Give us all your money!
Scientology Faces Criminal Charges – AP.google.com: A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.
The probe also concluded that Scientology’s Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts, said Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors Office.
A Belgian parliamentary committee report in 1997 labeled Scientology a sect and investigations were launched into the group’s finances and practices, such as the personality tests conducted on new members.
Investigators have spent the past decade trying to determine how far Scientology went in recruiting converts after numerous complaints were filed with police by ex-members alleging they’d been the victims of intimidation and extortion.
Ah HA!
That was what that that guy was doing at the library he’s got the iPOD Touch(myself)!
Cheers
I hate how religion threads always degrade into Apple product worship/bash sessions…
But then attacking Scientology is like shooting iPods in a barrel.
MisterMustard
“how come nobody’s ever busting Buddha’s balls?”
Possibly because Buddhism isn’t a religion as such and Buddha is not so much a single person as a state of awareness. Siddhartha Gautama referred to himself as ‘awake’. Cults don’t usually coalesce around a modest statement. The hot buttons for the mentally challenged are usually more akin to virgin birth or interplanetary conception.
I am a devout follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We have no church, no e-meters, we didn’t claim to live with dinosaurs, we don’t believe virgins can give birth but we do believe that Joseph was ridiculed by those dicks at work. “Hey Joseph, how’s the son of God?” Bwahahaha! That is the last time he’ll take a job out of town.
“Religion is to society as masturbation is to sex”
Karl Marx.
>>Possibly because Buddhism isn’t a religion as such.
Aw jeez. As much as I battered it out with the Atheists over whether or not their religion is a religion, at least I can see their point (although I don’t agree with them).
But “Buddhism isn’t a religion as such”??? If you don’t view Siddhartha Gautama as the moral equivalent of Jesus Christ, then I don’t know what to say to you. After 49 days of meditating under the Bodhi tree, he attained “Awakening” or “Enlightenment”, and thereafter was known as Buddah, spending the rest of his life teaching his “Dharma” to others. If that ain’t a religion, wtf is?
>>The hot buttons for the mentally challenged are usually
No, the “hot buttons” for those whom you would call “mentally challenged” are anything that can’t be proven with a TI graphing calculator and some graph paper. In other words, if you don’t understand it, it must be jungle fever-induced vodoo.
BTW, Buddism is the fifth most popular religion on Earth, right behind Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Chinese Universists. Got lots of religio-cred, for something you don’t even think is a religion.
#31 – MM,
I’m having a bit of trouble finding the original O.T. text on the internet. I’d prefer a Jewish site as the King James bible is not the best translation from the original Hebrew. Here’s what wikipedia has to say on the subject, I’ll keep looking for a better source.
After crossing the Jordan, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan where they laid siege to the city of Jericho. The Lord spoke to Joshua telling him to march around the city once every day for six days with the seven priests carrying trumpets in front of the ark. On the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times and the priests were to blow their trumpets. This Joshua did, and he commanded his people not to give a war-cry until he told them to do so. On the seventh day, after marching around the city the seventh time, the priests sounded their trumpets, and Joshua ordered the people to shout. The walls of the city collapsed, and the Israelites were able to charge straight into the city. The city was completely destroyed, and every man, woman, and child in it was killed. Only Rahab and her family were spared, because she had hid the two spies sent by Joshua. After this Joshua burned the remains of the city and cursed any man who would rebuild the city of Jericho at the cost of his firstborn son.
According to the above, no trumpet was blown to knock down the walls. Either way, my original point was merely that many bible stories sound like they were written by a bunch of stoned teenagers. No matter how you slice the Josh story, it still sounds like a bad trip. Dude, everyone died, even the animals!! What a bummer. No shit.
Now back to bashing scientology, which according to L. Ron Jr. actually was written by a stoner. (“only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs.”)
>>Either way, my original point was merely that many
>>bible stories sound like they were written by a bunch
>>of stoned teenagers.
That may well be, I don’t know the recreational drug preferences of the folks who wrote the Bible. Timothy Leary loved his acid, and he was a lot of fun.
