Scientology is never founded

Ronald Hubbard dies in a car accident and never founds scientology what happens to the world excluding the pop cultural jokes (that would be the only thing i would miss).
 
I second that. Maybe they would become moonies or hare krishnas or some such. What annoyed me with scientology is that Hubbard admitted he'd made the whole thing up, and people still get wrapped right up in it.
Cruise and Travolta finds some other way to be crazy.
 
There is one sect we tend to forget those days but had a certain popularity, and a lot of 'heat' too - and that the founder died recently.. The 'Moonies'.

SPECIALLY if the USA is more rightwing, I bet it would have a certain popularity.
 
All I know about the Moonies is that once upon a time they made some kind of shitty movie glorifying Douglas MacArthur. I think that'd be pretty up there with some of the stuff Scientology does.
 
What if they wound up joining Thelema? After all, Hubbard did do stuff like trying to invoke the Whore of Babylon with John Whiteside Parsons...
 
Hollyweird finds another New Age fascination.

I don't know. Scientology, I think, was not followed based on religion or whatever you wanna call that general area. I think it got popular with celebrities because it was something new that offered them answers. The exotic always draws attention. That's the reason why musicians in the 60s were interested in India and in the 70s they were all starting to find Jesus. Scientology locked onto that interest, and propelled itself to the success it has managed to get.

If its not Scientoloy, it could be anything and everything. Could be New Age, or Christianity, or organic food or anything. Just anything exotic to latch attention onto with cliques that follow it so they can feel part of something.
 

Cook

Banned
Cruise and Travolta finds some other way to be crazy.

Much as that South Park episode taking the piss out of Scientology was funny (and it was bloody funny), it really has to be said that following Scientology is no more crazy than believing in a jealous god trapped in stone who comunicates with his followers via burning bushes that talk and who turns disobediant wives into pillars of salt, or people who believe they'll be reincarnated as a bug if they are bad and nothing at all if they are good, or people who think there are several levels of heaven and the one reserved for them is the best, or that the souls of the dead all live on the Moon... etc ad infinitum.

As far as crazy religions go, Scientology has a pretty good record; they haven't burned any non-beleivers to death, stoned adulterers or blasphemers and don't practice human sacrifice (or animal sacrifice for that matter). Quite frankly I don't see why people seem to work themselves into such a fury concerning them.

Especially since those getting worked up often start with "I'm all for freedom of religion, but they aren't a religion...!"
 
Much as that South Park episode taking the piss out of Scientology was funny (and it was bloody funny), it really has to be said that following Scientology is no more crazy than believing in a jealous god trapped in stone who comunicates with his followers via burning bushes that talk and who turns disobediant wives into pillars of salt, or people who believe they'll be reincarnated as a bug if they are bad and nothing at all if they are good, or people who think there are several levels of heaven and the one reserved for them is the best, or that the souls of the dead all live on the Moon... etc ad infinitum.

As a lapsed whatever the hell my religion was, I admit that Christianity is not exactly scientific. But Scientology is a lot nuttier. Christianity is very much spiritual and things beyond understanding and a borderline magic. Scientology is based on a story where Xenu got a bunch of prisoners, brainwashed them in a giant space movie theater, threw them into volcanoes which he nuked, and then the ghosts of those aliens infected early humans and that's what causes us to feel bad feelings. It's Star Wars, which takes a really weird and convoluted turn. I can't abide by the anti-theistic line of "Well, this is crazy but so are all the other religions". The other religions are based on either things that sound fine as stories, or are treated as beyond comprehension from a mighty and all powerful super being or multiple of them.

As far as crazy religions go, Scientology has a pretty good record; they haven't burned any non-beleivers to death, stoned adulterers or blasphemers and don't practice human sacrifice (or animal sacrifice for that matter). Quite frankly I don't see why people seem to work themselves into such a fury concerning them.
They pulled off the largest infiltration of the Federal government in American history to get (and destroy) records pertaining to them, have a history of suing and legally harassing anyone who criticizes them, have harassed (including death threats) people they feel are threats and/or who are criticizing them, abuse and harass members who have wanted to leave (one lady was starved or dehydrated to death), have infiltrated local governments and police in areas where their organization has a lot of influence and control, etc, etc. These aren't fanatics branching off from the group; this is the Church of Scientology itself, as an organization, doing all this. They have a HORRIBLE track record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies
 
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One is a religion, the other is a cult.

