Archive Message - 1995
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Since some of the materials which describe the $cientology cult could be considered to be copywritten materials, I have censored myself and The Skeptic Tank by deleting any and all possible text files which describes the cult's hidden mythologies. I have elected to quote just a bit of the questionable text according to the "Fair Use" legal findings afforded to those who report. - Fredric L. Rice, The Skeptic Tank, 09/Sep/95 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- From news.interserv.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!news.3do.com!dragon!jjh Mon Jul 17 09:49:16 1995 Path: news.interserv.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!news.3do.com!dragon!jjh From: jjh@3do.com (Joel Hanes) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc,alt.recovery.religion Subject: Re: Answers from Dan... Followup-To: alt.religion.scientology Date: 14 Jul 1995 06:35:17 GMT Organization: University of Okoboji Perloo & Glee Club Lines: 138 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3u5375$5va@badger.3do.com> References: <3u4lf2$moe@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> Reply-To: jjh@3do.com NNTP-Posting-Host: dragon.3do.com Summary: Dan asks for a statement of my religious ideas; I respond Keywords: delusion manipulation predation evil Xref: news.interserv.net alt.religion.scientology:75425 alt.atheism:136412 talk.religion.misc:67804 alt.recovery.religion:4701 dynamicd@ix.netcom.com (Dan Sigal ) asks: > > I have always enjoyed responding to intelligent queries about my > religious beliefs. What I find interesting in the lack of statements by > the "antis" what their beliefs are. Can anyone recall a sincere post > what an anti's religious beliefs were? Nope. Easily rectified. I grew up in a large Iowa Presbyterian congregation, and was active in church functions. My childhood pastor is still among my parents' closest friends. His successor became my friend: a brilliant man who managed to communicate to me and to my confirmation class his love of the Bible and of his work, and his joy in his God. As a teenager, I was very concerned with religious matters; my parents led our church's youth group, and I read a bunch of religious history, and the Bible straight through. I went off to a beautiful church summer camp for a couple weeks each summer for three years. A large portion of the staff were former overseas missionaries, from the more pious and fundamentalist arm of the Presbyterian church. Gradually, I began to see that some of these people used their religion to relieve themselves of the burden of independent judgement, of the necessity for thought. My disillusionment came to a crux when the leader of a study group presented Genesis as straightforward factual narrative rather than an allegory -- I responded by pointing out that the ground beneath his feet was glacial till, composed largely of rounded igneous cobbles and quartz sand, yet three hundred miles from the nearest outcrop of crystalline rock, and in a state where flat-laying sedimentary rocks lie a thousand meters thick over the igneous basement. I was shocked when he, and a majority of the staff, refused even to discuss how such evidence of glaciation could be reconciled with a young earth and a Noachian flood. This stance felt to me, then, like intellectual dishonesty, like lying, like evil. It still does. This was a crisis; I was deeply committed to religion as an answer to the sense of the sacred I found within myself. I prayed; I studied devotional texts and religious writings. I asked God to come into my heart and help me to know Him as a daily fact. I never felt an answer. Others say that they have, and how can I say they have not? I can only report that I spent a terrible year asking God into my life, into my heart, and got no reply. Over the years, my revulsion for self-deception has grown, as has my perception of it in many of the more pious sorts of religionists. I came to see that unthinking piety could be used, and often was used, to justify acts that I thought clearly evil -- especially hatred of the Other, of those unlike ourselves. It amazes me to find this common thread in the statments of the growing "religious right" in the U.S.; a group ostensibly devoted to the teachings of someone who taught tolerance and _love_ of those others. So, today, I am an atheist. I find no evidence in myself or in the world that any numinous being exists or has ever existed. ----===0===---- ObScientology: It seems pretty clear to me, based on what I know if its doctrines and practices, that Scientology is based almost entirely on surrender of one's own judgement and thought to the "org", (not to mention one's money), and on deliberate self-deception. I'm sure that the "Church" includes among its adherents many people of good faith, innocent of the manipulation and naked greed that I think has characterized the organization from its inception. Perhaps Mr. Sigal is among them. Nevertheless, I now agree with those who compare Scientology to Orwellian double-think; the simile seems to me more than apt; almost exact. The actions of the "Church" disclosed on alt.religion.scientology and in press accounts seem to me actively evil. The guile and duplicity of the Scientologist postings in a.r.s and on AOL are shocking, and among the most deluded I've seen in eight years of reading the Net. As I've implied above, I think the Christian God is a most improbable person, and I don't believe in Him. However, should I be wrong, should there be a final trump and a judgement day awaiting us all, I feel certain that L. Ron Hubbard and much of the the heirarchy of the "Church" of Scientology will be among the damned. They prey on the weak. They manipulate the strong to make them weak. Their religion is for sale, and only for sale; it is never given, only sold. I've read L. Ron Hubbard's "scriptures". (Thanks, Scamizdat!) I find the ideas revolting. The very wording is ugly. --------------- Cross-posted from alt.religion.scientology to alt.atheism, talk.religion.misc, alt.recovery.religion People in these groups: _PLEASE_ read a.r.s for a couple days. It's a burden, it's a high-volume group, but it's important. Exposing evil is everyone's business. Followups directed back to a.r.s. --- Joel Hanes

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