Scientology’s 8-pointed cross, “symbolizing the 8 dynamics” – adopted to appear “religious”
The question is often asked — how can scientology call itself a religion? It doesnt have most of the things that “normal” religions have — worship services, a belief in God, relying on actual gifts and not charging for services, a kind, gentle approach, focus on families etc etc
And of course, L. Ron Hubbard was extremely derisive about religions (I will do a post focusing on his views one of these days) until he realized it could have great benefit to use the “religion angle.”
But one of the things that is most incredible about this business that masquerades as a religion for tax exempt purposes is that it actually presents itself as a business too.
The World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE) takes the exact same things that are used in scientology as “religious scripture” and presents them as business “courses”. They even use the same names. These are some of the “Intro Services” that scientology uses to interest and hook new people.
Yet, here they are presented as BUSINESS SOLUTIONS — and not as “follow Christian principles in your business dealings” but “here is ‘administrative technology’ to improve your business.” It’s not presented as having ANYTHING to do with scientology. Yet, it is identical.
This is one of the more blatant indicia that scientology is NOT a tax exempt religious organization.
Apropos of nothing, but I wanted to once again congratulate Mark Bunker for having the brass ones to beard scientology right in its den (of iniquities) in poor suffering Clearwater. Have we seen any improvements in the scene of their crimes since he took office? Has he been able to relax in that park bench?
Those dark clouds behind the faux cross on the flag building are especially apropos to scn’s current conditions.
The religious is maybe that we are one in the whole world. Away back big bangs and psychs seperated the whole world and human beings I. Seperated they comes together and finally we are one in the whole world. To be greater than the the universe is to be the whole world. Superious worlds don’t know what money is in the whole world.
What?
The Church of Scientology is a criminal enterprise pretending and cloaking itself as a religion. Both the IRS and the Supreme Court ruled Scientology is not a religion. Because of incessant legal harassment of IRS employees by the CO$, the IRS relented … and gave the Scientology crime syndicate tax exempt status.
Al Capone could have donned minister robes and threatened senior IRS officials and their families at gunpoint too … and he would have gotten tax exempt status just like the ‘Scientology crime syndicate’ did … and would have never spent a day at Alcatraz.
When you are INSIDE it the cult very much RUNS like a business.
The mentality of a corporation such as the numerical digital stat….i.e.How many crates of coca cola shipped to Disney this week ?
The STAT The STAT The STAT. It is all run by metrics. How much revenue $$$ this week is the main stat.
The statistic of production is such a fixation that many a staff member will tell you, you are only measured and evaluated based on the last week’s STAT. Your privileges, your day off, your meager pittance of payroll is dependent on the very last week’s production.
ALSO, there is no God in Scientology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u5bAfcq5kA&t=2s
Karen, you’re right except their god is money, more Money, EVEN MORE MONEY
Scn has nothing that one can call spiritual. Nothing all round like a zero. It is just mind stuff.
A person that has a positive attitude toward others without judging them is miles ahead more spiritual than scn. They just keep judging big time and all the time. Before joining (wog) when you are in (they already know about you thanks to hubby), then when you decide to leave (degraded being/suppressive).
I was more spiritual before joining this cult and now after I left.
LmR offered:
“I was more spiritual before joining this cult and now after I left.”
I’d generally agree with that. At a minimum, I’m not not-seeing the crimes that the scientology leadership is committing, and passing them off as “for the greatest good”. For a while there, I even justified the months of extended punishment they subjected me to, culminating in the RPF(Re-education Project Force). THEN they beached me as unsuitable for any job they had at Flag. (Idiots!)
Back in the mid 70s orgs and missions were ordered to create a religious image for themselves. They had to put crosses on the walls, put auditors in shirts with white collars and begin holding Sunday services and wedding ceremonies too. The sole and only purpose was to make them appear to be religious as it was thought it would bolster the ongoing effort to obtain federal tax exemption and maybe also create a better public image for them.
Orgs and missions (including of all things Flag) reluctantly did very little to further this purpose. Fact is Flag only erected a cross in a lobby that people only walked through when attending some grandiose event such as Hubbard’s birthday celebration.
