I visited NYC yesterday and saw a pile of discarded pamphlets for Scientology on a subway. Apperently, they were inviting people to watch a free 15-minute film on Dianetics in a Scientology branch somewhere in NYC. I'm guessing the pamphlets were left on the floor for a reason.

This boggles my mind. Do people believe in everything that Scientology is and stands for? I mean, truly believe in it as a religion? If there are Scientology branches in major cities, surely there are people who put such faith within such organization. I've been believing that it was more of a corporation for financial gain.

We have a church of scientology in Columbus. It's in an old shut-down deli.

Replace Scientology with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc and you have my views on any religion.

Scientology is great. It annoys religious people because it's a mirror of their own beliefs and makes them realise equally stupid their beliefs must seem to others.

We have one here in Louisville, KY. I honestly don't know much about Scientology besides the little that I hear in the media, which is generally more about Tom Cruise than anything else. I hear L. Ron Hubbard's books are quite good though (I've only read Battlefield Earth).

You're seriously ignorant if you think Scientogoly is anywhere near the same level as any of the other major religions in the world.

Indeed. Scientology is a yes-man religion.

I'm an atheist. I don't think that Noah's Ark was real, but it's several orders of magnitude more plausible than a 747 with rockets inhabiting the earth.

God i loved that South Park episode.
I really can't beleive that anyone can actually devote their lives to that crap.

You didn't even understand it.

You just laughed because they use swear words.

Is it the intention of the forums to bash TE until he leaves?

I mean... I'm not defending him or anything, but doesn't it say something in the rules about personal attacks? It's getting a little bit out of hand. I mean he can't even post without someone bashing him for christ's sake.

Scientology blows me away. I don't understand how anyone could actually think its true... if they even do. You'd have to be crazy.

I think its just a way for actors/actresses to get tax free banking. This enticed some poorer fans of the actors to join either and then their mental condition or whatnot enabled them to easily be converted.

LOL... considering your religion, that's funny coming from you.

lol.

I was in Battery Park last night!

"Baaaaa. Baaaaaaaa."

-Maynard on Scientology

I mean, when some sci-fi writer decided to make a religion out of some cheap story, why the hell did he make a religion out of some really stupid one?

I would have made a religion out of explosions, lasers and ... more explosions and lasers. None of this creepy crap.

There are aliens and spaceships. Maybe the aliens have lasers and they can blow up the space ships.

Yeah, but there's also stupid crap about dropping people into volcanos with spaceships resembling airplanes. That's lamer than my socks after testing if the ice is stable.

I'm a scientologist.

I don't think it's all that strange.

<Antony> lets see how many people think i'm actually a scientologist

You suck, Vinny.

Thanks.

You would have had to have been very defensive and made really dumb points for anyone to even think about believing you.

Do you even KNOW who you're talking to Avenger? I am the king of dumb and defensive... err... wait.

Vinny you shouldn't-a done that :[

edit: i realy should finish reading threads before i make my post.

Oh c'mon! The only reason older religions' stories seem more plausible is that you've grown up in a culture where many people accept it. Somehow, all the animals in the world were within walking distance of Noah, they all fit in this one boat like a clown car, water appears from absolutely nowhere and floods everything, somehow he manages to not only collect enough food but also to store it alongside all the other animals in his tiny boat etc etc. Both stories are damn weird and crazy. Admittedly it does mean that to truly believe the scientologists' story you have to be a fair bit more gullible since you don't even have the excuse that your entire society believes in the story.

What's cool about scientology (in an evil genius kind of way) is that Hubbard obviously realised he would be dragging in the kind of people who could fall for all sorts of cults and most of whom probably needed psychiatric help. By demonising psychiatry as part of his religion he could ensure that his followers didn't get the help they needed that might have removed them from his cult.
On top of that all those "auditing sessions" are also a stroke of genius. You basically have an interview with a higher cult member while holding these two metal bars that are part of what they call an "E-meter" which is basically a galvanometer which could fairly easily be used as a crude lie detector. Now you'd get asked all sorts of prying questions in an effort to get you to reveal your secrets and get rid of mind aliens or some other crap. This often means that the scientologists now have enough information to blackmail you should you decide to leave.

scientology seems completely plausible to me, you're all just naysayers.

All I'm saying is that Scientology is just as believable as any other religion out there.

Recusant hit the nail on the head. You only rank other religions higher because of culture and the fact that they're older. They're still (most of them anyway) based on stories written by men. Just because those books are older you seem to find them more plausible.

Except some aspects of other religions are actually proven to be real.

What?

What parts of other religions are proven to be real? apart from stuff like place names.

I'd like to hear these parts that have been proven real and then explain why they don't count.

Jesus for example. We know he existed, did great things and had great influence. I'd call that a significant head start against scientology.

The real question is whether or not he was divine...not his existence.

Multiple accounts help as well, as opposed to one author.

No... Just no...

I'm going to try to find a post I made ages ago in another topic...

[quote=Me in another thread]What? There is no evidence he existed.
It should be easy to prove he existed. However... The only people to write about him are the writers of the bible gospels. No writers from the time he was supposedly alive mention him. Writings about him (other than the gospels) only start appearing ~100 years after his supposed birth.

Even the gospels are questionable. Paul, for example. In all of his writings he never says he met or even saw Jesus himself.

There are no eye-witness writings of Jesus, despite there being a libraries worth of text from the time Jesus was alive. You'd think with Jesus doing so much miraculous stuff he'd get talked about. He apparently touched thousands of lives yet nobody thought to write about him.

Not to mention his massive similarites with Hercules, Mirthra, Horus/Osiris and Krishna amongst others.

No, I'd say there is more evidence to support that jesus was a fictional character than to support him being a real person.[/quote]

This guy who supposedly influenced the world, performed miracles was not written about until well after he died. No eyewitness accounts of him from and most of the stories about him were rewritten stories about hercules, mithra, or another mythological being who existed long before he did.

Very, very, very few historical scholars are going to agree with your position.

In addition, lack of eyewitness account certainly do not mean he doesn't exist, as you suggest.

I don't find that less plausible than claims of a man walking on water, resurrecting the dead, exorcising demons, turning one man's meal into food for thousands, and after his death ascending into some higher form of existence from which he and his dad (who are actually one) watch over the world.

Uhm, I remember quite clearly from religious ed that there are quite a number of documents from his lifetime that mention him.
Not so much about miracles, more about him being a rioter.

Then you have to consider that back then Jerusalem was at the edge of the (Roman) world. There wasn't much news from that place.

We should all just worship Optimist Prime.