On 1/26/2012 10:10 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:35:37 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>
>>>> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
>>>> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
>>>> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
>>>> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
>>>> which one to believe.
>>>
>>> It's subjective.
>>>
>>> You could probably learn a lot by reading his Wikipedia entry.
>>
>> Yeah, but... it's subjective. ;-)
>
> Wikipedia is often a starting point rather than an ending point.
>
>> The other day, I read about something called "the church of
>> scientology". From what Wikipedia said, this is /obviously/ a criminal
>> organisation that should be shut down immediately. And yet, various
>> national governments have investigated it and decided either to take no
>> action, or to officially recognise it as legit. So clearly Wikipedia
>> isn't presenting the full picture here.
>
> CoS is an interesting organisation because of how closely they try to
> protect their identity and information, to the point of making it
> difficult for anyone to objectively write about them.
>
> They're classified as a religion.  "Cult" is probably much more apt a
> description, and a cult with some very high-profile members.  But what
> I've read on the history of it, apparently L. Ron Hubbard (the author)
> had a bet with his son that he could create a religion and get people to
> donate lots of money to it.
>
Part of the issue is that, due to the secrecy, and other factors, most 
of the "its a church" decisions where made *prior* to a full 
understanding of what went on in it. Its now undergoing "reform", what 
ever the hell that actually means. But, a lot of the stuff it does, like 
requiring people to shell out huge swaths of money to them for bullshit, 
or locking people into the religion, etc., are not *that* terribly 
different than some Christian cults do. Some of those flat out try to 
require their members to "never" associate, if possible, on a 
family/social level, with anyone that isn't in the same cult. Though, 
they don't usually manage to get by with locking people up, and 
preventing them leaving, the way CoS was doing.

But, basically, its sort of a toss up. If you can get by with declaring 
"only" it criminal, while excusing nearly identical insanity in other 
cults, great, if you can't... the uncomfortable situation arises where 
the person trying to ban gets asked, "Yes, but group X, and Y do the 
same thing, why are they not illegal too?" And, the only answer anyone 
can give is, "Well, they are Christian!" The problem doesn't come up 
with Islam, or Hindu, simply because in the former case, everyone is 
against the extremist versions that do crazy shit anyway, in the 
countries that accept CoS, and in the later case, almost no westerner 
has a single damn clue what Karma actually is, the abuses it supports, 
or the long list of caste distinctions, and silly restrictions, that 
arise out of them.

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