A guy I know who worked in the GO and was charged with getting all this “religious imagery” done told me once that org staff were very reluctant to carry out this goal. He concluded this was because no one believed it was a religion in the first place. So many of the SO folks had been in the cult for decades and it had never before been “promoted” to them as a religious organization so they inherently had no interest in creating that mock up.
Yes, it is now, and has always been a charade and a scam.
Glenn, it was 1974, IIRC that NY org went whole-hog to simulate a religious operation. SO many different Catholic symbols, the cross & clerical garb, etc, were imported on one day, and all of us studying the Academy Levels had to stop and immediately study the hastily-compiled “minister’s course’ before we could continue with what we were there to learn/practice. What a JOKE it was to we who were there. That “ministers’ course” was laughably wrong some times.
The sole and only purpose was to make them appear to be religious as it was thought it would bolster the ongoing effort to obtain federal tax
“Yes, this was also in the 80s, 90s, until now. Full manipulation of governments to get tax extempt.”
It is obviously a money making businesses. If you know the seaorg, you as a member never think of religion. You think in money. Nothing more.
Who has been in the SO know very well that we never used to talk about “our religion” or such things. Never. Not even with public or org staff. The idea wasn’t that at all. We all knew it was a kind of lie to be free to do our business.
Our true religion were statistics and money.
And we had execs screaming and threatening all the time to increase every week more our devotion.
Scn is certainly not a religion. And it doesn’t take much to see it from outside.
It is obviously a money worship cult.
They never did anything for others outside the bubble. Never.
LmR, exactly my experience at Flag/Flog.
Jere. Laughing. Experiences that one doesn’t want to forget.
The “Religion Angle” needs to be closed.
Sadly, otherles, only the organization can do that by surrendering, and you know the likelihood of the tiny drunkard giving up such a PROFITABLE situation.
My conclusion is that there should be no tax exemption for any religion whatsoever. It is all getting far too crazy. Falwell’s wife does oral sex, NOI claims that the white race is fake, Scientology is really a business, space aliens claim they altered human DNA, cult leaders demand sex slaves, Epstein’s female friend gets involved in pedophilia, priests get charged with harming young boys, Danny Masterson used Scientology to trap females etc. etc.
Blavatsky was right. The courts cannot decide what a religion really is. Churches take more than they need. Remove the tax exemption on all religion; let the free market decide.
Never going to happen.
Going after churches would be worse for a political career than eating puppies on live TV. There are a lot more people who like churches than people like yourself, so it is a dead project. The scandals do not impact them, since they apply to only certain churches.
The way to wreck the Scientology tax exemption is to split the Co$ from actual churches, and there are good approaches. You could also deal with Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, etc.
George, there’s much to commend that idea, but the religious are a POWERFUL lobby.
AND the “religious angle” is BAKED into the US Constitution.
I’m with you, George. Every religious organization should pay taxes.
Even better: let the religionists get a REAL job!
ETA: The same could be said of the bureaucrats and other politicians who don’t know what work or customer service are.
“My conclusion is that there should be no tax exemption for any religion whatsoever. It is all getting far too crazy. Falwell’s wife does oral sex…”
Wait…..does that mean I have to pay taxes if my wife does oral sex……?
Well, ya gotta hand it to ’em: There is no separation of church and state when it comes to scientology. It has managed to be both and not separately. The fact that a member has to abide by a “contract” signed before he/she does a “religious” service says all one needs to know. There is nothing religious about the contract and yet some judges have adjudicated that it needs to be adhered to – and no matter what it demands.
Yeah, Mary. They definitely learned how to “game” the system to their benefit and now use it to keep the clapping clams enslaved, just as Tubby intended.
Followers of $ci know that the only reason the IRS granted tax exemption was to make the massive number of law suits go away along with the harassment they had to endure.
O/T. 2018 Scientology Dianetics Auditor of the Year and Classed (i.e., E-Meter) Auditor-in-Training Nation of Islam Sister Charlene Muhammad promotes anti-White racism and bigotry.
