The Cult of Scientology

Asiaprod

DaveMcG wrote: »

I'd be more inclined to take scientology seriously if L. Ron Hubbard was crucified. And not a science fiction writer.

Can we crucify Tom Cruise instead?

Only if you include John Travolta. A proper crucifixion requires three sacrifices

cavedave

Asiaprod
A proper crucifixion requires three sacrifices

Can we have a vote on who number 3 will be?
http://www.topsocialite.com/67-celebrities-who-are-scientologists/

Free Katie

oriain

Didn't the results of the last census show that there were officially no Scientologists in Ireland? Yet the "church" is there, bold as anything on Abbey Street for I don't know how many years. I smell dirty shenanigans I do!

Although I had a lot of fun when I had that stress test with that machine to measure my thenon-something-or-other levels.

South Park and Germany have the right idea if you ask me!

Dades

cavedave wrote: »

Can we have a vote on who number 3 will be?

At the moment - I'm thinking Lisa Marie Presley.

But everyone else is a close second.

Tim Robbins

eezarthegreat wrote: »

Yeah it's been there a while, trying to gage how people feel in general about the cult itself....but the obvious idiots are out with their funboy remarks

It's hard to legislate against them.
Firstly do you legislate against the mysterious unsubstantiated believes, well then you have to get rid of Christianity, Islam and every major religion.

Secondly, do you legislate that a group that takes money from you. Well then you have legislate against most religions again. Some evangelicals make you, or suggest you pay 10% of your salary. How different is that?

Basically, all Scientology is a new age religion, which also has scripture, tonnes of anecdotes of helping people with their lives and probably takes more money from you than the traditional ones. You can't ban it outright unless you have a way of objectively differentiating it or else you have to ban other religions.

In fact, Scientiology is probably a very good reason for an atheist to bring their children up with some form of Christianity. At least they have some way of learning about religion in a reasonable safe, controlled enviroment and see what all this faithy stuff is all about. If they are logical person, they'll see the holes and leave it.

However, if they are faithy person and never get experience of a "good" religion, they are just more susceptible to getting nabbed by Scientologists or a Christian cult.

eezarthegreat

They had a thing on RTE yonks ago and it claimed that tom cruise pays the rent on the abbey street building?

Either way, it's involved in a lot of under the table work, violence, coercion and threatening behaviour

Sicko cult for the sick masses

Tim Robbins

eezarthegreat wrote: »

Either way, it's involved in a lot of under the table work, violence, coercion and threatening behaviour

Christianity has been involved in all the above. In fact there is ample evidence of paedophilia - a most heinous Crime - in the state's largest church?

I think you are missing the point. How do you legislate against Scientology and leave Religions which had covered up Paedophila alone?

cavedave

eezarthegreat

Sicko cult for the sick masses

Does that comment indicate a certain disdain for the plain people of Ireland?

seamus

oriain wrote: »

Didn't the results of the last census show that there were officially no Scientologists in Ireland?

Afaik, the census only recognises "official" religions when tabulating the result.

So people who put down "Jedi" and other such nonsense, get put in the "Not Stated" category when it comes to counting. Afaik, "Atheist" is officially put into the "No Religion" category.

The CSO isn't overly helpful in its results though. I can't seem to find an extended breakdown. The "Other Stated Religions" category shows the biggest growth, fuelled mostly by Islam - which is now the third biggest religion (4th if you include "No religion") - but Islam stills gets lumped into "Other".

eezarthegreat

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Christianity has been involved in all the above. In fact there is ample evidence of paedophilia - a most heinous Crime - in the state's largest church?

I think you are missing the point. How do you legislate against Scientology and leave Religions which had covered up Paedophila alone?

Sounds like someone is found of scientology

As I said before I'm in now way defending christianity or any of the rest, scientology has been established in recent years and is obviously a complete money hungry farce.

