Scientology

[CesareBorgia]

Can someone explain this religion to me? How does it compare to the others, what are their ideas and stands on issues etc.

What books of theirs should I read? What is their bible?

Thank you.

[PhoenixAsh]

In a nutshell...

They believe the soul which they call thetan is imortal but that we just forgot it. We need auditing to relive through past trauma to free ourselves of them and remember who we are and what our nature is.

THey also believe the thetans are extraterrestial in nature....originating from others planets.

THis has to do with Xenu the lader of the Galactic Confederacy....who brought people to earth billions of years ago....then detonated hydrogen bombs in volcanos which killed a lot of them. THeir thetans tehn occupied the bodies of the living and cause traumatic memories and have a limiting and devastating effect on humans.

[dernier combat]

It's basically just a front for late founder L. Ron Hubbard's business. Their "equivalent" to the Bible is Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, of which the few excerpts I've read are just pseudo-psychological new-age bullshit.

[Sasha]

It's an scam cult with no expected historical relevance.
No point in spending time on them unless you have family or friends caught up in them.
Best research would probably be some critical books but you really only need to see the southpark episode on them, its one of their best.

[Viet Minh]

I don't know why, but they really annoy me. Hubbard is on record stating the best way to make money is to start a religion, and hey presto, he invents one, seemingly going out of his way to make it as nonsensical as possible. To me thats hilarious, but the way they brainwash people is disturbing. Scientology now has all the markings of a cult, and not a religion. Thats not to say religions don't use brainwashing techniques, some do that too.

[graymouser]

Scientology presents something it calls the "Bridge to Total Freedom." Given the results so far, it appears that this actually means freedom from money, dignity, personal time and eventually personal liberty.

Originally with Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health L. Ron Hubbard claimed that the brain records memories perfectly. However, during periods of pain and unconsciousness it records engrams, creating a "reactive mind" in addition to the "analytical mind" with perfect recall. Stimulating an engram brings all the pain back up; this is mostly verbal. Life fills people with engrams that impede them in all kinds of ways from having perfect memory and analytical thought. The process of auditing is supposed to relieve engrams, and afterward the "Clear" will have significant leaps in memory, freedom from all neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses (Hubbard would routinely claim that this was 90% of all illnesses).

After Dianetics, Hubbard went on to produce a fuller version, called Scientology, where it turned out that you had past lives and they had engrams too, going all the way back trillions (yes, trillions) of years. It was in this time that he created Scientology also as an organized Church, getting people "on staff" and eventually subjecting them to the infamous "ethics" that could mean days of labor at pennies an hour, etc. Scientologists would join, spend the money they had, beg borrow or steal more, and finally wind up working for the cult. Indoctrination involved a series of "Training Routines" that were essentially as close to brainwashing and hypnosis as you can get. Hubbard got increasingly paranoid, spending long amounts of time at sea where he would routinely have crew members thrown overboard for minor transgressions. There are also onerous "sec checks," where people would sit with an e-meter - basically a crude lie detector - for hours being asked questions about potential crimes, and have to explain any reaction on the meter. At the same time he came up with more bizarre and outlandish stuff - the Operating Thetan (OT) levels, which cost more money and require intense dedication to the cult.

OT starts off fairly innocuously, doing some basic prep work. But in OT III, the "Wall of Fire," people learn the whole bizarre space opera history of Scientology - with Xenu, the rebellion etc. The upshot is that the reason that people who've gone Clear don't have any of the expected phenomena is that there are hundreds of additional souls attached to the human body, all of which have their attendant ills. So the rest of the OT levels are basically the person going by themselves and "auditing" their body thetans. Supposedly this grants superpowers, although they've never been demonstrated.

Of relevance to us, Scientology is intensely anti-communist. It's essentially a mishmash of bad psychology and science fiction, and religion as capitalism - the worshipper becomes a worker for the god, L. Ron Hubbard or David Miscavige. They're particularly awful with child labor, because children are "downstats" and live boring, unrewarding lives with lots of forced work until they grow old enough to get out of the cult. It's a weird group, I would recommend that anybody looking to understand it spend some time at xenu.net (http://www.xenu.net) and read the real skinny on it.

