Scientology's belief structure should not be called into question at all. They are perfectly allowed to believe whatever they want, without reservation or judgement.

However, it is not their belief system that makes them cultlike. It is their actions, policies, and tactics that make them cultlike. They use emotional and psychological abuse to instill a complete and utter dependence on the group into its adherents. They use thought-reform techniques such as sensory deprivation ("TRs"), food and sleep deprivation (how many Scientologists out there that live with and work for the church have worked long hours and had meals of rice and beans, be honest with yourselves), and forced confessions (auditing is voluntary only at first, and a means of determining your loyalty later) to lower recruits' critical thinking skills and make them more open to suggestion.

They break up families and friends through their "disconnection" policy. Yes, officially "there is no practice of 'disconnection' allowed in the Church of Scientology" (Scientology Policy Directive 28, 13 August 1982, "Suppressive Act – Dealing with a Declared Suppressive Person"), but that statement is immediately followed with: "One does not however use a false excuse of 'handling my PTS [potential trouble source, i.e. anyone that is in touch with a "Suppressive Person", i.e. anyone who criticizes the church] condition' to covertly maintain a line of supportful dealings and agreements with an SP. If you wish to maintain such a line, do so outside of current and future membership in the Church. To deal with a Suppressive is a Suppressive Act."

So, there is no disconnection policy, but if you don't disconnect then you are out of the Church. Isn't blatant hypocrisy wonderful? Remember, folks: if a friend or family member joins, don't expect to hear from them ever again.

And of course consider their mafia-like tactics of attacking anyone that criticizes the church. These attacks include, but are certainly not limited to harassing phone calls, threats of violence, hiring private detectives to investigate you, plastering your neighborhood with flyers declaring your "crimes", picketing, and framing you for serious crimes (see Paulette Cooper and "Operation Freak Out").

And if that all wasn't enough, consider the church's own forced labor camps. Go ahead, go look up "Rehabilitation Project Force".

This is only a partial list of the wrongdoings of the church of Scientology and why they ARE a cult. To any who might argue that they're no different from "normal" religions, think again. Yes, 'normal' religions might be money grubbing, but I can think of none that do it to the same degree as Scientology. Yes, 'normal' religions might be accused of brainwashing their constituents, but I can think of none that do it to the same degere as Scientology. Please please PLEASE do some research and educate others about this deleterious group. The more people think that Scientology is "just like other religions", the more able they are to continue committing these crimes.

The saddest part about all of it is that most Scientologists are truly nice people, that truly believe that they are doing the world a service by spreading the word. The perpetrators of all these horrendous crimes are victims themselves. If you're brainwashed, you don't know you're brainwashed! I offer a puzzle to any Scientologists that might disagree: If Dianetics is truly a complete science of the mind, then isn't it possible, with full knowledge of that science, that one could control others, and make them think whatever they want? And couldn't that thing they teach others be how to control more people? And if you were being controlled, could you possibly know you were being controlled?

I think if you look at all the major OTG (One True God) religions you will find combinations of times,periods, and sects that are/were as bad as scientology. Frankly, "modern" day Islam seems worse as it seems to be more violent and less rational.

Anyway, once you accept dogmatic irrational beliefs that are contravened by evidence (e.g. science) you're just arguing about your choice of poison. If sceintolog survived 1000 years and became widespread there would probably be "moderate" scientologists and fundamentalist scientologists. The moderate scientologists would regard all the specific absurd creation etc myths as silly and the fundamentalists would regard the moderate scientologists non-believers. The moderates would exhort the world to understand that scientology is a good religion and that the fundamentalists don't represent that. The fundamentalists would point to their religions text (Battle field earth ;-) and say "well, here's what the prophet said"

Funny how religion is always "Irrational" and questions left unanswered by science are also considered irrational. Do you contend that science has the answer to creation? If so, please provide a definitive answer that involves no faith in research or measuring methods that have been created in the last 5 years.

