Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise, and the Cult of Scientology

http://www.radaronline.com/fresh-intelligence/2005/06/15/index.php

Check out the article on Katie Holmes. She and Tom have been running around proclaiming that they are healers and that psychologists are evil and blah blah blah

I'm a very religious tolerant person, but just because John Travolta convinced Bill Clinton to grant $cientology non-profit status (giving them milllions in saved tax dollars), doesn't mean that it isn't still a money-sucking cult. (that is banned in Germany, for one country)

www.xenu.net if you are curious about the cult.

And all the rest of the religions aren't money-sucking cults?

No. Don't confuse religions with their Churches. In the case of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard (the sci-fi writer who created it) once said, "If I wanted to make lots of money I'd start a religion". Money IS the point of Scientology.

So you suggest that you can learn all there is to know about a religion by going to the site maintained by its enemies? I'm not sure I see anything remotely resembling religious tolerance in your attitude. Scientologists are the new Jews for the 21st century. They are still few in number, not all that powerful, and have a habit of being rather more successful and uppity than some people can tolerate. In other words, they make an easy target. Oh, and they made a little mistake back in the '90's: they suggested that people on the Internet should be responsible for what they post there. Truly an atrocious idea!

Claiming that xenu.net represents the "true" Scientology and that the church has no other meaning to it than money is like claiming the whole purpose of Catholicism is to provide priests with young choirboys to sodomize, or claiming that every Muslim is a terrorist, or that the whole purpose of Hinduism is to institutionalize a caste system that denies untouchables the right to participate in the rest of society. In every case you would be missing the actual teachings and practices of the vast majority of the religion's followers. You would be missing the whole point, frankly.

For a slightly more balanced look at Scientology, or any of these other religions, try this link:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/scientol.htm

Sounds like Ananda is already a cult member. The whole "Jews of the 21st century" is one of the buzz phrases used in the cult just like "Shock therapy is evil".

You should be absolutely ASHAMED of comparing a cult that is allowed to exist and thrive to a religion who lost 8 million members in the Haulocaust. That's just utter crap.

Second of all, this analogy is flawed.

Jews were never small in number, were never "not all that powerful", and have been a major world religion for the past several millenia.

My boyfriend moved to Hollywood in 2000 or thereabouts and went to Scientology classes because, he reasoned, that was where he could meet the powerful folks.

We now live about 5 minutes away from the Hollywood apex of Scientology on Franklin Avenue. It's built like a castle. Apparently some princess lived there before she sold it, or something along those lines.

The thing that drove him away, he said, was the overall feel. These people are creepy. Sure, they have pretty girls who admit you and call you all the time to ask about you and ask when you're going to go to the next Scientology class. They have people who call you all the time. They are very interested in telling you what they believe, and they are extremely aggressive.

My boyfriend had to ask them several times to stop calling him. Short of threatening them.

My father, who is a retired investigative journalist, knew another journalist who wrote an expose on Scientology.

This is a money-grubbing cult, no more. This is not the modern form of Judaism.

They're all cults, but its the followers that have turned some religions into money-sucking machines.

You said that better than I did.

I dont need any - middle men that are greedy, want all money, control you, stop the evulution, ban the condom, not equal for all sexes.. ban homosexualls, called xxxxxx (fill in what you want for kind of churches and similar) - I have direct contact with that what it now is/are..

(...and you build great places Juro! love them!)

Well ... I am no great student of religion, but I tend to shy away from this school of thinking (I was not brought up to a specific form of religion -- my mother is an atheist).

I am curious though: what divides "religion" from "cult"? Time?

Membership. If you're a member, it's not a cult

Ok, that and general acceptance. And, of course, the more adherents a religion has, the more likely it is to also have general acceptance as a religion. I suspect that if $cientology had the actual number of adherents they claim, it would have passed from cult status a good while ago.

Sounds like an experience a friend had with some christian youth group.

All religions are cults and all religions are money grubbing.. some are simply more subtle / have a longer sales cycle. It's pretty much necessity - you need money to pay for all those bibles / churches / etc.

If you are looking for something spiritual, consider unitarianism. It's a pretty good philosophy which encourages everyone to have a mind of their own.

However, even unitarians will tell you that a 5-10% tithe is necessary if you wish to be a voting member.

