Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous" 486
Anonymous writes "A circuit court judge has denied the Church of Scientology's second request for an injunction against protests by the internet group "Anonymous." The Church sought to prevent Anonymous from protesting on the birthday of the Church's leader, the late Ron L. Hubbard. The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing."
Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they even listening to themselves? Do they realize how stupid they sound? "A group known as Anonymous"- you mean that guy that had attributed to him poems, quotes, and the rickroll?
Anonymous is Anonymous. Seriously. Say what you want about "lol *chan" but the truth is 'Anonymous' is not linked to 4chan. Anonymous itself is a person, who wishes to keep their identity hidden. "Anonymous", as a group, simply refers to the collective nature of people who wish to conceal their identities. THAT'S IT. IT WAS A JOKE. "Anonymous does not forgive!" IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE THE PERSON'S NAME CAME UP AS ANONYMOUS, NOT BECAUSE ANYONE WHO ASSOCIATES THEMSELVES WITH THIS GROUP IS UNFORGIVING. Christ, will these fuckers ever get it through their thick fucking heads that this isn't some terrorist group? This isn't some fucking Jihad against Scientology! It's a bunch of pissed off nerds who got a bunch of other nerds from around the world to protest a cult, THAT'S IT.
The media are a bunch of fuckups.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Informative)
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Except "these people" haven't done anything to directly harm me or my family or friends.
I'm more concerned about the fundamentalist Christianists and Islamists (yes, in that order, at least here in the U.S.).
Most people know the Scientologists are nuts. But most "moderate" religious people tolerate the extremists among their ranks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yuo Fail. Most don't. Most Muslims (at least, two with whom I work) don't want to murder me. Most Christians (I work with dozens of them) deplore Fred Phelps and his ilk. Teh J00z? Couple of them at my office. They don't eat pork, they do drink wine. Buddhists? They think all us Abrahamic folks are a little strange, but if that's our way of following the Path, then we're
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You've heard it before: "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Socialist. ..."
And these should be protested and exposed just as vigorously. Especially the first, since they have voted into office the current leaders who are destroying our economy and
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or, as Bill Maher would say: I don't care what kind of crazy you are.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientology is bad, but there are other religions that have been around a lot longer and are a lot more harmful to society and civilization as a whole.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, people do good and evil things immaterial of religion - but systematic harm to society by converting perfectly, normal good people into doing things that are harmful to society? No, that's something only religion can do.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet neither have the fundie Christians or Islamists done anything directly to harm you and yours.
Yeah, I suppose preaching hatred against gays, so they get spit on or cursed at or their friends get beaten up on the street, that doesn't count as "direct" harm.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the IRA tried to blow up my mother at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Birmingham. She got away unscathed but she saw someone's foot blown off. That's the catholics for you.
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Their cameramen patroled public transit on 2/10 (Score:5, Informative)
They're planning on disrupting the protests [indymedia.org.au] with staged violence by anons [enturbulation.org]. Make sure you catch it all on camera if you attend.
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lol, they think 'anonymous' is an alien race. You can't make this stuff up:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Marcab [encycloped...matica.com]
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Informative)
(To be fair, yes, some locations have laws against protesting in masks, or in any way that would obscure the face. However this varies greatly by location and there's certainly no blanket "masks are illegal" law like you're suggesting.)
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure if its tested in court.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Funny)
Scientology vs various John Does, Jane "Gasmask" Doe [encycloped...matica.com], Xenu, LisaMcPhersonWasMurdered [cmu.edu], TravoltaIsGay [snarkygossip.com], John Desu, Desu Desu, Desu Desu Desu Desu Desu et al, proceedings of the Internet Court [encycloped...matica.com] 2008.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Insightful)
~Dan
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Informative)
Scarves are better than masks.
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Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Informative)
They are so the cult doesn't make you a target.
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Funny)
It might be interesting if the Anti-Defamation League were to find itself at odds with the CoS. If nothing else it would be good entertainment to watch two groups with a history of using similar tactics fighting with each other
Re:Grab Your Masks! (Score:4, Interesting)
You obviously have no idea how far the CoS goes or you wouldn't even make that comparison. To someone I know personally they have hired folks to go around their neighborhood informing people that the guy was a convicted sex offender and they were informing them according to Megan's Law (not true). They called the news and told them he was under investigation by the FBI for terrorism (which they reported on the air but wasn't true). They looked at the return address of all the mail and sent anyone who sent personal correspondence a threatening letter. They called his ISP and tried to get everything he'd put up removed. They contact his employer and told them they'd be sued unless he was terminated. What was his crime? He put a copy of some text up on his website that was purportedly one of the higher-level training manuals for Scientology discussing Xenu et al.
