Chalmers
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Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/22 16:29
Penn made reference to this article on the March 20th show, and I just finished reading it. I highly recommend checking it out.
Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman
Mirrored on rickross.com (Rolling Stone will sometimes prune old articles, so this one will always have the full text)
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Daz_Genetic
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Re:Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/23 07:11
Heavy reading, but got through it.
In Christinity, I've always beleived that most people can't shake it because it's so deeply engrained in our culture. However with scientology, it's a whole other thing. It's really contemporary, yet has the same effect on people.
What's amazing is that we've been given the rare opportunity to observe and study the birth of a religion. It gives great insight into individual human behavior as well as group dynamics. People act very different when the expectations of others around them are brought into it.
But I do feel sorry for the people who've wasted their lives in this cult.
I can't believe they don't allow masturbation though. That sucks.
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Chalmers
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Re:Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/23 11:10
Wow, you summed it up a lot better than I could.
For me, all religions that I know of are BS, but this one seems over the top, for exactly the reason you cited: it's the new kid on the block, so we're only just (last 50 years, but I've only heard about it maybe 10 years) hearing about Xenu and what he did 75 million years ago, and it seems so crazy. I grew up hearing about stories of some dude walking on water, turning water into wine, healing some blind dude, then being magically transported out of a cave, and so I've had enough time to digest these weird/impossible things. Just as crazy and oh-so BS, though maybe not as flashy.
Besides no masturbation (a definite deal-breaker for me), the other thing that is so scary is the tactic of using one's family as leverage when they try to leave the cult... Pretty low, if you ask me.
Oh, and Penn had a great point when he mentioned that you didn't get to hear all this over-the-top BS until you had already invested years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars into it. By then, even if you don't believe it, you might just stick around, in the hopes that you could one day be on top of the pyramid, and make back some of that cash!
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Daz_Genetic
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Re:Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/23 17:59
Yeah, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach when I read of people leaving Scientology at the expense of their wife and kids who were no longer allowed to associate with them. I love my wife very much. She is a Christian, though not very devout. It makes me ill to even consider that she would choose that over me if it came down to it.
But more sickening that any of that were the talk of Children being brainwashed right into it from birth. I know that happens with all relgions, but when you are able to look at it from a third-person point of view, it seems disgusting.
I heard of Scientology pretty much around the same time you did. Perhaps a little before then. Though I didn't get to hear all the Xenu stuff till way more recently (within the last few years).
Originally, with the name Scientolgy, and with the little knowledge I did have at the time, it just sounded like a harmless Self-Help system based very much around scientific thinking and logic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who made that mistake.
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Chalmers
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Re:Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/23 20:02
Daz_Genetic wrote:
I heard of Scientology pretty much around the same time you did. Perhaps a little before then. Though I didn't get to hear all the Xenu stuff till way more recently (within the last few years).
Originally, with the name Scientolgy, and with the little knowledge I did have at the time, it just sounded like a harmless Self-Help system based very much around scientific thinking and logic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who made that mistake.
I believe the Xenu stuff only came out in the very late nineties with a former practitioner revealing it.
And no, you're not the only one who made that mistake. 
As for my background, my mom took my brother and I to church (United Protestant) every week, and I eventually became a Sunday school teacher, and an elder in the church. The way I saw things, I was helping the kids by teaching them these neat stories about these old dudes who were nice to each other (and got them out of listening to those boring sermons). Even then, I didn't look at the bible as anything more than a nice collection of stories, and if people liked them, great.
After I started university, I really started opening my ears and eyes to folks of other flavours/religions, and saw that this was causing more harm than good. My opinion now is that religion is all too often a crutch for people ("true believers") who are unable to take control/responsibility over their lives. Better to blame someone else than yourself, or *shock* random chance.
My "religion" for the past 10 years has been "Don't be a dick", and so far, it's served me quite well.
If anyone wants any insider information on the United Church level Omega, let me know. I've got some real dirt.  And a great pancake recipe.
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Takaro
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Re:Rolling Stone article on Scientology - 2006/03/23 20:50
Like Richard Dawkins says in the documentary The Root of All Evil, bringing up children into a religious belief system when they're too young to know better should be considered a form of child abuse. I love how religious people recognize that when it comes to other 'cults', but completely miss it when it comes to their own religion.
My in-laws are 'spiritualists', which entails a whole slew of wacky beliefs, none of which have any evidence to back them up. They are intelligent, well read people (not well read with science though), and it took me a while to figure out why they readily believe such crap. It came down to one thing: the world seems like an unfair place without a greater power making sure the good are eventually rewarded, and the bad are eventually punished, and they simply will not accept that, so they open their minds to any answers that reflect the world as they want it to be.
It's like when I was reading about Buddhism, and I was trying to figure out where the belief in reincarnation came from, and in a book by the Dalai Lama himself, he gave the reason of, essentially, 'reincarnation must happen, because life would be unfair otherwise'.
In other news, there are no people starving in third world countries, because that would be unfair...
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