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About LinkBacksAs long as there are people who are weak, gullible, have no supportive family or have no self belief in the world then there will always be religions/cults/con-men ready to take advantage of them in some way.
As long as there are people who are weak, gullible, have no supportive family or have no self belief in the world then there will always be religions/cults/con-men ready to take advantage of them in some way.
I'm not fat and I'm not 40
Originally Posted by JPreston
how dare you say that. now send me £200 so your sinful words may be forgiven!
Vodka
Hhmmmm, now what other religions does that apply to...
Another athiest here, to point out that scientology is no more invalid than any other religion. Mormonism, like scientology, was made up out of whole cloth by a historically known individual in fairly modern times but folk don't get so riled up about them, do they?
The only difference between scientology and any other religion is that the latter is longer established...but no less wacky. The story of Noah and the flood; animals two by two (and some of them in sevens) on one big boat? Moses parting the red sea? Is believing any of that any less dumb than believing in xenu and thetans? There's exactly the same amount of evidence in favour of both, and both are equally plausible.
George Carlin said something like "Religion, easily, is the Greatest BS Story Ever Told! Think about it: religion has actually convinced people -- many of them adults -- that there's an invisible man who lives in the sky and watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And who has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to remain and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, till the end of time. But he loves you! He really loves you....and he needs some money....."
And George Carlin was in both Bill and Ted movies - end of argument
Surely Scientology is summed up by L. Ron Hubbard himself:... and I bet he's made more than just $1 million out of it."Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."
Thing about it on BBC1 now
You're all being very naive if you genuinely can't see the difference between Christianity and Scientology. There is a lot of historical evidence for Christianity, that Jesus lived, fulfilled prophesies outside his control written about him hundreds of years before his birth and he made more of an impact upon the world than any other person in history. Christians at the time died to let people know about him and his teachings, would they have done this if they knew it was a lie? Most educated athiests acknowledge these events, they just differ in opinion whether his claim that he was God was true or not. There is also some evidence for God, so it is not the completely irrational belief that a lot of people would make you think it is. Recent polls suggest that most people in this country actually believe in a God or higher power of some sort. How many do you think they believe in the idea of the evil lord xenu who transported us to earth in the beginning? It is well documented that L Ron Hubbard made Scientology as a money making scheme and a bet that he could get people to believe in it. If you don't believe in God, that's fine, but don't equate it to believing in ramblings of a power crazy science fiction writer.
The Bible says you should love your neighbour and not kill people. No true Christians will demand you give money to them, my experience is they will be overly generous with their money to you. The Bible doesn't demand you give all of your earnings to pay for the church and to hear about its teachings, instead it suggests you should give about 10% of your wages to a charity to help the needy - there's a big difference.
Don't get me wrong there are some people who call themselves Christians who do bad things, those who are conmen and ask you send them money or those who attack people. However these aren't in line with Biblical teachings, and those people are in the extreme minority. The actions that Scientologists take such as taking your money for personal gain, removing people from their friends and family, and silencing opponents is in line with their 'religion' and its teachings and it is all controlled by a single organisation. I think in reality most people can see the difference, they just like bashing Christianity whenever possible. But by making statements saying that they're the same, it's these attitudes which allow Scientology to continue and to ruin countless people's lives.
Last edited by Slick; 14-05-2007 at 09:42 PM.
There is one big difference between the fundamental claims of Christianity, and (what I understand of) those of Scientology, or, for that matter, those of Islam, buddhism and several others.
Christianity is based in large part on events that (it is claimed) took place and were externally verifiable, rather than simply on teachings from a leader. If you had lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago, you could check whether Jesus really lived, whether he died, and whether he rose again. Now, you can look at the historical documents recording the events, and make up your mind whether they are accurate or not. Regardless of what you think about Jesus' teaching, the evidence (if real) demands some sort of explanation. No-one can ever say whether or not Hubbard or Mohammed really received a revelation of truth, except them, and they are both dead. They certainly don't seem to have 'done' anything particularly beyond the capability of other men.
In case you couldn't tell, I find the evidence of Jesus' life compelling
Very interesting programme, it showed how scared scienctology are of any message but their own. I could totally understand why the BBC guy lost his cool their representative was the most annoying guy on the planet. Either he's very well paid or totally brainwashed!
He reminded me of the guy from thank you for smoking that film.
Actually, for those of us who don't believe the bible is an accurate and impartial history of the world, historical evidence strongly suggests Jesus never existed.
That's just part of the similarity between Christianity and Scientology.
There is more historical evidence for the existence of Jesus than any other person in ancient history, any historian worth his salt would not try to deny his existance, but lets not go down that route as it's getting a bit OT.
dam i missed, but i found this on google about them
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...uration%3Along
I'm not trying to be sarcastic or offending but there's much less evidence of Jesus compare to Pharaohs, and people of Rome, Carthage, Greece and a whole lot more ancient history civilizations, hell some are even stored in the British Museum.
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This simply is not true. There is an almost total absence of evidence (and there are compelling reasons to doubt the authenticity of what does exist), and this alone is evidence he didn't, as the Catholic Church has been desparately looking for and preserving documents for the last 1400+ years.
Please read for yourself rather than following your brainwashing.
Actually I think you'll find Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus all made a mention to Jesus between A.D. 50 and A.D 150.
The gospels weren't written until roughly A.D. 60-65
Civilizations are not individual people though, and for example most of the evidence of people like Pharoahs comes from the Bible too. It is amazing the couple of loose documents much of the well established Greecians are based upon, yet people jump at the opportunity to discard the thousands of sources supporting Jesus. But like I said, let's not go down that route...
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