Comment by coliveira
3 days ago
Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
3 days ago
Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
From reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons yesterday after someone posted a link to it in the comments for another thread, I came away with the impression that Hubbard seemed to be into some pretty weird stuff long before scientology.
damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
You get or used to get true believers working in hellish conditions[1] on the boats, paid ~nothing. It might be a quid pro quo convenience for the Tom Cruises, but there are also some suckers.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org#Lawsuits
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Religion is all about social function, at least from social science perceptives I guess.
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This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
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