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Scientology's Credibility Questioned Over Video Channel
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Mar 28, 2008 01:40 PM
from the scientology-and-shady-almost-synonyms-these-days dept.
from the scientology-and-shady-almost-synonyms-these-days dept.
stonyandcher writes to share that the Church of Scientology has come under fire for some items on their recently launched video channel. Most notably, claims have been leveled that dignitaries in one of their videos were faked and at least one of the people featured in the video is claiming their statements were taken out of context.
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Submission: Scientology video channel's credibility questioned by Anonymous Coward
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Credibility??? (Score:5, Funny)
Bears' woodland sanitary habits
Pope's Nazi youth
Apple enthusiasts' devotion....
Re:Credibility??? (Score:5, Funny)
"The Pope was on vacation to Bermuda during the youth in question"
"And whats with those Apple enthusiasts, damn, like seriously, there more devoted than Xenu!"
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the word credible may be misunderstood and certaintly not used correctly by the original poster. This is why it offends people.
"Credible" refers to the capacity, or worthiness, for a person to believe in something. To say that a religion, any religion, lacks credibility is to say that no one could believe in it. For those that do believe in a particular religion, this would be hurtful and deemed offensive by its members. Hence, the flamebait, or even a troll moderation.
I think what the quote should of said was that religion has no basis in logic, or material evidence. The original poster, and the parent may have been trying to state that a religion, any religion, exists devoid of any factual evidence, logical proof, quantifiable and repeatable results. IMHO, the very word religion describes the situation the poster may have been trying to relate to us.
Belief, per its definition, can be used to describe an acceptance of the truth, or conviction in the truth, with or without a foundation of "cold hard facts". Belief is neutral, or has no position either way.
Now "Faith" on the other hand is not neutral, it is not ambiguous. Faith is usually accepted to be the belief in something in the absence of material evidence or logical proof.
I am a "scientist". The scientific method, logic, reason, etc. are all very important to me. I have a strong belief that our world should be run on factual evidence and that reason and logic should guide our decisions.
However, to believe in something that (as of yet) has no evidence, or proof, is equally important. It provides us with inspiration and strength. My Faith is very important to me as well, and I think it is an important part of us all. To mock someone else's ability to have faith, or the fact that they have it, is to mock your own. IMO, that is what is offensive by the original poster, and the parent.
I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt though that may not have been what they meant, as I initially read it a little bit differently before remembering the true definition and usage of the word "credible".
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:5, Interesting)
How the heck should I know if they were frightened. You want to state their beliefs as fact simply because Nero gave it attention?
Hmmm.... Okay. Maybe then if Bill Gates acknowledged the Tooth Fairy she would be real.... simply because a bunch of people started saying it and he noticed it. I am sure pragmatism had nothing to do with anything back then.
Really? Eyewitness accounts? From 2,000 years ago? Well Golly Gee Willickers! I stand corrected.
Trying saying that out loud a couple times and then think about it some more. There is no forensic proof. Loyalty has nothing to do with Faith. Faithfulness can be synonymous with Loyalty, but Loyalty does not automatically imply faith.
The opposite of my definition would be belief based on factual material evidence and logical proof. A word for that might be reason.
That is a problem with people in religion. They like to confuse words to support their own faith. Faith, Belief, Reason, Skepticism (spelled correctly), Logic, etc. are all words that we should use correctly when communicating our ideas. The original point of my post.
As I predicted, the very notion that all faiths are equal and that they are not based on anything "real" would offend someone. I think you need to deal with a rather important fact:
You C A N N O T prove that god exists, or more accurately, change your sets of beliefs from being based on intangible and irrational assumptions TO proven and repeatable results from experiments derived from logical theories about material evidence being presented.
God does not have an email address, you can't find him in a Starbucks sipping a Frappachino, and he will not be visiting orphans tomorrow.
Now EQUALLY true is the fact that nobody can DISPROVE the existence of God either.
Which brings us back to my original point again, which is that all faiths are equal. None of them, by the very definition of the word, are based on anything "real". I have not said they are bad, in fact I said they are good. I love my faith, I just know it for what it is. It is my unwavering belief in something I cannot prove or even put into words. Some people would mock me and others for that. The so called "hard core scientists".
Well in order to be a good "scientist" in my opinion, you must also be open to the possibilities. The possibility that you don't know shit, or more accurately, your understanding of the universe and how it works might not be the truth.
You have stated that I am presenting "reasoned skepticism" and doing it rather poorly. Well I would challenge you, in a friendly way too, to prove to me the existence of God and provide the factual evidence behind the New Testament.
I am truly open to anything, since I have faith that nothing is impossible. I am not opposed to the idea that the evidence may exist, just that it has been found and presented to the world. So please give me your logical arguments, your material evidence. Show me the money Mav[LAG]!
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure about you, but I am pretty impressed that this guy was writing bad sci-fi years before he was born...
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Tell me about it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be more surprised if the site launched and everyone found out it was entirely on the up-and-up.
