Anonymous and Scientology
February 9th, 2008 Richard Posted in religion, scientology, web and new media |
Recently, a promotional video Tom Cruise did for Scientology, showed up on YouTube. Not long after, a movement, orchestrated by an organization calling themselves anonymous, began, starting with this spooky video, where they suggest that the Scientology organization “should be destroyed”. They’ve called for a world wide demonstration to be held tomorrow.
My first thought about this situation is the, only via the web, feeling. Such a fervor is enabled by the wide distribution of rich media currently afforded by the web. My second thought is that it seems unfair to single out the scientologists. In my life I have researched and experienced everything from born again Christian to psychedelic explorer, and much in between. The fact is, there are many instances of things the Scientologits are being accused of within Christian/other religion/spiritual/new age/whatever. There are many beautiful, transcendent, and fulfilling things associated with all these traditions, but the fact is that many people want to know the truth, and they prefer to find someone/thing that will tell them what it is so they don’t have to think about it, and they will give anything to anyone to find “peace” in that way. Sounds screwed up, but I’m not sure if I begrudge these people since I’d be a hypocrite if I did.
I’m not saying what the Scientologists do is good, I’m just saying, that, in my opinion, it’s not that unusual or evil, in comparison to other things that have been done in the name of religion/spirituality in this complex, really bad, really cool, and perfect world.
By the way, my friend Steve Garfield just published an interview of two members of the anonymous group in Boston, who plan to participate in the protest tomorrow.
February 10th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I have to agree wholeheartedly. Other than the fact that Anonymous has made trying to read Digg almost unbearable, I think they are blowing a situation out of proportion and unfairly targeting Scientology. From a new media perspective the situation illustrates how being connected can really amplify the power of a small minority, however - very similar to the Ron Paul effect, although Anonymous is just out and out offensive as far as I’m concerned.
I’m as unreligious as they come, but I do believe in the Constitution and the principles this country was founded on and I think this flies in the face of all of that. Anonymous’ grievances are based mostly on the fact that some people have died in the ‘custody’ of scientology and the fact that they take money from their members. These are accusations that Christians, for example, is far more guilty of - in gross numbers in the distant past, but in far more numbers than Scientology just over the last year if you Google something like “died exorcism”. And you don’t have to dig very far before you find stories of especially elderly people being bilked of their life savings by evangelists.
John Smith in the video pointed out that to get Scientology ‘training’ you give a tax free donation and then they give you the training for free - I grew up Catholic and they handled my private school tuition in the EXACT same way. You got an envelope in the mail and when you went to Church on Sunday mom and dad put the envelope with a check inside on the collection plate. Mr. Smith glossed quickly over the similarities with the Catholic church and that’s exactly why. Far easier to beat up on some fringe religion than on a religion where its members outnumber you and the backlash from THAT, especially given the power of new media, would be exceptional, I think.
Finally, the OTHER Mr. Smith talked about “Tom Cruise and how he’s so ‘outright’ about supporting the church” - as if his religious speech ought to be somehow restrained or kept in the closet.
Long story short: can’t we all just get along?
If someone dies - prosecute their killer on the basis of their crime and not on their religious affiliation. If someone cheats someone of money - prosecute them on THAT basis. Clearly the Catholic and Scientology churches don’t overtly support that agenda so let’s leave religion out of it.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
After reading comments like the original post and Christian’s response, I find it harder and harder to place my thoughts on this matter. I do not support the malicious activities of some Anonymous members, in particular DDOS attacks on Scientology websites. I do agree in maintaining equal rights for Scientology practitioners, such as the right to free speech. That being said, there’s a definite pull in my heart that says there’s something wrong with the way the church of Scientology operates.
There are some activities within other religions, such as Christianity, that are similar to Scientology. Yes, Christian churches accept, operate on, and instruct their attendees to make donations. Yes, many Christian churches use their collections in abusive ways - some televangelists come to mind. I do believe, however, that if one follows the teachings of Jesus as laid out in the Bible, there is absolutely no scam to be found, no exploiting of those who choose to follow Jesus. The only exploitations, I believe, come from those who pervert the original message.
On the other hand, from the reading I’ve done on Scientology, it is quite the norm for the church to require large donations from its attendees in order to “move up” the spiritual structure within the church. I’m not sure if this is inherently wrong, but it’s one thing that starts to put up red flags for me.
I could go on about things that are fishy and seem exploitive to me about Scientology - just read the Wikipedia entry on it for some thoughts - but in the end the only thing that may change their operations is the law, and even then, I suspect if the law found one thing wrong with Scientology, Scientologists would figure out a way to hide that operation or find a loophole so they can continue it in the future.