They can be seen as one and the same. Cult has a negative connotation to it as being some radical group that follows what other percieve to be a false leader, but by definition, all religions are cults. All cults, however, may not be religions.


cult P Pronunciation Key (klt)
n.()

[list=1]
1. A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.
   
2. The followers of such a religion or sect.
   
[/list]

3. A system or community of religious worship and ritual.
   
4. The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.
   
5. A usually nonscientific method or regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.
   
6. 1. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.
      
   2. The object of such devotion.
      
   
   
7. An exclusive group of persons sharing an esoteric, usually artistic or intellectual interest.
   

Thanks PetGirl! Just wish RL would slow down (or I would stumble on a winning lotto ticket) so I could spend more time inworld.

Religion is about control and money.

How do you think the churches got so wealthy to begin with?

religioustolerance.org is operated by two Unitarian Universalists, a Wiccan, and a Christian. It has no ties to Scientology (that I've been able to determine, at least), and appears to be supported by heavy advertising.

The site's material on Wicca and Neo-Paganism is comprehensive and generally accurate. I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy of the Scientology article.

In general, your argument will be better recieved if you argue the facts rather than attacking the people presenting the information. My experience with Scientology suggests that there's not much more to it than simple biofeedback training wrapped in layers of mysticism. If that works for some people, great!

I am less than enthused also about the church's repeated legal attacks on ISPs and other entities for copyright violations by users. Spirituality shouldn't be getting its hands dirty in IP disputes... particularly if you're getting big tax exemptions, and particularly when your prime motivation appears to be surpressing criticism.

Religion is about understanding our place in life. It's the spiritual journey you undertake, and *everybody* is religious. Even atheists have asked the basic question, "Why am I here?" The answer is very personal...as religion should be.

Now the organization of religion....*that's* about control and money. It is made up of people who want control over your life, and your pocketbook. If you want to talk about your faith, that's fine. If you want to support your faith financially, that's fine. Niether should be a requirement, however. And there really isn't a religious organization who doesn't make both of the above their main goals, IMHO.

That's one of the reasons some of us prefer religious disorganization

Of course, that has drawbacks too. It's always better to have friends in the wagon as they're driving you off to the gallows.

I've had a personal experience with Scientology.

When I was a young man, out of work, alone in a new city, I had a visitor to my door. A very, very lovely young lady, who handed me a free copy of the Dianetics book, and started a long, very interesting conversation. She seemed in no hurry, and we sat and talked for a long while in my little apartment. She was charming, intelligent, seemingly compassionate and sincere.

I have always been a cynical kind of person, and thus was very standoffish in regards to the value of either Dianetics or Scientology. I'd even read several of L. Ron Hubbards sci-fi novels and found them to be a bit one-dimensional and repetitive.

Anyway, she told me to read the book, and she'd call or come by in a week or two and see what I thought. So I did. The book itself, and the methods described made alot of sense and was interesting.

She returned about two weeks later and we talked somemore, and she convinced me to come visit her at Dianetics (scientology) center downtown. She told me time and again that I could pursue learning and apllying Dianetics without having anything to do with the Scientology aspects.

So I went down to the center and she was there to greet me, more lovely and charming than ever. She said I had an appointment to talk with one of their "Education Councilors", but wanted to show me around first.

Everyone was very friendly, and she showed me a few interesting gadgets that showed that remembered pain (a pinch) could cause almost the same reaction physically as the real pain. It was interesting.

Then she lead me into my "appointment" and dissapeared. From there on in it got creepy. I took a personality profile and these three people spent the next hour trying to tell me what classes I needed to take at the center, all for large fees, to begin getting "clear". And the more they talked, the more it began to sound cultish. They didn't want me to leave, and tried every trick in the book to make me stay, switching off roles as spokepeople, and finally, when I began to get really irritated and stubborn, bringing in the lovely girl who had brought me there. They almost surrounded me, getting more and more insistant that I stay and try some of there education/help courses.

Finally I lost my temper and laid into them, and walked out the door, never to return.

I still think the Dianetics principles are fascinating, and possibly even very helpful if followed, but the rest was clearly cultish, and designed around the almighty dollar.

