It's four pages, seems to long to cut and paste. But worth reading, we aren't alone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/us/07scientology.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
Good article on Scientologists
by JeffT 5 Replies latest jw friends
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dissed
I've never met a Scientologist Jeff, but they some of their actions are quite similar to a group we know. The way the attack their former members is just like the WTS.
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Locutus of Borg
Back in the 70s I read Dianetics and talked to some Scientologists in Boston. They reminded me too much of the JWs and my scam-o-meter was pegged.
I read that NY Times article and found many of the similarities with the Watchtower to be absolutely creepy. The wotld would be a better place without destructive organizations like these.
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JWoods
This is the equal of the witnesses in brainwashing, control freaking, and scamming their followers for monetary gain of the central organization.
I have a friend who escaped from a high level of this cult during the L. Ron Hubbard era (he was in the elite Sea Org and was on board the Hubbard yacht Apollo as a crewman).
Probably even more than the witnesses, they maintain a super-clean outward image and hide all the excesses inside their secretive society.
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JWoods
(Second post to say)
This article about the sea-org people shows an experience even more extreme than my friend had (back in around the late 1970s. He was basically just kicked out and shunned, but not to the extent of this couple. He had no relatives in the CS org so the shunning did not mean very much.
Like some who leave the JWs, he was left with vestiges of the Scientology weird doctrine - much like the wife of the Sea Org couple.
It is not mentioned in the NYT article, but the Scientologists have undergone a great revolution post Hubbard: The takeover ousted most of the original higher-ups in favor of an uneducated lower level guy who basically staged a palace coup at Hubbard's death. Not totally unlike how Rutherford ruthlessly gained control of Russell's organization.
It looks like they may be fighting a PR war for survival as some of these crazy beliefs and tactics become exposed to the public. Most damaging may be the constant physical abuse which is being reported more and more often now.
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Mad Sweeney
Wow. Just change some of the terminology and this could be an article about a couple of ex-Dub Bethelites.