I suppose to put this on your "scientific" level, we would say Astrology and Astronomy are both equal sciences. Would you argue in favor of this idea? They are both thought to be sciences with many "proofs" of their legitemacy. Do you understand the argument now?

"And of course consider their mafia-like tactics of attacking anyone that criticizes the church. These attacks include, but are certainly not limited to harassing phone calls, threats of violence, hiring private detectives to investigate you, plastering your neighborhood with flyers declaring your "crimes", picketing, and framing you for serious crimes (see Paulette Cooper and "Operation Freak Out")."

But are those isolated incidents or is it something that is a widespread problem? Given that Scientology isn't being investigated by the FBI, my educated guess is the former.

I appreciate all your (sweatpantsninja) comments regarding the practices of Scientologists, but why shouldn't we examine Scientology's beliefs? Surely their beliefs must dictate their actions? Besides, we discuss and judge people's beliefs in every other area of life--why should religion be exempt from our scrutiny? Side Note: Daveo, will you please clarify your post?

Gladly. Duckandcover states that all religion is irrational and that choosing one over another is just a matter of "choosing your poison". His belief is that science answers (or debunks) all questions that religion has heretofor accounted for. I have no problem with science and its use to answer questions of this earth, but when we begin dealing in conjecture are we not teetering on the edge of faith? If a scientist can call my faith "irrational" then I can say the same of his. Sounds a little like religious debate, no?

Why did you restrict evidence he might come up with to everything but the last 5 years?

Bertrand T. Dennett:

I appreciate all your (sweatpantsninja) comments regarding the practices of Scientologists, but why shouldn't we examine Scientology's beliefs? Surely their beliefs must dictate their actions?

The issue isn't if belief in Xenu is any more or less silly than belief that man was created from dust, or that there are millions of tiny purple gnomes that are 15 seconds in the future busy drawing our world frame by frame with crayons, that is an issue of faith.

What is at issue is the implementation and that can be discussed without mocking the 'faith' aspect of any belief system.

In this case, we can examine the implementation instructions from the 'author' of the religion because the documents still exist and are available if you look for them. Many of those instructions include using any means neccesary to attack and silence detractors.

If the Pope wrote down and issued such orders would that change the basis of the Catholic faith or the implementation?

Look, the majority of people have the same religion as their family. Therefore for one to break free from the brainwashing of the family one has to disconnect from ones family.

If everyone young person disconnected from their family there would be a lot more agnostics and that would be a good thing.

I'm not a supporter of Scientology but I do find it 'funny' that the top post uses 'same degree' a few times when they compare SC to other religions.

What that tells me is that religion in general isn't good only that SC is worst. I agree with that.

My point was that we cannot truly understand what happened millions of years ago using modern technology. We can make informed assumptions, but again we are talking about faith. Carbon dating has been used to show that the earth is billions of years old, and so is a pig that died twenty years ago. Who knows how quickly carbon was diffused in an atmosphere of acid? Many scientists believed that the moon would have ten feet of dust on its surface based on the idea that it had been there for billions of years and had collected space dust all that time. When the lunar lander made its touchdown, there was about two inches of dust. What happened there?

This is all getting off the point that duckandcover is trying to say that since all religion is irrational, then one cannot be worse than the other. My reply stands that to follow that thinking, astrology and astronomy must be given equal creedence. I await his/her reply.

no no. Science is a method, not a religion. It is a method for knowing that relies on reproducibility. If another can't reproduce your findings, they (rightly) aren't accepted. In fact if everyone can't reproduce your findings they aren't accepted. And the body of knowledge, and the theories (always tentative) science generates to explain observed findings , are subject to constant revision, by design. Its expected, anticipated even.

The pride of a scientist isn't that he's right, although we like being right, the pride of a scientist is that he will drop an error like a hot rock if the error can be demonstrated and reproduced.

