Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology From: av282@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Martin G. V. Hunt) Subject: What is Scientology? Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 03:50:26 GMT Posted by request: --------------------------- What is Scientology --------------------------- Scientology is a dangerous, mindbending cult that was established in the 1950's by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard and presents a grave threat to the concepts and tenets of freedom and democracy. Scientology has, as its basic purpose, the destruction of freedom and the erosion of human rights on the way to making money; it uses any means possible to achieve this end, including legal harassment, verbal and physical threats, hiding under the cover of "religion", and thought reform so complete that to talk to anyone brainwashed by the cult is to talk to little more than the mouthed platitudes of mechanical zombies. Scientology has evolved its own language that is little more than meaningless, incomprehensible ravings to rational, educated minds. This newspeak is a form of semantic control, used by the church to extract profit, either in money or personnel resources from its hapless, brainwashed victims and to serve PR functions to fool the public. Scientology is a totalitarian and fascist system that sees freedom of speech as an arch enemy, and freedom of thought as a personal attack, deserving of every means to stop it dead, sometimes literally. An example of this newspeak is the unfounded claim by the cult to be a "church"; Scientology is a cult, not a church. Based on science fiction and fantasy, the cult's teachings are little more than a thinly concealed attempt at making huge sums of money for the people at the top of the cult. Near the end of his life, Ronald Hubbard was reported to be making as much as one million dollars per week. Hubbard is documented as having said that the best way to make a lot of money is to invent a religion, and that is exactly what he did with the cult of Scientology. A mainstay of the cult's writings are based upon a kind of pseudo-science that gives one the clear impression that it is the 1930's. Many of these writings talk down to their audience as if they were wholly ignorant of basic facts about geology, biology, medicine, and other branches of general knowledge and science. The lamentable truth is that the cult's brainwashed victims are actually willing to defend these bits of fantasy as established scientific fact, against all reason and logic; one such delusion is "auditing". In "auditing", Scientology charges huge amounts of money to hook the indoctrinees up to a crude resistor-based bridge ohmmeter and ask bizarre questions about what supposedly happened to them millions, billions or even trillions of years ago on this and other planets. This "treatment" (also called "metering" by the cult) is supposed to cure all manner of ailments, both physical and psychological, for astronomical prices. The total cost of going from "raw meat", as the cult disparagingly calls the public, to "OT-8" is estimated to cost over 250,000.00$ US. The cult also uses another form of this "auditing" process, called "security-checking" to obtain very personal information about the follower's sex lives and criminal history (if any), which is then used for security purposes as potential blackmail to keep people quiet about the illegal activities of the cult should they ever escape its semantic entrapment long enough to resume their former lives. The litigious nature of the controversial cult of Scientology is well known and reported in the literature on this dangerous cultic phenomenon. Scientologists have, as one of their basic policies, the destruction of anyone who is perceived by this paranoid schizophrenic organization as being an "enemy", and baseless lawsuits, sometimes involving frames, are used for this purpose. An enemy is anyone who, in the eyes of the cult, denigrates the cult in any way; thus critics are subject to multitudes of frivolous lawsuits, threats, strong-arm tactics, and outright physical attacks. For this reason, suggestions have been put forward to ban Scientology from the courts for barratrous abuses. Scientology, while trying desperately to maintain a PR facade of sweetness and light, in reality call their public by such derogatory names as "raw meat", "bodies", and "WOGs"; these same people are thought to be so inconsequential to the cult that they are "body routed" into the organization, as they are thought to have no self determination or free will whatsoever, and thus no rights. The "raw meat" are fit for little more than indoctrination using simple hand motions like the children's game of pat-a-cake, according to the cult, as they are too far down the cult's "tone scale", a list of all the emotional states a person is capable of, to be treated as human beings. Interestingly, this "tone scale" of all human states and emotions fails to contain either happiness or freedom --- the stated goals of Hubbard's so-called "religion". The charade of hiding behind a religious cover even goes as far as installing pews and an altar in most of its buildings; however, these are seldom actually used until an investigation by a taxation branch brings down the order from above to "make this place look churchy" by using the pews and dressing up a cult indoctrinator as a "minister". Pretending to be a religion serves two purposes within the cult; escaping the charge of medical malpractice and avoiding legitimate taxation within the host country the cult has infiltrated. The hope for the future is that more countries will stand up to this tactic with protective legislation. Scientology hides behind the facade of a "religion", yet to the cult indoctrinees and those "in the know", this is merely seen as a way to avoid taxation and hassles over using the "auditing" techniques for stated medical purposes. The medical community has long been trying to curtail this cult's dangerous pseudo-medical practices, such as the "purification rundown" and the use of the "e-meter" for