If anyone wants good, unbiased religious info, I highly recommend www.religioustolerance.org
They have info on practically everything, and hopefully it will answer your questions, GuyMontag
I’ll say. I actually read all of the way through Battlefield Earth (why, I do not know), and the only things he got right in any field of science are that horses don’t work based on teleportation technology, and herbal tea is good for stomachaches. Truely, the breadth of his ignorance is amazing: Most SF authors concentrate on having one or two fields that they don’t know about, but Hubbard manages to know nothing about every scientific endeavor known to Man.
Out in the middle of the extremely rugged and rural Humboldt County coast of Northern California, there exists a HUGE Scientology compound. When I was in elementary school, my itsy-bitsy hometown was abuzz with rumors and gossip when we learned that The Chirch (as I refer to them) had purchased a large chunk of coastal ranchland in the area.
As the years went by, local “discreet” construction workers, (unemployed except for marijuana harvest season) were hired to build a large house/mansion, various outbuildings, and a colossal undergound bunker network that was allegedly designed to be a Scientology archive. A neighbor of mine was hired and shared some pictures that he took of the site with my parents and I. He opperated a backhoe and other heavy equipment.
If you can imagine a half-pipe that extends the length of 3 football fields, that basically describes the multiple half-culvert structures that were set into the ground. These were then sealed with a flat roof.
Inside these gigantic hollow half-pipes, The Chirch apparently stores books, papers, documents…anything that they might possibly need after the rest of the world is destroyed by whatever doom is likely to befall us. Cryogenically preserved specimines are also allegedly stored there. (I’ve personally seen little white cryogenics vans driving out into the middle of nowhere in the wee hours of the morning.)
With all of that being said…many of the locals are pretty perplexed by the whole thing…many have not and will not ever set foot on The Chirch’s property. One question on everyone’s mind is:
Why the hell would you archive gigantic vats of books and frozen heads for “safe keeping”, in the middle of one of the most seismically active areas of North America?
Personally, I seem to be doomed to a life of uneasy proximity to The Chirch. Upon graduating college, I blew upon the wind far far away from my beloved Humboldt. Settling in the Atlanta area, I landed a job at this cool little internet company called MindSpring. Then one day our merger with EarthLink was announced.
They’re weird. They’re creepy. They attach themselves to soup cans in search of enlightenment…and I can’t seem to get away from them.
What utter bullshit is religioustolerance.org. The quotue from Hans Kung on their front page is way out of context. I know Hans and he would never regard any of these fringe lunatics to be a ‘religion’ that one should be in sincere dialogue with.
The site is just a mouthpiece for justifying every looney idea under the banner of religious tolerance. And their claim that Christianity will be marginalized in the U.S. by the year 2020 is just laughable. Christianity is growing in the U.S. and is not seeing the decline that is being claimed. Funny how they try to come across as scholarly with all their footnoting, and they don’t even footnote the statistics to back up their fall-of-Christianity claim.
And speaking of lousy footnoting, their article on Scientology might as well have been written by the Scientologists themselves. The troubles that Scientology has had are glossed over or given the Scientology spin or are painted as religious persecution by the site. And, the article doesn’t mention the huge amounts of money Scientology sucks out of it adherents, nor the who Xenu thing. One would think that belief in aliens communicating with us would be important to mention in an article on a ‘religion.’
Peace.
Sometimes, intolerance is good. Like, e.g., intolerance of ignorance, fraud, and hucksterism.
Foolishly, I once went into a Scientology centre in London and volunteered to do one of their questionnaires. These were v. long and incredibly boring. Half way through I asked to leave, but the staff were intimidating and suggested that I had already wasted their time, and should complete the questionnaire. I was very young at the time, so I obeyed.
Anyway, to get back at them I decided to cheat. I could see that the questions were trying to get at my mental state eg: “Do you often feel life is not worth living/difficult/meaningless…” I deliberately answered every question very positively, giving them the impression that I was delighted with every aspect of my life and without problems (I wasn’t of course). They took the forms away, and after a half-hour wait (no cups of tea offered) I was summoned into an interview. Here I was told that I was severely depressed, that my life had no meaning, etc etc, and the answer to my problems was…you guessed it - to buy Hubbard’s wretched book on “Dianetics” for some absurd price.
The point is that the “questionnaire” was a joke. They never looked at it, the “result” was a foregone conclusion. Apart from wasting my time, which I had given in a spirit of youthful curiosity and open-mindedness, they were damned rude.