Christian, I’m interested in your school tuition story. The envelope your parents received - did it ask for a donation for no particular purpose, was it a tuition form, something else? I’d like more specifics about that. I always assumed private Catholic schools would handle their tuition the same way every other private school would.
I’ve received services aside from regular church service, sunday school, etc. (namely, counseling) from three different Churches - two in St. Louis and one in Rolla, and I don’t believe any of them would even think to ask about whether we gave to the church or not as a precursor to receiving their counseling services.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Every parishioner received a weekly envelope from the Church - non-school-attendees would have a list of boxes of ’suggested’ donations, for those attending the attached school there wasn’t a choice, just a box with the amount in it. This was a mainstream church in St. Louis.
On whether its wrong to charge for attendees to ‘move up’ in an organization - I really don’t think you can dictate how a religion operates. I agree that much of Scientology seems pretty alien to what most Americans were probably raised with, but it doesn’t make it wrong - just different.
Frankly, based on my Catholic upbringing I could probably make a video that would sound as nutty to non-Catholics as Tom Cruise’s video, which I thought was kind of banal and shruggable really - and just look at how some Christians looked at Mitt Romney’s status as a Mormon! I think its mostly just xenophobia - we don’t like what is different from us. And that’s kind of sad.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Mmmm, the age old debate of religion; the reason I never committed myself to the idea of religion-denomination-based faith. Church of Christ, Catholic, Mormonism, Benny Hinn, The PTL et al; all organizations led by PEOPLE with an agenda not completely in line with bringing honor to His Kingdom. Especially those who embellish The Word to make it say what they want to support their agenda. Oh how I could go on with utter disdain towards what we all know as organized religion. BTW, I am a Christian and I attend a “Baptist” church. I call out Baptist for the mere fact that was what the church has been for the longest time. It is far, far from what anyone would know a baptist church to be, especially here in the south. I joined this church because it wasn’t the hypocrisies I saw growing up or in televangel-land.
The cowardice of Anonymous being anonymous is funny to me. They want to stand at their pulpit and ostracize an organization without having a face to theirs. Like talking smack at school, saying you’re gonna whoop someones arce in the parking lot and not even show up to the fight. We live in a world that EVERYONE wants to have their 2 cents and say what they want, but not always having SENSE to support it.
That’s my rant for now.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I think I would agree that it’s bad form to single out the scientologists if not for the perception that they themselves stifle free speech. They are one of the groups with a reputation for suing anyone who mentions them, which tends to make people leery about even discussing them. And for this reason I am not sure that anonymity is cowardice–it may be the only way to succeed in being heard without being shut down first. Also, that the tendency of netizens to cache and mirror material is one of the great strengths of the web even as it drives copyright holders insane–it makes it that much harder to hush up controversial or unwanted material.
Other than that, I figure people can spend their money on silly things if they want to. I’m not religious (I am “culturally” Protestant Christian as some are “culturally” Jewish, but the faith never really did “take”), but people should be allowed to find their own way. I am worried with the Patriot Act and similar political decisions that within 20 years even my most religious family members will once again have to pick up and move to another country because of persecution for their Christian pacifism. I am fine with people thinking other people are weird. I am not fine with people thinking other people are so weird that they need to be silenced. That pretty much goes for all sides.
Side thoughts: I always found it funny that in Martin Gardner’s “In The Name of Science” he thought scientology would die off quickly. Here we are, 50 years later….
I haven’t seen the V for Vendetta movie, so I wonder if they used the Guy Fawkes masks there like there were in the book?
February 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I think it’s rude to single out an individual. Even though I felt really disconnected with Tom Cruise’s views, he’s got the rights to say what he wants to. Personally I thought Tom Cruise had little idea of what he said in the interview and avoided eye-contact for most of the times. The 2 guys interviewed by Mr. Garfield seemed equally perplexed. As I have my rights to object what others say, Tom as well as anonymous group has their own rights to express their feelings.
Rather than attacking scientologists physically or via the internet, if they think they’re right about the misdeeds of the church of scientology, they can protest for an independent inquiry to be held. Pressing the government to dig deep into the matter in an unbiased way would be the right thing to do, I suppose.
I visited the church of scientology website and it mentions that “Man is an immortal, spiritual being. His experience extends well beyond a single lifetime. His capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized — and those capabilities can be realized. He is able to not only solve his own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also achieve new, higher states of awareness and ability”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that! It’s a different ballgame going beyond that as I’m not fully aware of the ‘misdeeds’ that they have done in the past. I don’t want to judge anything just by going through couple of websites that mentions deeds or misdeeds about anything. For me they are innocent until proven guilty. If anonymous can authenticate about the misdeeds of scientology, who knows……… I might be advocating against the church of scientology.
