To Tom Cruise’s credit he did save someone’s life a few years back when he was married to Nicole Kidman.
Monavis
I saw on the news awhile back that some fundamentalists are training their children and others to be lawyers, to get involved in politics etc. so they can control and vote their beliefs in to the constitution. Bush was voted in to change the supreme court to be more conservative.
People want people to agree with them. One reason for separation of church and state is to protect the minority from the majority.
Monavis
At what point was the basic theology of the church hidden from non-believers? The early Christians didn’t save the weird stuff for people who were already too invested in the church to leave, they started with the weird stuff. And the weird stuff wasn’t even that weird at the time.
Well, any organized christian religion at this point in history would never attempt such a thing. It’s happened in the past, because they were hateful and misguided. But really, Jesus taught to spread the word peacefully, and if they declined… live and let live.
All that said, I don’t care for organized religion at all. I have no use for it, and I do think it causes problems. It marginalizes things into black and white, leaving no room for gray, which discourages anyone to think for themselves or question authority.
Anyway, we are a flawed species. Apparently some (or most?) want to believe in something. Whether they use that as a vehicle for hate and their own fucked up agenda, or actually practice it peacefully is up to them. I’ll concede that religion is a fuel for the extremists… it’s a tragedy and if there was some way to separate those from the peaceful center, then I’d be all for it.
Do you really think that faith and religion will someday be abolished?
I walk into a Scientology center, and ask about the cult/er, church. I bring up the bizarres stuff (Xenu, thetans, L Ron Hubbard’s bizarre life and claims), and laugh in their face. What would they do to me?
Got that cite yet? :dubious:
They’d stun gun you in the crotch, steal your wallet, put you on a DC-8, full of other Wogs like you, and then crash it into a volcano. Who’s got the last laugh now?!
Not true of every religion, or every cult.
I am not a Scientologist, nor do I play one on TV.
The other day I read a little article entitled “How to Talk to a Scientologist,” ostensibly written by someone who’d left on the topic of how to get your loved ones out. It said, in part:
The Xenu stuff isn’t introduced until the OTIII level, and L. Ron taught that learning this information before you were ready would drive you insane or kill you. From what I understand, the folks at the front desk are likely very low-level members and have not reached these teachings.
On the other hand, they are actively taught how to resist “Suppressive Persons” in courses where they scream insults and such at each other in order to develop the ability to blank out and not react in any way at all. My guess is they’d simply mentally label you an “SP” as they ignore everything you say and hustle you out the door pretty quickly.
That explains where Tom got his training:
Oh, please, of course they still do it. They just aren’t as blatant, mostly because they are less unified and powerful. But, for example, the Catholic Church has killed an unknown but large number of people with it’s lies about condoms; they don’t care, because killing means nothing to people who believe in souls.
One way or another. Either we will eliminate it ourselves, probably via genetic engineering, or it will be eliminated because we destroy ourselves. Religion is madness, and unless we cure ourselves it’s sure to kill us as our knowledge and power grows.
Wasn’t the whole point of Gutenberg printing the Bible (as opposed to something else) so that the lay people could gain access to Christianity’s basic theology? I’m having a hard time confirming this with Wikipedia, so I’m probably wrong - but I was told some time ago that before the introduction of movable type, only the clergy could afford access to the Bible, and they exploited this level of information to their advantage.
Or something like that? 
It’s not that they were prohibited from having it, it’s just that it was exceedingly difficult for most people to get a copy of the Bible, or any other book for that matter. Obviously there were plenty of people who really didn’t mind.
On tithing, the big difference to me is that tithing is, as I understand it, voluntary. They may suggest 10%, may even suggest it strongly, but if you don’t have it to give, they aren’t going to strong-arm you into giving it. You can still attend church services, receive counsel, and so on. You could be a parishioner your entire life and not give a cent. In most churches you can even receive assistance in various forms–food closets, clothing, sometimes rent assistance and so on.
