On 2005-06-06 19:30:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I'd say that's a great testament to what "brainwashing" can do! Tom and John are two of the most successful and likeable celebrities out here. That's the kind of brainwashing we could all benefit from???
If they don't like troubled teen programs, what is their suggestion? "
One of Scientology's biggest hypocracies is that they recruit celebrities, people who are *already* successful, and then get the celebrities to tout Scientology as the key to their successes.
And the "Scientology" Tom Cruise and John Travolta experience is very different from the Scientology that ordinary schmucks recruited in by Cruise and Travolta's example get.
Scientology has a nasty history of not only being totalist in their religious doctrine, but being totalist in what they expect from the ordinary schmucks that join them---all their money, and all their time. There are people who have left Scientology that make serious allegations of having been made virtual slaves serving unpaid in Scientology facilities, and working full time and very strenuously on Scientology ships, with the organization employing coercion to keep them from leaving those ships and leaving Scientology to get paid work outside Scientology and get out of "giving" all their money and spare time to Scientology.
If you're Catholic and you take a vow of poverty and join a monastic order or convent, if you decide to leave and get a job and not be Catholic and keep your own money, they let you. They don't put you on a boat at sea where they can control your movements and coerce you into staying. They don't apply any pressure except the persuasion of ideas and speech to keep you from leaving.
If you ask to be released from your vows, and still want to be Catholic but live your life as a layperson keeping your own money and working in secular life, a lot of times they'll release you.
Scientology has a bad reputation of indulging in dirty tricks and slap suits to silence former members who criticize them.
There are a lot of governments who don't have our strict religious freedom laws that allow *most* other religions to practice freely that have ruled Scientology a cult. They aren't all governments with the same political ideology or have anything else in common *except* that they've determined, independently, that Scientology coercively exploits people.
Most organized religions exist along a spectrum of control, from low control over their membership to absolute coercive control. If coercive control is the critical attribute that defines a cult, with different people defining the level of coercive control that makes a cult at different levels.
By the definitions of almost everybody who knows a lot about them and isn't a Scientologist, Scientology is a cult.
I'm Wiccan. A lot of people call our religion a cult, even though we're very, very low control over our members as religions go---even lower control than most of the mainstream ones, since we don't build buildings or pay ministers, and therefore *rarely* solicit contributions.
A very few of our people accept pay for providing priestly services, but with very few exceptions they're violating a fundamental tenet of our religion when they do so, and we tend to view such people as predatory apostates rather than "Good Wiccans." It's only legitimate for us to accept pay for religion-related services if we "truly labor"---such as a person who does a lot of card readings for virtual strangers charging *reasonable* rates for her time. Very low centralized control, unusually low solicitation of adherents' money. We solicit less of adherents' money than almost any other organized religion I could name.
Anyway, I didn't mean to advertise for my religion. :smile:
My point was that we have a very tolerant attitude towards other religions---we believe it's very important for us not to try to divert others from their path unless they're doing harm, and then we'd only seek to divert them from doing the harm. If someone comes to us, we consider very carefully whether or not they're displaying the signs that we're their path, and if they aren't, we send them away as gently as possible.
I don't have any special axe to grind over Scientology for being a different religion from mine. I am not prone to consider something a cult simply for being an unusual, minority religion. Or for having unusual but not harmful religious practices or tenets.
From the level of financial and life control they seem to usually seek to exert over their adherents, I personally consider Scientology a cult.
Timoclea
