That blog is very enterbulating. So much so that it’s upsetting the balance of my thetan levels, not to mention my bank account.
LRH had an answer for just that. You’ll literally go crazy if you learned all the secrets before you are ready (and have paid many bucks). He told his followers that his first version of Dianetics made people lose their minds or kill themselves, so he had to lock it up and re-write it in a way mere mortals could handle.
From Tony Ortega’s blog: “As for calling his “science of mind” by the name Excalibur, that’s a reference to an earlier manuscript that became something of a legend. At least, Hubbard liked to promote the legend that he’d written a book of the universe’s secrets that was so mindblowing, the few people who had read it had either gone insane or killed themselves.”
I thought you were kidding. You’re not. I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
(Did her “ass readings” tell her to get all that work done? Holy shit, she looks like someone put a Barbie doll in a microwave!)
Nice.
The issue I take with Scientologists is that they are in emphatic denial about the church’s history, activism, and litigiousness.
A group of people who are obsessed with their own imaginings is not unheard of in religion (or even a group of D&D players), so in spite of the ridiculousness of their mythology, they are no different from any other religion, to me, in that regard.
But Christians can agree the Inquisitions and Crusades actually happened, or that there was a Catholic church cover-up of child molestation and a policy of protecting their accused pedophiles. They also seem to understand that parody and mockery is part of free speech, and don’t go absolutely ape shit every time someone says something negative about their religion. Only the extreme minority do.
But the cult of celebrity’s money makes certain to put celebrities of dubious talent front and center to defend the “integrity” scare quotes of the cult, trotting them out any time anyone says anything negative.
Meanwhile, the ever-growing community of ex-Scientologists has nothing but horrendous things to say about the gang. Because that’s what it is, a gang, and if you try to leave, it’s just like trying to leave a gang. You’re dead to them.
That is what is wrong with Scientology. it isn’t that it is a laughably wrong “religion” scare quotes, it’s that it is a pyramid scheme and a gang. Both are bad, mmmkay?
This still raises the same issue. It’s one thing to keep the disease secret but why keep the cure secret?
If they have information that’s so dangerous that it can kill people and they have the information on how to protect people from that danger, then why don’t they release the information on how people can protect themselves? Why are they risking people’s lives by keeping this information secret?
Hubbard wrote The King in Yellow?!
Every time I open this thread I get this weird ache in my jaw and a strong desire for a bowl of fabes con almejas . . . it’s weird.
CMC fnord!
Danny Masterson: ‘Everything in Scientology Is Based on Logic’
We used to sit around the lab and laugh about the eternal battery…
EVERYTHING is based on logic? That’s not really a very good endorsement, Mr. M. For all of its virtues, logic is useless without some valid premises from which to proceed.
“If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
-Tweedledee
Because so far they’ve had tremendous luck in getting people to pay them large sums of money to learn the secrets. It’s all about the Benjamins. (So, yeah, them having tax-free religious status with the IRS is a joke.)
Serious question: Who gets those Benjamins? Who profits from Scientology?
When LRH was alive, I used to hear stories about his lavish lifestyle, his private security force, and his fleet of yachts. I don’t hear those stories about the later leadership. Are there people living high on the hog off of Scientology today? If so, how did they achieve their positions? Why don’t I hear more about them? If not, who keeps the damn thing going, and why?
If I had no ethics and nothing to lose and wanted to take a chance, could I join Scientology knowing it was bullshit and hope to one day become one of the profiteers?
Hubbard became mostly a figurehead in the eighties (he died in 1986). Many of his supporters were pushed out of leadership of the church and David Miscavige became the de facto leader.
But while Miscavige is running things and is the public face of Scientology, Heber Jentzsch is still nominally the President and official leader. But nobody has seen Jentzsch in public since 2004.
Another disappeared person is Michele Miscavige, David Miscavige’s wife, who hasn’t been seen in public since 2007.
The official Scientology story is that Heber Jentzsch and Shelly Miscavige have both chosen to live in seclusion. But many people believe they’re either being held captive somewhere or have died.
Ah, yes, logic!
MAJOR PREMISE: All Scientologists are douchebags.
MINOR PREMISE: Tom Cruise is a Scientologist . . .
The money is going to make David Miscavige happy, into publishing LRH’s stuff and giving it away to make sure he stays relevant, and for the church to buy up real estate and pay for Super Bowl ads to make it look like they are a growing, important religion with global reach.
Oh yeah, and it’s not cheap to pay all the lawyers they need to fend off anyone that criticizes them and to hire “squirrel busters” to harass ex-members who speak out against them.
I’ve been on board their small but perfectly formed cruise ship. High level of nervousness. We kept mouthing to each other ‘you know what you know’
As a funny aside, my father knew LRH back when he was writing Dianetics (I’ve mentioned before that I inherited a signed copy). LRH and a few other people would come over to my fathers house every day for breakfast because my dad was the only person who had a job and could afford food. They lived in Colorado Springs at the time.
Yeah, that’s kinda Scientology’s problem. It’s hard to have a big-P Prophet when everybody’s just two or three degrees removed from knowing Hubbard. He apparently bragged about starting a religion for fun and profit to nearly as many people as were at Woodstock. Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home,” and Hubbard lived, and sponged, all over.
I don’t get why people knock Scientology when its no more fanciful than to believe some guy in the sky created the Universe in 7 days, created a woman from the rib of a man, their ancestors had 900 year lifespans, and his son came back to life after 3 days.
Just as old ladies in trailer parks mail their social security checks to millionaires like Pat Robertson.
I had this discussion with a Jehovah’s Witness hater on this board: your religion is no less hateful, financially fraudulent and/or full of bullshit and bully gangsters than the next guy’s.