How about this:
“The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.” L Ron Hubbard
Anyway, I kind of lost the plot there. Sorry.
:smack:
The OTs were posted to ars. Just the text, no pictures. The CoS claimed copyright on those. So to say the pictures are the main thing is to ignore the basic facts of the issue.
Pretty unique huh? Sort of like being a little pregnant and other oxymorons.
Telling people to commit crimes is not even vaguely unique in the world of religion. The Jehovah’s Witness faith tells people not to perform any type of military service, which is a crime in many nations. They have been imprisoned for it. The Hindu faith told people to commit satee, even when it was made illegal by the British colonial government. They were executed for it. The list of religions that have official dogma that tells people to commit crimes is huge. In fact I could issue you a challenge to find me three religions, aside from Bhuddism, Daoism and other philosophical religions, whose official dogma has never been a crime in any nation at any time.
So you believe. As I have already said, that is your more-or-less worthless opinion and it has no place in GQ. The fact is that scientology has a stated aim as a religion to ensure that all people willing ti embrace the message experience lasting peace and true love.
I could easily answer that by saying that the leadership believes, as does almost everey other religion, that money is essential for spreading the faith.
You want to hear good stuff about scientology? Find a scientologist. They’ll talk your ear off. Just as credible as your non-scientologist friends. In fact, they are in some ways more credible because they actually believe in dianetics and probably deal with it considerably more than people who dislike it?
As for the woman who died under suspicious circumstances, that’s no reason that there is a problem in-and-of-itself with Scientology. Unless you are of the opinion that, say, the Inquisition is problematic for Catholicism. What if we had started a thread about “What exactly is the problem with Catholicism”? Would you be so quick to disparage?
You are free to disagree, dislike, and malign the group. Fine, you don’t like them. I don’t think the case can be made thought that just because you don’t like them they shouldn’t be a religion. And just because you only hear bad things about them from your friends and acquaintances doesn’t mean that they are wholly bad.
This is the problem I have with cult-bashing. In the 70s people were litterally kidnapped and tortured for believing in “destructive cults” because they wouldn’t submit willingly to leaving. They are adults and they say they are happy. These deprogramming sessions were supposed to prove that they were being brainwashed? Nonsense. All they proved was that you can break a human soul.
There are people happy in scientology. I have met them. They proselytize me, but so do other religions. I am not of the opinion that we can automatically say they are being duped. That no one benefits from this group just because you say so. Hogwash. It’s a religion like any other. If you want to declare scientology unworthy of redemption than cast an eye on other religions similarly. At least Murray-O’Hair was consistent in her condemnations of religions.
You are free to not like certain groups, but I do not think that that necessarily means the should automatically be discriminated against.
Come now, Eleusis, this is complete hearsay. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn’t. The CoS denies it (for good reason, of course), and actually attributes it to George Orwell.
Blake, are you actually going to post some evidence? Like another religion that has anything comparable to Fair Gaming as an official dogma. Civil disobedience does not come close to “disposing of someone quietly and without remorse.”
Well, the essay I cited lists NINE WITNESSES.
Maybe not good enough Scientology apologists, but more than enough for me.
Yes but we aren’t discussing that. We are discussing the ‘bullying’ tactics of the CoS in asking Google no to post copyrighted photographs. That is why it is a Strawman. It is unrelated to the issue being discussed.
** Eleusis**Not understanding what is under discussion does not make you look smart.
It’s totally irrelevant in Derleth’s defence of his charge that the CoS and presumably the Chicago Reader are bullies for enforcing copyright of photographs.
But they don’t support your accusation of bullying for not allowing a random stranger to publish copyrighted material on a website. You posted that comment in defence of that charge.
They may be relevant to the greater issue, but your charge of bullying in the example you referenced is hypocritical and ignorant if you do not also criticise the SDMB for not allowing copyright infringement. To try to defend that accusation by pointing to other, unrelated, examples of bullying is a strawman. I never argued that the CoS wasn’t averse to negative publicity.
My sole point was that the example you gave is not evidence of bullying, it is evidence of the same stringent protection of copyrighted photographs that the Chicago Reader demands of you right here. For you to label such action bullying when carried out by the CoS but not when it is carried out by the Chicago Reader is hypocritical and ignorant.
Derleth: How is a religion LEGALLY defined? I challenge you to offer a counter to Scientology being a legal religion. The CoS won its case and was determined to fit the IRS’s legal definition of a religion (which is, by the way, the only “power that be” in the federal government that has a regulation on the subject that I know of) and so a real religion. The mafia is a crime syndicate. It makes no claims at being a religion, nor does it fit the legal definition of one. I’m afraid you are out-of-luck in this argument.
Huh? You’re changing argument on me. The issue was “false pretenses”. The Salvation Army offers economic support to those in need, actively supporting the evangelization of those it helps. That’s the old “bait-and-switch”. People don’t come to get help so they can be told the gospel. They don’t come to an addiction program to learn about dianetics. Nevertheless, it is a matter of the free exercise of religion that when a religious group sets up a charity they can run it how they please. You may find that problematic, but try to understand that others find ALL groups with religious agendas problematic in that regard. Your argument fails to recognize that other religions engage in similar behavior.
You want to know about religions that do that? I’ll tell you what: research churches that support anti-abortion health clinics. See how they advertise. They DELIBERATELY mislead in order to try to get their message across. Check out www.planningparenthood.com and try to tell me that the people (who happen to be connected with religious groups, btw) at adoption.com aren’t attempting to do EXACTLY what you are describing.