As others have said, forget Scientology, it’s just more fraudulent quackery. Ignore it.
moriah, I have found the site to be highly recommended by a good deal of knowledgable people. Obviously the site does not cover everythng involved in a topic, and they let you decide if you belive something is a religion is not. It is a jumping off point.
The majority of people that have disparaged the site do so because it discusses or gives credence to faiths other than Christianity.
I don’t want to turn this into a debate, I just wanted to defend my choice of this site.
Please note, I am not involved with this site in any way
Oh c’mon. You’re calling that unbiased? It doesn’t even mention all of the suspicious deaths!
This is particularly disturbing:
No, sorry, wrong. CAN was bought up by Scientology, not some multi-faith board. CAN is now a Scientology puppet, much like Narconon (not Narcanon, which is Narcotics Anonymous), spreading Scientology lies to the credulous. Given the essential lie, I heavily doubt the accusations they level at the old CAN.
Plus, they generally sweep the condemnation of Europe under the rug, calling it intolerance of new religious movements' and suchlike. Kinda like Scientology itself screaming bigotry’ whenever a government examines its membership lists for untimely deaths.
In short, :rolleyes:.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/ – Narconon info. Note the spelling of the name to cash in on Narcanon, or Narcotics Anonymous, a well-respected group. Suspicious activities don’t end there.
liirogue, what would you say to a page on Stalinism that left out all references to gulags? That’s the kind of insult ReligiousTolerance.org represents to us here. You probably have no idea of what Scientology is really about, and you go duped by a slick page design. Try Operation Clambake for a few facts.
To Godzillatemple:
No assertion was made that the Church of Latterday Saints is a pyramid scheme. Please refer to the quote you yourself posted.
The Church and pyramid schemes were both referred to as examples because some pyramid schemes, like the LDS, involve a series of progression through various levels, and the progression through such levels can be expensive for the initiate. I included Mormons as an example based on my observation of Mormon friends who have expressed anxiety over qualifying for their “Temple Blessing”. Very possibly qualification for this distinction has nothing to do with making contributions to the Church; I don’t know. I do know, however, that like people who make a point of buying products from the Publisher’s Clearing House in order to improve their chances in winning their lottery, they didn’t believe it.
(To forestall any complaints from people who may wish to object that the Publisher’s Clearing House is not a pyramid scheme, please note that I am not saying it is. To assert that something is, in some way, similar to another thing in some respect is quite different from saying that they are the same; this is a very elementary point which I have seen overlooked by posters in a great many threads.)
One can also refer to the anxiety some Mormons feel about raising the money to hold their wedding in an actual temple. This last point is referred to, with great effect, by Trey Parker in his film Orgazmo. None of this is a comment on the genuineness or the relative moral worth of the Mormon faith, only as an observation on how it is often seen to operate in practice.
As for the belief or suspicion held by some Jehovah’s Witnesses that Michael Jackson may have been the reincarnation of Christ, this was reported by Time and Newsweek when it had currency. I shall look for cites.
Slipster
I never doubted your claim. I’m not asking for a cite. I want details.
A small group of people from a religious sect make a bizarre claim and form a new group.
In itself, this is not even news.
But when people seriously claim Michael is the messiah, my enquiring mind wants to know.
Mind you, the article on this web site regarding Scientology puts forth an OUTRIGHT LIE. It claims that the Cult Awareness Network’s “name, logo, phone number and other assets were purchased by a new group run by a multi-faith board which is dedicated to promoting religious tolerance”
Scientology now owns the Cult Awareness Network (http://www.csj.org/announce/annoucement_archives/can.html and http://www.cnn.com/US/9612/19/scientology/)
It’s definitely INTERESTING that ownership by Scientology’s legal pit bulls is considered to be ownership by a group “dedicated to promoting religious tolerance” by this particular web site.
Let us hope that they are merely dupes and not shills.
This seems to be turning into a debate, so I’ll move this thread to GD.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Dogface, thanks for giving me some cites. I knew the Co$ owns CAN, but I didn’t give any cites in my post. Nice to be one-upped. 
My lack of cites regarding my ramblings about Humboldt has been bugging me, so here are a couple of questionably valid links.
There is also mention on this Operation Clambake offering (search for “Humboldt” within the content).
The use of cryogenics is discussed (and allegedly dismissed by The Chirch) here
(They can deny it all they want…I’ve seen the vans myself)
Some pictures can be found here
THIS is an article that appeared in SPY magazine in 1996 (didn’t read the whole thread, forgive me if someone already posted.)
It was one of several articles that appeared in the mid-nineties by reporters who had managed to see Scientology from the inside. The author has apparently seen fit to post it.
It’s a good one.