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Panorama programme on Scientology
A while ago, I wrote a blog entry about Scientology. This week, Panorama (a serious UK news programme) did an in-depth analysis of Scientology, including interviews with prominent Scientologists. The programme is available online. Quite frightening how they seemingly hounded and intimidated the presenter. The BBC bloke ended up completely losing his rag with the Scientologist by the end of the week.
I was interested to hear that Scientology is not classed as a religion in the UK, due to the fact that paying for their courses does not constitute worship. Also that the Scientologists interviewed denied parts of what I'd assumed were core beliefs of their faith (the stuff about aliens, thetans, and nuclear bombs).
Comments
Scientology is a very
Scientology is a very apreciated science. To face others you can only blog of this over here.
Sorry, I didn't quite get
Sorry, I didn't quite get what you're trying to say. I certainly don't appreciate Scientology as a science. For a start, I'd like to see some proper scientific research; but of course you only get that if you're part of the organisation and pay some money.
"To face others you can only blog of this over here" - doesn't quite make sense, but I guess you're saying I'm cowardly. In my defence, I'd say that the original blog entry is pretty much reportage, and doesn't make any judgements of Scientology (unlike this comment). I was attempting to take a scientific attitude and say, "Here's one side of the story". If you can point me to holy books which properly explain the core tenets of Scientology without me having to pay any money (e.g. the Bible for Christianity, Talmud for modern Jews, Qu'ran for Islam), I would be happy to include the other side of the story. And I don't just mean point me in the direction of some of the good work you've done; I mean, show me your real core religious texts for free. I might also then be more inclined to treat Scientology as both a religion and a science.
That's what happens to your
That's what happens to your thinking when you practice Scientology for too long.
The more you research it, the worse it looks. It deserves neither the term religion OR science, as most people usually mean those words.
You will also find, in general, that there are no neutral, authoritative sources of information about Scientology. Apparently everyone who studies the cult (and I use the term understanding EXACTLY what it means and implies) and doesn't join it ends up either hostile to it, or pretty much silent on the subject, usually to save themselves from harassment.
BTW if you dig around either the Internet or paper publishing deep enough, you WILL find a fair amount of their religious texts - but Scientology claims that reading their texts without the proper (expensive) guidance and training will damage one's mind.
xenu.net is a good source of outsider information on Scientology, and their attitude is fairly typical for researchers on the subject.
Thanks for the comment. I'll
Thanks for the comment. I'll have a look at xenu.