South Park, Tom Cruise, L. Ron

[legion]

Did anyone watch last week's South Park?

They basically went after Scientology, and made fun of Tom Cruise for good measure. I'm surprised they went so far. Further, they basically ended the episode by daring the Church of Scientology to sue them.

An excerpt:

"Tom, you have to come out of the closet."

Tom Cruise: "I'm not in the closet."

[dd74]

Didn't see it; heard all about it, though. South Park is the Looney Tunes of today as far as irreverence goes.

[Joeaksa]

After TC went off on the Today Show about medications believe that a lot of people now know how wacko he is. Course anyone who would leave Nicole Kidmann needs to be checked on anyway, unless he really does need to come out of the closet...

JoeA

[dd74]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
After TC went off on the Today Show about medications believe that a lot of people now know how wacko he is. Course anyone who would leave Nicole Kidmann needs to be checked on anyway, unless he really does need to come out of the closet...

JoeA

Exactly. I'd see TC in Century City on occasion. He wasn't looking at skirts, but suits.

And going off on Brooke Shields about stuff that's inherently female? WTF? Be a man: go off on Terrell Owens, Brett Farve or Tony Stewart.

[legion]

Maybe he wants to have babies...

Maybe he wants to be called Loretta...

[kang]

I saw it. Apparently, scientologists really do believe that stuff about aliens coming out of volcanoes and stealing our souls, or whatever they said on the show.

[legion]

They also believe that humans evolved from clams.

I tried talking about the show to my vehemently anti-Christian friend, and he didn't get it. As far as he is concerned, all religions are scams preying on the weak-minded.

He doesn't get the difference between spreading a message, then asking for a donation (Christian approach) versus breaking up a message into little chunks, and charging to learn each chunk (Scientology).

[dd74]

Do you know how much property in L.A. they own?

[kang]

I was curious (and bored) so I did a quick web search. I found this link:

http://www.lermanet2.com/exit/volcanos.html

Which has this to say about Scientology:

1.3: "Section III OT" summarised
OT3 is a secret, senior level within Scientology that can only be done after many other courses, by which time the client is well prepared, well behaved and ready to, if not believe, at least work with anything Hubbard says as being truth, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. People are not suckers to have been conditioned in this way, but have been ushered through many successive plausible small steps and changes, each one acceptable by itself, but progressing towards enchantment with past life recalls, a shut-down of critical thoughts, alienation from outside opinion and a turning-towards and eventual unquestioning acceptance of Hubbard's imposed belief system.
OT stands for "Operating Thetan" where "thetan" is Scientology jargon for "soul", and "Operating" is supposed to mean "At cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time". The 3 means that this is the third in the series of courses.
OT3 mainly concerns a supposed "Incident II" happening 75 Million years ago, when Xenu an officer in charge of the 76 local planets of the "Galactic Confederation", solved overpopulation by mass exterminations, mostly by shootings. The souls of those killed were collected together using super cold, transported to volcanoes on earth (he gives a list of these and they are checked out in this paper), H-bombed at the volcanoes, collected up again using electronic ribbons and transported to Hawaii or Las Palmas. They were there subjected to 36 days of hypnotic "implants" using films and simple apparatus, which in their already shocked state was supposedly very effective and kept them clustered together and trapped on earth as demons.
We are each supposed to contain large numbers of these traumatised and grouped souls stuck around our bodies like some sort of spiritual "fleas" (Hubbard's term). The OT3 processing consists of beaming a narrowly focussed attention onto clusters of souls to communicate with and separate them, then get individual souls to recall the volcano they were blown up at etc. which by Dianetics theory releases them from the trauma. If the souls resist recalling the "Incident II" killings, bombings and hypnosis, then "Incident 1" is supposed to be offered for recall instead.
"Incident I" is time-stamped at 4 quadrillion years ago, and here I quote in full: " LOUD SNAP WAVES OF LIGHT CHARIOT COMES OUT, TURNS RIGHT AND LEFT CHERUB COMES OUT BLOWS HORN, COMES CLOSE SHATTERING SERIES OF SNAPS CHERUB FADES BACK (RETREATS) BLACKNESS DUMPED ON THETAN" (Thetan = soul = spiritual "flea" = "demon").
If even "Incident I" won't work, then the Scientologist is doing something wrong and his Dianetics procedures are checked-over. If even then the Scientologist fails to get results, he is condemned as having lied about completing previous courses and required to do the entire series of over 20 courses and counselling from beginning Scientologist onwards all over again.
The end result of OT3 is variously declared to be "freedom from overwhelm", also "No Body thetans left".

