No, it isn’t. In the sociology of religious bigotry, the idea (I guess these days, one would call it a “meme”) that the clerics of X religion murder people is a common one, and it goes by the name blood libel.
If you feel this puts you in untoward company, I think you might want to reflect on your reasons for perpetuating an unsubstantiated rumor, rather than putting your thumbs in your ears and repairing to the echo chamber of 4chan. Just a thought.
The Church of Scientology is not Medieval Jewry. Your analogy is essentially Godwinizing the thread.
It would make a lot more sense if the governments where Scientology is allowed were to say, “Okay, it’s DEFINITELY not a religion. It is a cult. So, now they pay taxes. Cough it up, Hubbard Lovers!”
It certainly WAS a mistake to consider it a religion in the first place. It is a cult. Cults we can ban all the hell we want to.
I don’t know anyone (except Bill Maher) who is more anti religious than I. I think all religions are cults , especially Catholicism, in which I was raised. Evil, evil cults, all of 'em.
That said, I don’t want my government telling me what I should believe. Nor do I want my government listening to these cultists.
It’s a double edged sword kids. I loathe Scientology but are they really worse that any "legit"religions? I can’t be on the side of the Frenchy gov’t here, as much as I’d like to. I’m giving myself a headache. Oy.
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Lobohan, quit reading my mind! 
Exactly what you said, calling it a religion, it’s what we’re told by our government too, right? So, believers, your religion with the Savior and/or Elijah or maybe the one about Mohammed, governments are saying that Scientology is just as valid as a belief as yours! So valid, it is a religion!
I really will never understand how the devout will seem to forget this. Centuries old religious practices are equal to a failed sci-fi writer of the '50s. At the rate Scientology’s going, they’ll have more money than Islam in a couple decades. Tax 'em, bye-bye bailout maybe.
Kimmy? Could you kindly define the difference between “murdering people” and “human sacrifice?” Because blood libel is about human sacrifice. You do know that you should only use words as they are properly defined, right? It’s not right to make up false definitions for a word.
Also, previously, you used the word ‘lookup’. Is that actually a word, or a typo?
Thank you.
Actually, while that may be how the phrase originated, I’ve heard it used more broadly to mean “a false accusation of causing the deaths of others” before. Definitions change; what really matters is understandability, and I think we all understand what it means in this case.
I saw a TV news program (extended magazine-documentary) about Scientology and they were monitored and indicted in several European countries but not for their beliefs (anyone who thinks this is mistaken) but for illegal acts of coercion, tax fraud, and other such things which are simply illegal. They are not being proscribed for their beliefs but for racketeering just like the Mafia in America. Anyone who says otherwise needs to show some convincing evidence.
This is a case of French prosecutors bringing charges of organized fraud against some leaders of the CoS. Prosecutors are always pushing the envelope. It’s their job, partly.
From the article:
So, technically, I don’t think the French Government is banning a religion, but a criminal organization, as designated by court verdict prior to the banning (if the defendants are found guilty).
Before anyone says it: cite?
Oh and before anyone says it: Catholosism: cite?
What matters is understandability and the degree of conforming to the analogy. In this case, it is both an understandable analogy (in that we all twigged what he meant) and a hysterical Godwinizing metaphor at the same time (in that the accusations do not involve human sacrifice, are not used to justify murder of the accused, and are not false.)
I suppose both Oprah and the Church of Scientology deserve internet defenders, no matter how serious the harm that they perpetrate.
I agree with you that individuals in an organization should be held responsible for their own crimes, and that they are not necessarily attributable to to organization itself. The Catholic Church has a somewhat admirable doctrine of forgiveness and salvation, which puts it in a rather complicated position with respect to sex offenders. Sex offense is in no way the actual position of the organization but sadly, is an undesirable byproduct of celibacy.
But the stated aims of the Church of Scientology are different. Its expressed purpose has been illegal mischief. Not passive resistance, not civil disobedience, not principled resistance to tyranny, nor any other praiseworthy but contrary position with respect to the law.
These are not the actions of individuals who fell of the wagon. These are examples of the institutional behavior of the Church of Scientology. If one cannot conclude from these examples that the Church is rotten, what can one conclude about the behavior of any institution?
Kimmy, are you a Scientologist? Just curious.
In another thread, it was suggested that “Godwin’s Law” itself, far from its original use in keeping discussions on track, had become a tool used in shutting down debate and analysis. These days, when a comparison of one’s current distasteful behavior or politics is made to an earlier age’s distasteful behavior or political, the hysterical alarm of “Godwinizing” is raised.
What is human sacrifice if not murder? It seems at the very least that both require the killing of another. I suppose you could say: human sacrifice involves a religious or ceremonial aspect. Now, here we are told that Scientology is a murderous religion, that people are killed for the benefit of Scientology and Scientologists. To fair-minded people, this is an accusation that Scientology sacrifices the lives of others for its own advantage. What do you need to count it as human sacrifice? Candles and chanting? Do you that is what most people find troubling about sacrificial rites? The theatrics? I rather think it’s the killing. So when you accuse a religion’s adepts of murdering other people, as part and parcel of the practice of that religion, you have substantially made the accusation of human sacrifice, quite apart from whatever Rosemary’s Baby-inspired ceremonies you might otherwise associate with the practice.
