Scientology: what is it?

[FarCry]

More bullshit for greed and power.

[meta0747]

It's a major corporation/mafia, in which their so called religion is a very small percentage...

Its like another form of Freemasonry

[Broncoi!]

i only watched the south park episode and it was pretty embarasing for them i must say

[Nietzsche13]

Strict, stern, narrow, and rigid.

[Benzine87]

Is that ridiculous alien story what they really believe?

And L.ron being a suspected paedophile living on a boat with young boys etc?

[Darwinist]

Originally Posted by Benzine87

Is that ridiculous alien story what they really believe?

Well yes and no. Anyone below the OT III level isn't allowed to read that story, and OT III's and higher are instructed to lie about it to the public and lower level members(because it might make them sick ). But yeah, it's been confirmed by ex-members who have done OTII that it is indeed what they teach.

Originally Posted by Benzine87

And L.ron being a suspected paedophile living on a boat with young boys etc?

Actually he seemed to prefer underage girls. His Commadore Messenger Organization(CMO) was composed of teenagers, male and female, mostly children of Scientologists, and he had a troupe of female CMO's who catered to his every whim in the 70s and 80s, including bathing him and following him around with an ashtray to catch the ashes from his cigarettes. Did he have sex with them? That hasn't been conclusively proven, just rumored.

And I came across this gem of a letter from a Scientology minister to a Potential Trouble Source.

From: tilman@berlin.snafu.de (Tilman Hausherr)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Reverend Bagley speaks
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 1995 16:29:41 GMT

A father got this letter from Reverend Bagley:

[schnip]

<Church of Scientology letterhead>

Rather than let my lawyers have all the fun, I will write to you this
once and straighten you out. I have a great urge to beggar you to your
last pair of socks, but I will curb the desire a little longer. If you
had the gut of a demented swineherd you would have read those pieces of
literature I so graciously had sent to you... do not judge people by
yourself. Not everyone is a mass murderer like yourself. Yes, I know
quite a bit about you and your various projects during the war. And how
do you sleep at night? I hope tis ill... I am expert at harassment, try
me and find out. You are not strong enough. You are not smart enough.
You haven't the funds to go through long lengthy court battles. We have.
Bigger men than you have done their best to stop us. They failed. So
will you because you are a blatant moron in comparison. We joust only
with our peers, others like you we will simply gobble up... one more
word out of you and I'll have you investigated. I might anyway. I have
never seen one person yet that resisted Scientology who didn't have a
great deal to hide. And you evidently won't look at free books sent to
you, so you must, perforce have a great deal to conceal.

[The letter continued with more accusations of guilt on the part of the
father, along with praise of Scientology and concluded on this ominous
note.]

If you want to start a Donnybrook, Buddy, wail away; to use the argot of
the streets I'll just start my people to work on you and then before
long you will be broke, and out of a job and broken in health. Then I
can have my nasty little chuckle about you and get back to work. . .
You won't take long to finish off. I would estimate three weeks.
Remember: I am not a mealy mouthed psalm [sic] canting preacher. I am a
minister of the Church of Scientology I am able to heal the sick and I
do. But I have other abilities which include a knowledge of men's minds
that I will use to crush you to your knees. You or any other wretch that
stands in our way. Cause the list is long, but their careers are very
short of those that have jousted with us.

With the utmost sincerity possible



Reverend Andrew Bagley
Organisational Secretary

P.S.: Don't reply to this letter. If I want to get in touch with you,
I'll be able to find you. Anywhere.

[schnip]

Reverend Andrew Bagley wrote this letter to a father who didn't want to
pay the courses of his son, and reported the scienos.

Later, the father paid the bill, and his son took approximately $4,500
worth more courses in Scientology paying for them himself the next time
from a $5,000 inheritance.

From: Paulette Cooper, "The scandal of Scientology" (re-formatted, sorry
for the typos)

[swirldog]

Originally Posted by ErikHS

They must be doing something right since their so big.

Quit being so afraid of anything spiritual!

IMO, getting in the heads of Hollywood actors with too much money and too little intelligence. What they're doing right is marketing.

At least Christianity and Judaism are historically based. Roman historians mention a man named Jesus in Galilea. We know that Jews were once slaves in Egypt and somehow escaped back to Israel.

Scientology is traced back to L Ron Hubbard who somehow claims to know about aliens coming out of a volcano (or something like that) 65 million years ago. (Or something like that.)

Finally, if I founded some crazy new religion (let's call it swirldogism for S&G) and I marketed it successfully, would it mean swirldogism was a good religion that was helping its members and/or the greater community? Would you defend it because some of the practitioners honestly believed in it?

[james123]

Writer Harlan Ellison describes the origins of Scientology :

Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes!

I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers. L. Ron Hubbard was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.

Wings: He claimed to have written _Dianetics_ in a weekend, and nobody can deny it.

Ellison: That's true. He wrote _Dianetics_ in one weekend, and you know how he used to write? He used to take a roll of white paper, like paper you wrap fish in. He had it on the wall, and he would roll it into the typewriter and he would begin typing. When he was done, he would tear it off and leave it as one whole long novel.

We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

Wings: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: "The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it."

Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stolee a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior. I mean he really believed that. He was also very nervous when I was in his office because I was a Jew. You know, he was afraid maybe I would spring horns or something.

Anyhow, the way he conned John was that he had J. A. Winter, who was a doctor, who was a close friend of John's, and he got him to run this article on Dianetics, the new science of mental health.

Wings: Dianometry was the first article, I believe.

Ellison: Right. And science fiction fans will go for any goddamm thing. They'll believe anything, man, they will believe in the abominable snowman and the Bermuda Triangle, in Pyramid Power, in EST, in Scientology, in the Second Coming, they'll believe in any goddamm thing, they don't give a shit. They go to see _Star Wars_; they think it is for real!

So science fiction fans picked it up, they began proselytizing, he started making money, when he had made enough money he was able to spread out a little more, then he got more cuckoos, you know, pre-Charlie Manson assholes that had no place else to go, and he began talking to these loons as if _Dianetics_ really meant something. Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".

Now, they've gotten so big that they own property all over the country, and it is impossible to stop it. They infiltrated the FBI, they infiltrated the tax department, ... the funny thing is, Ron Hubbard and I still occasionally communicate with each other. Every once in a while, a couple or three times a year, we exchange letters. And I write to him, you know, and I say, "Hey Ron, when is this bullshit going to cease? These cuckoos are really driving me crazy! They come around the house with pamphlets!" And he writes me back, and he says, "It's the good work, it's the good work."

It's all very funny stuff. He was going to write a new story for me for an anthology but I guess he got too busy counting his money. I don't know.

[Darwinist]

Ok, disregard ALL of the above.

Scientology deserves to die for bringing this unholy abortion into the world...

L. Ron Hubbard Sings(feat. Frank Stallone, John Travolta and more!!!)

[Pridelives]

Scientology must be scurged from the earth.