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Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/5/2010 4:14:51 PM   
hertz


Posts: 1315
Joined: 8/7/2010
Status: offline 		The behaviour of the Church of Scientology is being questioned by some of its members, who, although they still believe in the basic beliefs, are of the opinion that the Church itself has been hijacked and led astray by its leadership...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMDGikPmEyw

This is part 1 of a BBC1 show. There are another 3 parts on the same page.

http://wiki.whyweprotest.net/Freezone

Stamp Out The Squirrels!

http://gathering-minds.net/a-laymans-guide-to-the-freezone

Does anyone here know anything about this stuff? Freezone Scientology seems to be Scientology without the focus on money and celebrities. That sounds OK, doesn't it?
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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/5/2010 4:16:03 PM   
willbeurdaddy


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Status: offline 		The square root of ridiculous is still ridiculous.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/5/2010 4:27:41 PM   
Aylee


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Status: offline 		So what are they saying?  That Tom Cruise is NOT the ONE?

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/7/2010 8:00:01 AM   
GotSteel


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quote:

ORIGINAL: hertz
Does anyone here know anything about this stuff? Freezone Scientology seems to be Scientology without the focus on money and celebrities. That sounds OK, doesn't it?


Do they teach that belief in Christianity is caused by being possessed by a brainwashed alien ghost?

Also do they convince people to go off their meds?

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/7/2010 8:59:01 AM   
Moonhead


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Status: offline 		No idea.

Yes. They're adamant about people not using medication, particularly psychiatric drugs. Tom Cruise's bizarre behaviour on talk shows a few years back seems to have been mostly down to his being told that he had to cut it out with the perscription downers. I think with the attention (mostly bad) this gathered, it wasn't one of the cof$'s smarter moves...

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/7/2010 1:57:55 PM   
hertz


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Status: offline 		I might be a bit off-side on this, but it strikes me that most beliefs, when you get down to it, are a bit bonkers. Even the ones that are not usually considered to be bonkers are, if you look at them from a different place than you usually sit, a bit bonkers. Quantum Mechanics, the Invisible Hand thing, Christianity, the Internet... Bonkers, one and all. Why should we judge something as crazy as Scientology to a higher standard than we allow for all this other crazy stuff? In the end, it's a judgement call, surely?

Some of the people who have talked about Scientology say that the practice of their bonkers religion works for them - they just don't like the Church itself. This sounds fine to me, and certainly no crazier than believing in Jehovah or Allah.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/7/2010 2:30:26 PM   
pahunkboy


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From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		it is a money pit.

while some of the self improvement ideas are ok-  the quest is to sell book, tapes and videos- to climb up the enlightenment.

think AMWAY.  

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/7/2010 4:39:46 PM   
willbeurdaddy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: hertz

Quantum Mechanics, the Invisible Hand thing,



Far from being bonkers, QM is quite elegant and logical.

And the "invisible hand" is the logical consequence of one assumption...that each individual (and yes, collectives of individuals behave as an individual) ...acts in its own self interest. While no assumption is universally true, that one is close enough that there is no question that the "invisible hand" is by far the purest economic theory. It only breaks down when a minority collective amasses so much power in a given area that its self interest overrides and is inimicable to the interests of the majority (ie "society"). Then steps are needed to curtail that power...ie regulation.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 11:19:51 AM   
GotSteel


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quote:

ORIGINAL: hertz
Some of the people who have talked about Scientology say that the practice of their bonkers religion works for them - they just don't like the Church itself. This sounds fine to me, and certainly no crazier than believing in Jehovah or Allah.

It depends on what sort of belief in Jehovah or Allah we are talking about, are we talking about Unitarians or Jehovah's Witnesses for instance. In one case their belief might be so vestigial as to effect their life in no determinable way. In the other their belief might be opposed to reality to the point that it gets them killed. Refusing medical treatment is one of those things that has very demonstrable real world consequences and I'd put any group that advocates said practice on the far end of the ridiculous scale. So even if this group isn't any father out their than certain beliefs in Jehovah or Allah, that isn't saying much.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 11:32:14 AM   
LadyRian


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Status: offline 		L Ron Hubbard, Sci Fi author and an astute observer of how he could profit handsomely from turning Sci Fi into religion.

"What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown.Sam Moskowicz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money.[/link] Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors.[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-hlied-53]According to The visual encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money.[/link]Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy. After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951,Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and  expressing interest in starting a religion."

[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-funnyroom-87]

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 11:54:17 AM   
Aneirin


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From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		I saw the tv programmes too and it was interesting to see the total turn of events as regarding the presenter, he finally getting what he set out to find.

But scientology is just another belief for those people that need to believe, but like all religions have done, scientology is now splintering and undoubtedly it will splinter again ad finitum until it splinters into nothing beyond a set of ideas one vaguely clings to when the mind needs to think about things beyond the plain to see.

But of religions, those long established and those not so, haven't they all at some point been about creating wealth ? As to remember, wealth often comes with power, the power that can be counted on when the belief fails.

