Leah REMINI (King of Queens): "More to follow me out of Scientology"

[DirkGently]

30. Eh. Scientology reads like a cynical farce of the WORST of religion though

You're right that you can draw a lot of parallels and aim a lot of darts at any religion. They're power structures, of one form or another.

There's that story about LRH sitting in a bar, pondering that religion is a great money making scheme. There's the fact he was a pulp science fiction writer, and the entire orthodoxy of Scientology is basically a "space opera," as he used to call his own writings.

And you can also make qualitative distinctions. COS feels like a predatory money making scheme utilizing only the nastiest bits of religious organizations. Fanaticism, secrecy, brainwashing. It seems to lack even the smallest kernel of a functional ideology of any kind.

And internally, they really still claim it's not a religion at all, but "tech," which anyone of any religion can use. So it's questionable whether Scientology deserves to be regarded as a "religion" at all. That designation became important to them mainly for tax purposes.

The orthodoxy brooks not some dissent, not a bit of dissent, but zero. There is no question they're employing mind control tactics. Isolation, badgering, collecting intense personal information for future use, the threat of ostracism. Stories abound of the "exercises" where people are ordered to stare at each other for hours. Perform harsh physical labor for years. All the "sec check" babble where people are cornered and interrogated about their possible "suppressive" activities.

There is the "fair game" doctrine, supposedly abandoned, which is strange, because it was Hubbard's policy, and his word is supposedly infallible within COS. Enemies could be "deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Nice.

Their money collection tactics are extreme. Catholics tithe, Mormons REALLY tithe. These guys present people with "bills" for tens of thousands of dollars, and hound them endlessly to pay. Doesn't matter if they can.

Their pseudo-science is truly dangerous, and they are truly trying to employ it. All that 9/11 "therapy" bullshit with aromas and vitamins or whatever? Same with the many-headed front entities that pretend to help addicts. Same thing. Vitamins and exercise. Psychology, in particular, is the enemy, either because L.Ron saw it as competition (the 'e-reader' is just an old school lie detector) or because the guy had been diagnosed himself and was pissed about it. Remember Cruise screaming about Brooke Shields' career being terrible when she dared to claim she'd had post-partem depression.

Their bad acts are concerted schemes to damage people and come from the top of the organization. The plot to frame a critic for terrorism that almost worked. Infiltrating the IRS. All the smears and lies and harassment of critics. Having people followed. Suing them into oblivion. Crushing the Cult Awareness Network in court to creepily take over the name and staff the phone lines with their own people, who believe the term "cult" is a nonsense word unfairly applied to them?

Does it stack up in terms of pure evil with the Crusades or the Catholic Church shuffling child predators around the world? Maybe. But there is a sense of malice of purpose I think stands out. These were blatant plots to destroy and control.

I don't know. Maybe anyone can call anything a religion, and certainly the mere fact that it appears to outsiders to be utter nonsense is not the issue.

But it's fair to question practices. It's fair to note results like suicides and people dead after Scientology "treatment." It's fair to listen to the crazed rants of people like Tom Cruise and consider whether that's comparable to the way typical adherents of "normal" religions think and behave.