The buzz is that starting next week, the Church of Scientology (Co$) will start leaking damaging information about Katie Holmes.
I guess the secrets gathered during their mandatory audits will be aired out. It’s not that we are surprised, considering the reputation they have and the fact that Tom Cruise is their golden poster child. Intimidation, defamation, law suits are among the tools the Co$ is using against detractors.
‘Religion refers to systems of general compensators based on supernatural assumptions’ by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge in their book A Theory of Religion.
In their delusion the Scientologists can’t understand that their precious Co$ is very much detested by most people. The common mortals won’t even consider it a ‘church’; more like a ‘cult’. A dangerous one for that matter. Actually is it any non dangerous cult around?
A quick net search provided the following list. And guess what? Scientology is among them.
I would add other cults to the list to get a better picture about how a group of people exploit others and get a tax-free ride under the religious umbrella.
1. Church of Bible Understanding: Members of the cult live in a commune and donate 90% of their income to the cult; the leader of the cult is Stewart Traill and according to former members, Traill controls every aspect of members’ lives through harsh criticism, shame, and public humiliation.
2. Manson Family: the cult was started by Charles Manson, a reject of society and his own mother (Note: Freud’s teaching pointed to childhood as a place to visit to explain people’s behaviour) and ended with a string of murders, the most prominent one being Sharon Tate
3. Aum Shinrikyo– the religious cult started as a yoga and meditation class in Tokyo and ended with a Sarin attack; it was dubbed ‘the religion for the elite’; eventually it changed, allowing other people to join. ‘The cult started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of recruits, and of holding cult members against their will and forcing members to donate money. A murder of a cult member who tried to leave is now known to have taken place in February 1989’ Source: http://listverse.com/2007/09/15/top-10-cults/
4. Restoration of the 10 Commandments: formed in Uganda, as a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church; the teachings put strong emphasis on the apocalypse. Mass graves were found after a fire in 2000, when an estimated 800 cadavers were found.
5. Raëlism: Raelian Church or Raëlism, is a UFO religion founded by a an alleged contactee named Claude Vorilhon, that favors physicalism- the belief that everything is physical, and denies the existence of soul and a supernatural god-like entity
6. Scientology: It has been described as a cult and commercial enterprise, known for harassing and suing its critics, and for abusing the trust of its members. One of the major tenets of Scientology is that a human is an immortal alien spiritual being- thetan- that is presently trapped on planet Earth in a physical body and forgot their true nature. The main character is Xenu.
7. Order of the Solar Temple: lots of controversy surrounds this cult, still active even after making headlines for mass suicide and murders committed in Switzerland and Quebec, Canada
8. Heaven’s Gate: combination of Christian beliefs and UFO; some members submitted to voluntary castration; died by mass suicide
9. Branch Davidians: leader was David Koresh; the cult was known due to the ATF and FBI siege that resulted in the death of 82 members of the cult, including the leader
10. Unification Church or Mooneyism
11. Children of God
12. Jehova’s Witness
13. Mormonism