posted
No denying that the German government can get a bit fanatical at times, but they seems hell-bend on ridding Germany of the Church of Scientology, saying that it is a threat to the Constitution of Germany and at "...abolishing the free democratic basic order".
Seems a little extreme when you consider that Scientology only has about 6,000 members in a country of 82.4 million.
For the record, I am no big supporter of Scientology, and while there may be some misconduct by some individual members, I see not more than any other religion. Germany has also revoked Scientology status as an officially recognized church.
The whole thing seems irrational or at least hyper-rationalized.
Again, not a big supporter of Scientology, but this seems a little overboard.
posted
Revoking their religious charter would be different from a ban in my opinion. The surveillance of scientologists is outrageous by American ideals (I almost wrote standards but realized that might not really be true).
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
The difference between Scientology and other religions at present is that the Church of Scientology is frequently breaching what most countries consider the boundaries of ethical and legal behavior. The lengths that they will go to to silence or discredit dissidents are unlike anything regularly perpetrated by other churches and religious organizations and often amount to ridiculous barratry and other stuff that comes off as being really, really foul.
Why Scientology gets banned from countries like this is because they run afoul of the law so often and get caught doing really reprehensible stuff, so governments eventually revoke their ability to use their religious status as a shield of any sort.
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posted
Europeans do seem to think differently from Americans about the legitimate powers of government. The idea of the state making a list of worthy religions seems very dangerous to me, an American.
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Europeans do seem to think differently from Americans about the legitimate powers of government. The idea of the state making a list of worthy religions seems very dangerous to me, an American.
I think that's mostly a tax thing.
My understanding is, when a German gets his tax form, there's a little box where you can select the church you belong to, and if you check a box, then you get levied an extra tax, and that money goes to your church. If you check nothing, then you don't lose any money. The government is basically handling the collection of tithes.
So if scientology gets dropped off the lists, then its members won't be able to check a little box and have the government collect on behalf of the church.
It's not like the govenrment is declaring that you can't go to the church, or banning its existance. They've just decided not to help them coellct money.
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posted
That's the first I'd heard of the compulsory tithe. Of course, that's probably a holdover from when German = Lutheran. I guess we should just be happy they don't make everyone contribute to the state church regardless of what other church one belongs to.
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posted
I believe it largely has to do with Operation Snow White. (In which the scientologic cult succeeded in infiltrating multiple governments with the purpose of destroying unfavourable records.)
Many European nations are still sore about it, whereas the US seems to have completely forgotten.
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quote:Europeans do seem to think differently from Americans about the legitimate powers of government. The idea of the state making a list of worthy religions seems very dangerous to me, an American.
Well, here's why the controversy over scientology is not really about the religion but rather the organization which runs it:
quote:While acknowledging that a number of his colleagues accept Scientology as a religion, sociologist Stephen A. Kent wrote: "Rather than struggling over whether or not to label Scientology as a religion, I find it far more helpful to view it as a multifaceted transnational corporation, only one element of which is religious."
In addition, there is now solid proof in the form of writings by Hubbard himself that he turned Scientology into a religion pretty much entirely in order to make money off of it.
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quote:In addition, there is now solid proof in the form of writings by Hubbard himself that he turned Scientology into a religion pretty much entirely in order to make money off of it.
I'd be happy to see such evidence, and not in the form of his oft quoted, "The fastest way to make money is to create a religion."
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote: The story of Xenu is covered in OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to advanced members. It is described in more detail in the accompanying confidential "Assists" lecture of 3 October 1968 and is dramatized in Revolt in the Stars (an unpublished screenplay written by L Ron Hubbard during the late 1970s). Direct quotations in this section are from these sources. (See also Scientology beliefs and practices)
Seventy-five million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having an average population of 178 billion.[1][2][3] The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with aliens "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth. Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions[1] of his citizens together to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The spacecraft were identical to the Douglas DC-8 with the exception of having different engines.
When they had reached Teegeeack/Earth, the paralyzed citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously. Only a few aliens' physical bodies survived. Hubbard described the scene in his film script, Revolt in the Stars:
quote: Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction. Debris-studded, and sickly yellow, the atomic clouds followed close on the heels of the winds. Their bow-shaped fronts encroached inexorably upon forest, city and mankind, they delivered their gifts of death and radiation. A skyscraper, tall and arrow-straight, bent over to form a question mark to the very idea of humanity before crumbling into the screaming city below...
– L. Ron Hubbard, Revolt in the Stars treatment
The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions[6] of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data"' (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, et cetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.
In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.