Scientology IS a cult and is based on a premise so laughably absurd it makes regular religions seem downright logical. Of course people who get wrapped up in Scientology have no idea just how absurd the premise really is because the totality of it isn't revealed to them until they're already spent tens of thousands of dollars. By that time they've been in it for so long and have been so thoroughly conditioned that they accept it all hook line and sinker. It also makes heavy use of hypnosis. They use a device that's similar to biofeedback which is supposed to measure your "engrams" where they have to concentrate and make the device read "clear." The process is essentially hypnosis and puts people into a very suggestible state. It's just one of many brainwashing techniques they use. Anyone unfamiliar with what Scientology is all about should do some serious reading about it. I highly recommend reading The Road To Xenu If anyone ever approaches you and tries to get you involved in Scientology, pity them, and then punch them in the face.

Wow, David... I had a near identical experience only it was a charming man in his 20s (we were around the same age) and it took place in Boston. I am very curious about a lot of things, especially religion, and I like to (try and) understand what moves people. So when he approached me, I had time and listened to what he had to say (I also sat down and talked to hare krishnas and fanatical greenpeace activists...it was a weird time in my life). I went to the appointment and just like you, took the tour and met with the older creepy people. I took the personality test and was given a long list of ridiculously expensive *classes* they said I should take. Just like in your experience, every time I resisted, the approach was changed until I pretty much had to walk out of the place without the usual *thank yous* and *good byes*. I wasn't afraid but worried, although at some paranoid point I did wonder if they would physically stop me from leaving, but I was just upset that they wouldn't back off or take no for an answer.

Needless to say, I never went back (I still talk to strangers on the street though... you'd think I'd know better )

Hypnosis can't be used to make you do anything that you wouldn't or couldn't do without it. Much to the CIA's dismay, "brainwashing" doesn't really exist as it's portrayed in popular fiction. Even drugs and torture have proved ineffective in most cases.

Most "brainwashing" utilized by "cults" is no more or less pernicious than the same doctinal rigidity and propoganda utilized by everbody from the Nazis to the Boy Scouts to the Southern Baptist Council. "Brainwashing" is a charge leveled by panicked parents who don't understand how their sweet little obedient darling could have developed their own distinct thought patterns, and has been applied to rock music and comic books as often as "cults".

In instances where Scientology (or any other religion) utilizes harassment, intimidation or violence to achieve their aims, the members engaging in such activity need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Beyond that, they're perfectly free to pursue biofeedback as the path to enlightenment to their hearts' content.

As a born n' bred Catholic (now firmly agnostic):

Scientology says we were sent here by space aliens. Judeo-Christianity teaches about one big omnipotent God. Going further into Christianity, there's also a half-god half-human son who rose from the dead and entered heaven with body and soul intact. The Romans and Greeks and a panthenon of Gods and Goddesses, each with their own little niche role to fill. Wiccans revere a Mother Earth deity.


Its all equally plausable, or equally ridiculous, depending on what you were raised to believe, or choose to believe.


Spirituality is the search for something greater than ourselves - the innate feeling that most humans have that there is a greater Power than ourselves out there. Religion is the human organization of other people into a hierarchy, much like government, that promise to teach people about the "true" answer to spirituality, with the goal of expansion and self-perpetuation.

I'm of the mind that the only difference between a religion and a cult are:

1. size of the organization (and therefore public acceptance)
2. how extreme the tactics are of recruitment and retention of followers.

In terms of #2, from my own experience, I can say that I feel like I was brainwashed into believing certain tenents of the Church (luckily my mother was a VERY liberal person and interspersed a lot of common sense into what I got from the sermons), but I certainly never had anyone knocking at my door or threatening me to eternal hellfire since I quit going. In other countries, in other times (including very recently), the Catholic Church wielded (and abused) such power over people's lives that they certainly were a prime example of point #2.

If Tom and Katie want to donate all their cash to Scientology, hell, let 'em. They're gonna spend it somewhere, they earned it, and its not like Scientology is going to be sweeping the nation because of it - most of us aren't that rich. Passion of the Christ or Battlefield Earth? Two sides of the same coin.

Well that's really just semantics, Arcadia. I define brainwashing as a kind of hardcore social conditioning... disarming people of their reason and replacing it with what they want you to believe and then building a brick wall around it. Brainwashing isn't a thing that mad scientists do to you with some secret device. It's just a word to describe practices and intent. Scientology just happens to do it in a very hardcore way through hypnosis, pressure, confinement and isolation, and getting people to speak the lingo of scientology (which unless you've been indoctrinated in it is meaningless). Brainwashing is a literary device to describe intent. It's not a thing.