You can doubt and question christianity all you want but it's here, established, respected and loved, not-innocent but it does not preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings

Johnmb

eezarthegreat wrote: »

You can doubt and question christianity all you want but it's here, established, respected and loved, not-innocent but it does not preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings

???
Are you talking about christianity as in the religion that tortured people to force them to believe, and still threaten people with hellfire and damnation as being a religion that doesn't preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings? Or do you use the term to refer to something else?

as for the scientologists, they are the equivalent of a dangerous christian cult. No more dangerous, nor any less dangerous, just more well known.

cavedave

it does not preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings

Have you read the bible? It is mainly advice on what you can kill people for and how to kill them.

(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.


(Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purge from Israel.


(Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed: they have forfeited their lives.

(Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.

Dades

cavedave wrote: »

Have you read the bible? It is mainly advice on what you can kill people for and how to kill them.

*Sigh*

That was the Old Testament God before he went to therapy.

death1234567

cavedave wrote: »

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.

Sounds fair to me . You can beat them until they are half dead and it will take one or two days for them to die but if you make it quick and painless your up the creek. Isn't the bible great.

Tim Robbins

eezarthegreat wrote: »

You can doubt and question christianity all you want but it's here, established, respected and loved, not-innocent but it does not preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings

I am afaid you are not really thinking about this very objectively.

Your criteria is impossible to measure objectively. Let's have a look:

1. established - so it Scientology
2. respected - Christianity gets mixed feedback, more to the point how do you measure respect objectively?
3. loved - again subjective.
4. does not preach hatred or evil - again this is all subjective.

So you have no objective and reliable criteria to differentiate between Scientology and Christianity only a bit a of fluffy logic and your own opinion.

In fact it's actually very hard to objectively differentiate between Scientology and other Religions. They all have wishy washy views of truth with absolutely no objective evidence. They all take money off people.

So the only thing you could do is legislate that a religion can only take so much money off someone, but then you have two problems:
1. You have taken away someone right to give as much money as they want.
2. You'd have to do that to know religions.

So you haven't really made any progress in this thread. In fact you have missed a very pertinent point i.e. the difficulty in objectively differentiating between religion and cults and doing it fairly.

cavedave

Dades

That was the Old Testament God before he went to therapy.

I heard he was Bipolar

gramlab

cavedave wrote: »

(Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.

Never knew the bible was so safety concious and ahead of its time.

No lost time accident to report to the HSA.

Zillah

Dades wrote: »

*Sigh*

That was the Old Testament God before he went to therapy.

Some Gnostics maintain that Yaweh of the Old Testament is the very embodiment of evil. Seems a much more comfortable fit than the normal attempts believers have to make to shoe-horn their God into the all-loving category.

Zillah

eezarthegreat wrote: »

You can doubt and question christianity all you want but it's here, established, respected and loved, not-innocent but it does not preach hatred or evil and doesn't incite negative feelings

Ahahahaha.

Oh...wow.

Ahahahaha.

eezarthegreat

Obviously the bible says a lot of ****, nobody in their right mind would follow it to a tee.

I have never been told that if I wanted to learn more about a religion I would have to pay so don't give me this whole "you're missing the point ****" as I get it all and I understand the points raised.

I have never read the bible in whole but I have never felt the idea imposed on me of "if somebody doesn't believe what I do they must be dealt with" and before anybody says it the reason I have beef with this cult is because it casues more harm than good and at least, as flawed as it is, christianity can do THAT right....at least

Zillah

eezarthegreat wrote: »

and before anybody says it the reason I have beef with this cult is because it casues more harm than good and at least, as flawed as it is, christianity can do THAT right....at least

Ahahahaha. Oh man.

1 - Anti-homosexuality.
2 - Anti-contraception.
3 - Child molestation.
4 - Centuries of repressive culture.

And thats only the stuff we're dealing with now. In the past they were much worse and only stopped because they were forced to.