I have no problems if people want to believe in Xenu, or even that submitting to weekly lie detector tests and giving the CoS lots of incriminating evidence is the way to salvation. But when you start attacking your detractors and ruining their lives, you cross the line into a violation of the principles of free speech and free association, and thus it's very anti-American.
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The other major change is the internet for not only putting on public display their harassing and threatening tactics but also for offering the existing members and victims of that organis
In other news: (Score:4, Informative)
We're never going to give them up, never going to let them down.
Re:In other news: (Score:5, Funny)
We're never going to give them up, never going to let them down.
Wow, an inline rickroll.
Fuck. I just now got ABBA out of my head, and I was going to go to sleep. Take a chance on me. FUCK.
Touched a nerve? (Score:5, Insightful)
An "injunction against protests"? In the US? Wow! They must have really touched a nerve. Keep it up!
Of course CoS had any sense at all they'd just ignore the whole thing until it blows over... but I'm counting on CoS to blow it way out of proportion. Which is exactly what Anonymous wants.
This could be an interesting showdown, especially if the protests continue to be disciplined and, well... funny!
Scientology playing dirty (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would have a hunch, that the "Church" itself is causing the problems on the page. First The war starts [wired.com]. They impose there beliefs and pull web pages from Google [wired.com]. I have seen a few things that they have done to try and put "Anonymous" in a bad light. I wish I could find the link, and maybe someone out there knows it. It is of a group of protesters getting arrested. The "Church" said it was "Anonymous". This was quickly debunked they the comments around the article, and found that the pictures where taken from a real protest elsewhere, and not an "Anonymous" protest. All and all i think the "Church" is a bunch of bull and don't play fair with others.
I'm now prepared to get buried by the "Church" for my negative comments against them.
RIAA run by the church of scientology (Score:5, Funny)
OMG! I think I get it now!
RIAA is run by the church of scientology!
That explains everything!
Um... (Score:5, Informative)
Sydney Protest Footage (Score:5, Informative)
..because they are against everything "geek" (Score:5, Interesting)
They started by taking down anon.penet.fi, and they've been getting worse every year. The hell with all their supposed abuses, and cult like activity. It's messing with the geek stuff that pisses me off.
Get off my f*ckn net! On my f*ckn net we don't tolerate: censorship, copyright abuse, trademark abuse, bogus DMCA notices, intimidating lawyer letters, or stripping our anonaminity for no good reason.
People have been scared to fight back for nearly 20 years. No more!
* Posting anon not because it's cool, but because these jerks still scare me enough not to use my nick.
Scientology vs. Synanon (Score:4, Interesting)
These are the people who put rattlesnakes in the LA DA's mailbox. I think the Synanon founder was sent to prison for attempted murder on that one.
They also at one time had over 100 attorneys working for them and would sue anyone just like Scientology. They even won a lawsuit for defamation or libel against Hurst Publishing. It had never been achieved before. They had a tactic where in lawsuits they would depose people for hours asking them stupid questions like "what has the consistancy of your stool been lately?"
Just wait. Scientology will eventually get nutty enough to do something similar to the rattlesnake bit and then they are done for.
To support the ides of March from your desk.. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=573326 [slashdot.org] "Church of Scientology violates Federal Law"
You'd never guess who might be voting THAT one down
A FAQ on Scientology AKA Church of Scientology (Score:5, Informative)
Cut their write-off (Score:3, Insightful)
"Praise God" pretty important, but you might like: (Score:3, Insightful)
* Largest non-governmental primary/secondary education provider in country. Educates about 2.5 million students (including about 320k non-Catholic kids), many of them poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Routinely outperforms local public schools, but subsidi
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, you're right, might as well not even try.
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Funny)
I will, however, waste my time insulting your intelligence. Because that's fun.
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing magical about religion that makes it exempt from attack and ridicule.
