What are your thoughts on Scientology???

I am very curouis to know what people think.

 

When posting a thread in The Senate Floor, it is often helpful to not simply ask a direct question only.

You must provide your knowledge of a topic, backed up with some kind of evidence, and give an informed opinion on it.

Perhaps you should do some research into it to post your thoughts on the matter.

I realize that the current events involving individuals like Tom Cruise setting up Scientology tents at movie productions is a starter for discussion, but perhaps we can get a more substantive discussion going on in the matter of Scientology.

What is Scientology?

Why do their programs have monetary fees for enrollment?

Does it change people's lives for the better?

Is it a religion or a philosophy?

 

You have given some good points to start with.

Is it a religion or a philosophy?

Scientology is by all means a religion. I too woundered if it was just a philosophy but as it turns out a great deal of importance is placed on spiritual matters that are useally absent in philosophies.

Why do their programs have monetary fees for enrollment?

This is one of the things that i find to be quite disterbing. The goal of Scientology is to make the world a better place by bettering yourself and the world around you. Why then do they charge money for this informating. The goal of a better world should be all that is needed in order to spread the word free of charge.

Does it change people's lives for the better?

I don't know? If it does great. However by calling it a religion and then charging money for the scripture it seems very shady.

 

Neither. It's a cult.

 

As I have yet to hear of a conservative Scientologist, I think it may have been created to push a political ajenda.

And don't say it....you know there are many Christian Democrats.

 

Scientology started out as a 'science' in the form of Dianetics. Depending on what you read, it was transformed into a 'religion' to attract more people and to gain tax relief worldwide.

There was a very famous High Court case here in Australia concerning scientology, or "Church of New Faith" as it was once called, and its claims for tax exemption on the basis of it being a religion. The High Court upheld it was a religion but on the basis of a pretty wide definition.

Having had a close friend get caught up in scientology I can say that it did him the world of good - he got in for a few years, did all the courses got invloved socially and then got out when he felt he had personally achieved everything he was going to achieve. There were no kidnappings or stalking or requirements to stay away from friends or family. We generally kept our distance during the height of his fervour simply because he was always armed with dianetics literature which was generally in picture book form.

I can honsestly say, having read the 'teaser' information, that it didn't make much sense to me - it was all about a quest to be become 'clear' and seemed to be saying that your perception of the world and your mental happiness is based primarily on recognising and dealing with past experiences that were potentially and subconscously damaging (even something as innocuous as falling off a swing can have some harmful effect on your mental wellbeing).

Dianetics promised a path to clearing your psyche of all of this emotinal baggage -although I don't know specifically how as I declined to spend any money and participate in the courses.

There was nothing spiritual about it - it seemed to be a form of psychology.

It's just big business now - like Microsoft or IBM.

 

So this year we had Michael Moorcock as a guest at a con I help put on. I'm not sure if he told this story at a panel, or just hanging out with our guest relations guy or what. And I'm pretty sure I've heard it before, but this is straight from him.

Apparantly, at some con back in the 70s or so, Moorcock, L. Ron Hubbard, and Harlan Ellison were hanging out and talking about cults and what you'd need for one to be successful. They mention stuff like aliens and having members have to pay as they go. Later on, Hubbard goes on to write Dianetics. Moorcock's quoted as saying something like, "Out of all of us joking about it, Hubbard actually went and did it."

Just an anecdote I thought I'd share.

 

I've also heard that Issac Asimov made a bet with Hubbard that he couldn't make a religion. I've also read that Hubbard made a comment like, "Hey, I could use the money," when referring to making Dianetics.

While on shore leave in San Fransisco, me and two friends were walking by a rather large building when this lady walks out and asks us if we would like to take a personality test. After a small talk, we decided to do it. It was a fairly long test asking what you think of certain actions and what you would do in a situation and so forth.
We finished the tests, she took them away and we waited. While we waited we walked into another room which was a big display area for the Dianetics books. We got a little suspicious. We got our test reuslt back thinking they were going to tell us what we were like, and all they said was that the three of us ahd serious problems that needed fixing and Dianetics would be that fix.
We promplty left.