In any case, I don’t put too much faith in the rules and regulations of various denominations, especially when the Word Of God is interpreted by misogynistic, xenophobic, war-profiteering, sexually-confused hatemongers. (although I was always kind of jealous of the Catholic kids when I was little, the ones who “fasted” on Fridays and got lobster and shrimp and tastry broiled fish sticks with tartar sauce for their “fast”). That’s why I attend a left-leaning liberal “we love you all” sort of church. We don’t try to legislate our beliefs, if some of those among us believe that abortion or same-sex marriage is a sin, we don’t participate, and we try to help others without oppressing them. And if you don’t believe in what we believe in, that’s fine. I haven’t met many mega-church pastors in the soup kitchen.
#39 – There were no trumpets.
The used the shofarot (ram’s horn).
>>The used the shofarot (ram’s horn).
Aw jeez. Now we’re going to get into that “blow the shofar (chauffeur)” stuff about the Jewish High Holy Days?
You’re kinky, OFTLO. I’ll grant you that.
Mister Mustard
“In Buddhism, a buddha (Sanskrit: Awakened) is any being who has become fully awakened (enlightened), and has experienced Nirvana.
Buddhists do not consider Siddhartha Gautama to have been the only Buddha. The Pali Canon refers to many previous ones… while the Mahayana tradition additionally has many Buddhas of celestial, rather than historical, origin. A common Buddhist belief across all Buddhism is that the next Buddha will be one named Maitreya (Pali: Metteyya).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha
“The Sanskrit term Dharma (Pali: Dhamma) signifies the underlying order in nature and life (human or other) considered to be in accord with that order.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma
As to why Buddhism is referred to as a religion (and I do not dispute that it is within the definition of ‘a set of beliefs’ as a religion), I earlier recommended Houston Smith’s book. The statement I made: “Buddhism isn’t a religion as such and Buddha is not so much a single person as a state of awareness” addressed the premise that Buddhism is not faith based nor fantasy laden; and busting Buddha’s balls implies there is a single set of balls to break.
BTW, lest you think I took offense to the image of imperiling Siddhartha Gautama’s gonads, there is an wonderful Zen teaching which states: “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!”
>>busting Buddha’s balls implies there is a single set of balls to break.
OK, let me reposition the apostrophe, and say “breaking Buddahs’ balls”. Does pluralizing Buddha satisfy you?
In any case, your definition of a “religion” seems unecessarily narrow and restrictive. Whoever said there had to be just one “god”? Who even said it had to be in the form of a person? According to your definition, Wicca is not a religion, Jainism is not a religion, Hinduism is not a religion. Just about nothing other than the Big Three would be considered a religion. Except they all ARE religions, even if it’s better for the nonconformist, free-thinking, uncoventionalist ego to pretend they’re not.
#45 – MM,
The so called Big Three are really a single Big One. They have far more similarities than differences. Looking in from the outside, it’s almost hard to tell them apart. They’re all really sub-sects of Zoroastrianism.
>>The so called Big Three are really a single Big One.
OK. Whatever. I actually consider the core of the Big and Little 100 to all be a single Big One. When you strip away the prohibitions against shellfish, cloven-hooved beasts, eating “meat” on Friday, alcohol, abortion, eating cows, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, there’s something that remains. And that is the Big One.
And somehow, in spite of all the throwing-to-the-lions, the burning at the stake, the dynamite vests, the opression, the ridicule, the criminalization, the Big One has been with us since the dawn of humanity.
Kinda gives one pause.
As I’ve said before – every God is a creation of the ignorant, emotional, fearful average human mind.
The simplest, and therefore most likely explanation for why your ‘Big One has been with us since the dawn of humanity’ is because the thing that created it, that selfsame human mind, has been with humanity even before that. The mind necessarily predates the inventions of the mind, of which a “God” is one of the oldest, arising as it does from primitive emotions and thought processes.
To reframe – your so-called big idea, the concept of an invisible, all-powerful force behind everything the average human doesn’t understand, has not lasted this long because as you absurdly imply, it’s such a logical, consistent, time-tested concept, created by those tremendously rational, knowledgeable and wise club-wielders – but because the fundamental portions of the human brain which have always been the source of fear and wonder have changed the least in that time.
That’s why a tiny few of us know how to build spacecraft and computers, while the vast majority of us still believe in that invisible Big Daddy who tells us we’re better than everybody else. 🙂
It must be very comforting for you to know that you are wiser, more rational, more advanced, and more courageous than almost all of humanity, past present, and future, my little Poisson distribution. How does it feel to be a virtual god?. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill for a guy who drinks lattes and trades one stock!