I agree with Dr. Hall that such fervor is enabled by the wide distribution of rich media currently afforded by the web. Web can either make it or break it ……completely. Being a church, a responsible entity, church of scientology should be aware in how they approach public. I think they must be pretty happy with the rising media attention and that too for free!!! Now, what I don’t like about these cults or factions affiliated with some religion are when they start preaching bad about non-affiliated individuals. Church of scientology uses terms like SP (suppressive person or anti social personalities) and PTS (Potential Trouble Source). Does anyone think using those terms to denounce others is the way to go for an entity like church? ……I don’t think so.
I really don’t like the aspect of ‘marketing a religion’. I have had personal experiences … really bad ones with this so, I really don’t like people saying our religion is good and yours is bad. I’m a Hindu but I equally respect Christianity, Muslim and other religions. These kinds of things happen in all religions. I have seen it myself in Hinduism. There are hundreds of different factions within Hinduism and they clash with one another to show that one is good over the other. I believe all religion say the same thing. It’s the followers along the way who misinterpret the real meaning and we fight with each other. I believe the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice. To be good and do good – that is the whole of religion and I guess that is pretty much what every religion says.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
My thoughts completely matched Basanta’s. Even farther, Tom Cruise seems mentally ill. I say this not because of what he was talking about (Scientology), but because of the complete disconnect in what he was saying. I had a very difficult time understanding what his point was in that 9+ minutes. He made minimal eye contact and the fits of laughing were creepy. His elitist attitude struck me as repelling.
What I did derive from those 9 minutes, is that Scientologists try to be good people by helping others and encouraging others to participate in life instead of just being a by-stander. They want a better world; don’t we all? I don’t think any of those things are bad and do mirror the goals of many other religions.
With that being said, I find the terminology used and irreverence towards psychiatry a bit disturbing but that could be simply, as Christian pointed out, xenophobia.
I do find their views on removing any bad press wrong. Just as Scientologists are entitled to believe in what they choose, as are others entitled to read/learn about it. Should they Catholic Church demand all negative press surrounding sexual misconduct of priests be removed from the internet?
February 11th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Maybe I’m over-empathizing with Tom Cruise and Scientology, but again, I don’t think that some of the suppression and PR craziness that they engage in are isolated simply to Scientology. For example, the Vatican has threatened legal action to get a satirical cartoon depicting the current pope in a nazi uniform removed. In the wake of the child abuse scandals the church has filed legal motion after legal motion to keep internal documents secret citing church-state separation. The Vatican also keeps a ’secret archive’ that no one is allowed to see without express permission and, even then, they must specifically request a specific document so the person getting access must know that it already exists. One document that was leaked included information about continuing cover-ups of sexual abuse by priests.
So, in my view, all of these organizations have very similar problems - we’re just comfortable with some because they’ve been around for a long time and so seem ‘normal’. So we call Christianity a religion because it pervades our culture, we call Mormons a ’sect’ because they believe things that fly in the face of that social norm and we call Scientology a ‘cult’ because it’s new, relatively small, and (again) alien to us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Secret_Archives
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-130970742.html
http://www.indymedia.org/en/2007/04/883380.shtml
http://www.paddydoyle.com/bigsecret.html
February 11th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
OK, this is weird. I mentioned in another topic about stumbleupon.com, right. So I am doing some research on some work things on the web and select the stumble button for the first time today. Here is what comes up: http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html.
Do do do do, do do do do.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
The priest scandal was perhaps not the most appropriate and I am sure there are many other religious cover-ups I have not read about. However, I see omitting any webpages critical of Scientology from search engines, coupled with their Fair Game policy, as elitist in nature. A feeling of superiority not one of a welcoming, accepting, forgiving group. I guess that is the difference I see. Perhaps it is acceptance/tolerance based on how long each has been around.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Religion, not a subject I like to discuss because of heated arguments that occur. Any crime on the net should not be tolerated. I think views should be allowed on the internet but maybe we should stay away from religion. Just like the rules for any party, never discuss religion or politics unless you want a fight.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I really don’t want to debate values over the internet such as religion, faith, etc. All of your comments are interesting. I am a Christian pretty firm in by beliefs; I am not really a passivist but these sorts of videos and conversation just sort of turn me off of both sides, they make me want to stay inside and close the door.