Scientology is a mind control based cult.  Don't go near their testing centers, once in, these experts on mind abuse will keep you in,  and once in  your mind will be emptied of free will and your wallets will  be emptied to the benifit of L.Ron's heirs. The only way to deal with the paranoid cult is to remind them they were invented by a Science FICTION writer.

...pimply ginger children from the Midwest grow up to be jargon-spouting self-help gurus with nautical fetishes.

Whoa...total South Park Flashback!

Yea it is so lagit that it steals the cross from Christians and claims that Jesus blood line came from another planet.

It is a typical tactic of newer religions to include old icons and motifs. Kwanza(sp) rips off the Jewish Manorah(sp).

Scientology is bunk, garbage, crap. It is nothing more than an attempt to make an new myth more popular than an old one.

Scientology exists because of marketing. Christianity exists because of marketing. Islam exists because of marketing. But none of these crackpot cults can pony up evidence for the magic or the deities they claim.

The sales pitch for all of these is the same, "Why do you care about the engine, the roadster is cherry red, it is a cream puff". It is the same emotional appeal that had ancient Egyptians praying to a giant ball of burning gas for 3 thousand years, not knowing it was not a being, but merely a burning ball of gas.

Scientology is merely a newer form of myth.

As Strafio has said, instead of telling him “what you believe is bullshit” verbatim, you should convey this point via a set of points. Don’t be rude, don’t laugh. In fact, don’t display any emotion of any kind. It makes you look more objective.

1.       The assertions that are concomitant with the central doctrine of Scientology, ie, “Dianetics”, are based on a set of empirical propositions that have been proven to be wholly false. According to scientologists, and the doctrine upon which the notion of a “body thetan” is based, the universe is 70 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old. This is approximately 70 orders of magnitude greater than the accepted age of the universe, where an overwhelming body of scientific evidence which demonstrates the universe is 13.7 billion years old.

2.       Scientologists believe in the concept of a “body thetan” which is eternal and roughly equivalent with the religious/eschatological concept of a soul. There is no evidence that such “thetans” exist. An overwhelming body of scientific evidence from neurology and psychology gives coherent explanations for mental states (albeit not yet complete), emotions, and mental illness, contrary to the scientology doctrine of the “thetan”. In addition, the concept is roughly equivalent to dualism in that in Scientology, the physical body is wholly irrelevant compared to the immortal “thetan”. This is directly contradictory to a large body of scientific evidence which demonstrates how physical and organic structures of the body are responsible for mental events, emotions included. The rejection of psychotropic drugs by Scientology based on this belief is hence irrational. There is a large body of evidence from pharmacology, psychopharmacology, neurology, molecular biology, neurophysiology and biochemistry which gives a coherent theory of the physiological workings of neurons, and the impact of psychotropic drugs on emotional states. There are coherent explanations for precisely how these function in molecular terms, and a large body of empirical evidence documenting their workings. Nothing of the sort can be said for the contradistinctive assertion that thetans are responsible for the aforementioned mental functions.

3.       Scientologists believe it is possible to measure one’s “thetan levels” based upon a device called an “E-meter”. However, the reading on the E-meter is actually a well-known example of the galvanometer skin response, which is purely physiological in nature.

4.       Scientologists believe that an alien megalomaniac called Xenu transported the bodies of frozen aliens to planet Earth to dump them in the volcanoes of Hawaii, whereupon their souls inhabited the bodies of early man.  This is clearly absurd per se, but there is something particularly suspicious about this story that conveys its science-fiction nature, that being that the cruise ships employed looked exactly like DC-8, which are commercial aircraft which would be crushed upon entry to the vacuum of space.

5.       The age of the universe as propagated by scientology exceeds the half-life of a proton (depending on how it is imputed), making it a problematic conflict with our existence. Nonetheless, even without this consideration, being that star lifespan is measured in terms of billions of years, and after a peak in star formation, formation of stars decreases as a function of time, a universe of 10^85 years old would be completely dead. This number exceeds the lifespan of the universe.              

