http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/index.php?title=Scientology&feed=atom&action=history Scientology - Revision history 2024-03-28T15:41:23Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.17.5 http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/index.php?title=Scientology&diff=4897&oldid=prev Pile at 16:34, 23 April 2008 2008-04-23T16:34:48Z <p></p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>The &quot;Church of Scientology&quot; is one of the more modern religious sects to appear in America and spread.<br /> <br /> Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices initially developed by L. Ron Hubbard in 1952 as a successor of his earlier self-help system, Dianetics. Hubbard later characterized Scientology as an &quot;applied religious philosophy&quot; and the basis for a new religion. Scientology encompasses a spiritual rehabilitation philosophy and techniques, and covers topics such as morals, ethics, detoxification, education and management. The practice and promotion of the Scientology belief system is organized via the Church of Scientology, the first church of which was founded in 1953.<br /> <br /> The term &quot;Scientology&quot; and related terms are trademarks held by the Religious Technology Center which grants the mother church of the Scientology religion, the Church of Scientology International (CSI), the right to use the trademarks and to license their use to all other Scientology churches and entities.<br /> <br /> Scientology and the organizations that promote it have remained highly controversial since their inception. Journalists, courts and the governing bodies of several countries have stated that the Church of Scientology is a cult and an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and abuses the trust of its members. Scientology officials argue that most negative press has been motivated by interest groups and that most of the controversy is past history. <br /> <br /> Here's what one critic online has to say about the doctrine of Scientology: <br /> <br /> {{bluebox|<br /> I'm going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Right, then I'll begin.<br /> <br /> Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.<br /> <br /> Xenu the alien ruler Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.<br /> <br /> Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).<br /> <br /> These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.<br /> <br /> The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a &quot;thetan&quot; in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).<br /> <br /> After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called &quot;implanting&quot;.<br /> <br /> When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.<br /> <br /> As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.<br /> <br /> That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called &quot;body thetans&quot;. And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these &quot;body thetans&quot; and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.<br /> <br /> Well what did you think of that story?<br /> <br /> What? You thought it was a stupid story?<br /> <br /> Well so do we. However, this story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years).<br /> <br /> We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains.<br /> <br /> Most of the Scientologists who work in their Dianetics centres and so called &quot;Churches&quot; of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret &quot;upper&quot; levels of Scientology. It may take them many years before they reach this level if they ever do. The ones who do know it are forced to keep it a secret and not tell it to those people who are joining Scientology.}}<br /> <br /> [[Image:Time-scientology-cover.jpg|right|300px]]<br /> <br /> ==Scientology front organizations==<br /> <br /> * Religious Freedom Watch<br /> * Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)<br /> * The Way to Happiness Foundation<br /> * Applied Scholastics<br /> * Concerned Businessmen's Association of America<br /> * HealthMed Clinic<br /> * Narconon<br /> * World Literacy Crusade<br /> * Downtown Medical<br /> * Criminon<br /> * Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE)<br /> <br /> ==See also==<br /> * [[Dianetics]]<br /> * [[Scientology testimonials]]<br /> * [[Scientology videos]]<br /> * [http://www.apologeticsindex.org/Penthouse%20Interview.pdf 1983 Penthouse interview with L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.]<br /> * [http://www.xenu.net/archive/media/time910605.html Time cover story on Scientology]<br /> <br /> <br /> [[category:theists]]<br /> [[category:religion]]<br /> [[category:definitions]]<br /> [[category:Ignorance &amp; Misinformation]]<br /> [[category:humor]]</div> Pile