I don't care what anyone believes, and yeah every religion is regular and awful.
Your statement is correct that other religions have had a much more adverse effect, if for nothing else because they've existed for centuries while Scientology has only been around for a few decades, yet it already has millions of followers and is a multi-national billion dollar organization.
The reason I think Scientology deserves this special attention is because it is a cult. They literally brainwash people, and teach them to use these bizarre tactics of intimidation and threats. And if anyone ever tries to leave the church and offer any kind of public dissent they actively try and destroy that person.
Again this is where I see Scientology different from other religions, like my example with Christianity earlier, there are tons of awful shit that comes from Christianity, without a doubt. But people are free to participate or not in that, people can pick up a bible and say "wow this shit is regular and insane" and reject it.
With Scientology anyone that even mentions some of the insane shit they believe gets sued into oblivion, they take advantage of desperate people, usually off the street and trick them into thinking they're going to cure their problems, now there are plenty of parallels here to other religions and aspects of them such as televangelists. But remember, no one has to go through a televangelist in Islam or Christianity, they can pick up a bible, reject or accept or whatever-with Scientology to be a part of it in anyway whatsoever you have to give them as much money as you possibly can if you want their help. Many, many people end up selling their houses with a hope to move up a "OT Level" and cutting off all contact with loved ones(who might talk them out of it). And again if they try to reject this they get destroyed, sometimes literally, as with the case with an alarming number of deaths from people who were shut in a room until they starved because they rejected it halfway through brainwashing.
http://www.lisamcpherson.org/ Is the most notable of these.
Back to religions throughout history, you're absolutely correct that some of the worst shit imaginable has constantly came in the name of one religion or another. Christianity has a lot of blood on it's hands. The Crusades, Witch trials, justification of slavery, the burning/hanging of scientists and heretics, and today there are certainly some insane shit going on. I would contend that electing republicans into office being the worst considering the far reaching effects-offense possible, although surely there are countless others to choose from.
However, I want to stick with my argument that the difference here is that with Religions you can use them how you want - and with Cults you get used in a very specific harmful way. Like you can pick up a bible and be inspired to go be a missionary and feed starving people in Africa, you can hold food drives to help the poor in the name of Christ, and on and on OR you can just use it as an excuse to hate fags and support war. This is the difference. There is no way that you could ever ban someones thoughts, so you can ban people from believing in fairy tales. Nor would that be a good thing, as Orwell and others have taught us. What you can do is expose them for what they are. Bring out the lies, counter with truth.
I don't want to repeat myself, but to go back to my earlier point, many of the things we associate religion being the cause of throughout history, actually had other causes. Like pretty much any example you can think of(other than witch burning and shit like that) usually had other causes than someone reading a book and saying "gee I'm gonna go blow up the WTC, brb," the causes for these things are usually related to their living situation, economic factors, education and the like. Just about any problem you can think of will always go back to some of these things. Desperate situations create desperate people. In the south people are often obese and poor. They are looking for a miracle, they might get it from a televangelist, but if you took it away from them they'd just substitute for some other snake-oil sales man, either religious or secular. Much like the mom in
Requiem For A Dream.
The terrorism example also plays out this, as the Koran gives plenty of justification for terrorism. And over a billion Muslims read this, yet very, very few actually commit it. Why? Because reading the Koran isn't enough. They need to be desperate. What makes them desperate enough? Having their family blown up, having their country invaded and their government overthrown like we did in the 50's with Iran, seeing America do all these things creates the swamp that these mosquitoes come from. We created this, not the Koran or Islam. You can look this up, it' happens secularly for nationalist and other reasons all the time. Islamic countries often do have deplorable human rights conditions, I would still argue that a lot of that is related to the economic issues where many have a ultra-rich few princes governing with a uneducated poor majority. Secularist countries such as China have pretty bad Human rights records as well.
You have to remember that almost no leader of any religion actually believes in what they are saying. Do you think the president and his advisor's give a shit about Religion? They use it as a tool. Karl Rove even admitted he didn't believe in any of it. If you think we're in the Middle East, or our Economic policies or really anything our government does has religious causes you're fooling yourself. It's all politics. There have been countless recent scandals involving republicans that pushed for anti-gay legislation that we're actually gay themselves. It's all politics. The candidates that say they are in it to fight terrorists would continue our friendship with Saudi Arabia, where more terrorists come from than any other nation-furthermore they would continue policies that our own CIA has confirmed would cause more terrorism. So don't believe anything in politics or the government or even religion has much to do with religion or any kind of true conviction. It's all politics and money every time.
I don't want any of this to sound like I'm downplaying the awful shit thats came from religion throughout history, although in some cases I may disagree about the actual causations/motivations. I think it's clear there is ample evidence with Christianity and any other religion to hate. I just want to distinguish how this is a different situation and in many ways a much more troubling one.
Topic: Scientology (Read 6308 times)