But money, wealth and the creation of it, is a religion to many, methinks religion and wealth go hand in hand.

< Message edited by Aneirin -- 10/8/2010 11:56:03 AM >

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 12:05:44 PM   
DomKen


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From: Chicago, IL
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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyRian

L Ron Hubbard, Sci Fi author and an astute observer of how he could profit handsomely from turning Sci Fi into religion.

"What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown.Sam Moskowicz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money.[/link] Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors.[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-hlied-53]According to The visual encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money.[/link]Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy. After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951,Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and  expressing interest in starting a religion."

[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-funnyroom-87]

I doubt wiki is able to keep the truth up for long, scientologists are pretty determined to sanitize history.

Hubbard was a hack writer of pulp fiction. He wasn't interested in telling good stories but solely in making money. He wrote under many psuedonyms for many genre pulp fiction magazines during the 30's and 40's. During the late 40's he saw the self help craze and decided to cash in. He wrote Dianetics and it made a lot of money but suddenly he found himself paying high taxes which he didn't like. At a party at John Campbell's home he was complaining about how much he was paying in taxes and someone, pehaps Campbell, suggested he claim Dianetics was a religion. Unfortunately for all of humanity he ran with it. It seems clear that he invented Xenu etc. sometime in the mid to late 60's to fulfill the expectations of the suckers he was stealing from.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 12:13:11 PM   
willbeurdaddy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen


quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyRian

L Ron Hubbard, Sci Fi author and an astute observer of how he could profit handsomely from turning Sci Fi into religion.

"What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown.Sam Moskowicz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money.[/link] Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors.[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-hlied-53]According to The visual encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money.[/link]Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy. After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951,Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and  expressing interest in starting a religion."

[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-funnyroom-87]

I doubt wiki is able to keep the truth up for long, scientologists are pretty determined to sanitize history.

Hubbard was a hack writer of pulp fiction. He wasn't interested in telling good stories but solely in making money. He wrote under many psuedonyms for many genre pulp fiction magazines during the 30's and 40's. During the late 40's he saw the self help craze and decided to cash in. He wrote Dianetics and it made a lot of money but suddenly he found himself paying high taxes which he didn't like. At a party at John Campbell's home he was complaining about how much he was paying in taxes and someone, pehaps Campbell, suggested he claim Dianetics was a religion. Unfortunately for all of humanity he ran with it. It seems clear that he invented Xenu etc. sometime in the mid to late 60's to fulfill the expectations of the suckers he was stealing from.


Like all other religions.

_____________________________

Hear the lark
and harken
to the barking of the dogfox,
gone to ground.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 2:06:46 PM   
hertz


Posts: 1315
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Status: offline 		Funny thing... I'm a hard-line atheist. There's no God, I am certain of it. And I totally go with the idea that religion is about groups of people or individuals taking power for themselves with a bit of story-telling.

But (and this is the important bit), having seen what my fellow atheists are capable of; the sheer, bloody-minded bigotry and ignorant self-centredness of many of them (Richard Dawkins springs to mind), I find myself cheering for those with a bit of faith. And that includes the fundamentalist Scientologists. It doesn't have to be all about money. It doesn't have to be all about greed, or the survival of the fittest. Sometimes, I think it can be about having some sort of moral code to live to, and a set of standards to live up to. To be honest, I don't really care much that the belief itself might not stand up to scrutiny.

I dunno...

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 2:26:05 PM   
Fellow


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Status: offline 		Why should we care? These are free adults spending their own time and money. 

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 2:32:24 PM   
hertz


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Fellow

Why should we care? These are free adults spending their own time and money. 


Yeah - Amen to that.

But it's never quite that simple, much as I wish it was. If people are being exploited and used, brainwashed even, in some sort of Cultish fashion, then I guess I feel an obligation to intervene. The problem is knowing where the line is...

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 4:43:55 PM   
DomKen


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From: Chicago, IL
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Fellow

Why should we care? These are free adults spending their own time and money. 

Because it isn't always about adults and Scientology routinely kills people.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/8/2010 5:58:27 PM   
thornhappy


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Status: offline 		Like some Christian sects that only allow faith healing.

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/10/2010 7:21:20 AM   
Moonhead


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Joined: 9/21/2009
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen


quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyRian

L Ron Hubbard, Sci Fi author and an astute observer of how he could profit handsomely from turning Sci Fi into religion.

"What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown.Sam Moskowicz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money.[/link] Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors.[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-hlied-53]According to The visual encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money.[/link]Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy. After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951,Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and  expressing interest in starting a religion."

[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-funnyroom-87]

I doubt wiki is able to keep the truth up for long, scientologists are pretty determined to sanitize history.

