PooterGeek

Matt_c

I like how ‘Kirk’ beams up at the end of every clip. Is he going to Heaven or the Enterprise? And although it’s gut-clenchingly patronising there are worse ways of scaring people about hell.

Michael

It is disturbing that people take their beliefs to such a level that they go out of their way to try and make people feel worthless so that they will convert to their religion.

I have the misfortune of working only just round the corner from the Tottenham Court Road Scientology centre, and I’m constantly accosted by off-puttingly fresh-faced people asking if I want to take a free personality test.

I’ve never succumbed - but has anyone ever tried it and got a result other than “you have a severe personality disorder that can only be cured by granting the spirit of L.Ron Hubbard (pbuh) unlimited access to your wallet?”

Venichka

No disrespect, but not THAT good-looking. In as much as a friend of mine (Czech, female, blonde, stunning) was approached in more or less the same location by Goodge Street tube (not, we think, by followers of Hubbardology) and asked if she would like to model in “magazines for Japanese boys”, and, indeed if she “liked to play with toys”.

I’m not sure this is of any relevance to anything much, really, but I like the story.

stubby

I am currently reading a bio of Hubbard by a Brit journalist (Bare-Faced Messiah, by Russell Miller, 1987) and it’s fascinating, and creepy, and I can’t put it down. The guy was far more manipulative, deceitful, cruel and pathological liar-y than I knew, and anyone who believes the stuff Scientologists claim about Elron, or anything else, is way crazier/stupider than I ever realized. Holy crap - what a scary wacky creepy crawly cult. Our Branch Davidians look like models of rational and independent thought compared to that crowd.

Speaking as a Christian, whether your loved ones go to hell or not has nothing to do with you. And the best form of evangelizing - the only effective form, really - is living your life according to your professed beliefs, being honest about your owns sins and weaknesses, caring about (and respecting) other people regardless of their beliefs or their sins and weaknesses, not mucking about in other peoples’ business without an invitation, and generally not acting like an asshole, which I assume these people do (I’m not going to try the link - I have more than passing familiarity with crazy Christian fundies.)

Roger

Hmmm - I thought they’d stopped doing the personality test thing when I went several years walking almost daily down Tottenham Court Road without being accosted once.

Turns out it’s just another sign that I am no longer youthful, good-looking or well-dressed….

When I was in New York a few years back I used to pass by the ‘Scientology Celebrity Centre’ off Fifth Avenue - needless to say no one invited me to do a personality test there either.

Second Stubby’s recommendation of Hal Miller’s L Ron Hubbard biography - like the ‘religion’ itself manages the unusual combination of being both extremely funny and seriously creepy.

Are the Scientologists really worse than the Branch Davidians though?

I’d say it’s precisely their pulp science fiction (which Hubbard used to produce by the yard before he quite literally said ‘Sod this - I’m founding a religion’) weirdness that makes them if not harmless, at least not something the rest of us need to worry about over much.

Any movement that organises itself as a pyramid-selling scheme and recruits exclusively from the shallower and dimmer members of the middle class is never going to be a threat to anything much other than the bank accounts and sanity of its own members.

The Branch Davidians like the People’s Temple before them recruited from a much wider social range and devoted themselves to building totalitarian separatist communities.

Up to a certain point states can ignore this, but once the cultist communities top a thousand or more and start brandishing illegal weaponry and openly violating the civil rights of their members and neighbours, even the most corrupt and incompetent government has to step in.

Middle class weirdos like the Scientologists and the Rajneeshis have at times toyed with this kind of separatism, but in the end it takes trailer (and ghetto) trash poisoned by centuries of Protestant fundamentalism to create a Waco or a Jonestown.

Michelle

The foundation of christianaty is what we are all lawbrekers, we lie, we have stolen, lusted, hated, coveted and done things we know is wrong, and if God is good and cares about right and wrong then he would surely care if someone gets rapped or murdered? but his justice is so through that he cares also if we lie or steal. and if he is good he will judge, and if he judges he will find us guilty becauce we have all broken his commandments, and if we are guilty should he send us to a place of reward or punishment? any rational mind will see that we would be punished. if God just let us go without any punishment then he would be corrupt, and he isnt, his justice is an integral part of his character. we broke the law, and we can either pay the fine or do teh time[no use bribing the judge with your ‘good works’]. if God let us go, he wouldnt be good, or God. because he loved us he decided to pay our fine so we can be let go in Jesus christ. and he says we have to repent[turn form sin] and make him the lord of our lives to be forgiven. if you do something wrong, the normal thing is to apologise and have no intention of turning back to it- or your apology is useless. Thats the Gospel, and if i Love someone i would want them to know teh way to heaven, and it’s because of this love i tell people about the gospel.