I also drink single-malt Irish whiskey, play a Rick 4002 bass and drive German cars at extralegal velocities, although admittedly not simultaneously, although I fail to see where any of my amusements and diversions are germane to anything other than your poorly-concealed envy and resentment… 😉
A tip 4 U and your intellectual faux- populism: any contemporary Westerner involved in the sciences who is unaware of where his/her mental capacities rate vis-å-vis the vast majority of humanity, who are indeed of considerably lower intelligence, is none too bright him/herself.
I’m gonna learn to wait 30s before hitting that button…
Mustachio, I’ve decided to leave the intellectual humility to you, as you would appear to have more reason to be humble. :O
>.any contemporary Westerner involved in the sciences who is
>>unaware of where his/her mental capacities rate vis-å-vis
>>the vast majority of humanity.
But you’re not a scientist, Ghotierman; you’re a gigolo!
And wtf is that “a” with the dot over it (å)? Is that how demi-gods write “à”?
“But you’re not a scientist, Ghotierman; you’re a gigolo!”
No, no – you’ve mistaken me for Richard Gere. I get that a lot.
>>Mustachio, I’ve decided to leave the intellectual humility to you,
>>as you would appear to have more reason to be humble.
Yep. The louder they proclaim their intellectual superiority….. 😉 😉
#47 – MM,
the Big One has been with us since the dawn of humanity.
This cliche’s a little vulgar, but makes the point. Eat shit, a billion flies can’t all be wrong.
More to the point though, the statement is patently false.
Zoroastrianism is not perfectly documented for a start date, early records are from around 500+ BCE. Judaism dates to 539 BCE when Cyrus II freed the Hebrews from their slavery to the Egyptians.
So, even it it had been around a thousand years before that, which is highly doubtful, the Big One goes back less than 4,000 years, probably quite a bit less.
Humanity is between 100,000 and 200,000 years old, probably closer to the latter. So, the Big One has only been around about 2%, possibly 4% at the outside, of the duration of humanity.
Given that we’re a young species, the Big One is hardly eternal.
>>More to the point though, the statement is patently false.
You’re talking about your Big One (combo of the Big Three), not my Big One (spiritual belief in a greater power).
That, my paper towel-manufacturing friend, has been around since the dawn of humanity.
#41
But Marx was hitting a nerve when comes to religion.
#57 – MM,
Still, I doubt we have any evidence of even that level of spirituality for more than around a 5th of our time on the planet. And, that big one (no longer capitalized, since it really isn’t), likely caused a lot less damage, though still non-zero.
#58 – Angel,
So was Lennon, yes John Lennon, not Lenin. Some now misquote his words as “and one religion too” because they can’t bring themselves to realize that “and no religion too” was his attempt to point out yet another reason for people to kill and die. Can an atheist do cartwheels in his grave? Probably not, fortunately. But, Yoko should sue anyone changing the words that way.
#56 – Given that we’re a young species, the Big One is hardly eternal.
And that gives me hope.
#57 – You’re talking about your Big One (combo of the Big Three), not my Big One (spiritual belief in a greater power).
Well hell Mustard… If you are gonna describe it as a spiritual belief in a greater power, then I suppose you’ll have to count me in… Of course I have a spiritual set of personal beliefs and I believe in a power greater than our individual selves…
What I reject is that the aforementioned power is sentient or supernatural or anthropomorphic or represented by any modern religion in any way, and is in fact natural and ordinary and is thus completely consistent with atheism and decidedly not part of any religion, nor should religion (which conspires to enslave humanity) be subscribed to it.
#61 – OFTLO,
That describes what your “greater power” is not. But, what is it?
Certainly the sun has greater power than we do. We can’t create any form of generator to beat it. However, I suspect that’s not what you mean.
We are obviously limited by the laws of physics, but if that’s what you mean, it’s hardly spiritual. What exactly are you talking about? The force? (Actually, duct tape is the force; it has a light side and a dark side and it binds the universe together.)
If you read thru the entire linked article, you see that the US State Dept. is essentially comming to the defense Scientology, against the Belgium and German governments. Since when it is the job of our State Dept. to defend something claiming to be a religion?! And why the hell to they even care? Sounds like there’s more to this than we suspected. Are there influencial Dianetists running our government? Don’t they take their oath of office seriously, anymore?