It is NOT good that you can't attack something because it is a "religion" and would ONLY for that reason deserve respect. People's deeply held beliefs are not OK just because they are deeply held beliefs, they can just as well be ridiculous, and wrong. The fact that you ridicule them isn't even necessarily respectless, not challenging people's delusions, and leaving them with these ridiculous beliefs can be much more respectless.
And before you ask, yes, I'm a religious man, and I wouldn't mind at all if you mocked and attacked my religion.
I'm not Christian, but I don't see much reason to attack Christianity as a whole. I do occasionally challenge some denominations and churches, or just single people's interpretation.
Scientology on the other hand, I mock completely. You can say dianetics is the basics of the religion, and the church is a seperate thing. I don't thing I have to tell you why I attack the church. So that leaves dianetics. I see no reason I couldn't mock it, it's just pseudoscientific psychological nonsense. It's a lot of stupid ideas and conclusions mixed with some interesting ideas. It's not worthy of respect just because it's claimed to be religious.
(I claim this post is a basic religious text of my religion, it represents my deeply held religious beliefs. It was directly inspired by God and therefor it's content is unchallengable religious dogma, and absolute TRUTH. You cannot deny it.)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Interesting)
There is nothing magical about religion that makes it exempt from attack and ridicule.
It is NOT good that you can't attack something because it is a "religion" and would ONLY for that reason deserve respect. People's deeply held beliefs are not OK just because they are deeply held beliefs, they can just as well be ridiculous, and wrong. The fact that you ridicule them isn't even necessarily respectless, not challenging people's delusions, and leaving them with these ridiculous beliefs can be much more respectless.
Since the prime minister of the country belongs to one of these Christian parties, it is still uncertain whether this will work out.
I found it quite funny to discover that, since it makes ridiculously hypocritical all the talk about having Mohammed in comic cartoons that took place in Europe. I mean, everybody was "pro" support for freedom of speech, but now two major political dutch parties (including the prime minister) seem to see this law as an entirely different story.
Funny, eh?
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Informative)
It's worth noting that free speech doesn't exist here except inasmuch as it's politically difficult to pass laws banning certain forms of speech. The state of Victoria has a charter of rights which merely states that the Parliament must consider such issues, and the Australian federal government has nothing even remotely similar.
Yet we join forces invading Iraq and Afghanistan saying we're giving them freedom.
This experience has cemented the view in my mind that there's no such thing as "god-given" or "constitutional" rights; the only rights we have are the ones we make sure we keep.
(To our credit, we were one of very few democracies that made it through the first half of the twentieth century without a disruption to the process — including changes of government (whichever party was in power in (September) 1914, 1917, 1940 and 1943 all lost the election); even the UK suspended elections.)
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, under federal law Albert Langer was sent to jail for describing a way to vote in federal elections that was valid at the time.
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
No christian churches label you an 'oppressive person' and send their office of special affairs after you. No christian churches will rile up their congregation over real or percieved insults. You won't see them screaming in the streets, holding signs that say 'death to those who insult christianity.'
You won't even get punched by a believer if you stand in front of a church screaming jesus was a zombie.
Protesting christianity is about as cool as yelling at the old dog laying in the corner because he dug a hole in the back yard. The offense you protest is barely worth mentioning and the dog isn't going to be affected by your protest enough to even get up.
Now, is it 'cool' to protest christianity, as in 'okay'? Sure. There's just no point.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, not anymore, anyway. I seem to recall this thing called the Spanish Inquisition. Nowadays no one expects it, but at one time it was the "office of special affairs" for the most prominent Christian church.
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Informative)
They were also the first ones to use the courts to try and get a web page taken down. Depending on who you ask, that may or may not be worse than the fact that they are the largest cult in the world and they kill people.
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/ [whyaretheydead.net]
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, Scientology isn't a Church. They charge admission, and they're a for-profit organization. They're not recognized as a real religion in Belgium, Russia, Canada, Greece, France, Germany, the United Kingdom. [wikipedia.org] It's respected here in the US because anyone with enough money to purchase a free ride gets one in this society. CoS have loads of power.
I was talking about the Catholic Church with someone the other day, and they were arguing that you can't condemn the religion as a whole. I maintain, however, that if the Pope gets to tell you you're not Catholic, [wikipedia.org] it's organized enough to criticize as a whole.