I disagree. For example, ever heard of “Preach the Gospel, if necessary, use words”?
I get it already, Derleth, you don’t like the Scientologists. What you fail to realize is that for the very reasons you don’t like them, there are other people out there who do very similar things that, quite frankly, don’t get called out like the Scientologists do. That’s just plain bigotry, as far as I’m concerned.
You are allowed to dislike a group, but to go on tirades such as yours seems to me to be based more in a personal vendetta than actually fighting ignorance.
Scientology. Next question please!
Huh-uh. You don’t get to apply laws to some people and not to others. Just because you don’t like it that Scientology copyrights things doesn’t mean you can flaunt the law and demand to know why. All that matters is that that’s what they choose to do. Is it for nefarious reasons? Maybe, maybe not. You aren’t in Scientology, therefore, you have no say about what the reasons they have are.
Seems to me, what you’re upset about is that Scientology is just a modern religion that uses the modern world cleverly to help support itself.
Do you think that some of these evangelical preachers would stand for someone taking their book that sells for $19.95 at Christian Bookstores and distributing free copies of it? Huh-uh.
As far as I’m concerned, copyright law is such a pathetic reason to call a religion dangerous. It’s almost laughable.
Explain. How is it relevant at all? I mean, how is copyrighting your core dogmas a problem? It’s just different from religions you’re used to, that’s all.
Sorry. This statement is wholly false, either now or in the past.
Indulgences sold in the late 15th and early 16th century were clearly scams (as well as being violations of church law–though tolerated by too many of the hierarchy), but there has never been a fee for receiving Communion or going to Confession.
Another blatant straw men.
I never said that any religion has something “comparable to Fair Gaming as an official dogma”. I was pointing out the obvious ignorance involved in your wild and baseless assertion that most religions do not endorse illegal acts in official dogma. That was your claim, and it displays the grossest ignorance of both religion and history ignorant. I demonstrated that it is in fact almost impossible to find a religion that doesn’t endorse illegal acts in official dogma.
So rather than arguing against what I actually posted you are now arguing equivalence of the illegal acts mandated. I never mentioned equivalence. I never needed to. Your overly broad erroneous statement never mentioned equivalence. You just said that most religions do not mandate illegal acts. Period.
You are wrong when you say that. That was my point. iI has been proven. Attempting to argue equivalence of the illegal acts betrays that you were wrong when you said the illegal acts didn’t exist in most religions.
Now, the “official dogma” of this is in question, including whether “Fair Game” really incites church members to crime. That’s totally a matter for the court to decide, and decide they have: in favor of the Scientologists. So I fail to see how it can be that the organizatino is a crime syndicate as you seem to be saying.
At best, it’s a case of he-said she-said, I’d say. Interesting story, but not nearly the open-and-shut case you make it out to be. In fact, this kind of stuff is also seen in other religions. MLK used Christian principles to justify his violation of the law. Does that mean that the Baptist Church is dangerous?
You need to be more specific. What part of the way it is run lends you to believe this to be so, other than the spelling of its name? I think that’s about all the evidence you have offered up until now, and that’s hardly a smoking gun.
I never said there was ** tomndebb**. I said that “RCs not so long ago, and possibly still today, were made to feel obliged to make a donation”. That is not a fee.
Or are you suggesting that all the stories I have been told of the 1960s and the collection plate being handed ‘round and the pointed looks for those not giving enough were all made up?
There is a difference between a fee and a feeling of obligation.
It’s CORE to the question asked in the OP. It’s different from religions I’m used to, and that is a problem. CoS charges in excess of $300,000 to go through their “program”. That is a problem. They SUE PEOPLE who quote their “intellectual property” for the purpose of criticizing it. That is a problem. They brainwash people and take their money. That is two problems.
If they were a real religion, with only the best interests of the people in mind, NONE of this would happen. Heck Gideon’s gives away free Bibles every minute of every day. Simply put, the CoS exists expressly for the purpose of making money. Hiding behind their copyright to avoid criticism is CORE.
The Chicago Reader does not claim to an altruistic religion IMHO any comparisons are moot.
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
That last sentence should read, “The Chicago Reader does not claim to be an altruistic religion, and therefore IMHO any comparisons are moot.”
Maybe you should read up a bit more about this.
What’s funny is that portions of the essay you quoted are being rewritten, regrabbed, reeditted and reposted all over the internet with varying degrees of certainty about whether L. Ron Hubbard said the thing. It’s not at all clear what’s going on, other than there are a number of different sources that indicate that Hubbard said such a thing. It’s by no mean a proven fact in my book, and didn’t seem to stand up in court, for one.
However, even if he did say such a thing, that does not make the religion a problem or dangerous. As I pointed out, there are other religions that the same complaint could be leveled against. We don’t single out the religions as being problematic just because they had unscrupulous people in charge.
We might take the case of Joseph Smith who clearly had a “colorful” past, to say the least. Does this automatically mean that Mormonism is problematic and shouldn’t be labelled a religion? Absolutely not. In terms of the legal definition of a religion, the LDS Church is a religion. Likewise for Scientology.
I don’t care if Hubbard had ten wives and was a cocaine addict with gingivitis, he still founded a religion of which people who are members find speaks to part of their spiritual life.
Actually, in the eyes of the law, civil disobedience is worse. One could conceivably dispose of someone quitely and without remorse perfectly within the bounds of the law.
Shall we look into what other religions say about unbelievers and those who “fall away”? I tell you, it ain’t pretty, for the most part.