[IROC]

I think Scientology should be held up as a shining example of how people will believe anything if it is presented to them in the form of a "religion". I mean, this is absolutely nuts and yet people actually believe this stuff.

I read once that L Ron made this whole thing up on a friendly bet.

Mike

[kang]

I heard that L Ron once said something to the effect of “If you really want to make millions, all you have to do is start your own religion.”

[legion]

Originally posted by IROC
I think Scientology should be held up as a shining example of how people will believe anything if it is presented to them in the form of a "religion". I mean, this is absolutely nuts and yet people actually believe this stuff.

I read once that L Ron made this whole thing up on a friendly bet.

Mike

The rumor is that the bet was with Isaac Asimov.

[1967 R50/2]

Saw it. Hilarious. Tom Cruise section was particularly funny.

Scientology seems to me to be the modern equivalent of a "Mystery Religion" like in ancient Greee. They usually held that ther is some secret truth that they guarded which only a few may ever know...in the case of Scientology, they learn this secret by paying through the nose.

[techweenie]

Originally posted by legion
The rumor is that the bet was with Isaac Asimov.

I believe the comment was between John Campbell and L. Ron. While it's unclear which one said it, it's clear which one did it.

-------------not surprisingly, it's officially denied--------------
http://www.scientologytoday.org/Common/question/pg82.htm

[Tobra]

Saw it, hilarious. I like how it ended, "So sue me!" Then it listed John Smith as the name of every single person involved in the show, which was the funniest part to me.

They did the same thing with the Cult of Latter Day Saints(No offence meant to you Mormons) It was every bit as funny

[TerryBPP]

Originally posted by IROC
I think Scientology should be held up as a shining example of how people will believe anything if it is presented to them in the form of a "religion". I mean, this is absolutely nuts and yet people actually believe this stuff.

I read once that L Ron made this whole thing up on a friendly bet.

Mike

EXACTLY!

Technically they are only as nuts as all the other people that follow all the other religions. Why are the other religions any different? Because they are older? All started by men with a purpose, manupliation and money.

[dd74]

Originally posted by TerryBPP
All started by men with a purpose, manupliation and money.

I agree, but there also is "interpretation."

[1967 R50/2]

Originally posted by TerryBPP
Technically they are only as nuts as all the other people that follow all the other religions. Why are the other religions any different? Because they are older? All started by men with a purpose, manupliation and money.

Now that is just daft! You must be trolling.

Explain please how Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confusius or Mohammed were in it FOR MONEY.

Moses spent most of his life in A DESERT, Jesus got nailed to a board, Siddhartha was rich but gave it all up, Confusius was constantly getting kicked out of town, and Mohammed ...ok HE actually was quite rich.

But other than him, I see a conspicuous absense of money here.

The only thing they had in common was that they espoused a morality to societies that could really use it.

If you can't see the difference between the moralities put down by the major world religions and the abuses made by cults, you're not looking very hard.

That is all that can possibly be said about that.

[dd74]

Originally posted by 1967 R50/2
If you can't see the difference between the moralities put down by the major world religions and the abuses made by cults, you're not looking very hard.

I don't know. I've heard of people starting their own religions in their garages and backyards. Now, they suddenly no longer have to pay taxes.

Hmmm...Church of Porsche anyone?

[techweenie]

Originally posted by dd74

Hmmm...Church of Porsche anyone?

Are you really prepared to worship a guy named "Ferry?"