The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and locked him away in a mountain, where he was imprisoned forever by a force field powered by an eternal battery (Some have suggested that Xenu is imprisoned on Earth in the Pyrenees, but Hubbard merely refers to "one of these planets" (of the Galactic Confederacy). He does, however, refer to the Pyrenees as being the site of the last operating "Martian report station", which is probably the source of this particular confusion.[7] Teegeeack/Earth was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since that time.
Any religion that believes this crud, despite being written by a well known science fiction writer does not deserve religious recognition or legal protection of any sort.
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That is absolutely hilarious. Anyone who believes crap like that should be publicly laughed at by children, adults and elderly alike.
it doesnt make the slightest attempt to be even remotely feasible. People are beyond gullible. I bet the scientologists saw a couple epidsodes of celebrity jeopardy and said to themselves, "There are some people stupid enough to believe this @#$%!!"
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quote:In addition, there is now solid proof in the form of writings by Hubbard himself that he turned Scientology into a religion pretty much entirely in order to make money off of it.
I'd be happy to see such evidence, and not in the form of his oft quoted, "The fastest way to make money is to create a religion."
No. It is an actual letter written by Hubbard himself, taken and recorded as evidence by the FBI during its raid on the scientology headquarters.
quote:The arrangements that have been made seem a good temporary measure. On a longer look, however, something more equitable will have to be organized. I am not quite sure what we would call the place - probably not a clinic - but I am sure that it ought to be a company, independent of the HAS [the Hubbard Association of Scientologists] but fed by the HAS. We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation but not in name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. Think up its name, will you. And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and 1. knock psychotherapy into history and 2. make enough money to shine up my operating scope and 3. keep the HAS solvent. It is a problem of practical business. I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we've got to sell. A religious charter would be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick. But I sure could make it stick.
All there in the link.
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posted
pooka: Black Blade = Lovable Guy. Blayne Bradley = Obnoxious Kid (though I bet he'd be fun to geek out with.)
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TrapperKeeper: That is absolutely hilarious. Anyone who believes crap like that should be publicly laughed at by children, adults and elderly alike.
it doesnt make the slightest attempt to be even remotely feasible. People are beyond gullible. I bet the scientologists saw a couple epidsodes of celebrity jeopardy and said to themselves, "There are some people stupid enough to believe this @#$%!!"
Be nice. Members are basically brainwashed into believe it, they're taught things like that if they think about these things too much it will kill them. It sounds like such cartoon nonsense, but the means Scientology goes through to keep it in peoples heads is really awful.
Thinking about that tidbit reminds me of all the interesting things ex(and longtime member) Tory Bezazian has to say in speaking out against it Here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HptefbTrzMU (She comes on like halfway in, and all the rest are worth watching)
Posts: 299 | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
"In addition, there is now solid proof in the form of writings by Hubbard himself that he turned Scientology into a religion pretty much entirely in order to make money off of it."
According to various oldtime scifi writers, TheodoreSturgeon et al, Scientology is the result of a Worldcon* bar bet concerning the plausibility of Heinlein's core plot point in The Sixth Column: the establishment of a totally new religion not based on older beliefs in modern times. While the other writers naysayed the idea, Hubbard was drunk enough to insist that it could be done.
* WorldScienceFictionConvention, home of the HugoAwards
posted
My own feelings of Scientology aside, I am extremely wary of calling an entire religion fraudulent or malignant. Many of the things said about Scientology in the wikipedia article feel like speculation and based on hearsay. Many anti Mormon pamphlets operate on those principles. Most are vicious lies interlaced with the truth so that nobody can distinguish one from the other.
Maybe Scientology is a wicked organization with base purposes. But people have long made similar claims about my own religion, and it isn't true.
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quote:Maybe Scientology is a wicked organization with base purposes. But people have long made similar claims about my own religion, and it isn't true.
Scientology is a wicked organization with base purposes. A cult. If your willing to spend enough time looking it up, it's there. It was created by a loser, and is run by jerks. Hi-ya.
I think I can see where people are coming from concerning no one having the right to say which and which is a religion or isn't, and I guess I'd be there too if it wasn't for the all sorts of 'special allowances' that religions get. And that's what the problem is in Scientology's case.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Hubbard I wouldnt consider a loser, I do like Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth as a breath of fresh air.
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I've read Battlefield Earth probably half a dozen times. It's good fun. Mission Earth took forever to get through (though not nearly as long as you'd expect a 10 book series to take), and didn't need to be nearly that long. But it was fun, too. Certainly not Heinlein, but better than a lot.
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posted
Yes, I read up to partway through the 2nd book. And I'm no stranger to long novels and series, either.
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