Despite living across the bay from Scientology HQ, I’ve never met (other than in passing) any real life Scientologists. I’ve read a lot about Scientology, but what I want to know is what it’s like for your average, lower level church adherant.
Educate me: So what’s it all about? How does the church factor into your everyday life? How did you get into it? Do you have regular services? What’s with that e-meter? And did they tell you about Xenu?
We had a Scientology church here in Murfreesboro, but it folded for want of intrest.
There are moments when this little burg shows good judgement…
There was a poster a ways back who admitted to being a Scientologist, but he might have been driven off. The climate on the boards is pretty inimical to Scientology in general. I’d expect that even if there were a few around, they wouldn’t speak up.
I almost attained the lever of a clear, until I discovered tha…
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All kidding aside:
Has Anyone Here Ever Been Able to Get Through (and vaguely even comprehend) Dianetics?
It’s gotta be the most difficult read I ever attempted. I got about 1/4 of the way through and threw it in the round file. If a reader is able to make it to the end; passed all the footnotes, gibberish, et al - I’d imagine it must closely resemble a religious experience.
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (http://www.religioustolerance.org) are the best source I’ve ever found for unbaised information on different religions. Shore 'nuff, they have even managed a polite summary of Scientology.
I realize it’s not quite what the OP is looking for, but it might be useful.
Every Scientology thread needs a link to http://www.clambake.org/ .
Podkayne
According to your link, the Cult Awareness Network was bought by an organization for religious freedom. According to Clambake, CAN was bought by The Church Of Scientology. Considering what I know of Scientology, I find it very likely that the Foundation For Religious Freedom is a front.
All I know is that L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series is the absolute worst pile of drivel ever committed onto the pulp of innocent trees, who deserved so much better.
I wanted to remove my brain and scrub it with a stiff wire brush after I was finished.
Moving this to Great Debates.
Please make note, though, that the site makes the common “mistake” of calling their narcotics program NARCANON(a well respected and long established program), when the real name of the group is the very similar sounding NARCONON. This is the same “mistake” made every time that NARCONON mispronounces their name on their national radio spots. Also, I notice that the site repeats the long-debunked official “biography” of L. Ron Hubbard given out by The Church of Scientology.
I shouldn’t be surprised if the SDMB has been added, by now, to the web filter that Good Scientologists are expected to use when connecting to the Internet. Any group that seeks to combat ignorance is going to be at loggerheads with a group that asserts that “it’s true if it’s true for you”.
Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten most of the really good Scientology stories I ran into back in my days of active Scientology criticism. It’s even been several months now since I signed onto the IRC channel that some of us still hang out in to discuss old times. The anti-Scientologists are nearly as rabidly loony as the Scientologists, and it’s hard for a sane person to spend much time around either. A few minutes perusal of alt.religion.scientology will provide ample evidence for this.
My gullible idiot mother dragged me into the Church of Scientology when I was eight, for over a year. I did some filing as a volunteer along her side, went through some ‘auditing’ with some weird tin cans hooked up to a box with a needle display called an E-meter, underwent a lot of ‘touch assist’ remedy bullshit for my migraines, and was finally placed into the Purification Rundown.
‘Purif’ entailed, daily: wolfing down absurd quantitites of vitamins, minerals, various salts, quaffing insane amounts of water and the condensed piss called Cal-Mag, jogging half an hour on a treadmill (the one good thing about the whole ordeal), and sitting in a sauna for five hours at around 180 degrees. I hurled up the minerals from time to time, the niacin made me itch, and I felt like shit in the saunas - I couldn’t stand the LA weather to begin with since I had left my home climate of Moscow behind a year before. I lasted through about four weeks of this hell. Then one of the other participants nearly choked me to death for no apparent reason. He got removed from the program and sent to another branch of the Church with slight reprimand; my mom and I were recent immigrants and didn’t know that this was grounds (or have the means) for a lawsuit or anything of the sort. I continued for another week, and began to experience intense abdominal pain. I quit. My mom tried to get me to return, but I did not relent and she soon saw the idiocy of the thing. The people running the program claimed that it was the ‘radiation of Chernobyl’ coming out of my system. We didn’t return.
