Scientology???

this thread showed me no one really knows what Scientology is about. so being that i had some spare time today i went down to my local church and met with a man who described it to me. its really interesting. his big thing was that its not a religion but a philosophy. its about improving life and relationships...a little Tony Robbins maybe but over all not that bad in its more basic form

 

every time he posts i realize he hates everything i am or hope to be.

 

forgot to mention i was given a free copy of Dianetics and i purchased Scientology: A New Slant on Life ...i am reading the latter now...i will keep you updated.

 

i hope you didn't sign up for anything. you don't get to hear the deep dark secrets until you're deeper into the hole... i mean, religion. if it's not a religion, but a philosophy, then why the fuck are they tax exempt i wonder?

but seriously, every scientologist i've ever known or met has been kinda weird to outright crazy. i doubt it's coincidence.

 

Did he explain why they're called the "church of Scientology" and why they get tax breaks as such?

 

When I was at Fort Meade I looked up Scientology and inquired about it myself, out of pure uninformed curiosity. I filled out some kind of personality questionaire, sent it off, and got an e-mail back telling me I could visit one of their local centers to "discuss" my results. All the readily available information I was able to find didn't tell me anything about the core beliefs of the system.

What I did find didn't strike me as a "religion" at all, but a kind of self-help program based on a centralized authority. I passed.

Religion is not something so dry and clinical, and shouldn't revolve around heirarchical institutions and ego cults. Religion should have candles, ritual, and some kind of sense of the timeless and numinous (wondrous or otherworldly). At least that's what I think.

Still, it's said that people have attatined great success, gotten off drugs and improved their lives through this stuff. For them that's great. Just strikes me as a little flaky and overly secretive.

 

Did they pester you after that? I have heard they are very persistant in signing up new members.

 

Amazingly, no. I was surprised. They are evangelical, in the sense that they want to "spread the word" to everybody. In that way, they're not much different from your everyday corporation with a product to sell. We are a capitalist society, after all.

 

tax exepmt i dont know...but the church thing...one explanation

Hubbard prefaces each book with a comment about definitions...he seems to rely on using words differently than normal to keep an air of mystery. this could be the case.

from Eaton's 1897 Dictionary

church

Derived probably from the Greek kuriakon (i.e., "the Lord's house"), which was
used by ancient authors for the place of worship. In the New Testament it is
the translation of the Greek word ecclesia, which is synonymous with the Hebrew
_kahal_ of the Old Testament, both words meaning simply an assembly, the
character of which can only be known from the connection in which the word is
found. There is no clear instance of its being used for a place of meeting or
of worship, although in post-apostolic times it early received this meaning.
Nor is this word ever used to denote the inhabitants of a country united in the
same profession, as when we say the "Church of England," the "Church of
Scotland," etc. We find the word ecclesia used in the following senses in the
New Testament: (1.) It is translated "assembly" in the ordinary classical sense
(Acts 19:32, 39, 41).


he could be using the assembly definition

 

i dunno about the drug thing. certainly an addiction to cultish behavior is better than an addiction to drugs, but it's tough to say just how much better.

my brother kicked a drug habit by becoming a jehova's witness (that's the group that ran his particular NA program). i suspect narconon (scientology's drug kicking organization) does the same thing.