Saw that South Park episode where they viciously satirize Scientology –
My question is why all of the 'expose’s of Scientology, the beliefs based on bizarre science fiction and not normal religion, the heavy fees, etc., haven’t yet destroyed it. As far as I know their membership hasn’t significantly declined?
I understand that humans have an imbred psychological need to believe in a high power, but Scientology to me doesn’t even seem like it would offer that.
So are they surviving on terrorizing their remaining members? Are people at this point still joining? Can’t figure out how many churches are dying off (catholic church has a major priest shortage) but Scientology keeps sucking in the dough.
Once you believe something big, something that many of your life decisions were affected by, it’s in your best interest to do your best to keep believing it (Imagine a mild “doublethink” from Orwell’s unpleasant 1984). Readjusting your entire worldview, including memories, static preconceptions and attitudes, habits and self-worth is extremely hard and very risky. It generally gets worse the older and less adaptable you get.
In cruder words, shit like that leads to such unhealthy activities as hard drugs, suicide or cutting off one’s clitoris (last one is hypothetical). It also can cause lack of appetite.
That explains the high retention rate. As far as recrutement, their numbers are extremely low, and there is no shortage of naive or crazy people out there.
I’d also suggest searching for older threads on Scientology, it has been discussed here many times before and there are many gems to be discovered in those threads.
I thought it was because the real objects of veneration in Scientology were all the big-name stars, such as Cruise, who are involved with it. I could be wrong, but that’s certainly the impression I get.
Not exactly. As I understand it, the South Park episode in question revealed elements of esoteric doctrine that are not revealed to Scientologists until they reach a certain level in the hierarchy. Of course, it’s problematic for an organization of any significant size to keep such secrets forever; disaffected members will always reveal them eventually. All the “secrets” of Freemasonry can be found in public libraries.
Ok, well I meant that South Park didn’t fabricate much. It might not be what is emphasized in their teachings, but they “believe” it. There’s lots of things in the Bible that are pretty ridiculous too, but mostly they aren’t emphasized in the majority of Christians’ lives.
The fact that they demand so much money from their followers probably helps them hold on to people. It’s a very old psychological trick for inducing loyalty; you get your followers to do something stupid or evil in the name of the cause, and then they can’t admit that the cause is wrong without admitting that THEY’VE been stupid or evil. And people hate to admit things like that, so they keep going along with the cause, doing yet more stupid/evil things, which makes it even harder to admit their fault, and so on.
If South Park built an episode around those “ridiculous” things, I would expect most Christian viewers to say:
[1] “They’re making that up,”
[2] “Yes, that part’s ridiculous, but it doesn’t affect my core belief,”
[3] “That’s exactly right,” or
[4] some combination of 1, 2, and/or 3, but never, ever
[5] “Thank you South Park, for showing me my faith was ridiculous!”
If South Park and similar efforts to mock Scientology have an effect, it will be to innoculate those who aren’t believers but may have been susceptible to recruitment. Individually I don’t think they have much of an effect, but collectively they may be reaching a point where a significant number of potential recruits will have seen and heard enough to at least be skeptical.
Imagine, if you will, the Catholic Church recording what was said in the confessional and using that information to enforce tithing. And if a percentage of what each congregant tithed was returned to the person who brought that congregant to church. How would attendance be affected?
From the first “Free Personality Test” to Operating Thetan Level Auditing, you are attached to a device known as an E-Meter. The circuit for an e-meter is a simple galvanic skin response meter, essentially a crude lie detector.
The notes that they take while they audit you are precise and require special training to perform, as they are codified into a system that can be read by the next auditor. The questions they ask you are often exptremely personal, and every response is recorded. Questions can include sexual behavoir and desires, attitudes towards parents, friends and other important figures in your life and of course your financial worth (to name just a few).
Effectively, by the time you “become” a full fledged Scientologist, they have a HUGE amount of very personal information, some of it pretty damning, and at least very very personal in nature.
So, is it possible that many people, especially famous public figures may not want to quit for fear that the public may find out what they “did behind the barn” when they were 12" or some such?
It’s not a question of emphasis, most of the information is deliberately withheld. rank and file members only have this information revealed to them very slowly and incrementally, “boiling the frog,” so to speak. By the time they get to the Xenu stuff, they’ve already been invested for years. Most rank and file Scientos don’t know about the really crazy stuff and the church tries to monitor what its marks watch on television, see on the internet, etc.
I think $cientology preys on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum-you don’t see many Hravard or Yale students manning the booths at the local mall. Mostly its the confused, scared lonely kid from East Bumfuck Teacher’s College who swallows this crap.
God knows its been publicized enough.
Given the number of people who openly call Scientology a scan, I’m not sure it is a better one. It’s more like of a more obvious one, if you’re going to call all religions scams.
On the other hand, they may be getting more media-savvy (sp?). I’ve seen a few ads for Dianetics on one of the cable networks recently. If I didn’t already know what Dianetics is, I might be tempted.
$cientoly was founded by a fraud-L. Ron Hubbard. His whole life was a lie. Scientology doesn’t turn people into geniuses-it turns them into slaves! How can anybody fall for this??