Posted on 02/24/2006 11:05:41 AM PST by Central Scrutiniser
Inside Scientology
Unlocking the complex code of America's most mysterious religion
The faded little downtown area of Clearwater, Florida, has a beauty salon, a pizza parlor and one or two run-down bars, as well as a bunch of withered bungalows and some old storefronts that look as if they haven't seen customers in years. There are few cars and almost no pedestrians. There are, however, buses -- a fleet of gleaming white and blue ones that slowly crawl through town, stopping at regular intervals to discharge a small army of tightly organized, young, almost exclusively white men and women, all clad in uniform preppy attire: khaki, black or navy-blue trousers and crisp white, blue or yellow dress shirts. Some wear pagers on their belts; others carry briefcases. The men have short hair, and the women keep theirs pulled back or tucked under headbands that match their outfits. No one crosses against the light, and everybody calls everybody else "sir" -- even when the "sir" is a woman. They move throughout the center of Clearwater in tight clusters, from corner to corner, building to building.
This regimented mass represents the "Sea Organization," the most dedicated and elite members of the Church of Scientology. For the past thirty years, Scientology has made the city of Clearwater its worldwide spiritual headquarters -- its Mecca, or its Temple Square. There are 8,300 or so Scientologists living and working in Clearwater -- more than in any other city in the world outside of Los Angeles. Scientologists own more than 200 businesses in Clearwater. Members of the church run schools and private tutoring programs, day-care centers and a drug-rehab clinic. They sit on the boards of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Boy Scouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
I believe you are incorrect on the purpose of the working.
But nevertheless...
We have a man who names himself The Beast, 666, anti-Christ, taken from Revelations, with followers seeking to bring into being the Whore of Babylon, Armageddon...
However, he is not "worshipping Satan" however that is defined, and therefore he and said followers cannot be properly termed Satanists.
I think the more you paint in this room, the smaller your corner gets.
However, I will agree that you are still left with an unpainted patch of floor.
The point is not "hate the muslims" - it is the use of "religion" as a scam and good business to be in.
Mohammed was simply the L Ron Hubbard of his time.
L Ron Hubbard is Mohammed with better technology, starting in a western "enlightened" society.
Thus there are indeed differences in details, but the essence is the same.
Just as with Jim Jones and the kool-aid drinkers.
It is unfortunate, but for those so inclined to take advantage of vulnerable people by using a belief system, time and again it is demonstrated that there are plenty of people who can be duped by these systems.
Well, you could say the same thing about every religion then, because none of us were there to witness it, and all the scriptures could be the L Ron Hubbard type writings of the day.
What is that old saying? The only difference between a religion and a cult is a thousand years of practice?
(putting on asbestos suit)
:-)
Bump.
Precisely...
The challenge is to filter out the BS from the truth, to discern the intent and effect of a belief or religion.
For example, a universe where the diety says that in dying on behalf of the religion, you get 72 virgins in "heaven" - that is clearly a system based on BS. It doesn't make any sense at all that this is a fundamental structural part of the nature of reality.
Likewise, blowing up trillions of individuals in volcanoes on some other planet to solve an overpopulation problem 75,000,000 years ago... need I go further?
Scientology and Islam prove that anywhere from 200k to 10,000,000, to 1.2 billion people CAN be wrong.
Oh yeah, and I forgot, you have to pay me $200,000 for me to give you a manila folder with this information in it. Don't forget that.
And sign a release saying you won't sue me...
...and keep it secret - keep it safe...
Bump for later.
When I go to church, the guy wearing a big dress mumbles a few words and turns wine into blood.
But its cool, because afterwards we play bingo and drink beer.
I love being a catholic.
You flatter yourself. (Some surprise, for one who calls themself the "central scrutiniser" and misspells scrutinizer.)
I've never called anyone a "newbie", and could care less when you or anyone else registered. Particularly since I've changed screen names several times since shortly after this forum first appeared according to what I wanted it to say, and therefore am well aware that how long a name has been registered often means nothing.
I gather from your interest that you take part in that ritual often seen on FR of presenting oneself as an insider who has approval power over newer posters.
Obviously your capacity for reasoning is limited, and life is short, so this will be my last post to you, as engaging as our little banter has been.
The message you wish to convey, as confirmed by your posts, with your screen name--mispelling notwithstanding--is that you consider yourself capable of superior scrutiny---which on this thread you've shown includes not only which "religions" warrant "hate" and "bashing" (Scientology) and which do not (Islam)-- but also where and how these views are to be expressed.
You go ahead and knock yourself out with your grandiose delusions of the value of your perspectives. But if you're going to continue to believe your superiority gives you the authority to dictate that someone's views are not welcome simply because they're inconvenient to you, you'd do well to limit that behavior to the relative safety of cyberspace.
I imagine you've already been taught that lesson in the real, physical world, though. Little punks who think they're much smarter than they are usually are, sooner or later.
Alright you have me curious now. I never heard of a satanist not beleiving in Satan.
Does your brother believe in Satan? I am wondering why he would call himself a SATANist if he does not beleive in Satan. If he is just an atheist why does he not join atheist groups? Does he beleive in the power of black magic or cast spells? Does he beleive that we humans struggle between light and darkness in our thoughts and actions?
When I was in my late teens, I worked with a self proclaimed satanist. She was in her fifties. She beleived in Satan as a being who offered her great power to use in the world. She tried to recruit me with promises of powers. She despised Christians/Christ and told me her god was much more powerful. It was one of the more strange experiences of my youth.
Also Salem, Mass. is full of folks who call themselves satanists who beleive in Satan. They are not like the pagan witches; they worship Satan and say so openly in their materials. They sell books with chants to invoke Satan.
