Stephen Jones wrote in message <396e7b07.591201106@news.uswest.net>...

>> I am exposing Scientology for the type of Totalitarian organization they
>> are. They like to hide behind religion; they are not a religion but a political
>> movement that disguises itself as a religion.
> Hi! Bob. Would you elaborate on your theory? Pretend you
> are taking an essay test. Ready...... GO!
>
> Scientology is not a religion. Scientology is a political
> movement. Explain.
The most cursory review also would illustrate that L. Ron Hubbard explicitly stated that Scientology is not a religion.

Robert Vaughn Young states that when Scientology adopted religious garb and began doing "religious services" that everyone present viewed it as a big joke and laughed about it. Warrior, a twenty-year veteran, concurred and stated that the people he was around didn't view it as a religion either.

I'm sure that there are Scientologists out there who view it as a religion, or ex-Scientologists who viewed it as a religion when they were members, but I have certainly seen more ex-es who viewed "the religion angle" as Hubbard called it, as a "matter for solicitors and accountants" as Hubbard described it in the memo stating that Scientology was to be reconstituted as a religion.

If it were a religion in any full sense of the word, it would be a religion everywhere it is. This is simply not how it operates. In South American countries where a "religion"

can not own property, it registers as a "philosophical association." This is also how it operates in Israel and in Greece where it would gain no advantage from being a religion. The Purif and "management tech" when they are used by the "Church" are claimed to be religious in nature when that is advantageous in court.

When they want to introduce it into schools or sell it to private industry, then the claim is that the exact same practices are secular.

This itself is a pretty clear indicator that Scientology itself has no deeply held beliefs about its own religiosity, since it dons and doffs the "mantle of religious liberty" at will when it is advantageous to do so.

That is to say, it hides behind religion, but only when there is an advantage to that. While the belief-set may be a religion, the corporate organization is not.

ptsc

Go Back