'Scientology is creeping me out' - Pharyngula

[Rob H.]

Scientology is creeping me out
January 20, 2013
PZ Myers

...snip...

But there aren’t locks on the doors. The inmates stay there, punishing themselves, begging for more, all in the hopes of achieving redemption in the eyes of the psychotics running the show. The whole book (Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright) is a lesson on how human psychology can be warped and used by religion, leading people to submit to commands that I can’t imagine ever respecting…but they are led step by step into an earthly hell, all the while thinking it’s paradise.

One thing that struck me is that Scientology is a pathological extreme, but in substance it’s no different than other religions. And this was confirmed in a discussion of the numerous court cases that challenged Scientology. Scientology had its tax exemption as a religion stripped from it for a long while, and fought hard to get it back (and they eventually did, in a craven capitulation by the IRS). One of their allies in these trials was a former Franciscan friar and product of the Harvard Divinity School, Frank Flinn, who happily defined religion for the courts and pointed out that Scientology was just like Catholicism.

Like Catholicism, Flinn explained, Scientology is a hierarchical religion. He compared L. Ron Hubbard to the founders of Catholic religious orders, including his own, started by Saint Francis of Assisi, whose followers adopted a vow of poverty. Financial disparities within a church are not unusual. Within the hierarchy of Catholicism, for instance, bishops often enjoy a mansion, limousines, servants, and housekeepers; the papacy itself maintains thousands of people on its staff, including the Swiss Guards who protect the pope, and an entire order of nuns dedicated to being housekeepers for the papal apartments.

...snip...

What irritates me, though, is that anyone can read that (scientology is a religion, different in no substantial way from Catholicism) and argue that any religion deserves a tax exemption, or should be regarded as anything more than a self-aggrandizing perpetual money-making machine for the hierarchy. As I said, the IRS did eventually give in in an out-of-court settlement and let the Church of Scientology have everything they wanted…but the message they should have taken away is that no church deserves special treatment. Tax ‘em all. Remind the world that all of their mythologies are lies, and that all are just as corrupt and just as fraudulent as Scientology.

~~~

Lots of good reading there (both PZ's post and in the comments, with the exception of a lone woomongering crank) and plenty of ammunition for when religious people point at Scientology and mock it as really out there, not at all like their religions. (They're all equally daffy, imo.)

Edited for clarity.

[dimbear]

1. A major engine of evolution is the predator/prey relationship. The prey participate

in evolution too. Usually in nature the prey don't volunteer, although there are a few predators which use bait successfully.