What do you think of Scientology?

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Plus, you have to pay progressively more money as you learn more about the religion. It’s not like Christianity or some other legitimate religion where you can attend services for free and sign up for a Sunday school, Bible study or RCIA and learn everything up-front.

See this business insider article that goes into more detail: How Much Scientology Costs, According to Ex-Members
 
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I would avoid it like the plague. In addition to not being true and being a Ponzi scheme, involving yourself with it is a likely ticket to years of harassment and even possible litigation if you decide later you want to leave. It has driven some people into mental instability.
 
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I watched a documentary about Scientology. I think it was called going clear or something.

Scary stuff happening in what seems like a cult.
 
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I don’t know much about it because they tend to be secretive about what they teach. They believe in a style of reincarnation. In something like Hinduism, you can incarnate as an animal or plant, whereas in Scientology, you can only incarnate as another human being. From what I’ve heard, they make it difficult to leave. They spy on you and harass you if you leave or you intend to leave. I’m not impressed with Scientology.
 
I read Dianetics around 1990. It gave me a very bad impression then.
Now that I’ve seen so much about it from ppl who have left, what I think is that it’s a Hollywood owned and operated cult and tax evasion system for overpaid actors who believe they’re truly better than other people.
Leah Remini’s series revealing things is very informative.

But in answer to the topic question:
I think they’re a bunch of uninformed folks who were fooled by a system that trapped them into itself. I mean seriously, they sign a million year contract, or the sea org ones do. I am not one, so cant say.
 
I’m in the middle of watching “Scientology and the Aftermath” at the moment on free to air. Leah Remini and Mike Rinders have interviewed scores of people who’ve got out and been rejected by their families as a result. They destroy family relationships all the while taking huge amounts of money from people. Run a million miles from them. I believe that the series is on Foxtel at the moment.
 
Emeraldlady said:
I’m in the middle of watching “Scientology and the Aftermath” at the moment on free to air. Leah Remini and Mike Rinders have interviewed scores of people who’ve got out and been rejected by their families as a result.
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Yeah Leah Remini left Scientology after being raised in it. Now she’s a Catholic and has talked about how different it is compared to Scientology.
 
I find it very disturbing.

It’s a sci-fi money making cult and it scares me.
 
Avoid it like the plague. I know someone who was involved in it. Through the grace of God this person left that sect.
 
It is. I read their basic ethics on their website and the whole moral system is based on survival. A LOT of evil can be justified if someone believes their survival is on the line.
 
ltwin said:
Yeah Leah Remini left Scientology after being raised in it. Now she’s a Catholic and has talked about how different it is compared to Scientology.
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When I was recovering from surgery a few years ago, we got cable TV during my “stay-home” time (about two weeks). I watched the entire series that featured Leah Remini and other “Scientology” escapees. It was terrifying, and I would not be surprised to learn someday that she has “disappeared”. She is a brave woman–may God help her, please!

I recommend this series, but don’t let your children see it. It’s very scary.

When I think about what the Scientology cult teaches, I am reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s world (all fantasy), and his “Deep Ones” who plan to “clear the earth”. This is called “Cthulu Mythos,” and many sci-fi and fantasy writers have contributed stories to this fantasy line. It’s scary fun to read about in a fantasy book, but I think that somehow, Ron Hubbard must have decided that it’s “real-life.”
 
I had a 1st/1st edition, in storage in the attic, back some 20 years ago. Rats ate it. And nibbled on a couple of other titles.
 
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The guttural bit is correct. Sounds like a hacking cough and…Oh. Wait.

A few of Hubbard’s shorter SF works are reasonably well thought of in the field. But he was no great talent.
 
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At the time, the value of my copy, sans DJ, was roughly $100-$125, on the open market.

Scientology was the method of getting around the legal limits on Hubbard pushing Dianetics as a diagnostic/treatment tool.
 
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe L.
Rom Hubbard basically bet a friend he could create a religion out of thin air just prove it could be done.

I discovered him as a sci-fi writer as a teen and his work was pure dreck: sex, violence & sensationalism.

Scientology is dreck too.
 
In the pulp days he was a competent pulp writer, in more genres than SF. FEAR and TYPEWRITER IN THE SKY, especially. Note that I talking about his pulp work.
 
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The story has its origins in a story Harlan Ellison told; that Hubbard, at a small gathering of SF writers, asserted that starting a religion was the way to make money. And he decided to do it.

Harlan later stopped verifying that story, for reasons I know not.

The relationship between the earlier quack medical scam of Dianetics, and the development of Scientology I first read in Martin Gardner’s FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE. Which I recommend, save for a sentence about Chesterton in it.
 
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