Seconded.

The government had to grant them, and I believe this was in the 1990s (and the Church had been founded in like the 50s), recognition as a religion. On a personal note, that was a gigantic mistake because it legitimizes Scientology legally, regardless of any social taboos against it, which is not warranted given the blatant (blatant!) evils the Church of Scientology has proven capable of.

I'm not going to play PC silliness here; I'm going to state blunt fact. I do believe you have the freedom to worship whatever religion you want. But the Church of Scientology is a fraudulent organization started as a money making scheme by Hubbard; a fraud who lied about his entire biography throughout his life to make himself sound more impressive, and who was taking multiple and heavy doses of narcotics in his later years (which I do believe is a sin in the Church). It, as an organization, runs itself like a well oiled militant machine which despises dissent and rallies its members into a fanatic frenzy to do it's will, and that will is generally one of harassment if not worse. That is extremely frightening and extremely dangerous.
 
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The world loses some bad science fiction?

And remind me, is the story true about Hubbard and Heinlein making a drunken bet to each other, resulting in Scientology and Stranger in a Strange Land? If so, we'd very likely lose one Heinlein novel I haven't read but heard is nice. What effects would that have on his writing career?

In fact, even without that story, this could butterfly a reasonable number of science fiction works - even without going into what could get a spot on the coveted NY Times Bestseller lists if there's no cult buying huge numbers of Hubbard's works to push them up there.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
As a lapsed whatever the hell my religion was, I admit that Christianity is not exactly scientific. But Scientology is a lot nuttier. Christianity is very much spiritual and things beyond understanding and a borderline magic. Scientology is based on a story where Xenu got a bunch of prisoners, brainwashed them in a giant space movie theater, threw them into volcanoes which he nuked, and then the ghosts of those aliens infected early humans and that's what causes us to feel bad feelings. It's Star Wars, which takes a really weird and convoluted turn. I can't abide by the anti-theistic line of "Well, this is crazy but so are all the other religions". The other religions are based on either things that sound fine as stories, or are treated as beyond comprehension from a mighty and all powerful super being or multiple of them.

They pulled off the largest infiltration of the Federal government in American history to get (and destroy) records pertaining to them, have a history of suing and legally harassing anyone who criticizes them, have harassed (including death threats) people they feel are threats and/or who are criticizing them, abuse and harass members who have wanted to leave (one lady was starved or dehydrated to death), have infiltrated local governments and police in areas where their organization has a lot of influence and control, etc, etc. These aren't fanatics branching off from the group; this is the Church of Scientology itself, as an organization, doing all this. They have a HORRIBLE track record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies

Depends what you mean by crazy. I would argue that believing the events of Dracula actually happened is equally as crazy as believing that the events of Twilight happened, notwithstanding the fact that the former is a much more coherent and generally better story. And for what it counts I would tend to agree that the cosmology of Islam, for example, is much more pleasing in an aesthetic sense than that of Scientology.

Also, falsifying records pertaining to themselves, harassing or litigating against people who criticize them, abusing/torturing/killing members who try to leave, and using government organs to spread their influence are things that all the major religions have already done (it's how they got major).
 
Depends what you mean by crazy. I would argue that believing the events of Dracula actually happened is equally as crazy as believing that the events of Twilight happened, notwithstanding the fact that the former is a much more coherent and generally better story. And for what it counts I would tend to agree that the cosmology of Islam, for example, is much more pleasing in an aesthetic sense than that of Scientology.

Also, falsifying records pertaining to themselves, harassing or litigating against people who criticize them, abusing/torturing/killing members who try to leave, and using government organs to spread their influence are things that all the major religions have already done (it's how they got major).

Now, now, this is a massive generalisation.:rolleyes:
 
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