I don’t see Tom Cruise being isolated except by his own choice. (I mention him only because he’s the only Scientologist I can say anything at all about.) He’s not trapped in a compound with a psychotic leader.
So, in your opinion, is Scientology a cult?
Being forced into seclusion would be a good way for the CoS to draw attention to itself. “What happened to Tom Cruise? Has Scientology kidnapped him?” However, the regular member will be pushed towards distancing themselves from non-member family and friends as a way to eliminate ‘harmful influences’ in their lives. And yes, being held against their will is a possibility.
The Church needs Cruise to lead a relatively normal life–he’s too well known, and if they exerted their influence over him too much it would reflect badly on them. The normal person doesn’t have the protection of being in the public eye.
I have had reports of bills being sent by Catholic and Jewish organizations to members for attending services or religious instruction. These incidents were related to me by members, some of whom happily paid the bills. These bills were not presented as requests for donations, but as bills.
I think what L. Ron Hubbard did in creating his religion as a lark and then making up a theology was absolutely evil and despicable. It’s adherents are quite a bit less evil and mostly dupes who perpetuate it when they should know better.
Scientology had 2 problems. One is it is new and we can still remember the founder. He was a sci writer who had some weird ideas. He has not yet become a vague super man like other religions where time has removed real history and left the myth. Both he and Joseph Smith are too real and very flawed.
Then the teaching are strange and it seems to draw weirdos. Evolving into a god with your own worlds to watch over appeals to some, but it is a hard sell for the grounded. The whole idea of selling the teaching has a vending feel that removes the holyness and makes it more of a business. I don’t think people react with hate but more of a you have to be kidding me when they read about the teaching and see the antics of the followers.
It’s not weird to have a talking snake, and dead people springing back to life, and burning bushes holding conversations, and the sun standing still in the sky, and virgins having babies, and the world being created in under a week?
I’m just asking.
I am very sorry for John Travolta’s family because of what happened with his son. I have no desire to see anyone suffer, regardless o religion.
I do appreciate John Travolta’s considerable skill in acting, and Tom Cruise’s as well. The fact that they are Scientologists doesn’t affect this (except when it drives Travolta to make “Battlefield Earth”, or Tom Cruise to do absurd things in the name of his faith).
I do believe that most people in Scientology probably are true believers, and aren’t participants in the creed’s excesses. Even if I were the vindictive sort, there’s no reason I’d want such innocents t suffer. This goes for the celebrities as well, or aybe especially. L. Ron and his cohorts deliberately targeted celebrities to give their cult some respectability and visibility, and they treated the ones they could rope in very well, giving them a luxury organization of their own.
That said, I loathe Scientology for the way it has wrecked people’s lives and sucked away their money. I think it has corrupted governments and people within them as well, and they’ve done it in a particularly sleazy and underhanded way, with blackmail and threats. This isn’t innuendo, it’s a matter of public record now. Go to xenu.com and look up things like “Operation Snow White” or “Operation PC Freakout”. The Scientologists say that these were the work of former leadership, and the current ones in charge have repudiated all that. I find it hard to believe. The Church is still closed, and highly suspect.
L. Ron himself acted to prevent people from leaving his organization and setting up benign versions, outside the influence of his corrupt leadership. They long campaigned against “squirrels” who used their practices without license or permission, going as far to sue them for unauthorized use of trade secrets (they could claim that their organization was not a Church, when it suited them, then run to the shelter of the law claiming to be a religious organization. Just another reason not to like them.) There ARE “squirrels” existing today, of course, but they can’t be a significant organization as long as the main Church keeps cracking down on them – which is a gross offense against religious liberty, to my mind. No other Church in modern times has used litigation to get rid of heretics.
I’m Catholic and I’ve never heard of a parish billing its members. The only method of payment request I’ve ever seen is the envelope method. When you join a parish, they start sending packets of envelopes every few months, which you are supposed to use for your donations. However, the donations are totally voluntary, and if you are a registered member, they will never deny you any of the services they are supposed to provide to members of the parish. The purpose of the envelopes is 1) to prod you into making the donations, and 2) to keep track of how much you donated, for tax purposes (they send you a statement at the end of the year).
It’s kind of beside the point, though…the point is that there is no information about the Jewish or Catholic religions that is denied to anyone who wants it, regardless of the ability to pay. For instance, the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church is available on line, for free, along with scads of other Church documents (Papal letters, encyclicals, etc.). You can read all you want to know BEFORE you decide to join the Church. AND you can be a member for life and have access to the essential services (the sacraments), without ever contributing a dime.
The isolation is what matters, not how it’s achieved. Isolation from anyone outside the group is an excellent means of increasing that group’s collective craziness ( this applies to more than just religion, by the way ). Whether or not we are speaking of outright physical isolation, or a simple refusal of those in the group to deal with outsiders; it’s intellectual and social isolation I’m talking about.