It is not used to justify the murder of the accused. It is used to justify their official suppression by the government. It is used to justify the “humor” in statements like “Fuck them with a rusty chainsaw” and “They could all die tomorrow for all I care.”
Lastly, I await, now well past the quarter-hour in which it was originally promised, evidence that substantiates these accounts of officially-sanctioned Scientology murders. Merely to assert repeatedly that claims “are not false” certainly does not make it so.
“Blood libel” is the defamation of another religions and its adherents involving particularly the allegation that these adherents kills non-believers in the service of the religion. This is precisely the claim, never backed up by a scintilla of evidence, made about Scientology. I am amazed that there are modern, otherwise smart and egalitarian people who cannot see the analogy between this and more ancient episodes of this tribalism. Nevertheless, though these people may be innocently blinded to their own prejudices, and though exposing their prejudices for what they are–and their bad old historical roots–may cause them discomfort, it cannot be waved away with self-serving reassurances of one’s own fairness and an appeal to that welcome-overstaying Internet in-joke, “Godwin’s Law.”
Scientology is not a religion. Its founder famously speculated about the tax-free advantages of founding a fake religion before he founded Scientology.
I’ve had the meta-argument many times before: who gets to define a religion? The adherents? The answer is, no, not the adherents, at least when I have this discussion with mainstream Christians. They are quite insistent that, for example, the Nazis occasionally calling themselves Christian “doesn’t count.” So by that logic Scientologists can’t call themselves a religion and be believed.
But the founder of a religion – his or her words ought to count. Especially when they pertain to the founding of the religion.
A system, yes; an organization, no doubt; a superorganism, frighteningly so – a religion – a real religion – no.
Defend the superorganism as you like; but define it correctly.
from here
from here.
Cite for what? That I saw a TV program about Scientology being a sect which did illegal things? My post is my cite. I saw it. I promise I did. Really. I did not fall asleep.
You want more details? It aired on Spanish TVE2, on a program called “Documentos TV” and the episode was called “Victimas de las sectas” (Victims of sects). It aired on 2006/01/31 at 11:30 PM.
It is not for me to prove or disprove anything. It is up to those making the claim that Scientology in Europe is persecuted only for religious reasons to prove it because I do not buy it for one second. It is an extraordinary claim and requires proof. Please show me.
And to those who say only individuals should be indicted and the organization left alone, you could say that about the Mafia. Every country recognizes that when it gets to the point that the organization itself is serving illegal purposes then it should be shut down. It is like that in America too. Not only that. In America you have even less defense when it comes to things like forfeiture laws, etc. In America you can go to jail merely for expressing opinions or even help others disseminate opinions which in the view of the government help America’s enemies. So let us not play this silly “lack of freedom in Europe” thing. Yes, some things may be different in Europe because Europe is not America but when it comes to freedom and Human Rights Europe is not behind America in any sense.
I had sort of expected this. No, I am not. I am a quite unobservant Episcopalian. And step-Jewish.
Once in high school, we had a discussion about gay rights. Not really winning her side, and because this was the early 90s, when the accusation had more bite than it does today, my opponent wrapped up her argument with “What are you? Gay or something?”
As I told her then, I say now: one can value the autonomy of oneself and others without being gay or a Scientologist. Religious liberty is not itself a sectarian concern. And it is no liberty if we limit only to those with whom we agree. The test of our love of freedom is to allow even to people who’s beliefs we find to be bizarre and abhorrent.
Who knows? Perhaps because it wasn’t so very long ago that my own sexual orientation was criminalized and medicalized, I consequently take a very skeptical eye at official pronouncements about what beliefs and associated practices the majority will suffer.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20080507174854tsop.nb/topstory.html
Source: Agence France Presse
ROME • A French former Scientologist who was rescued in January after several weeks of captivity in Sardinia will return home next week, a police spokesman said yesterday.
Martine Boublil, who was found half naked on a mattress infested with insects and worms in a room full of rubbish on January 21, is still recovering in hospital from the ordeal but will return to France “sometime next week,” the spokesman said from the northern Sardinian town of Nuoro. A French diplomat in Rome confirmed that the 48-year-old, whose brother Claude Boublil is a leading Scientologist in France, would go home “soon.” […] Nuoro police were alerted to the kidnapping by a caller.
French Scientologists Arrested in Italy
Source: AFP
Three French members of the Church of Scientology, suspected of holding a fourth person against their will, were arrested Monday in Nuoro, Sardinia, a local police spokesman told AFP. “The three people belong to the Church of Scientology, whereas the person being held was probably not a member,” Fabrizio Mustaro, of the Nuoro Prefecture on the Mediterranean island, told AFP.
Police were alerted by a phone call that reported cries for help coming from a house on Mount Ortobene, near Nuoro, said Mustaro. Officers found a 47-year-old woman of Tunisian origin sleeping semi-naked on a mattress infested with vermin. She was subsequently hospitalised. Three other people at the house, a 42-year-old woman and two 18-year-old men, one of Tunisian origin, were arrested and charged with kidnapping.
[/quote]
Difference is gay rights advocates don’t function as an organized crime syndicate, unlike Scientology.
[bolding mine]
Wait a minute. You defend Scientology, someone asks you if you’re a Scientologist, and you say “No, it’s like the time I defended gays, was asked if I was gay, and actually was gay”??? Isn’t it exactly NOT like that?