I see them because I get auto-emails about threads I’ve posted in. $15 well spent.
Also, I would love to know how that statement could have been any more ridiculous than it was.
It’s a philosophy which you don’t agree with and do not even comprehend. Not quite the same as ridiculous. Many people feel that taking a man’s life is horrible, but giving a man life… is also bad. Others differ.
(For the sake of sticking to the discussion, this is an example of tenets held by real religions. Tenets which lead them to certain principled actions, which others disagree with on similarly principled grounds. Yet scientology seems to lack any such sort of thing. As far as we know. Another argument why it’s not really a religion.)
As soon as you click ‘Submit Reply’ it sends a notification with your original message.
I see. It’s so incomprehensible to me that I can’t even know what it is. Staggering.
Agree completely.
I see. Actually I think I can opt-in for emails too, but never understood why someone would want their mailbox so spammed. (Plus think how unhealthy it would be for the dope addiction!)
You can turn 'em on and off too. If there’s a thread I’m particularly interested in, I leave it on, if it’s “People Who Hate Children,” I turn it off.
Of course, that thread just kept pulling me back in. Damn you, curlcoat!
Again, how many Catholics follow the church’s birth control mandates to a T?
And if you don’t use a condom, the church’s leaders aren’t going to come harass you and write it up in a personal file.
Apparently, god does that, probably a subset of Santa Clause’s list. Maybe Xenu, the thetans, or whatever, expects different things from their followers.
And what you always say makes no sense. Take, for example, Christianity and Buddhism. In both faiths, the road to salvation/Nirvana is to live the apostolic life. Adherents try to live like Christ or like Buddha. If you have ever tried to do this yourself, it’s hard. Very hard. Some might say impossible. The only way to remove human “corruption” from religion would be if all of its adherents were able to be successful. This is not likely any time soon.
Not being able to live up to one’s own ideals is essentially human and is by no means hypocrisy. I am also not responsible for the weakness and corruption in my coreligionists. If I were a Catholic, I would not lose the right to criticize the evils in other institutions just because a few priests molested children. I can criticise that, too. But this thread just happens to be about Scientology. There are plenty of others about Catholicism and child abuse.
I don’t even think you know what hypocrisy really means. You fired off a general broadside accusing everyone who dared criticize anything of hypocrisy. If you disgust meter is calibrated so finely, it is amazing you can ever leave the house in the morning. Are all of your beliefs perfectly consistent?
No, I do not think it has. I am pretty “grossed out” by unreason, illogic, and misuse of words with meanings that are well-agreed upon. I keep it to myself in my private life, but on a message board, I can highlight it if I wish. It’s nothing personal.
People in this thread have issues with CoS. You claim that people who have issues with CoS are essentially hypocrites. And you have no clue why I am concluding that you are talking about people in this thread? Go ahead, tell me another one.
It’s not your tone.
Sounds like this thread is intended to be an exercise in this:
No, I think it is more than that. This is a third party asking why people are fixated on P when A does essentially the same thing. The people doing the fixating may not be A or P. I think I was closer to a Tu Quoque when I made my original comment about other religions says the COS was crazier than they were.
This makes no sense. If it isn’t a tu quoque because those responding are neither P nor A, isn’t it more likely to be a problem with the premise - that A and P are comparable and the “fixation” is thus irrational?
Maybe I’m missing something from your argument. But, the fixation is irrational, or more likely arbitrary, to pick one over the other when they are essentially the same. I guess it comes down to a person’s opinion as to which is worse, although millions of people affected vs. thousands pretty much resolves it for me.
I suspect that the part you are missing is this - that the millions directly affected by other religions in horribly detrimental ways tend to have been affected either really long ago (the Crusades, the Inquisition) or far away (Africans deprived of condom use).
To the vast majority of first world type people, most established religions are basically harmless, if one excludes the more rabid and fundamentalist varieties - a mix of social club and community centre. Your average Catholic priest isn’t really up to leading any Albergensian crusades down Main Street, Springfield these days; your average Protestant isn’t reinacting the 30 years War, either.
In contrast, many personally know people who have been intimately harmed by Scientology, which is also being plugged by celebrities. I have no idea what (if anything) Scientology is up to in the third world - they appear to be mostly targeting us, here and now.
Why is it a big mistery that people will “fixate” on something that has the power to harm them or those they know and love, rather than something that doesn’t?
Maeglin, I don’t care if posters in this thread believe that zombie oprah is coming back to lift all be true believers up to oprah heaven, I responded to the OP, which asked about why critics in general are so hard on COS while giving other bullshit a pass. So I answered what I felt. Glad it’s not my tone, because I gotta admit, I sure do dig my own tone.
Submitted for your approval: The first in a three day series of reports on Scientology by the St. Petersburg Times.
A choice bit:
The bit about the leader beating people up for fun, the DDOS on the IRS after Snow White… I can’t take samples without context there.
They do try the same thing over and over again.
There’s also some fun bits where they crack those mandatory confessions out and drop them on people.
Do you have a link for the entire series?
Er. Oops. That link was in there. At one point. My apologies.
What’s the difference between a cult and a religion? A cult acquires the respectability of a religion when it’s been around for a hundred years, claims ten million adherents, maintains a hundred-million-dollar legal defense fund, or controls a billion dollars’ worth of church assets – whichever comes first.