What I think you CAN'T criticize is an individual's drive for spiritual growth. If their religion involves slandering people and destroying their lives (CoS) or protecting child molestors [deliverusf...emovie.com] (Catholic Church), then please, criticize them. In other words, while the person's spiritual practice may be above reproach, the dogma is just a set of ideas and ideals just like any atheist would have. For example:
(I'm not really picking sides, just giving examples)
Religious - God says you should be nice to poor people
Nonreligious - The best interest of humanity dictates you should be nice to poor people
Religious - Abortion is wrong because God says so
Nonreligious - Abortion is wrong because it's unnatural to kill your own progeny
I think that what people call religious belief is just dogma. And atheists have dogma too. If dogma is above reproach, we are in a world of shit, my friend.
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't really give a damn if you want to believe in the bullshit. They just don't like how people have to pay to get to see the bullshit.
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Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Funny)
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't know much about how religions work then..
Did you know for example that it now appears that early Christians, far from being blamed for Rome burning, weren't even considered relevant, and many 'confessed' and were punished simply in order to obtain their martyrdom?
This was a big deal for them, since it meant all sorts of rewards and stuff in heaven. Apparently the Roman administration weren't at all keen, but a confession is a confession, so they were executed.
The point is, religions, even really stupid ones, thrive on the kind of treatment that would make normal folk think twice about carrying on.
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Insightful)
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You got me..
Actually, note that I said really stupid ones. My default position is that all religions are stupid, or at the very least anachronistic in modern times. They served their purpose in prehistory (holding Egypt together for several millennia), but we just don't need such social control systems any more.
They persist because they give some people a means to power which oth
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the flip side of the coin, religion is also a powerful method of control (as you pointed out). Atheists are probably the most important element, as they provide a strong, effective safeguard against any exploitation. For this reason, I think that in a perfect world, religion and ath
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so sure about that. Without God, you must explain moral codes in practical terms. The most basic (lie, cheat, steal)are easy enough. Some of the less obviously explained moral codes are both very important and not easy to explain the practicality thereof. (Envy, gluttony, etc.)
Humans are not fundamentally morally superior now as compared to 5,000 years ago. The only thing that has provably changed in that time is the societal indoctrination methods, and churches are the majority of those methods.
Churches, God, and Sin are ways of imposing codes of behavior that have been show to be successful over several millennia. The concepts of 'God' and 'Sin' are necessary to impose these codes of behavior, because you can't argue with God and you better do what he tells you.
If you were once again a child, or once again a teen, or once perhaps still are, how often do you recall arguing with your parents over some matter? That you were unconvinced by their stance?
They had at least two decades more of life experience than you to learn life lessons, and perhaps you might remember they were correct much more often than they were wrong.
But you still argued with them, because you didn't understand the value of their experience and you had to learn some of the same lessons the hard way, just as they did.
Well, assigning the most basic of these life lessons as commandments from God, with whom you may not argue, and who will punish you eternally for consistently failing to obey him, removes them from the 'negotiable' list completely. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not murder. Don't try to screw your neighbors wife. Don't make babies with someone you're not committed to. Don't be envious, etc.
Any one of these things, when broken, will gain the perpetrator a momentary advantage that is plain for anyone to see. In the long run all are detrimental to both the perpetrator and the society around him. Convincing everyone that God would burn you in hell for eternity for doing any of them made folks decide that the momentary gain wasn't worth the fire.
Much less obvious is the long term benefit to society when everyone obeys these rules. Both explaining the full logic of why that is so, and getting the student to accept your and societie's experience is a damn near impossible task with an empty slate of a child or a hormone-driven teenager.
Further, there are countless adults who fail to grasp the utility of the religious rules and traditions we live by. If they are religious, they may yet follow the rules and their lives will be satisfactory, and their impact on society a net positive.
If they are not religious, and do not accept that those traditions and rules exist for reasons they do not grasp, then they will behave as they see fit- leaving ruin in their wake, as lessons learned hundreds or thousands of years ago are tossed out as the baby with the bathwater.
So, allow me to try to summarize if you've made it this far:
Religion is a way of passing down millennia of hard-learned lessons in a way that leaves no room for argument.
I would go into the lessons besides 'don't lie, cheat, murder or steal', except you might argue with me about those topics, proving my point while convincing yourself I'm anachronistic.
Western civilization lies atop a massive carefully-built structure of unnatural behaviors that enable the tremendous intellectual and material wealth we enjoy today.