Science (the method), and the body of knowledge it produces, is the antithesis of dogma and faith. That's the difference between astronomy and astrology. Astronomy is the study of phenomena and theory is the attempt to explain. Astrology is some superstitious dogmatic crap, with no reproducibility or observation or anything...

On a lighter note, six years ago I was in the Dark Horse bar down in the Virginia Highlands part of Atlanta. I had no car, and whatever I was doing, it was on foot.

It was the early afternoon of a sunny, hot Atlanta day, and I was sooo thirsty. I went in, ordered a fancy beer in this bar, it was empty except for a man and a woman, sitting way across from me. I rarely drink at all. It was blissfully air conditioned in the bar.

Fancy beer in hand, its malty goodness slaking me, I wanted nothing else out of life, and in that moment, would have made a good Buddhist, as I was both satisfied and disinterested.

Across the room (Dark Horse is kind of fancy and has a pleasant wooden front room) the man sat next to, and began chatting up the woman...he plied his opening gambit, but she was motionless and unresponsive. He prattled on, and got to "What is your sign?", and she responded!

Elegantly she turned towards him, held up her hand, palm out, and replied, "My sign is, 'Stop' ".

I spit a little bit of beer down my chin in mirth. It was a gem.

Science hypothesisizes and theorizes the answers to the extent that it can find evidence to support such. Unlike math, nothing can be proved in science because it is inductive using observation etc as evidence and so can never claim to have observed all possible observations. Religion on the other hand, claims to know the answers (e.g. creation) without evidence (or often in contradiction to it); it's just to be taken as an article faith. More absurdly, that it is positive thing to adhere to faith even in the face of vast amounts of contravening evidence (e.g. the earth is 6000 years old despite the myriad ways of dating the fossils, DNA, or geologic features that show the age to be ummm a tad more).

W;r to : "suppose to put this on your "scientific" level, we would say Astrology and Astronomy are both equal sciences. Would you argue in favor of this idea? They are both thought to be sciences with many "proofs" of their legitemacy. Do you understand the argument now? "

I simply haven't the slightest idea what this paragraph is about. How in the world would Astrology and Astronomy be considered equal and how the hell did you conjure up the idea that somehow I would equate these two items. Anyway, all I can say is that Astronomy is a science in that it uses the scientific method to yield it's theories. Hypothesis are created that fit the current evidence. As always in science some of them will be wrong and tests need to be done to test hypothesis to get to a point of having a theory (or perhaps just a model) and even then it may be false and, likely, incomplete. Astrology on the other hand has no evidence to back it up. In fact, as I understand it, it invokes the supernatural for explanation and so it is, by definition, not a science.

Did you ever take any science in school? Did you ever see a definition. Before you respond, read this <link>

Take it from an ex-Scientologist, ex-Sea Org member. They are not isolated incidents.

This is not a religion of peace, love, forgiveness, healing. It is not a religion at all. It was created to line the pockets of LRH, and that is exactly what it did for him until his death. He lived like a king on that damn ship of his.

If Scientology was being investigated by the FBI, i doubt anyone would know about it until the investigation was over, by the way.

And how 'educated' is your guess? Or is it just a guess?

I guess it was just a guess then (no pun intended). I am probably heavily biased because I tend to put a lot of weight on the notion of innocent until proven, more than the average person.

Perhaps thats the scary part of Scientology. They're so under the radar that people who never had contact with them (like me) give them too much benefit of the doubt. I was just stating my initial reaction, which a lot of people share. In contrast, radical Islam is pretty overt about what they're about.

Based on your description, they borderline being a cult, although when I think of cult, I generally think of your Jim Jones, Moonies--- something on that level.

all this mess would have never started if we all just stayed with the Greek & Roman Gods. A god for each individual taste.

PS as a Christian, I love science, have no problem that the earth is billions of years old, and that big lizards were running around many years before man showed up, etc, etc. The bottom line the message is important, Look at Jesus's sermon on the mount vs Scientologys.