.

"

 

[Job]

I mean..like LOL, he told everyone he was going to invent scientology, make the whole thing up and they would still follow it, and they did.

The power of self deception seems to be strong in these people.

 

[Cerb]

The part at the end of the article, where the Journo proves that he was lying about "overcoming" his blindness after being "wonded in war", more or less proving the basis on which the whole thing is based is crap is LOL.

 

[megadave]

there's a quote i read in another article in which Hubbard states that he's got an idea to make his own religious because that's the best way of making lots of money

 

[Cerb]

yeah I've read that somewhere before too.

What struck me about this one, that I hadn't ever heard before, was the physical and mental abuse they seem to go through in some cases.

Also how shelterd everyone in it seems to be about how it is viewed by the world. In fact from other people in the world in general.

 

[rynnor]

I think the Scientologists are only about halfway on the scale of crazy american cults.

It's hard for us europeans to understand how crazy it is over there because to really become an insular cult you have to be able to live completely apart from mainstream society.

Thats not really possible in high population density countries and ones that dont have a constitution guaranteeing right to freedom of religion thats been interpreted to the extreme.

The really crazy ones tend to be small - just a few families or one enormous extended family with lots of incest - they only come to light during prosecutions.

Even the Amish are a crazy cult if you look into what happens amongst them - they just seem to get away with it.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well, it is a bit silly i guess, but each their own. I'm in no position to tell people what they should and shouldn't believe, but i could suggest not giving money to anyone as no religion has a message of "pay or hell", even if i know it's prominent in a lot of them(human addition, greed and all)

Ofcourse some people are easy to convert, but can't really hold it against them, they just are, but you can hold it against people using it to their advantage.

Cults in itself i don't have a problem with, IF they had a positie effect on people. You know, the whole community, values etc aspect. Fact just happens to be that a lot of them don't. I'd say most, but no expert on cults here.

 

[Cerb]

I agree that if a cult is making people happy and not doing that in a morally wrong way (brainwashing or making them think they are happy).

I've never had a problem with religion, I realize that it's probably all bollox, but it's bollocks that allows people to rest easier then fine go nuts. Organized religion though is where things go bad. Humans are flawed, simple as, we ruin everything including religion.

What bothers me about scientology is that, even though alot of its members say they are happy including children, they were never given the chance to know anything different.


Also they come across as proper mental. When your spokes person says that he is the only person who is qualified to help someone who has just been in a car crash, you're in trouble.

 

[Jiggs]

What up my fully-operating thetans