[PhoenixAsh]

They sue everybody who is openly critical of them and call them nonsense or a cult. We fall outside the US jurisdiction which recognizes scientology as a tax exempt organisation and a religion and protects freedom of speech against them.
In the US you have to be careful.

[IndependentCitizen]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e12-trapped-in-the-closet

Watch this.

[GallowsBird]

I'm glad I'm not in the USA so I get to call them a cult as much as I like!:)

Incidentally why couldn't they follow a better "pulp" writer like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Dashiell Hammett or Dunsany... no they went for Hubbard... weird. :bored:

[PhoenixAsh]

I am thinking of starting a religion around Douglas Adams's Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy....

I will start my fish based diet right now...sardines :-)

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I'm glad I'm not in the USA so I get to call them a cult as much as I like!:)

Incidentally why couldn't they follow a better "pulp" writer like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Dashiell Hammett or Dunsany... no they went for Hubbard... weird. :bored:

That's because Azathoth cares not for popularity. Or anything.

[Sasha]

I am thinking of starting a religion around Douglas Adams's Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy....

I will start my fish based diet right now...sardines :-)


you are going to need these peanuts too, trust me eat the peanuts

[PhoenixAsh]

yes...and I am going to start a monetary system based on tree leaves...its ecologically sound...and its easier to fight inflation by burning down forests :-)

[Sasha]

mmm, i think this will take of better if we put a bit more zaphod in there, some sex (Eccentrica Gallumbits, The triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six), drugs (pan galactic gargle blasters) and rock an roll (disaster area) to pull our cult members in....

[PhoenixAsh]

Great Idea...its clear you have a bright shining future in my...our...new church :-)

Now we need some Vogon poetry to break their will if they get annoying.....

[Sasha]

how is "the cult that seeks no answers, just questions" as an catchphrase?

[PhoenixAsh]

I think that would do nicely...we should also add somewhere that we are mostly harmless.

Now...we need a manic depressed paranoid android...to lead us to salvation. I sure hope those Japanese guys hav made progress in their research

[Viet Minh]

If Xenu is like their satan, we should start a Xenuist cult. Anonymous had some all hail xenu shit going on I think..

For the Hitchhikers thing, we need to invent a fake space colony only for the super-rich, then send them away thinking they will be going to paradise and not let them back here.
Btw is anyone else secretly hoping the private space shuttle that costs a million dollars per ticket blows up in mid air?

[PhoenixAsh]

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[Agent Ducky]

If Xenu is like their satan, we should start a Xenuist cult. Anonymous had some all hail xenu shit going on I think..

For the Hitchhikers thing, we need to invent a fake space colony only for the super-rich, then send them away thinking they will be going to paradise and not let them back here.
Btw is anyone else secretly hoping the private space shuttle that costs a million dollars per ticket blows up in mid air?

Thatwould be a great way to eliminate the bourgeoisie with NO RESISTANCE. I like the way you think.

[Viet Minh]

Thatwould be a great way to eliminate the bourgeoisie with NO RESISTANCE. I like the way you think.

The best thing is they would all be like 'so long peasants bwahahaha' and only when its too late realise they've been majorly conned out of their worldly possesions, and heading to their doom or an exile of boredom and meagre grinding poverty on a distant planet.

[Magón]

I went to a Scientology meeting once. They were having like an open house sort of deal, so there wasn't any need to pay, and there was hardly any people there. Maybe at the MOST 14 people, including me and two friends who went to check it out. Honestly, their whole little meeting made me think they're even more crazy.

[x359594]

...why couldn't they follow a better "pulp" writer like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Dashiell Hammett or Dunsany... no they went for Hubbard... weird. :bored:

Unlike Hubbard, those writers didn't deliberately start a cult.

Hubbard benefited from the credulity of the right-leaning editor-writer John W. Campbell who wielded enormous influence in science fiction circles in the 1940s up to the late 1950s. Campbell gave Hubbard a platform for Dianetics and a few notable science fiction writers like A.E. Van Vogt bought into it until it morphed into Scientology (Graymouser has give an succinct account above.) Sci-fi fans followed the lead of the authors, and for awhile Dianetics had a large following in science fiction fan circles. When Hubbard tweaked it to include past lives, most of the original followers drifted away.