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Religious tolerance...except for Scientology?

George_Washington

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I was just thinking to myself the other day that Scientologists must be the most untolerated religious group in this country and possibly the world and I think that's wrong.

I'm a firm believer that we should all have tolerance for a person's religion, no matter how wrong we might think it is.

It seems like scientologists are ridiculed in this country and I just don't think that's right.

I am not a scientologist but I feel somewhat sorry for the people in this country that are.

It seems like Now Tom Cruise and John Travolta are no longer judged for their acting but just for their belief in scientology.

Even more so, when Tom Cruise spoke out against psychotic drugs, he was ridiculed by his peers.

I just feel that scientology is a group in America that just doesn't get the kind of tolerance that other religions are given and I wanted to see what you guys thought about this.
 
Who is Xenu?
I'm going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Right, then I'll begin.

Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

Xenu the alien ruler Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).

After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting".

When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.

As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.

That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called "body thetans". And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these "body thetans" and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.




Hmmmm....I just dont know, what could possibly make it diffucult to respect this as a religion?
 
tecoyah said:
That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called "body thetans". And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these "body thetans" and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago. [/I]



Hmmmm....I just dont know, what could possibly make it diffucult to respect this as a religion?

Right. What puts me off about this religion is the fact that one must pay sometimes 100's of thousands of dollars to find their "inner thetan." Something about that just smells rotten.
 
George_Washington said:
Yes, I know there are aspects of it that are controversial. I see where you're coming from. But shouldn't we still just have tolerance for it and not judge people just for being of that faith?

I think most people do have tolerance for it. There was a little "scandal" about the stuff Tom Cruise said but who cares now? I doubt it's going to hurt his career long-term or anyone else's who practices Scientology. I don't know, just my lazy Sunday afternoon opinion.
 
George_Washington said:
Yes, I know there are aspects of it that are controversial. I see where you're coming from. But shouldn't we still just have tolerance for it and not judge people just for being of that faith?


I suppose we should, but I gotta admit, in this case I find it extremely hard to show compassion for those who take it seriously. I can respect Christianity, as there is an enormous amount of good that comes from it. I can respect Islam for similar reasons, and because I find the texts fascinating. I can respect Buddhism (which is a better example, as it is not a religion either) Due to the wonderful teachings it entails. I can show respect to the Witnesses in the watchtower, as they are extremely devoted, and try to be kind. I can Hold up high the book of Morman as a fine example of what we all should aspire to.
But.....even the man who created this Cult (yes, it is a cult) admitted he made the whole thing up. Thats gotta tell you something.
 
tecoyah said:
I suppose we should, but I gotta admit, in this case I find it extremely hard to show compassion for those who take it seriously. I can respect Christianity, as there is an enormous amount of good that comes from it. I can respect Islam for similar reasons, and because I find the texts fascinating. I can respect Buddhism (which is a better example, as it is not a religion either) Due to the wonderful teachings it entails. I can show respect to the Witnesses in the watchtower, as they are extremely devoted, and try to be kind. I can Hold up high the book of Morman as a fine example of what we all should aspire to.
But.....even the man who created this Cult (yes, it is a cult) admitted he made the whole thing up. Thats gotta tell you something.

Buddhism is a religion. Only it is not deistic - at least not in the sense that there is a creator god.
 
mixedmedia said:
Buddhism is a religion. Only it is not deistic - at least not in the sense that there is a creator god.

I agree it certainly could be deemd a religion....I think of it more as Philosophy myself....and dont think this takes away from it at all. That said...Okay....its a religion.

Dammit...now I gotta call myself religious
 
tecoyah said:
I agree it certainly could be deemd a religion....I think of it more as Philosophy myself....and dont think this takes away from it at all. That said...Okay....its a religion.

Dammit...now I gotta call myself religious

Oh, I see. I understand.

Call it a philosophy, I don't care. I am not a Buddhist, per se, but I am fairly familiar with its teachings through books. I respect its teachings very much. And I suppose if I were forced to claim a religion, it wouldn't take a split second to come to a decision.

Buddhism is pretty organized with monks, nuns and lamas, and in the case of Tibetan Buddhism, a spiritual figurehead. I see a philosophy as something less organized like Taoism or Confucianism.

But it's all just words. T'aint no thing. :smile:
 
I'm for freedom of speech. However, I do not believe that that freedom is extended exclusively with a "Here's a five-dollar bill, joey, buy something you like with it". Rather, that freedom comes with a responsibility, and a person like Tom Cruise should accept his responsibility. From various celebrities we need to endure the enticing speeches about how they are trying to use their fame to convince people to donate money to some 'good' cause, and seeing on how they keep getting asked, I assume that there is some correlation between the celebrity and public opinion. Or at least, the opinion of a select few.

That a given, that celebrity have some influence, they also have some responsibility. If you cry out against psychiatry, and the drugs used there, know what you are saying. There are schizofrenic people out there who pose a threat to themselves, and towards others without their medications, and who thanks to their medications are able to live a life free of hallucinations, depressions and other torments Tom Cruise can not even begin to imagine.

The view that condoms are forbidden by the Catholic Church goes in pair with their abstinence/no premarital sex policy. You can't get AIDS if you don't have sex before your marriage (well, through blood transfusions and the like, but condoms don't help in those cases anyway). However, as soon as you begin to say that psychiatric drugs are bad, and you are not providing an alternative to people who have schizofrenia, or per example, are depressed (which is a disease, not a feeling you have every now and than), you are not being responsible, and you deserve all the **** people poor out over you.