In other words, a bunch of people who don’t talk to outsiders, who only talk to people who agree with them tends to lose perspective, to have no reference points. To get nuttier, and nuttier, more and more extreme over time. And to not notice, because they refuse to listen or simply don’t talk to anyone who could provide that outside perspective.
It certainly looks that way.
I think the key distinction is that none of that stuff was considered particularly weird at the time it was first proposed. Miraculous talking snakes? Resurrection of the dead? Sure, my brother knew a guy who knew a guy…
Judeo-Christian authority was built up over thousands of years of accepting such tales at face value. Scientology on the other hand was established at a time when everyone concerned really ought to have known better.
Yeah, but they don’t make you pay out the ass to find this out after years of “reaching levels” or becoming “clear” or whatever.
Scientology is kind of a cross between a cult and a scam. (When I went down to have my nose pierced, there was a Scientology center right across the street-I was soooo tempted to go in there and start messing with them)
We used to live in the same building as a former Scientologist, and he was constantly being sent direct mail to get him back. He’d throw the stuff in the trash below the mailboxes, unread. I’d fish the occasional piece out. Judging from the stuff he’d received, he’d “gone Clear” - the final goal of Hubbard’s original “Dianetics”. This was supposed to have solved all of his problems. Of course, being useless nonsense, it had no impact on his problems. So they were trying to get him into “Advanced Dianetics” or “Go OT!” (to become an “Operating Thetan”) or do the “Purification Rundown”.
And, unlike every major religion, all these “religious services” actually had a price list! Each “service” had a “mandatory donation” that had to be paid in advance for the set number of hours. The higher you go “Up the Bridge” (they mix metaphors pretty freely), the more each service costs. By the time you reach the level that Tom Cruise or John Travolta are at (OT VIII) you will have spent several hundred thousand dollars.
When the Catholic Church starts selling indulgences again, let me know.
My Catholic friend who was “billed” $5,000 as her share of the new building project was most certainly billed and most happy about paying it. My Jewish grandparents were most unhappy about being billed for my father’s religious instruction (the equivalent of Sunday school) and thereafter only went to weddings and funerals. My father is an atheist in some part due to this. I have heard from many other Catholic friends that annulments of marriage were available to them for a price, depending on their wealth, the only solid figure that I have heard being $20,000.
I don’t imagine that they refer unpaid bills to collection, but I don’t know. The only denomination of which I ever attend, I am not an official member (Presbyterian) and I’ve seen the envelope method.
I am not offended by the practices I’ve seen, (heck, you pay for weddings and funerals and such all the time.) What I find troublesome is the cynically made up nature of Scientology. At least Joseph Smith was as nutty as a fruitcake and believed what he proselytized. Hubbard was just screwing people and laughing all the way to the bank. I don’t believe in Hell (I’m not a good Presbyterian mind you), but guys like Hubbard require some sort of punishment in the afterlife be specially invented for them. I’ll go with what Dante came up with but for a set period of time.
I’m not sure about that. I think that, early on, he honestly believed in his “Dianetics” and thought of it as what he was selling it as “The Modern Science of Mental Health”. It was only after authorities came after him for practicing medicine without a license that he cynically decided that it was a “religion” and wrapped it all up in that cloak - and of course the disastrous public debut of the first “Clear” who lacked every single advanced mental power Hubbard claimed the state would provide. Then it all became about money and power, which had its well-known corrupting influence. When you have your own ship and have dissenters keelhauled, you’re pretty absolutely corrupt. As he went even more crazy, he drank more and more of his own Kool-aid, eventually hooking e-meters to tomato plants and deciding he was God, as he cranked out higher and more expensive levels and courses to continue extracting money from the rubes or, as he charmingly called his recruits, “raw meat”.
I don’t know about Catholics, but when I went to Hebrew School of course it cost money, which was stated up front. However no one had to go, and kids who didn’t go still got to have a bar mitzvah - if usually in a less prime spot. So, either your grandparents weren’t paying attention or they assumed they could get something for nothing.
You also originally said that people got billed for just attending services. I assume you’ll retract that statement. I’ve never seen a Christian church or a shul take attendance. High holy day services, since they were crowded, might have required a free ticket. They did pass around a way of making a donation, but no one had to.
Obviously they are not going to isolate people whose major benefit to them is being in the public eye. However a friend of ours has a brother who is a Scientologist, and in a high position. He was ordered to cut off contact with his father, and prevent his father from seeing his grandchildren again. So yes, they do isolate people. I’d call them a cult.
They recruited the little brother of an ex-gf of mine, and got a bunch of money from him. Unluckily for them, he was underage and they had to give it back. Do you think they invited him to join anyway? Hell no. No pay, no pray.
Just a historical quibble - Hubbard was hardly a failed sf writer. He had many stories in Unknown in the early '40s, some quite good, and consistently got high reader ratings. Lots of good stuff in Astounding also. He was a pulp writer, and churned out stuff quickly, but he wasn’t even close to being the worst. I haven’t looked at the supposedly recent stuff (which I wonder if he actually wrote) but back in the day he was pretty good. I suppose the church owns the copyrights, and is keeping the stuff from being republished, but I have a lot of the original magazines. “Typewriter in the Sky” is about people who find themselves in a story being written by a hack writer It ends with the lines:
(Unknown December 1940.)