6.       The entire foundation for all of L. Ron’s assertions came from the prior assertion that he had accessed memories of past lives. There is no evidence for any of these assertions in turn, hence the foundation for his assertions is nonexistent and his assertions are baseless. There is a large body of evidence which demonstrates that it is impossible to distinguish false from true memories. In addition, Hubbard was known to be a skilled hypnotist.

To summarize, the core doctrine of scientology are in contradiction with overwhelming bodies of evidence delivered by the following scholarly fields of human endeavour

-Cosmology

-Physics (electrical and astrophysics)

-Neuroscience

-Molecular Biology

-Psychology

-Neurophysiology

-Pharmacology

 Your friend is right when he says it's not a religion. It's partly a business selling self-help products, and partly a criminal and quasi-military organization. The religious angle was crassly adopted to deflect all criticism as hate-crime, and to avoid paying taxes on the exorbitant profits reaped from members. Tory Christman was a CoS member for thirty years, and had reached OT VIII, before leaving and being declared a "suppressive person" on which Hubbard's practice of "fair game" could be applied (meaning any attempt to harass and defame her would be A-OK with the CoS). She was in the CoS for such a long time because she did feel she was helped, but she finally left because of a pattern that began to emerge.

She would feel good for a while after reaching some level, then gradually her mood would flatten a bit, and she'd be told it's because she needed to purchase some other course. And it went on and on.

It's not hard to get some idea of the attitude the CoS takes toward any criticism. Just stand outside one of their buildings and take a picture. In minutes, some mongoloid in a polo shirt will be taking yours. You might even get followed home, or have a PI watching your house. There's proof of this on record for anyone to check out. I'm no fan of Catholics, Methodists or Episcopalians, but I'm betting they don't do that.

The CoS also adopts the cult practice of isolating members from potential critics of the church, even if it separates families. Their quack medical practices were responsible for the death of member Lisa McPhearson, who was memorialized by protesters on 2/10/08.

Finally, even if the practices of the CoS have some appeal, it's possible to pursue this for free, and without contributing or becoming entangled in a criminal organization. Former members split off from the CoS and have founded "Freezone" centers around the world.

I read today in the Norwegian newspapers of yet another Scientology victim.

Kaja Bordevich Ballo, a 20-year old Norwegian student attending university in Nice, France, and who had undergone a series of stressful years from which she seemed to have recovered, decided on March 28th to take the Scientologists' "personality test" which she saw advertised outside the cult's Nice property. The Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA) test purports, on the basis of "yes" "no" and "maybe" answers to 200 questions, to identify your strengths and weaknesses, the idea being that you will then enrol with the "church" and cough up the readies for "courses" to improve yourself. Upon getting a "minus 100" score however with accompanying comments declaring that she was depressing, irresponsible, overly critical and "lacking in harmony". Kaja killed herself the same day.

Her father and friends have said that Kaja had developed real problems with her feelings of self-worth, and all are convinced that being abroad had heightened these inadequacies. What motivated her to take the Scientology test is not known, but it seems that Kaja had arrived at the point in her depressive state which cults everywhere recognise with glee and utilise heartlessly in order to draw recruits - that point where a vulnerable person rates communal acceptance as a goal higher than anything else, including self dignity. Kaja, in seeking probably what she thought would be a reaffirmation of her better qualities and an option to "belong", got instead a stark message that she was worthless.

The OCA has been branded by the British Psychiatric Association as "damaging" since 1970. Their Australian counterparts have called it "outright dangerous" and countless others have not only criticised it but have rubbished its application as a "personality test" completely. The "results" (always negative) cannot, they say, be drawn from the questions asked or the answers given. It is a ploy to dupe people into parting with cash, purely and simply. Journalists in Scandinavia in the past decided to "test the test" and sat it several times, giving different answers each time. The result, needless to say, was an almost uniform condemnation of their personailities with little variation in substance and none in implication. At the time the Norwegian press secretary for the cult, Matthias Fosse, tried to discredit the discreditors by saying that they could not criticise the process if they did not understand the complex computer algorithms used in scoring it. These, of course, are "secret".