Hubbard was a hack writer of pulp fiction. He wasn't interested in telling good stories but solely in making money. He wrote under many psuedonyms for many genre pulp fiction magazines during the 30's and 40's. During the late 40's he saw the self help craze and decided to cash in. He wrote Dianetics and it made a lot of money but suddenly he found himself paying high taxes which he didn't like. At a party at John Campbell's home he was complaining about how much he was paying in taxes and someone, pehaps Campbell, suggested he claim Dianetics was a religion. Unfortunately for all of humanity he ran with it. It seems clear that he invented Xenu etc. sometime in the mid to late 60's to fulfill the expectations of the suckers he was stealing from.

There's an interesting aside to that, that rarely gets mentioned in these discussions.
Part of the C0f$'s approach to Hubbard, is to try to get him retconned as a much more important and significant figure in pulp SF than he ever was. This argument is, to anybody who's ever read any of the godawful AE Van Vogt pastiches he spent his career shitting out, very funny indeed. His best work is a couple of horror stories, and everything else is near unreadable.
When Hubbard's stash of necro manuscripts began to see print in the mid '80s, contiongents of $cientologists were sent off to the SF worldcon every year a new volume of drivel emerged, in order to block vote for it in a bid to get the shitawful books in question a Hugo. Mercifully, this always failed.
(The Hugo Award is one of the two big science fiction gongs, and is voted for by attendees at the previous year's worldcon. THis is one reason why it tends to be monopolised by American writers, as the worldcon is rarely held outside of the 'States.)

John Campbell was, early on, pushing dianetics very aggressively. Alfred Bester tells a wonderful story about Campbell insisting that he read the galley proofs of the first dianetics article, and remove all references to Frewudian psychology from a short story he'd submitted before he agreed to buy it...

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I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted...
(Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)

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RE: Fundamentalist Scientology - 10/10/2010 8:05:10 AM   
Demspotis


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quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

It depends on what sort of belief in Jehovah or Allah we are talking about, are we talking about Unitarians or Jehovah's Witnesses for instance. In one case their belief might be so vestigial as to effect their life in no determinable way. In the other their belief might be opposed to reality to the point that it gets them killed. Refusing medical treatment is one of those things that has very demonstrable real world consequences and I'd put any group that advocates said practice on the far end of the ridiculous scale. So even if this group isn't any father out their than certain beliefs in Jehovah or Allah, that isn't saying much.



Some information, drawn from having studied the histories and teachings of the groups in question:

Jehovah's Witnesses are not the ones that believe in "refusing medical treatment" - that would be the "Christian Scientists". Jehovah's Witnesses refuse one particular kind of procedure, blood transfusion, because they interpret it as a violation of the Biblical ban (Old and New Testaments alike) on ingesting blood. (The larger Christian groups mostly just ignore that inconvenient rule.) They are quite happy to use alternatives for that particular procedure, when such exist, and they've gone to some lengths to promote alternatives and awareness of them. Other types of medical treatment pose no problem for them.

Hmm, and "Unitarians" isn't very specific. A Unitarian is really any Christian who doesn't follow the Trinity doctrine, but maintains the fundamental Abrahamic teaching that "God is One"; consequently, they distinguish between "the Son of God" and "God" rejecting the concept of "God the Son". The Unitarian/Trinitarian schism might be earliest formalized schism in Christianity, since it was one of the main subjects of the Council of Nicaea, which chose some of the many rival interpretations of Christianity then existing as the right ones, and attempted to ban the others. So, to this day, Trinitarians and Unitarians each see the other side as heretics.

Technically, btw, Jehovah's Witnesses are a Unitarian form of Christianity. There are other Unitarian church groups, in the US and in other parts of the world. (I detail a couple of them later on.)

But you were probably talking about the Unitarian Universalist Association and its members; most, in the US and Canada, who call themselves "Unitarian" nowadays are in the UUA. This denomination does not claim to be Christian anymore, because decades ago, it adopted a non-creedal stance, in favor of a belief in "A Free and Open Search for Truth"; they look to learn from many religions, and are open and welcoming to members with many kinds of beliefs, but none is imposed on the members. It ends up being like an "interfaith religion", in effect.

That group started from the merger of two denominations in the US, which were both types of "liberal Christianity". Universalism is based on "universal salvation", a belief that Jesus saved everyone, and thus that no one is damned. There is a joke about all this: "Universalists believe that God is too good to damn humanity. Unitarians believe humans are too good to be damned." Anyway, after the two groups joined, the new denomination went even farther and stomped imposing a code of beliefs, but instead adopting a shared set of social values and ideals. However, some congregations from the two original denominations declined to join, so there are still some actual Unitarian and Universalist churches out there, probably maintaining their own independent denominations.

Vampire fans and fetishists may be interested to know that Unitarian Christianity has a very long history in Transylvania. :) Also, as a result of missionary activity by Unitarians in the 1800's (amazing concept, nowadays!) there are a surprising number of Unitarian Christians in northeastern India. These kinds of Unitarians (along with Jehovah's Witnesses, but unlike the UUA) do not have "vestigial" belief in God/Jehovah/YHWH, they have very clear and strong beliefs, drawn from their understandings of the Bible.


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