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Credibility??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you expect from groups that require that members first suspend disbelief and accept claims of 'eternal life'?
Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end thought, both groups focus their worship on Allah, who is very not human.
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll still be a scam, just a conventional, accepted and well-integrated one.
Scientologists are loons for sure, but let's not differentiate their own brand of crazy from all the others.
As Douglas Adams said- 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'.
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should that be important. Hell, the Anglican Church had an Archbishop of Canterbury who doubted the divinity of Christ. Does that mean the entire Episcopalian movement no longer qualifies as a religion?
The chief difference seems to be that a successful religion is a sect or cult that manages to get near-universal acceptance as a religion within the societies that it exists. Scientology is seen by most of society as a crazy-ass money-hungry cult with a pack of swirly-eyed true believers who pay their money and believe any and all nonsense that Hubbard and his heirs shove down their throats.
Mormons were in the same boat for decades. They were seen as sexually deviant heretics. Fortunately for them, in those days a cult could basically seize control of a large, unpopulated area and grow relatively undisturbed for decades, and by the time the greater society finally met them head on again, they're numbers were sufficient that they had to be dealt with as a religion.
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Interesting)
0 - 0.5 years : Eccentricity
0.5 - 10 years : Scam
10 - 100 years : Cult
100 - 5,000 years : Genuine theology that reflects the true nature of being and the foundation of our civilization
5,000 + : Myth
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Informative)
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Doctrines of real religions are not secret (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Insightful)
To some extent it is that, but there is a much creepier aspect. From what I have seen, Scientology seems to be more of a social club for wealthy people who are interested in learning how to use aggressive psychological attacks such as hypnotism.
I started reading Dianetics, and it really does seem like a manual for using psychological attacks. A thetan is like a soul, but also like an influence. Non scientologists are infected with alien thetans, and once you are "clear" of them, you can become an "operating thetan". Then you can begin infecting the minds of others. Before it had always confused me that non scientologists have to rid themselves of thetans, but scientologists refer to eachother as thetans.
It was pretty sickening to realize that so many scientologists know exactly what it is all about. They develop new psychological attacks. Then they train their followers. The followers then use those attacks to manipulate those around them so they can become more successful in their careers, and increase the size of the church. This money is then reinvested in developing new psychological attack methods.
Someone please correct me if any part of this is inaccurate.
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Re:Won't be the first time a religion did this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Impressive. Two posts into the thread and someone's already trying to turn it into a debate over all religions. I'm not accusing you of being a Scilon - merely pointing out that it's a tactic the Scilons try to cultivate, because it turns the entire discussion into a debate about theology, effectively distracting everyone from the main issue.
Were this a thread about religion, for instance, it'd be fine, but the Co$ debate isn't about theology.
Organizations that use barratry ("The purpose of a lawsuit is not to win, but to harass") and violence (consider the similarities between the mysterious fates of Judge Swearinger's dog in 1998, and the fate of an outed anonymous protester's cat earlier this week) as a matter of policy are not religions.
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Re:The main issue is lying liars. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The main issue is lying liars. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The main issue is lying liars. (Score:4, Interesting)
And the guys protesting against them firmly support the free-zone (scientology without having to pay or be a member of the CoS), which they believe IS a valid religion, because it does none of the above.
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Re:Yea, and some well know atheists.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As a more direct rebuttal specifically to the Osiris [egyptianmyths.net] resurrection thing, that was written in hieroglyphs. How else would we have known about it? It's not like there have been any native Egyptian speakers for a long, long time, so we had to learn about ancient Egypt through other methods [wikipedia.org].
But hey, why let the facts stand in the way of your chosen God, right? He's infallible, and if anyone that believes in him says anything about him, it must be true!
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Re:Yea, and some well know atheists.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The concept of resurrection is at least as old as writing. Does this automatically mean the account of Jesus being resurrected is copied from those fables?
Few writings from the past contradicting Christianity exist. Does this mean that any surviving writings are automatically true?
There was a mystery cult that existed around the same time as early Christianity that has many similarities to Christianity. Does this mean that Christianity copied Mithraism, or Mithraism copied Christianity?
Christians have, in the past, destroyed information that they found distasteful or contradictory to their beliefs. Does this automatically invalidate their beliefs, or does it just mean there have been assholes in the Christian faith? (Law of the Universal Distribution of Assholes)
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Re:Yea, and some well know atheists.. (Score:4, Informative)
They were talking about the sacrament of communion as far back as 2500 BC: (from Wikipedia)
Since the ancient Nilotics believed that humans were whatever they eat, this sacrament was, by extension, able to make them celestial and immortal. The doctrine of the eucharist ultimately has its roots in prehistoric (symbolic) cannibalism, whose practitioners believed that the virtues and powers of the eaten would thus be absorbed by the eater. This phenomenon has been described throughout the world. One of the oldest of the Pyramid Texts is the Unas[14] from the 6th Dynasty (circa 2500 BC). It shows that the original ideology of Egypt commingled with Osirian concepts. Although ultimately given a high place in heaven by order of Osiris, Unas is at first an enemy of the gods and his ancestors, whom he hunts, lassoes, kills, cooks, and eats so that their powers may become his own. This was written at a time when the eating of parents and gods was a laudable ceremony, and this emphasizes how hard it must have been to stamp out the older order of cannibalism. "He eats men, he feeds on the gods...he cooks them in his fiery cauldrons. He eats their words of power, he swallows their spirits.... He eats the wisdom of every god, his period of life is eternity.... Their soul is in his body, their spirits are within him." A parallel passage is found in the Pyramid Text of Pepi II, who is said to have "seizeth those who are a follower of Set...he breaketh their heads, he cutteth off their haunches, he teareth out their intestines, he diggeth out their hearts, he drinketh copiously of their blood!" (line 531, ff). Although crude, this was a core concept, the conviction that one could receive immortality by eating the flesh and blood of a god who had died
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Since when (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides among the easily duped?