That behavioral structure is so carefully crafted and re-enforced that we forget that it is unnatural, and in forgetting that, we disparage the tools with which it was carefully built and must be maintained.
We are not naturally better than folks 5,000 years ago. We are only better because of the methods our ancestors derived to make us internalize their hard-learned lessons early in life.
Incidentally I do believe in God, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the anthropology.
Do you dismiss evolution/natural selection? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason I ask is, 'cause you kinda make a similar argument.
C'mon, this one's a no-brainer. Take the seven deadly sins for example.
Every single one of them, you're probably better off not doing.
So there's an "evolutionary advantage" to behaving a certain way. Those individuals who behave "ethically" generally have an advantage over those who don't. Now some of those situations are debatable, like, for example, in the short term, if we're in the middle of a famine, there's an (at least in the short-term) advantage to me if I steal your dinner.
However, a community/population/tribe that behaves "ethically" has an ENORMOUS advantage over a tribe of sociopathic anarchists (for example). So those tribes that behave in a way that we'd call ethically, when they go to war with that hypothetical tribe of sociopathic anarchists they kick ass and take wallets.
Nothing mysterious here, just natural selection/evolution. There's no reason to assume that religion is necessary for a society to develop an ethical code.
Hold the train there, we might be "morally superior" to our ancestors from 3,000 years ago when armies would invade and slaughter entire populations (although I suspect that the residents of Dresden or Hiroshima or Fallujah might argue with you on that claim), how 'bout comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancestors?
Pre-agriculture societies generally tend to have values more similar to what we'd call today "democratic values" like equality and freedom and all that good stuff. Plus, they generally won't do things like let someone die for lack of medical care if somebody lacks funds the way we will today.
I guess what I'm saying is, given the history of the 20th century, when 100 million humans were killed by other humans, (about 60% of them civilians to boot) you're on very shaky ground to assume that humans in our current form are "morally superior" to anything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Our current morally superiority is not inherent in our biology, it is the product of our traditions and cultures that have been honed in the past millenia.
I think you missed or misinterpre
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well that doesn't make sense, I would say less people today believe in god than they did before. Although I would go on to say that we're morally better off now than we were back then. We don't stone people to death, we don't chop limbs off thieves, we don't have slavery anymore.
You also seem to assume that people are still afraid of the fire. I don't think th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you don't. You can easily have moral dogma without religious dogma. Didn't your parents ever tell you to do something "Because I said so!"
At a certain point, you do, because the person will outgrow "what Momma said", but people can also outgrow "what God said." So you'll need to understand in practical terms, anyway.
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Depending on how one defines truth, lies or superstition, all of the major religions could be viewed as being deficient in the scientistic sense of cause and effect. I woul
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Zen Buddhism (Score:3, Insightful)
Buddhism's a much bigger raft than just Zen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IRL raids (Score:4, Informative)
There's a pilgrimage around Shikoku visiting 88 numbered temples plus a dozen or two unnumbered temples (I did parts of it by bicycle a few years back). There are two temples claiming to be #30, with the government choosing one then the other depending on the political mood. Other temples have waged war with each other over the years (the pilgrimage started 1200 years ago, I think)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IRL raids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:no point of attack (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My names Smoker2 and I'm anonymous
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bypassing the obvious science fiction elements of Scientology, there is this simple fact.
You have to pay (out the nose) to be a member in good standing in the Church of Scientology. While other religions have practices of tithing and/or charities, they are not required in order to progress in the understanding of the faith.
In Scientology, you have to pay to take the courses that ultimately give you the Xenu/volcanic explosions/thetans story. You have to pay many thousands of dollars before you get access to this "knowledge".
Show me the secret books of the Bible or the Qu'ran that only the followers who have ponied up tens of thousands of dollars get to see. You can't. There aren't any such books.
IMAO, Scientology is at best, a business designed to empty the wallets of the gullible. At worst, it is a scam and an extortion campaign.
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Informative)
As a matter of fact, according to Jewish Halacha Law, it is ILLEGAL to charge money for the teaching of the Torah. The knowledge this work contains belongs to the whole world.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know several people who have used the Vatican's library, none were Catholic, all were doing proper academic work (i.e. not God's work), all had access to manuscripts 500-1000 years old.