 

Oh yeah, their personality tests. I remember signing up for a voice over seminar in LA not too long ago and it was taking place at one of the scientology buildings. When I called up the girl at the front desk, she was way too friendly. I put in my reservation for the seminar then the girl started going into this spill about taking some test, trying to sell me sceintology all in one nutshell. I was like, no thanks. She kept going on and on, I eventually hung up and was so put off that I didn't even attend the seminar. Only mormons at my front door have given me that kind of first impression (sorry, don't mean to offend any mormon lurking around. ). But yeah, they got their alien theory thing going on, and if you go to the scientology building on Hollywood Blvd. the main room is full of "Battlefield Earth" merchandise! Worst movie ever!!

 

All I know about it is: L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, Tom Cruise, John Travolta. Never paid much attention to it.

 

From what I've read and heard Tom Cruise is a Dianetics zealot, where Travolta is more casual about it. I have heard good and bad things about Cruise on this, but nothing particularly bad about Travolta. Rumor: Cruise once brought in people to try and recruit fellow workers on a movie set while they got massages he paid for.

Ron Howard was interviewed by Howard Stern recently and Howard asked him about Cruise and Dianetics. Ron basically said it came up but he told Cruise he was not into anything like that, Cruise left him alone about it.

 

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

 

I think it's a cult, and is very misinformed about psychiatry.

 

J-Rod, not everything is about liberals and conservatives. (But if you insist, no self-respecting "liberal" would touch these yahoos, because they're anti-psychiatry and homophobic.) The only agenda it pushes is that of a sociopathic lunatic, the late, not-so-great, L. Ron Hubbard. The man was crazier than an outhouse rat. Read the website I linked to if you don't believe me.

(Oh, and there are parties known as the Christian Democrats, just not in the US, as far as I know.)

Trust me, these people are out there. They believe that we're infested with clumps of souls (thetans) of millions of people who were mass-murdered by some guy named Xenu, who's still imprisoned in a volcano.

Here is the basis of their religion:

Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

Xenu the alien ruler Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).

After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting".

When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.

As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.

That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called "body thetans". And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these "body thetans" and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.


But they don't tell you this until you're in the very top most levels-by then, you're so brainwashed, you'll believe anything they tell you.

Cruise acted like a total jackass yesterday at the Batman Begins premiere. Making out with Katie Holmes, running all over the red carpet and signing autographs. He completely upstaged Christian Bale, who SHOULD have been in the spotlight. Fortunately, Christian is more low-key and likes his privacy, but I still say he should

 

Wow, now that's a religion!

 

So totally owned by the Church of New Worlds.



(Come on... Heinlin fans? Eh?)

 

Eh, I prefer the Cult of Cthulhu myself.

 

J-Rod, not everything is about liberals and conservatives.

You're right, but most things in Hollywood seem to be.

Cruise acted like a total jackass yesterday at the Batman Begins premiere. Making out with Katie Holmes, running all over the red carpet

LOL Hey, if I were bangin' Katie Holms I'd be jumpin' around like a jackass myself.

 

I actually question most scientologists beliefs in the religious aspect of Scientology, it strikes me as more of a philosophical following than a religious following. I'm just taking a guess, but I'm thinking most Scientologists care little about the religious history. It's far different than Christianity or Islam in that way.

 

i feel that if you have to force a belief, it is no longer a belief, it is an opinion.

 

I hate it when people try and push their religeon on me...either going door-to-door or in any of the other various scenarios posted above.

I don't have a problem with those religeons existing, normally, just those annoying peddlers who are out to convert every last person.

Scientology, tho...yeesh...that's a real load. Alien exterminations? H-bombs? I can't believe people would actually believe that kind of rubbish, but I suppose that they've been brainwashed enough you could tell them that an evil monkey would bite them and give them rabies if they didn't sign over all their assets to the organization.

 

Yeah, but remember, they don't tell you the Xenu story until you get to the highest levels. By then, you're so sheltered and brainwashed, you'll believe anything.

 

But it's apparently well-known enough to be posted on the internet...

 

Cult.

 

J-Rod

As I have yet to hear of a conservative Scientologist, I think it may have been created to push a political ajenda.

As far as I know, there has been one member of congress who was a scientologist...Sonny Bono, a Republican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono