)(@U$)!(#J!$!11, I've tried moving this can of Pepsi all goddamn day with my fucking brain and it just ain't happening. I'm not feeling it. C'mon Ronnie! Imbue me with your enlightened ways and powers!!! MEST IS MINE TO COMMAND!

Honestly, I think this thread should be locked so we can all forget about it. Scientology is a farce and does not deserve to be a religion. L. Ron Hubbard should have been dunked in cyanide when he came up with the idea for something so ridiculous.

And that's the last I'm going to say about it, lest I get carried away. I am pleased to see Scientology could not suppress the SOS bill.

And with those words of wisdom, I leave this subject alone.

Religions are aboutu spreading themselves. You don't need a pretense of God to be motivated to be a nice person or be social. This is like the 'morality from religion' argument. That's the last place you would or should derive it from.

But proposing this notion about any of our current religions is preposterous and insidious?

Using other religions to judge Scientology is a farce. The premise is faulty and illogical from the get-go. This ensures that all your subsequent logic is skewed. Scientology is only overt in its moral bankruptcy.

What if I argued that this is the paradox of all religions? That they all started in some sort of similar vein? The problem with these debates is that they're not even real debates. We haven't even gotten to the meat of debating religion yet--we're too busy debating whether or not it's okay to debate religion.

At this time, I'd like to congratulate those who dogpiled on Archbio. Even if I disagree in many ways with him, the relentlessly skewing of his words is astonishing. I didn't think that such things would ever see the light of day on this forum. Every time somebody cried, "stop arguing semantics” (even though language and debate is built upon language, and in order to have an effective discourse everyone must agree on certain terms, his point being that the terms were being misused) or to “stop taking it to heart” I felt a little worse. Such puerile debating tactics should be saved for kindergarten classrooms.

This is simply untrue. I demand that you back up your claims or I will quote the very scriptures you speak of.

The world is still predominately religious. If it were that simple, Jerry Fallwell wouldn’t be an asset for not one, but two administrations.

It is. 50% of the entire religion debate is miscommunication and manipulation of words. Even when used with a positive motive, language and the use of it is extremely important for any issue.

Ahh, Sam Harris, how I love thee. Let me count the ways:

This is a joke, right? You guys have been nothing but indignantly hostile to Archbio. I love revisionism.

Who could believe a religion based around a guy who claimed he could walk on water?

Quite the opposite. He is, in fact, the most devout, a man of perfect faith—one of the few actually following his religion as it “was meant to be.” How is he not, in his mind, following right and wrong? Infidels are infidels. We do not follow Allah. There is your right and wrong.

More unsubstantiated claims.

More revisionism. This has historically been the last concern of the pious.

Am I the only one seeing this? Islam may be one of the worst offenders in this case, but one could argue this for all religions.

This is an unfair belittling of Archbio’s posts. They were fairly eloquent and logical, and nowhere near zealous.

I'm not going to join the debate on what defines a religion and whether Scientology falls within those boundaries, but I WOULD like to venture an opinion on what I think is a significant difference between Scientology and other major world religions AS THEY ARE TODAY.

Whilst atheists such as myself have our own opinions on the validity of these beliefs, it is pretty certain that, at the very least, the leaders of today's religions sincerely believe ther faith to be "right". Catholicism may or may not be a load of crap, but in my opinion, the Pope and his cardinals all BELIEVE that its teachings are correct. Maybe the religion WAS founded as a method of suppressing the masses, but I'm confident that the Pope doesn't get up in the morning and think "how can I use fabricated stories of the afterlife to scare people in to line today?": rather, he believes in God and honestly thinks he is spreading God's message in the best way he can. Whether he is correct in this belief is irrelevant to my point. Same goes for the priests of other Christian denominations and those of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc.

I would argue that Scientology is an exception to this rule : I would go so far as to assert that unlike other religious leaders, each and every high-ranking Scientologist is ACTIVELY SEEKING to deceive the masses and steal their money, and the NONE of those leaders believe a word of Scientological doctrine. This may not seem like such a big distinction, but to me it's a massive one. It's like the difference between an honest fool and a clever crook: the end results may, arguably, be more or less the same, but the motivation makes a world of difference in a moral sense.

Oh, and before anyone asks, no, I don't have any "proof" of my assertion that Scientology leaders are actively seeking to deceive and steal whereas other religious leaders at least believe what they are saying: it's an intuition, strong enough that I feel confident in making an assertion that, I admit, is basically unfounded.

Right. Not sure when I mentioned the pious though.

If I write a letter that says, "I'm sorry," and the person who reads it thinks I mean, "Fuck off and die," the contents of the letter haven't changed. Likewise, I'm sorry that many, many, many people have gotten the message wrong. It's still the message.

I think part of the atheist-rage here is that some people cannot remove the institution of a religion from the religion itself. I find organized religion creepy and cult-ish, but that doesn't invalidate the underpinning message after you strip away all the artifically tacked on weirdness.

The organizations, the institutions, yes. But there's nothing viral and insidious and mindkilling about a nice story illustrating, "Don't be an asshole."

I could not possibly agree more. It is self-evident that being a good person is the right thing to do. My personal interpretation of the religions I've studied -- and there was a lot of that in 6 years of bouncing around Philosophy courses -- has been that, in general and taken on the whole, they basically tell you a bunch of metaphors and allegories explaining this very point.

This is why it enrages me to see people use a very beautiful idea as the basis for their ignorant, hateful opinions. The sheer hypocracy of it elevates my blood pressure to the moon. Thus, yet another reason why we don't allow religions discussion here.

They were fairly eloquent and logical and potentially heading directly where I said. That I've seen people go that way many times in religious discussions (somewhat like those Sam Harris quotes, thanks) is why I suspected he was going there, and partly why we have the ban.

It's also why I find atheism so juvenile. There's as much, "Ha ha, you think there's an insivible man in the sky, you're dumb and probably ugly," as there is serious, meaningful discussion. Any progress you could make with the latter is so easily and rapidly undone with the former, and atheists must know that if they're as clever as they think they are, so it makes the whole exercise look like an excuse to belittle someone. Hence, juvenility, and yet another reason for the ban.

I suppose the point I've been trying to get across is that, yes, we know, many atrocities have been performed in the name of religions. But you need to remember that "religion" isn't a physical being with a will and a body. It is not a giant monster on the rampage. It's just a set of ideas. It's not the fault of these ideas that people built ornate institutions around them and that these institutions and extremists sometimes (often?) failed the ideas they claimed to promote/protect. Some of these ideas are quite useful to us while others are a little embarassing and obviously obsolete. We, as modern people, have a very real responsibility to ourselves, history, and the future, to pick and choose which ideas we take seriously.

Scientology is not one of them. There's a whole host of ideas from "real" religions I'd include here as well, but that'd be breaking our own rules :D

I do disagree there, for the most part. Several religions (and that's among old and new, simple and complex) have at their core "fuck off and die". For those, I consider the "corruption" and "distortion" of the message over time as a good thing. The teachings of Christ obviously aren't counted among them (since they do fit your description of the "underpining idea of religion".

A lot of funding holy writ doesn't seem concerned that people be nice to each other. When they are, it's as if incidentally. Of course, the tomes upon tomes of philosophy which have been added to temper the violence of some funding texts still matter.

I seriously take offence at this (not in a blood-pressure-raising way, of course). I mean, you obviously consider religion should be judged by the best things/ideas it has produced, but the fairly simple concept that is atheism should be judged by the tone some atheistic ideas are/have been presented sometimes? Unless you consider the very fact of saying to someone that what they believe is false is juvenile (which I find very dubious), then where did you drag up this tone for atheism: the internet?

It seems a little (not to be condescending) like a rationalization of why you would be entitled not to take anything that's an actual expression of atheism seriously. Atheism is so obvious truism that actually saying so is in bad taste? I still don't understand this.

I'd like to note something about the relationship between ethical philosophy and religion. And that relates to the whole definition issue from earlier. If one takes, lets say, the new testament, read it, and think: "hey, that Jesus person sure had some good ideas of how to behave", and then applies them in daily life, that doesn't make one religious. Such as applying the teaching of ancient greek philosophers make one religious in the Ancient Greek sense.

I hope no one take offence from this, but I will remain civil.

Edit: For the record, I mostly agree with everything Locke said. It's pure accident, I'm sure. And I'd like to thank Fifthfiend and say that I agree that I certainly misinterpreted a lot that has been written in this thread.

Edit2: There are atheistic religions! There, I said it.

Edit3: Nothing I said here should be construed as relating to the rules of the forum.

The pious are those who spread religion. The pious are those who adhere to it to the letter. The pious are those who wrote the stories. If anything, the stories make an extremely weak effort at spreading this message. Indeed, you don't need to read between the lines or skip pages to find the horrible, cruel mandates and tales, rather, you need to read between the lines to find the "good stuff."

People who stray away from organized religion and into ambiguous spirituality have only half gotten the point. Obviously, the institution has so many holes it's not even funny, but even just a vague concept of "God" is rooted in the most deceptively disingenuous logic.

Agreed. But I still think that's no grounds for banning the debate. Like I said, as of now, there's no real discourse on the subject (I don't mean just here, in society, all societies), and there needs to be.

Religions and superstitious beliefs, even non-institutionalised ones, are not personal. This is something stipulated by the 'believers' as a defense of its innocuous nature. But it is still neglecting the sociological perspective. Superstition is a social trend, one influenced, and indeed "vindicated" by its ubiquity.

Again I pull a quote from my handy dandy Sam Harris.

"When was the last time that someone was criticized for not "respecting" another person's unfounded beliefs about physics or history? The same rules should apply to ethical, spiritual, and religious beliefs as well. Credit goes to Christopher Hitchens for distilling, in a single phrase, a principle of discourse that could well arrest our slide toward the abyss--

Let us pray that billions of us soon agree with him."

This line of thought is dangerous. The idea that somehow the doctrine and ideology is completely detached from the response and actions of its adherents is absurd. Yes, in a metaphorical sense, it is a monster on a rampage--that we are currently blocking things like stem cell research due to religion constitutes, as you-know-who puts it, "the biological and ethical equivalent of a flat-earth society." You can't make a belief system innocuous solely using the word "just."

We could say, "communism is just a set of ideas," "Zionism is just a set of ideas," "national socialism was just a set of ideas," but they're not. They influence people. They are not simply words on a page or words spoken by people. They mean things, and they invigorate people to whatever degree. And they are, ultimately, selfish, intellectually broken anomalies in human thought. Listen to this and tell me what era you think it's from:

The cause of this behavior was not economic, racial, or political. The above passage describes violence that erupted between Hindus and Muslims in India in the winter of 2002.

And this is merely an extreme example, an obvious one. Physical violence is not the only modern consequence of farcical, unjustified beliefs.

Of course he doesn't, which makes it all the more dangerous. We have a man, or position, which requires no supposition of true logic whatsoever, with far-reaching influence, who truly believes he is doing right. But all he is doing is further setting a standard for non-intellect which can not exist if we ever plan to survive.

Heh. I think we agree more than you think. And I don't think it's just my agitated tone in some cases. I just think there's massive misinterpretation that is left unexplained.

Taoism comes to mind. There's a religion I still disagree with, but damned if I don't like its anarchistic principles.

Y'know. I screwed that up.

To butcher a quote about God...

I don't have a problem with atheism in general, but some of its fans really piss me off -- no one in this discussion, but out there in the real world.

Also, you're right, I shouldn't call "atheism" juvenile. That's neither correct in the broad sense nor is it an accurate representation of my thoughts. Rather, I find certain atheists to be juvenile about holding/expressing their beliefs.

Usually the school of thought that sees all religion in all its forms as a giant boot stomping on the face of intelligent discourse forever without exception. That's a brush so cartoonishly wide, it screams of being wielded by a teenager who reached that precious age where he discovers he has opinions.

In the same way that it's hard to remember that most Christians are not bible-thumpin', women-hatin', gay-killing medieval throwbacks, it can be hard for me to remember that most atheists just don't believe in a god without being a jackass about it. As I am often mistaken for an atheist due to being so closely aligned with them, calling atheism juvenile was stupid.

Then it defaults to one of the many other reasons (that there are so many reasons is yet another reason), namely that dealing with the constant fall out -- while seeking to be as superhumanly fair and just to both sides -- is just too much stress and work for a staff of volunteer moderators. It's not this forum's responsibility to save society, it's this forum's responsibility to provide a civil place to talk about a wide variety of topics. If a few topics have to remain off-limits to maintain the greater good, that's what has to be done.

While I'm on the subject, Moderator-Brian sees Locke taking this rare opportunity to grind his axe on a banned subject. I was already very close to closing this topic as we've all been playing a little too close to the fence. So if/when it gets closed, can we spare me the silent or overt accusations that it was closed for a sinister reason?

I'll allow myself to be absolute in this: that's true of all things.

While I still don't think it should really affect one's opinion of all things atheistic, I can see why it can affect the outlawing of certain topics on certain internet forums. As we all know, the internet has a serious idiot problem (I hope I'm not exposing myself to comments of ironical nature by saying that).

Spiritual, religious or theological (and the like) matters a really more something for specialized forums, I'd say. As for saving society, I wouldn't think a forum more or a forum less...

It was pretty much just good ol'-fashioned tribalism and demagoguery.

That they happened to be dressed up as religion just goes to show that tribalism and demagoguery are happy to make use of whatever raw materials they can lay hands on.