Video? Nice! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Video? Nice! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but it didn't go over very well [imdb.com].
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Yes, it's the video channel that's done it (Score:5, Funny)
Probably worth mentioning... (Score:5, Interesting)
(can't be screwed finding cites right now, worked for 26 hours straight, and now i'm plain out of it... little help?)
Re:Probably worth mentioning... (Score:4, Informative)
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Well I never (Score:4, Informative)
For an organisation that thinks we're all possessed by dead aliens using the ramblings of a drug addled hack who freely admitted he was in it for the money as the gospel, you can colour me shocked that they might have a somewhat warped view of the rest of the universe.
Radar article on Scientology (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The last frantic grapsing of a desperate group (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget: there's a sucker born every minute. And those suckers will continue to buy penis enlargement products from poorly written emails, and give their remaining money to Scientology.
A lot of these people also feel that the criticism and "attacks" on Scientology only *validate* it. How do you argue with that?
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Re:The last frantic grapsing of a desperate group (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't it be mad if the penis enlargment companies were owned by the COS or a subsidiary?
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Re:Scientology is the quintessential religion (Score:5, Interesting)
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It is a cult/organized crime (Score:5, Informative)
Please read for a start:
http://www.exscientologykids.com/ [exscientologykids.com]
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Re:It is a cult/organized crime (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Scientology is the quintessential religion (Score:5, Insightful)
When Dionysus turned water into wine, we understand that as a myth.
When Romulus is described as the Son of God, born of a virgin, we understand that as a myth.
When Vespatian's spittle healed a blind man, we understand that as a myth.
When Apollonius of Tyana raised a girl from death, we understand that as a myth.
etc... etc... etc... Jesus was just a guy that had Pagan mythological stories thrown on his name decades after his death to start a religion. Nothing more.
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Re:Scientology is the quintessential religion (Score:4, Insightful)
You make it sound as though I have a problem with their beliefs. But I've got to tell you, I don't give a flying DC3 what they believe. I could care less.
Yes, I consider myself religious, but (unless he tells me that he wants to sit down and have an intelligent discussion about it) what the next guy chooses to believe is up to him, and whether it's deism, humanism, theism, or FSMism, that's fine by me. I have a problem when he (and yes, this includes members of my own religion) uses coercion or threats or violence or elitism etc. to force his views... and hence my beef with Scientology.
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Re:Scientology is the quintessential religion (Score:4, Interesting)
As to Jesus, there is precisely one contemporary (within a few decades of his death) chronicler, and that's Josephus, and at least some of the passages were doctored later on. The Gospels themselves don't appear until the end of the First Century.
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Re:who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well all those cults like to hole up in their little compound off out of our way.
This cult likes to convert celebrities and use them to evangelize their cult, spread itself across the country, and litigate anyone who tries to slow their acquisition of money.
Basically, Scientology has a much greater chance of affecting me or someone I know than any of those other cults. Mainly because those other cults were actually "cults" run by some crazy messiah-delusion leader, while Scientology is a deliberate scheme for accruing vast amounts of wealth and power in the guise of a cult.
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Re:News for nerds. Stuff that matters. (Score:5, Informative)
Scientology and the Internet [wikipedia.org] explains the history.
In brief:
- attacks on USENET involving forged rmgroups in 1995.
- attacks on USENET involving Hipcrime-style spam for many years since then.
- legal attacks that resulted in the compromise of every user of the anon.penet.fi [xs4all.nl] anonymous remailer in 1996.
- Angry about copyright term extensions? What we jokingly refer to as the 1998 Mickey Mouse Protection Act was passed into law as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act [wikipedia.org]. By a staggering coincidence, Sonny Bono [wikipedia.org] was a Scilon.
- Angry about the DMCA? The Mickey Moust Protection Act wasn't enough of a legal club, and guess who was one of the first organizations to use it in mid-1999?
- And guess who was behind the DMCA attacks against Google in 2002.
- And last but not least, guess who was behind the DMCA attack against Slashdot itself [slashdot.org] in 2001.
Sorry you haven't been paying attention for the past decade, dude, but this is news for nerds, and it is stuff that matters.
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