I also think the story about him saying that he could make money by founding a religion has never been confirmed. I rather doubt he said it, because if he did Campbell would have known, and Campbell published the first Dianetics article.
Not excusing the cult, but I do want to inject some historical accuracy.
anyone else find it interesting that they choose a psychotropic drug for their son (depakote) which gives similar liver damage to overdoses of Niacin?
Is Harlan Ellison a reliable source? This interview appeared on a satirical magazine called Wings:
Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes!
I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers. L. Ron Hubbard was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.
Wings: He claimed to have written Dianetics in a weekend, and nobody can deny it.
Ellison: That’s true. He wrote Dianetics in one weekend, and you know how he used to write? He used to take a roll of white paper, like paper you wrap fish in. He had it on the wall, and he would roll it into the typewriter and he would begin typing. When he was done, he would tear it off and leave it as one whole long novel.
We were sitting around one night… who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said “This bullshit’s got to stop!” He says, “I gotta get money.” He says, “I want to get rich”.
Wings: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: “The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it.”
Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don’t you invent a new religion?
They’re always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry!
You’ll make a fortune!" He says, “I’m going to do it.” Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stole a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, “engrams” and “regression”, all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior. I mean he really believed that. He was also very nervous when I was in his office because I was a Jew. You know, he was afraid maybe I would spring horns or something.
No matter how or why Jett Travolta died, we already know that he was subjected to the “Purification Rundown” which, as I said in the other thread, I consider child abuse, ESPECIALLY if he had asthma, as Preston claimed. The gist of the PR is mega doses of niacin (which can damage the liver) and sauna treatments, which are dangerous for people with asthma.
Here’s more on the PR.
There’s an account by a pediatrician in the following section of the Baden-Wurttemberg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution report on the “Scientology Organization” (that whole study is an amazing read!).
Hubbard thought children were little more than dogs anyway.
This doesn’t apply to Scientology in any way, shape or form. Hubbard’s words are law and must be followed exactly. Imagine the most hard-core, literalist fundie Bible-based religion and times it by 3 (even the most literalist believer probably does something that doesn’t jibe with the Bible).
You can’t believe in one part of Scientology and not another. If you do, then you’re not a Scientologist. If Hubbard wrote it, you have to believe it. If you don’t believe it/agree with it, you have to quit being a Scientologist, or go through some sort of conditioning (auditing, sec checks) until you do believe/agree with it. If you resist that conditioning, you can’t be a Scientologist anymore. And that’s where most of your ex-Scientologists come from, because somewhere along the Bridge, they stopped to say “Hey, wait a minute…” and just like there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no questioning Hubbard’s words. At. All. Ever.
To learn more about this Policy (Policy is capitalized because it’s akin to Scripture…Hubbard’s words, Hubbard’s rules, Hubbard’s laws), called Keeping Scientology Working (aka KSW) here’s a good site. Among many others, it quotes Jon Atack from his book “A Piece of Blue Sky.” This appears in Chapter 3: “Fair Game, Ethics and the Scriptures.”
And a handy quote from LRH himself:
As has been pointed out, celebrities are a different kettle of fish. They’re treated in a special way that would never apply to regular Scientologists. Scientology is after their money, yes, and the veneer of respectability, yes, but celebrities are mostly valued for their fans. One celebrity could, depending on their stature, bring in dozens or hundreds or thousands of new recruits. For every 10 people who say, “Tom Cruise is one of my favorite actors, but Scientology seem creepy/weird/wacko” there is probably one who says “Wow, if Tom’s into it, it can’t be all bad, so maybe I should check it out.” You don’t think Lisa Marie married Michael Jackson for love or money, did you? It was his world-wide fan base they were after. Luckily, Jackson rebuffed the efforts to get him into the cult, one of the few things I actually admire the guy for.
To read some specific information about Cruise and Travolta, this page is pretty interesting. It’s old, from 1998, but it has fascinating details from Jesse Prince, some details that I didn’t even know (it’s been ages since I was involved in the anti-Scientology movement, since before Jesse Prince surfaced). Speaking of, here’s his Affidavit for the FACTnet case.
There’s just so so very much wrong with Scientology, that has nothing to do with their being a space aliens cult, that go far far beyond any crazy beliefs about Xenu and body thetans. This page and this page just scratch the surface.
The man who started this horror show, said things like this:
There are so many more but my stomach is churning. The bottom line is, the more you learn about Scientology, the more appalled any decent person should become.
It just goes
on and
on and
on and
on and
on!
Why am I against Scientology? Several reasons, all of those in the links above and so many more, but mainly because Scientology kills.
Hell no. I certainly don’t agree with silenus’s “unfit to live” comment, but otherwise, no amount of criticism is too much.
When the criticism becomes unfair, then it has gone too far… and in the case of the Travoltas, I think that line has been crossed.