With Scientology, you have two options. Fork over ridiculous amounts of cash, or go to work for them for years for a pittance, and if you quit before your contract runs out, you owe them tens of thousands of dollars in fees for the auditing you receive during your employ. They claim the payment system is their “tithe” but it’s certainly not voluntary by any means. In fact, in order to receive any services, you must be a “member” of the international scientological organization which I can’t recall the name of. The first six months are free, but it’s $500 annually after that. This is the service that registers you and every bit of “training” you receive. That’s $500 just to be allowed to register to receive any kind of training, which you then pay thousands of dollars for.
Hell, the auditors are required to own two E-Meters, which they pay out of pocket for. These things are built with a few parts from Radio Shack and a couple tin soup cans. CoS charges around $4200 for them and requires you purchase two… in case one breaks down, you know.
Aside from the moneymaking scam part of it, the part that cracks me up the most is that they believe that once you’ve reached the upper ranks of OT, you quite literally have superpowers–control over “Mest”: matter, energy, space, and time. You can move objects with your mind, and so on. Really? Really?!
Lastly, while most churches seem to be geared towards reaching out to the down-trodden, Scientology won’t do anything for you if you seem to have any actual problems, or are in need of any real help. It’s aimed towards making normal people “better”, not helping folks who need help.
You want to get really wigged out about Scientology, do a little sniffing around about their “Ethics” arm, and the “Office of Special Affairs”, formerly known as the “Guardian’s Office”. Those people give me the serious creeps. The rest of it is sick and cult-y and creepy, the OSA/“Ethics” is downright vicious and evil, both to “SP’s” and to members who’ve committed some perceived slight, like being “down-stat” and not bringing in enough “raw meat” marks.
There is nothing about this group that cares one iota about anything but racking in the cash. They’d be hysterical if they weren’t brainwashing so many people and sucking them dry. Their gross annual income is something like $300,000,000. That’s a good chunk of cash for a group that doesn’t provide charitable services.
I guess, to address the OP, I feel comfortable ridiculing Scientology because as others have pointed out, L. Ron Hubbard himself stated that the quickest way to become a millionaire was to start your own religion. They’re not out to save or serve, they’re out to take your money.
Hell, it was LESS weird. Odd, hippyish, and a lttle boring, but read your Bullfinch if you want WEIRD.
As for tithing, I don’t even believe the shit the Lutherans are teaching my kids, but at the same time I’m sad that, in my unemployed state, I can’t donate like I did because I believe in most of the things they do with my money, which is mostly helping people.
I’d have an easier time believing in the flying spaghetti monster.
Makes as much sense as ritually eating a piece of your savior’s body every week, though.
But then why are you looking for religion to make sense? If it didn’t depend on some power or something outside our complete comprehension, it wouldn’t even *be * religion.
In that case would you consider economics a religion? 
I do not have enough compliments in my vocabulary to express my admiration for this passage. Well done, mswas!
Lapsed as my own religious convictions may be, I grow increasingly nauseated by the vitriol launched upon anyone in history who has ever embraced the concept of a higher power. It is undeniably true that millions of people have, throughout the ages, been persecuted, tormented, tortured and slaughtered in the name of x or y religion. It is equally true, however, that millions of people have, throughout the ages, been persecuted, tormented, tortured and slaughtered due to the fact that they a) were related to the wrong person; b) had sworn allegiance to the wrong monarch; c) possessed some contentious piece of property; d) had chosen to defend their homes, possessions, ways of life, etc. from an invading force; or e) just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In short, people, given full license to act as they will, tend to be cruel to one another. To label religion as the guilty party is to fall into the same trap as those who would blame economics, social class, politics, ancestry or any other abstract concept for the failure of humanity to embrace the Utopian ideal. At best it’s an uninformed and hopelessly simplistic view of history. At worst, it’s the sort of thinking that leads to exactly the same kind of atrocity that is (on the surface) being condemned. “All religions are evil and should be abolished” is not very far removed from “all religious persons should be locked up or shot.”
Well, there are social (though not legal) consequences to slandering Judaism; post-Holocaust, few sane people want the “antisemite” label hung around their necks. Mocking the Virgin Mary can get your ass kicked in many parts of the country. Ditto Mother Theresa and Joan of Arc. Salman Rushdie can tell you better than I about Islam’s ability to laugh at itself. So yeah, I’d have to say that most major religions are less fair game for ridicule than the Scientologists.
Exceptions include the Unification Church and the Branch Davidians.