healing everything from backaches to bad eyesight. For this reason, the cult perceives a need to hide under the cover of religion, while at the same time calling itself a "science of mind" to gain credence on the the coattails of legitimate medicine. In addition, the cult has a policy of discrediting, attacking, and suing the medical and psychiatric communities, as they were perceived as enemies by the paranoid Hubbard; he was at one time diagnosed as being mentally unstable by a psychiatrist, and thus he conceived a hatred for the healing professions. Although the cult of Scientology often makes irrational and unscientific claims for medical treatment and healing, the reality is that these "effects" can all be easily explained by the placebo effect and by the crushing effects of complete thought reform, sleep deprivation, dietary control, semantic disturbances, and milieu control exacted by the cult on its victims. These brainwashing techniques lead the victim to "attest" to all forms of miraculous "cures"; if written "attests" are not made, then the poor "preclear" is sent off to "ethics" --- an action that every Scientologist fears. In fact, Scientology has a specific policy on people who do not "improve". They are seen as being evil, suppressive, or a source of trouble; thus if the cult's efforts fail, the "preclear" is held entirely responsible in a kind of catch-22 situation, and made even more of a victim. There are two faces to Scientology; one for public consumption, and an entirely different one, hidden from public view, for those "in the know". The public is told that Hubbard is "just a human", and that the cult does not treat of religion; but the fact is that Hubbard is known to be God once one has been brainwashed into the "upper levels". The public is given a PR story that the cult is a "religion", all the teaching are "belief", and all gains are "spiritual" in nature. Nevertheless, the indoctrinated know, or rather are brainwashed into believing, that Scientology is a workable method for treating human ailments, both medical and psychiatric, and every word of Hubbard's science-fictionlike scribblings, no matter how ludicrous, are "scientifically proven facts" referred to as "source" or, more significantly, "Source", and thoroughly researched. This "research" in fact involved Hubbard sitting down at a typewriter and writing whatever came to mind, a skill he developed while writing pulp science fiction. Scientology is well known for publishing various "codes" and "creeds" of a lofty and humanitarian nature, but the cult does not adhere to these altruistic statements in the smallest degree; they are just more PR material to make the cult look good in the eyes of a sceptical and increasingly hostile public. As time goes on, and more people lose their children, relatives, and friends to this dangerous, lawless, immoral, and litigious cult, legislation will surely be enacted in the free democratic countries of the world to limit its pernicious effect upon our society. Every time a brainwashed cultist wakes up to wonder what happened to the last few years of his or her life, and steps out of the shadows into the bracing sunlight of freedom of speech and thought, another nail is hammered into the coffin of this ugly phenomenon. The Scientology cult itself admits this; it says it has a problem with its "field" (the public) being "muddy" (hard to expand into). One can only hope that as time goes by, the cult will grow more distant from the paranoid and schizophrenic man who created it; already the cult has gone through its reformation, of sorts, as slightly more liberal minded groups have split off from the cult and set up their own operations. Former members of this cult are requested to speak out against it; tell the world the dark secrets of the "SO" and the "RPF". The SO is the Sea Org; a heavily controlled slave-like segment of the cult that signs billion year service contracts for wages lower than the average income of third-world countries. The RPF is the deceptively named Rehabilitation Project Force, a dark, secret, and hidden section of the cult used for punishing "downstat" members. Every recruit is irrationally expected to increase their production every week or they become "downstat", having falling statistics for production. The RPF is similar to a concentration camp; some of the unfortunate wights who end up here do not see the light of day for years. The RPFers for the Los Angeles Cedars of Lebanon Centre are imprisoned in cavern-like tunnels extending under the streets of Los Angeles, fed on a starvation diet of beans and rice, forced to work up to 125 hours a week, are not allowed to speak, and are dressed in filthy grey rags. There is an even darker and more secret organization for punishing "downstat" members called the "RRPF", or Ron's RPF; if anyone out there has experiences to relate of this cruel section of the cult, they are encouraged to speak out against this flagrant abuse of basic human rights. If you, the gentle reader have information of torture, inhumane treatment, murder, or other nefarious behavior or human rights abuses by this cult, then let the world know --- don't let what happened to you or people who were in the cult with you happen to another person out of ignorance of just how evil this cult really is. Fear not reprisals; people who have escaped the cult number in the hundreds of thousands! It has been estimated that there are several times more "disaffected" Scientologists than there are people trapped in the cult at present. The author of this FAQ shall, in all likelihood, be attacked by the cult for writing this, but this tactic will not serve. For the author believes so strongly in the truth that nothing shall swerve him from this path. In this world, we must fight for what we believe in; for if we turn a blind eye to the dictator or to those who would limit our freedoms, then we shall be forever on the retreat, and we shall end up having a life not worth living. Let this be a call to arms, "for we have nothing to fear but fear itself". -- Cogito, ergo sum. Martin Hunt, av282@freenet.carleton.ca