How about a whole website?
If you are of a mind to take their test:
- Take it in a city or town not your own
- Give money and credit cards to a friend before going in
- Do not give them your real name or address…or any other personal info for that matter
- Answer the questions as if you were a total self-centered asshole if you want a higher score
Somehow, an organization dedicated to fleecing self-centered assholes may be performing a public good.
A right answer for a wrong reason to be sure. But sometimes that’s good enough.
Yes it is, @k9bfriender , and yes it does.
I’m about halfway through it, and it’s a masterful work, shocking in its details. I don’t know which is more stunning, the fake-religion-as-moneymaking-enterprise aspect, or the degree to which the whole phony thing is run by, and started by, people who are plainly crazy and vengeful to their own members.
To me by far the most surprising and disturbing feature of Scientology is that the Feds have not eviscerated it. Whether for fraud, kidnapping, or tax evasion it seems an ideal very fat target for a lot of 3-letter agencies.
I’m no fan of conspiracies, but the clear evidence that it skates along unmolested suggests it has its tentacles pretty darn deeply entwined with the levers of power in the US government. Which is not good. Not at all.
It’s an official part of their doctrine:
Maybe they just have really good attorneys. I vaguely recall some book on the history of the Manson gang back in the 1970s had to have all the references to Scientology removed. There were a lot of people sniffing around Scientology, the Process Church, considered an offshoot, the Esalen Institute and other . . . groups.
And a lot of them. According to Wright, they tied the IRS up in litigation, and challenged them to show that they weren’t giving more established religions privileges for tax purposes in an arbitrary and unfair fashion. The IRS agreed to a settlement of 12.5 million in lieu of the billion dollars on back taxes they owed. 12.5 million is peanuts to Scientology.
Yeah, I don’t want to derail the thread and getting off into the weeds about Manson, but recall he initially carved an “X” into his brow during the trial, and his groupies followed suit, it was only later that he modified it into a swastika. Apparently there is some significance to “X”ing oneself out of society or somesuch with dianetics. Another interesting group in that same time period is the “Brotherhood of Eternal Love”, widely known as a big drug trafficking org. The Feds did take an active interest in them.