Dades

eezarthegreat wrote: »

I have never read the bible in whole but I have never felt the idea imposed on me of "if somebody doesn't believe what I do they must be dealt with" and before anybody says it the reason I have beef with this cult is because it casues more harm than good and at least, as flawed as it is, christianity can do THAT right....at least

Personally I haven't been "dealt with" by either Christianity or Scientology - have you?

seamus

eezarthegreat wrote: »

Obviously the bible says a lot of ****, nobody in their right mind would follow it to a tee.

Then we have vast swathes of people who aren't in their right mind. Most evangelists and "religious" people tend to pick and choose what parts of the bible/torah/koran they follow, but the bits they do choose they take as gospel (no pun intended).

Stories are good for explaining morals. They are not rules on how to live.

eezarthegreat

Dades wrote: »

Personally I haven't been "dealt with" by either Christianity or Scientology - have you?

You know what I mean, the CoS have it so that if anybody speaks out they find themselves in trouble. Of course the church of christianity is messed up in a lot of ways but they don't have this dictator style approach in which if you say negative things then you get people following you, flyers in your estate posting random untrue **** about you, and sure I agree, if they were not forced to it they'd still be up to what they are well known for :eek:

I was raised a catholic, but these days you question a lot you know? So I really couldn't say that i'm a devote or anything because I don't practise (as often as I should) but the Cos is a cult. Bottom line.

You could say the same about every religion I know but all that aside I think everybody that knows about it could and would agree that it is and to a futher extent agree that it has potential to be dangerous.

And at the end of the day, I'd rather be a catholic than part of scientology or have no faith at all

Dades

We've had loads of threads about Scientology here and I don't remember a single defense made of it, so I'm not sure where you get this idea of a "dictator style approach". I've also never heard personally of anyone getting harassed by them. Disdain is the only response I've ever come across.

eezarthegreat wrote: »

And at the end of the day, I'd rather be a catholic than part of scientology or have no faith at all

I'd rather be part of what I believe to be true!

eezarthegreat

Dades wrote: »

We've had loads of threads about Scientology here and I don't remember a single defense made of it, so I'm not sure where you get this idea of a "dictator style approach". I've also never heard personally of anyone getting harassed by them. Disdain is the only response I've ever come across.

I'd rather be part of what I believe to be true!

I can't go into it as it was a friend of mine but he was in some weird situations with them that's why it's so personal to me as he became very upset to the point of an almost breakdown from being hounded by them

Well you have your beliefs and i got mine

cavedave

DinoBot

eezarthegreat wrote: »

I was raised a catholic, but these days you question a lot you know? So I really couldn't say that i'm a devote or anything because I don't practise (as often as I should)


And at the end of the day, I'd rather be a catholic than part of scientology or have no faith at all

You say you dont really practice much nowadays, so you really dont have faith. So whats your fear of having no faith at all ? your almost there.
Would you rather have "faith" in something you dont believe in or just dont bother thinking about too much rather than having to engage your brain ?

At the end of the day you say you would rather be catholic, but by the sounds of it your catholic by birth and not choice.
Do you think that you are so important that you just happened to be born in the one true faith, god must love you :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Dave!

Jeez DinoBot, a little heavy on the evangelism!

eamon234

Tim Robbins wrote: »

I am afaid you are not really thinking about this very objectively.

Your criteria is impossible to measure objectively. Let's have a look:

1. established - so it Scientology
2. respected - Christianity gets mixed feedback, more to the point how do you measure respect objectively?
3. loved - again subjective.
4. does not preach hatred or evil - again this is all subjective.

So you have no objective and reliable criteria to differentiate between Scientology and Christianity only a bit a of fluffy logic and your own opinion.

In fact it's actually very hard to objectively differentiate between Scientology and other Religions. They all have wishy washy views of truth with absolutely no objective evidence. They all take money off people.

So the only thing you could do is legislate that a religion can only take so much money off someone, but then you have two problems:
1. You have taken away someone right to give as much money as they want.
2. You'd have to do that to know religions.

So you haven't really made any progress in this thread. In fact you have missed a very pertinent point i.e. the difficulty in objectively differentiating between religion and cults and doing it fairly.

Try and join the Church of Scientology with no money and see what happens.