Thread: Cruise is 'Goebbels of Scientology'

Tom Cruise, currently in Germany making a film about an assassination attempt on Hitler is being labeled as the ambassador of a totalitarian cult.

Cruise is 'Goebbels of Scientology', says German church - Independent Online Edition > Europe

Isn't the Scientology Church one of these American sects?

Is this a Christian 'brand'?

It was founded by Ron L. Hubbard, a second rate science fiction writer.

It's one of those brain washing, give us all your money and tell your family bye bye, deals.

It's a sect, banned from most Euro countries, only in the US it could survive as it's full of religious freaks, worst than AQ and the islamo facists.

Its the old version of intelligent design ppl that Kerux keeps trying to convert us too!

^
Bollocks!
And he doesn't attempt to convert anybody, just looking down on and attacking anyone who doesn't share his believes.

say wot?

bollocks that intelligent design is derived from Scientology?

I don't know what their explanation for the origin of the universe is, but from the Wiki article it looks to me that all they have in common with Christianity is using the cross as a symbol.
They believe in immortal souls going through reincarnation.
The whole thing seems an eclectic amalgam informed by various religious traditions as well as modern psychology and a bit of Sci-Fi.

All you want to know about Scientology is encapsulated in that great movie "Battlefield Earth" starring John Travolta.

ok possibly - I was of the impression that both had similar backgrounds.....

perhaps I am confusing Creation Science with Scientology.......

^ they share the same idea of ID

but they have very different rules for running the Church

I've thought about converting, but i've decided to remain a Jedi which i believe is now an officialy recognised religion in the UK after some 500,000 people put it down as their religion in the last census.

^
I think you'll find that was Australia, not the UK.

tom cruise is a proper cock.

^ but still a good actor, despite his total lack of intelligence re: religion.

I did two courses with the Scientologists in the late 1980's. One was the 'Purif'. or purification rundown, basically to run residual drugs out of your body. The other was called 'Objectives processing'.

I have mixed views. Some of their 'Tech' (as they call it) is effective. It has certainly cleaned up peoples lives. Some of the people working there were hopeless cases a few years before. I have no real complaints about the courses I did.

On the other hand-
They are constantly trying to sell you something, and it ain't cheap. You get no rest from the constant hassle, because many of the 'converts' work there for little or no money, to earn credits to do further courses.

The 'religious' aspect did not interest me. OK maybe we are are a functioning consciousness trapped inside a physical body. OK, maybe we were sent here by some arch villain millions of years ago. I was just there for a little self improvement- this stuff was not why I was there.

In the end, it put me off. I actually got a refund from the 'Org', for courses I did not want to stick around for. Apparently quite unusual. I had to sign something though that stated I would not go to the media, libel them and all that sort of stuff. This I was happy to do.

I wouldn't call it brainwashing or anything like that, but it's all a little overzealous for me. I did not want it to take over my life, or anything close to that, and it seemed to me that could happen if you stuck with it.

Originally Posted by sabang

I have mixed views. Some of their 'Tech' (as they call it) is effective. It has certainly cleaned up peoples lives. Some of the people working there were hopeless cases a few years before. I have no real complaints about the courses I did.

This is the thing, they are actually very skilled and effective in applied "psychotherapy" (for want of a better term).
I have also been to a few seminars in the 80s, can't even remember the names of the orgs now, as well as to various Far-Eastern things, as 'one' did, I suppose.

None of it stuck, but I can see the attraction for some.

Originally Posted by Wallace

Whilst you could start a cult of Jedi, you cannot have it recognised as a religion.

What would it take to get it recognised as a religion?

^You need to kill a few unbelievers.

Bet you saw that coming. Morcambe and Wise move over, well they're dead but anyway.

^ Maybe go out and sell it, like Scientology?

"If you want to make a little money, write a book. If you want to make a lot of money, create a religion.” L Ron Hubbard

I believe that for a religion to be recognised it has to be 'thriving, and have a dedicated number of followers' (Office of National Statistics). Simply writing 'Jedi' on a census form doesn't achieve this, and there is no way any of the census offices in NZ, Australia or the UK would even consider it. It's not even up to that office to recognise religions in the first place, they simply process the forms. All suggestions that it became a religion simply because lots of people wrote it down are misplaced.

So, if you want to be a Jedi, you have to start practising the faith. Given that there are no tenets for it to exist (other than a few ideas from half a dozen movies) it's unlikely to take off.