My health has been thoroughly fucked since. To be fair, a lot of the blame lies with inherited problems, but the Church of Scientology takes its share of credit. Sadly, my mom still believes in this nonsense.
What a welcome to America Paladud! …and you stayed anyway?
So is their slogan basically, “Hypochondriacs are amateurs”?
Scientology has been recruiting heavily in Russia for the past several years. New markets offer lots of gullible people.
KellyM
There’s a Smirnov joke in there somewhere.
In Scientology, they say they will hook you up to meter, interrogate you and make your problems disappear.
In Russia, if you cause problems, they hook you up to generator, interrogate you, and you disappear.
There’s a couple of specific questions I’d like answered, if anybody knows:
Why does the Church of Scientology use the cross as its emblem when its mythology/theology is not even remotely Christian?
What exactly is this “E-meter”? What does it do? What does it measure? What does it purport to measure? Has any non-Scientologist scientist or mechanic ever examined one?
I don’t know about the cross, but the E-meter is used for measuring emotional and physical reactions to stimuli as well as one’s current place on the Tone Scale. I’m pretty skeptical with regard to this dealie, but the movement of the needle was NOT purely random. I’d guess it has something to do with the pulse (like the metal handholds with sensors on the newer treadmills at my gym.)
The E-meter simply measures electrical skin resistance, but a mythological culture surrounds it, fed by the need for Scientology to extract the contents of wallets of the credulous.
Everything you wanted to know about the E-Meter.
Related products: see fraudulent electrostatic devices at Dr. Steven Barrett’s Quackwatch site.
If there is one single item that points to Scientology as an enormous load of stinking cagal fit only for the gullible, it is the e-meter. An e-meter is nothing more than a crude galvanometer with two electrodes (the tin cups) and a living, breathing fraud known as an Auditor operating it with one hand while taking your money with the other.
All the e-meter does is measure skin resistance, which any galvanometer can do without the need for mumbo-jumbo, half-assed mytho-cosmology, and brain washing. In Scientology, the subject holds the electrodes in his hands while the auditor asks questions and pretends to be interested in the galvanometer readings, acting as if they had some religious significance. In reality, there is no other identified use for the e-meter other than possibly measuring skin resistance, a fact that was emphasized by the US district court of DC way back in 1971:
According to Scientology, auditing will improve your health, intelligence, memory, and spiritual standing, among other things – I’m sure there are specialists in rejuvenation and penile enhancement among the quacks and frauds of the “church”. In fact, the only result you are guaranteed to experience is a lightening of your wallet.
Cecil addressed the issue in 1989:
“Poor man’s psychoanalysis” is not an appropriate description in my opinion, particularly with the high profile of Scientology spokespeople and representatives – in fact there was discussion that the “religion” has become a rather exclusive club in circles such as Holliwood, along the lines of Freemasons and so forth.
“Ignorant man’s psychoanalysis” is how I would describe it. It requires wholesale unawareness of scientific knowledge and critical thinking --not to mention a stunning absence of plain common sense-- to fall for this crap, which would certainly explain the success that the movement has had in Holliwood.
In short, the e-meter is a simple galvanometer, which may, if it works, measure electrical impedance on your skin. All other claims are the dishonest garbage put out by Hubbard and his idiotic followers.
A subsidiary of the SOS is some entity called “Author Services”. This is the publishing arm of the COS…and they print a lot of L Ron Hubbarts pseudo-scientific ravings (and his early fiction). I recently saw a whole lot of this trash at a discount store…you could buy a hardbound copy of “BATTLEFIELD EARTH” for $1.50! Who buys this crap?
Scientologists.