Fosse has not seen fit to comment on Kaja's sad death. Nor would the Nice branch of the cult admit anything except that it was a tragic coincidence, and this from a "press secretary" who would not admit her last name.

Since her death, according to Scientologists' own statistics, 144,000 people worldwide have been told that they too are lacking in personality unless they join the fold.

Kaja was buried in Grefsen cemetery in Oslo last Friday. Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", her favourite song, accompanied her into oblivion.

Read the OT 8 manual.  It's not to long and really crazy.

http://www.scientomogy.com/ot8/

Cheers, DeludedGod. Nice ammo.

Casting memeory back to the Tom Cruise rant video on YouTube fiasco a while back, does anyone else agree that far from it proving that his cheese done gone fallen off its cracker, it may well have had the effect of drawing people toward the cult?

Also, send him this:

I hate it when people do this. They use vague language to make it sound as if they've not commited epistemological malfeasance and have actually critically examined an issue. I call it "faux reasonability". It's not an argument. It's just a rhetorical device. If you think that you've actually not commited epistemological malfeasance in this regard and can actually defend your propositions, then you must do so by virtue of reasoned argument. You haven't done this. People who need to appeal to this little spot of rhetoric, with nothing substantiating it, usually have nothing to say. You've asserted that you have "looked things over for yourself" and "formed your own opinion", but you have presented absolutely no evidence for your assertions. None. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. 没有。So, please stop appealling to what I call "psuedo-critical thinking rhetoric". It is a form of chest-puffing where one stands there and does nothing but insist "research for yourself" and "form your own opinions" but in the end, never actually makes a meaningful argument in defense of any proposition. The only people who do this are those who wish to appear sincere and reasonable when in fact, it is most likely that the manner in which they reached aforementioned belief does not have a rational foundation. I have since come to suspect that when people employ this rhetoric, what they really mean is "question everything, except what I say", because I started noticing they only employed that when dealing with their interlocutor's arguments...never their own. It is the mark of someone who knows they cannot concoct a good argument, but must sound like a thinker all the same. It doesn't work. Don't use it. I'll see through it.

I shall use myself as an example. This is egocentric, but I suppose I am, so no matter. You will take note that I never employ this little bit of rhetoric. Why? Because I don't need to. I've encountered everything from HIV/AIDs causality deniers, intelligent design proponents, Flat Earth theorists, etc. ad infinitum who all pulled, at some time or another, the "psuedo-critical thinking rhetoric" they encouraged me to "question mainstream opinion" and "think for myself" (they evidently misunderstood the definition of critical thinking. See the appeal to novelty fallacy below). I never pulled (or continue to pull) any vague nonsense of that sort. Didn't need to. I Just beat the living shit out of their arguments. I certainly hope you can do the same. Otherwise, there is no reason to take you seriously.

The other thing I hate is when people commit a form of epistemological rhetoric called the appeal to novelty fallacy. This is what is going on here. Consider when someone believes in a mainstream opinion, oftentimes, they will defend it by virtue of it being mainstream. This is obviously invalid. But just as invalid is its opposite. The appeal to novelty fallacy occurs when someone is defending a notion which is not mainstream, or is fringe, and defend it by appealling to that their opponent may not accept it because it is not mainstream. This is a form of circumstantial ad hominid. It has been employed by everyone from Young Earth creationists to Flat Earth theorists to Homeopaths...and Scientologists as well. The Intelligent design community is especially fond of it. It is not a valid argument. "Questioning and forming your own opinions" and "rejecting an opinion which may be a mainstream one" are not necessarily the same. The proposition "The Earth is round" is wholly mainstream. Somebody versed in basic physics who examined the evidence could easily arrive at the same conclusion about its truth value.

So the next time you think about pretending to sound like a thinker by padding non-arguments in vague rhetorical suggestions to your interlocutor, just remember you haven't actually stated an argument. There is no point in the excuse for a response you just sent, such unsubtle appeals to rhetoric (as already discussed) are not merely childish, but completely unacceptable. Don't come back unless you are prepared to drop your rhetorical suppositions of being a critical thinker. A true critical thinker would not need to use such rhetoric (and would recognize that such is rhetoric, not argument).