This is not about being tolerant, it is about drawing a line what you can and can't say. Sure, Tom Cruise can say and profess his faith, but that doesn't by any length implicate that other people, in the least I, have to take that for granted and accept it as his opinion. Him being in the spotlight, he has to take his responsibility.

As a religion, I appreciate a capitalistic ploy when I see one. However, it ends there. Freedom comes with responsibility. Always. I'd have them put a sticker on their books that it has no scientific basis and that people with psychological or psychiatrical problems should look for help there, at a psychologist or psychiatrist, not at an institute that uses simplistic machines for behavioural analysis.

Mr U
 
George_Washington said:
I was just thinking to myself the other day that Scientologists must be the most untolerated religious group in this country and possibly the world and I think that's wrong.

I'm a firm believer that we should all have tolerance for a person's religion, no matter how wrong we might think it is.

It seems like scientologists are ridiculed in this country and I just don't think that's right.

I am not a scientologist but I feel somewhat sorry for the people in this country that are.

It seems like Now Tom Cruise and John Travolta are no longer judged for their acting but just for their belief in scientology.

Even more so, when Tom Cruise spoke out against psychotic drugs, he was ridiculed by his peers.

I just feel that scientology is a group in America that just doesn't get the kind of tolerance that other religions are given and I wanted to see what you guys thought about this.

If Tom Cruise was against those drugs because of Christian beliefs I bet no one in the media would have even dared to bring it up. But Scientology hasn't been around long enough I guess. It's definitely a double standard and I'm glad that there are Christians who realize how ridiculous it is.
 
I think the problem with scientology is that it was founded because the founder said himself "Religion is the best business to make money"
 
HU-210 said:
This is not about being tolerant, it is about drawing a line

Exactly.. a line has to be drawn somewhere. None of our constitutional rights are absolute: freedom of speech doesn't include screaming bomb on an airplane and the right to bear arms doesn't include nuclear arms. The same goes for religious freedoms.. I could start a religion revolving around LSD and say my rights were being infringed upon if I was busted selling it... or taken to an extreme: I could start a religion that requires me to brutally kill all infidels who don't believe whatever crazy ideas my religion consists of.
 
Guess what? I'm the second coming of Christ, and everyone must own a pink poodle to get into heaven. NOW TOLERATE ME! :lol:
 
George_Washington said:
Yes, I know there are aspects of it that are controversial. I see where you're coming from. But shouldn't we still just have tolerance for it and not judge people just for being of that faith?

So let me get this right. If I make up a religion out of thin air. Call it the Church of the Dead frog, (we worship dead frogs) in case you didn't know. You think that this is a religion that should be shown tolerance and or respect of some sort?
 
128shot said:
I think the problem with scientology is that it was founded because the founder said himself "Religion is the best business to make money"

I think the problem with scientology is it's a joke created by a really really bad science fiction writer.
 
mixedmedia said:
Right. What puts me off about this religion is the fact that one must pay sometimes 100's of thousands of dollars to find their "inner thetan." Something about that just smells rotten.

As opposed to a tithe that you are supposed to pay your entire life?

Really, what's the difference? They both want your money.
 
Columbusite said:
If Tom Cruise was against those drugs because of Christian beliefs I bet no one in the media would have even dared to bring it up. But Scientology hasn't been around long enough I guess. It's definitely a double standard and I'm glad that there are Christians who realize how ridiculous it is.

Good point.

Why is it that very old unsubstantiated beliefs are accorded respect, but newer, equally unsubstantiated, beliefs aren't?
 
Calm2Chaos said:
So let me get this right. If I make up a religion out of thin air. Call it the Church of the Dead frog, (we worship dead frogs) in case you didn't know. You think that this is a religion that should be shown tolerance and or respect of some sort?

As opposed to a religion that worships some dead guy stuck on a cross? Why should it be shown any more respect? Just because it's old?
 
MrFungus420 said:
As opposed to a religion that worships some dead guy stuck on a cross? Why should it be shown any more respect? Just because it's old?

I'm very tempted to say good point.... BUt I just can't bring myself to do it. L Ron Hubbard, space ships, volcanoes,...... I just can't quite bring myself to clump scientology into most other religions. Lets just say that religions are all based on odd beliefs.... BUt I am sorry, the whole alien, science fiction writer thing just makes me giggle...
 
MrFungus420 said:
As opposed to a religion that worships some dead guy stuck on a cross? Why should it be shown any more respect? Just because it's old?

There must be SOME reason Christianity spread like wildfire, consumed Rome and now has a third of the world following it.
 
The Real McCoy said:
There must be SOME reason Christianity spread like wildfire, consumed Rome and now has a third of the world following it.

People don't want to die? There must be some reason Islam is the fastest growing religion. Doesn't mean it's right and the same goes for Christianity.
 
Columbusite said:
People don't want to die? There must be some reason Islam is the fastest growing religion. Doesn't mean it's right and the same goes for Christianity.

There's many parallels and they both worship the same God. And I never said Christianity was right.
 
George_Washington said:
Yes, I know there are aspects of it that are controversial. I see where you're coming from. But shouldn't we still just have tolerance for it and not judge people just for being of that faith?
If people want to make their beliefs public, they make their beliefs open to ridicule. Don't want judgment? Keep one's beliefs to one's self.
 
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