You are the only person I heard to make the claim that Satanists don't beleive in Satan. But then again, we do have folks who call themselves Christians who don't beleive in Christ, so i suppose it is possible for there to be a Satanist who does not beleive in Satan. : )
The only thing I could imagine worse than Scientology would be its combination with the violence of Islam. Such as belief system would have to be persecuted with maximum prejudice.
Aleister Crowley, who openly supported the National Socialists, was affiliated with Ordo Templi Orientis, A.A. (Order of the Silver Star) and other such occult lodges all across Germany. Crowley engaged in all manner of deviancy, homoeroticism, sadomasochism and murder.
Much of the occultism in National Socialism is derived directly from there. Crowley envisioned himself as the Great Beast (To Mega Therion), just as der Fuhrer made himself in that image. Hitler's life as a struggling, inept artist was where that association blossomed.
Crowley's creed, “Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the Law,” (which is actually from Francois Rabelais) and used by Neo-Pagan nutcases without attribution for obvious politically correct reasons, is with certainty no different than the National Socialist “will to power,” or their ubermensch mentality.
It is also no accident Nietzsche's “over-man” and nihilist philosophy and resulting insanity from venereal disease closely mirrors the insanity of der Fuhrer.
These occult orders, sex and drug cults still survive today, as do the Neo-pagan, Neo-Nazi groups, black supremacist Rastafarian potheads, prison gangs and other related filth.
Crowley occultism is also from where L. Ron Hubbard emerges with Scientology. Note the NAZI symbolism of that kooky cult of weirdos and their deviant adherents who advocate homoeroticism and other perversions. Hollywood Cultural Marxists love Scientology.
Germany cracked down hard on the Scientologists for that reason and because they are using similiar mind control tecniques...
questions = questionED
grrr...
hey admins... how 'bout that edit feature? ;-) Some of us have all thumbs.
British spelling, not misspelled.
Any more babble? I'm getting tired.
You are the one that pretends to have power here, all I asked for was for you to try to stick to the subject at hand, but you had the thrombo...
"Satan" is a Hebrew word derived from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seti ("ha-Set-hn" as spoken in the Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "Adversary" of Judaic theology. A perplexing question is whether "Adversary" was originally intended as a plural like "Malakhim Raoth" in Hebrew, as a composite entity of the many "evil angels." (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim, according to primary dictionary definition in most errant college editions.) Paganism is pantheistic, idolatrous and always violently adversarial to Judaism historically. There is also Biblical description of pagan conflicts within Judaism itself, a confederacy of insurgent deceivers opposing God. Many Jewish rabbis will say that Satan does not exist at all; possibly because either phantasms are no things corporeal, and therefore the collective embodiment in their prince cannot be also; Satan, Lucifer, etc. are fictitious pagan deities, as all the pagan pantheons are contrived; or considering there is, according to Judaic theology, the many fallen angels, whereas Lucifer, Satan, Abaddon, Beelzebub, Belial, etc., etc. are but just a few of them. It is also consistent in Biblical teaching that there are false prophets within Judaism and the Christian Church inspired by such inimical genii. The Bible (both New and Old Testament), if taken literally, is a Zionist doctrine. Yahweh and Yeshua are Zionists, without exception or compromise.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass, an animal holy to the pagan Egyptian god Set, was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the figure commonly known to Gentiles as Satan, was born into the World. Such conflict was evident from the cradle of human civilization through pagan Babylon, pagan Egypt, pagan Greece (with the Maccabean period of Ptolemic Dynasties and Antiochus Epiphanes), pagan Rome, and continues into modern times on several fronts with Marxist iconic paganism, Islamic paganism and New Age Neo-paganism (they all hate the Jews and Christians).
The idea of a "Devil," lord and master of an infernal place, is universal to religion and a seemingly interminable myriad of names are enough to fill several pages in very fine print. The Patagonian devil "Setebos," alluded to by Shakespeare through Caliban in the Tempest, is one of many compelling similarities between esoteric mythoi in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: "Behold, I am Set, the creator of confusion, who creates both the tempest and the storm throughout the length and breadth of the heavens." Iago in Othello: "Divinity of Hell! When devils will the blackest of sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows, as I do now." Iago represents Satan in Othello. William Shakespeare knew a lot more in his time than the many do today. 'The many, as many, are ignorant,' according to Plato. Satan, Lucifer, etc., are spirits of paganism.
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is listed erroneously or deficiently as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. Often the etymologies are not congruent with definitions in language; such is true of the term "pagan." Often the Neo-Pagans will deceptively assert that Satan is only in Christianity. Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word (adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set, as the other devils' names are of pagan origin).
Socrates already told us why the pagans are liars and their gods are a lie before his execution for exposing the pantheistic pagan esoteric sophistries. Piety to the many gods, who all want different devotions or actions from humans, is impossible.
Consider this, from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[1] Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.
Actually I found this article to be quite to the point about the negatives of COS. It did print the present the viewpoints of COS, but also very strongly, especially at the end of the article show how scared those who left the cult or criticized the cult are.
I'm reading it and I've noticed how quick the people who speak on "behalf" of the religion are with the pottymouth. I mean, if somebody comes to ask me about my church, or my job for that matter, I'm not going to be using explatives casually.
I found it very anti CO$. The fact that the church allowed them to tour the ranch in Hemet is huge. (BTW, its easy to find the ranch on Google Earth, its that big!)
I think the church thought they would get good press, but never figured that the reporter would go undercover to attend sessions, or would be contacted by people trying to get out.
Its a cult, its scary crap.
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