More specifically, Sister Charlene Muhammad is currently promoting the lecture “Yakub’s Selective Breeding Project” by Nation of Islam Minister Dr. Wesley Muhammad. Six graphics at link:
https://exscn2.net/threads/scientology-dianetics-auditor-of-the-year-and-e-meter-auitor-in-training-nation-of-islam-sister-charlene-muhammad-promotes-anti-white-racism-bigotry.1836/
Below is a link to the Wikipedia article on Yakub and Nation of Islam scriptures regarding the origin of the White race. The article explains that Yakub and his followers created the White race through eugenics and:
Yakub (Nation of Islam)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakub_(Nation_of_Islam)
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
The brutal conditions of their creation determined the evil nature of the new race: “by lying to the black mother of the baby, this lie was born into the very nature of the white baby; and, murder for the black people was also born in them—or made by nature a liar and murderer”
[SNIP]
Elijah Muhammad also asserted that some of the new white race “tried to graft themselves back into the black nation, but they had nothing to go by.” As a result, they became gorillas. “A few were lucky enough to make a start, and got as far as what you call the gorilla. In fact, all of the monkey family are from this 2,000 year history of the white race in Europe.”
* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
VIDEO: “Yacub And The Making of The White Race: Fact or Fiction? Science or Fantasy?” by Nation of Islam Minister Dr. Wesley Muhammad.
Spoiler: The answers are “Fact” and “Science.”
This is the almost six-hour lecture that is being promoted by 2018 Scientology Dianetics Auditor of the Year and Classed (i.e., E-Meter) Auditor-in-Training Nation of Islam Sister Charlene Muhammad.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7UdiLohbbYQ
/
Wow, and to think I got put under non-enturbulation order (last step before a declare if one more report received) because I was listening to a lecture about alien abductions during white-glove cleaning.
That was around 88.
Times have changed.
I once had a conversation with a member of the Nation of Islam who politely insisted that I was the descendant of a mad science experiment, though he claimed whites were engineered to handle the cold. It’s something people actually believe.
Religions have their crazy creation stories, each one wilder than the next. The Greeks and Romans, the Phoenicians, the Norse, they all had their far-out explanations for how life came about. There’s far out magic in the New Testament and the Old Testament has wild stuff in it too. None of this bothers me. What bothers me is when religion foments hate and blame amongst people instead of forging communication bonds and furthering peace and harmony and understanding. So you believe that Jesus walked on water or that Aphrodite sprang up out of sea foam or that Moses parted the Red Sea…OK. Have fun. Believe in your talking snakes and whales that swallow a man whole and then spit him out perfectly intact 3 days later, or that Xenu did his Volcano number, or or or whatever. People can and do believe in, and derive comfort from all manner of woo. That’s ok. But when a religion’s scripture allows or mandates that some other group has caused all the world’s ills and problems and accordingly must be exterminated that to me is the indicator that that religion is nuts and the people following it are nuts.
*I* am coming to love The Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of the Universe. At least the adherents have FUN with it and share an inexpensive meal.
NOI is about as much “science” as scientology, meaning that one of their early leaders said “this is fact” without ANY supporting evidence and their brainwashed enslaved followers simply accepted it without question; later converts were/are shamed/forced into the same blind acceptance until it became second nature; enforced by the society’s members amongst themselves, and then the members, themselves.
In short, it makes them feel good that they have this inside track to the truth, so HAVE to continue to believe the increasingly weird proclamations from their leaders lest they lose their coveted position.
That racist Yakub balderdash should earn the Nation of so-called islam permanent harassment by the JDL and similar groups fighting anti-semitism and other bigotry. I expect devout Muslems will disown that blatantly unhinged cult if they ever get their act together enough to wield some power. I just thought…. Is there a group of ex-NOI members spreading the truth about their former Group, similar to the societies we know so well who are digging out scientology’s crimes?
Do they REALLY believe that Yacub shit? It’s not even reasonable as a metaphor. All it does is justify why they’re downtrodden. Seriously depressing material.