Someone had to put his foot down.

(Bless those Germans.)

Good.

Scientology is the worst.

Yay for the Germans!

tommydski wrote:Good.

Scientology is the worst.

Yeah, although Nazism obviously runs it a close second.

I didn't want to Godwin this thread in the first reply.

I can't remember if this was linked from this forum originally but after reading this old Time article on Scientology I really can't overstate my contempt for them. This was 1991, I can only assume they have only become even more abhorrent since then.

tommydski wrote:I didn't want to Godwin this thread in the first reply.

I can't remember if this was linked from this forum originally but after reading this old Time article on Scientology I really can't overstate my contempt for them. This was 1991, I can only assume they have only become even more abhorrent since then.

Say what you want about Scientology, and I will generally agree with you, but try this experiment: substitute the word Jew where the word Scientologist or Scientology is used in the linked article in the first post in this thread.

I don't think the German government or people has progressed quite as much as they would like to think they have from their Jew-baiting past. The object of their derision has just been changed.

Mark Hansen wrote:I don't think the German government or people has progressed quite as much as they would like to think they have from their Jew-baiting past. The object of their derision has just been changed.

[irony]Yeah, we hunt down these fucking Scientology bastards and kill them rightly so![/irony]

Scientology is a cult.
The Jewish people are a race.

It's really not comparable. Not letting a egotistical little scrunt who is certifiably out of his mind appear in a film is not the same as the persecution and attempted mass execution of an entire race of people. Also, I think it's a bit shitty to say that the German people at large were anti-semitic when it was actually a controlling minority.

Scientology is not a religion or a race. It's a horrible joke of an experiment gone wrong. It exists just to make a handful of genuine crazies even richer than they already are, quite often through the suffering and intimidation of other people. Even calling it a cult is sort of insulting, since it is really nothing more an elaborate con perpetrated on the weak and disenchanted.

Please define "race".

(Why is it that whenever I ask that, nobody ever supplies their definition? The only reason I ask is that defining terms makes it easier to understand the other person's position on the topic at hand, and often resolves points of disagreement.)

By their faith, the Jews are the "chosen people of God". If you are Jewish, then you believe this. However from a non-Judaic standpoint, Jewish people marry gentiles, people convert to Judaism, some Jews renounce their own faith and become atheists or adopt other creeds. There are black Jews, white Jews, Asian Jews, Hispanic Jews. That being the case, how can the Jewish people really be a "race"? What exactly is a "race" anyway?

Judaism is a religion, perhaps a nation as well. Not a race.

But yeah, I think that Scientology is a religion (by my definition, anyway) though not a very good one.

Nonetheless, that makes this a clear case of religious intolerance.

--edited for grammar--