Scientology is a disgusting cult with no socially redeeming features whatsoever. Plus their messiah is going the way of all flesh. He’s getting old and fat and is just plainly off his rocker.
Normally I’m a live and let live kind of guy. So long as the religious nutters whether they be Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or athiests leave me alone I could care less what they do.
But Scientology is a cult that has hurt people and destroyed lives. As with all cults it needs to be fought and exposed for the dangerous fraud that it continues to perpetrate.
In today’s New York Times there is a terrific exposé of some of the inner workings of the cult and the struggle a couple had when they tried to leave the “Church.”
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them…
Fifty-six years after its founding by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a Reformation. The defectors say Sea Org members were repeatedly beaten by the church’s chairman, David Miscavige, often during planning meetings; pressured to have abortions; forced to work without sleep on little pay; and held incommunicado if they wanted to leave. The church says the defectors are lying…
The church has responded to the bad publicity by denying the accusations and calling attention to a worldwide building campaign that showcases its wealth and industriousness. Last year, it built or renovated opulent Scientology churches, which it calls Ideal Orgs, in Rome; Malmo, Sweden; Dallas; Nashville; and Washington. And at its base here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, it continued buying hotels and office buildings (54 in all) and constructing a 380,000-square-foot mecca that looks like a convention center.
Haiti needs these jokers like it needs a hole in the head:
Amid the mass of aid agencies piling in to help Haiti quake victims is a batch of Church of Scientology “volunteer ministers”, claiming to use the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems.
Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling volunteers fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie.
“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,” she said.
“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”
I have always found the antics of Scientology to be rather creepy when they’re not downright dangerous to one’s well being.
Among other things Scientology was recently found guilty of fraud in France
The plaintiffs focused their complaints on the use of a device that Scientologists say measures spiritual well-being. Members used the electropsychometer, or E-Meter, to “locate areas of spiritual duress or travail so they can be addressed and handled,” according to Scientology’s Web site.
The plaintiffs said that, after using the device, they were encouraged to pay for vitamins and books. They said that amounted to fraud.
The ”church” is facing allegations of torture including forced abortions, assault and blackmail in Australia.
And while death of John Travolta’s son, Jett, was very sad, I am glad that the extortion case surrounding Jett’s death made it to trial. That’s because for the first time John Travolta was forced to admit publically, under oath, that his son was autistic. For years the family had been saying that Jett suffered from Kawasaki disease due to exposure to carpet cleaning chemicals. Whether Jett received proper treatment is not known.
(In 1993) Preston talked about her son’s struggle with Kawasaki disease. “It causes swelling in the organs, so your heart can swell, different important organs can swell,” she said. “We thought at one point we were going to lose him.”
The irony in the name of “Scientology” plays out in how the cult handles disease. Essentially all illnesses are in the mind. Scientology’s antipathy to psychiatry is well known. Less well known is how the cult treats other diseases. God help you if you have epilepsy, for example.
Less well known than any of the above is the fact that Scientology considers homosexuals subhuman(this is a bit of a surprise for a cult that loves its Hollywood converts)
I only hope that those in the grip of this horrible cult find the wherewithal to escape its clutches.
Scientology is is a miserable scam masquerading as a religion. What other “religion” copyrights its religious teachings?
A simple google search about the cult’s history reveals the movement for the con it is.
Here’s a hot off the press interview with a “church” spokesclam who get walks out of an interview when asked a very simple question about his beliefs.
Note that he doesn’t deny the question; he just attacks the journalist for asking it.
What a scumbag.
That’s the problem with messiahs. Unless they get crucified like Jesus(in case u haven’t heard of him, he has his own wiki entry) or shot like Joseph Smith, they get old.
Alas, even as we speak age is catching up with Scientology’s messiah, Tom Cruise.
No longer is he the dancing teenager in underwear. Gravity and middle age is catching up.
My guess is that Lord Xenu is responsible for this heinous attack on Scientology’s perfect little messiah.