The "Kabbalah" mostly hides in plain site; there are plenty of publicly accessible places to buy texts that been considered heretical even by most Jewish mystics throughout the centuries, if you know where to look. Jewish mysticism's tradition of hiding relies less on lack of publication and more on
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That pretty much describes all religions. Read up on religious history, money and power almost always flows to the church.
at least other religions don't SELL crappy sci-fi (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those books are not "required" to be a good Catholic.
The Church of Scientology has a carefully organized series of classes that are required (and increasingly expensive) in order to progress through the ranks of the church laity (any person not a member of the clergy).
You have to spend many thousands of dollars in the Church of Scientology before you learn about Xenu or what thetans "really are".
How much money do you have to spend to read the Bible?
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Second: The technical, traditional meaning of "cult" strictly refers to the priests and priestesses of a god or goddess in a pantheon. Aphrodite had a cult, Isis had a cult, and, at one point, your friend and mine, Jesus had a cult (he had about three hundred followers on a commune at one point, if I recall.) By contrast, a religion may include more than one god and encompasses those who simply believe as well. The media term "cult" generally refers to what academics call a "dangerous NRM" (new religious movement). "Dangerous NRM" supports your statement that it is a real religion and not something fundamentally different, but it is important to note the "dangerous" part. Wicca is a non-dangerous NRM. Heaven's Gate is a dangerous NRM. The difference is best related through a number of techniques that dangerous NRMs frequently use:
Another strong indicator of an NRM is the presence of a single, charismatic leader figure, like David Koresh or Jim Jones. (Both of whom eventually killed most of their followers, but were extremely well-respected by them. Jim Jones was even respected by main-stream Christian religion during his life time.) For this reason, and possible other reasons, Christianity actually satisfies both the traditional and modern definitions of "cult" (although whether that is a dangerous or non-dangerous NRM is another topic entirely.)
Books are great like that.
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a god-hating atheist too, but as much as I dislike traditional religions (for different reasons) the abuses of Scientology, in this day and age, are almost as bad as the Inquisition in its day. The difference is that, again, in this day and age, we can do something about it.
Just saying "it's just as bad, oh well" is a lazy cop out.
Besides, this isn't about their beliefs, this is about the abuses they perpetrate. The "fair game" policy, the special tax exempt status, the disconnection policy, all of that stuff adds up. They're worse than you think, especially if you're still at the "meh, they're silly" stage. They're much, much worse.
Yes, fundamentalism is bad, we're all aware of that. But most fundies aren't near as bad (when all aspects are considered) as the CoS. I'll concede that those that kill for their religion are more reprehensible -- but then again so would most regular people who are in those religions. In the CoS, Hubbard's way is the only way. It's an enitre religion of fundies who want to "clear the planet" -- and this includes you, by the way.
Re:Germany got it right... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't hate God if you're an atheist, because if you're an atheist, then you shouldn't believe in God in the first place.
Goodbye. Hand you card in on the way out...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can hate the idea of God. It's offensive to me that we should worship a wrathful dictator, especially a fictional one who occasionally relays his wishes through a select few.
Re:Lets be fair to the Hubberdites (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not saying that any or all of the death threats that the Scientologists are receiving are bogus, but there is already an established history of them attempting to manipulate the courts against people critical of them.
Re:Lets be fair to the Hubberdites (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Non-violent, lawful protest is the best way to go about it. If you start harassing members of the CoS personally, you are no better than they are and, more importantly, you would lose an important defence in court: that you have the right to peaceful protest. If that's all you are doing, legally they can't touch you.
As soon as you start harassing them, you lose that important benefit. This is why the protests were strictly peaceful and calm. If anything, a peaceful protest hurts them more because there's nothing they can do about it, and it looks to the world like the Scientologists are unable to defend their "Church"'s system from a bunch of people from the internet.
Re:Lets be fair to the Hubberdites (Score:5, Insightful)
For every one person you can find to do this, the CoS can find five who have many more years experience of behaving like this and getting away with it. And the people who the CoS find won't stop at following you home and photographing you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This troubles me about "Anonymous". Threatening a vindictive bully with vindictive bullying can just encourage them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They didn't. Being a church isnt a kind of a legal status, so everybody can call himself a church. Even text editor [dina.kvl.dk] users. To make it a legal title you first would have to define what a church is, and scientology then easily would change their business practices and methods to meet this new definition. In the end, you'd gain nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whats wrong with america? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Waitaminute: (Score:4, Informative)