What L. Ron Knew
You want to make money, start a religion. Here's Heinlein on it:
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens have ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
-Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
I disparage Scientology as a way to separate fools and their money -- just like all the other older religions. All they really have going for them is age, not special evidence that makes them more worthy. I'm always amused by religious people who think Scientology is somehow worse than any other religion. If you look at it objectively, one outlet of The Business That Is Religion has thetans...
When a person dies – or, in Scientology terms, when a thetan abandons their physical body – they go to a "landing station" on the planet Venus, where the thetan is re-implanted and told lies about its past life and its next life. The Venusians take the thetan, "capsule" it, and send it back to Earth to be dumped into the ocean off the coast of California. Says Hubbard, "If you can get out of that, and through that, and wander around through the cities and find some girl who looks like she is going to get married or have a baby or something like that, you're all set. And if you can find the maternity ward to a hospital or something, you're OK. And you just eventually just pick up a baby." To avoid these inconveniences, Hubbard advised Scientologists to refuse to go to Venus after their death.[3][4]
...and another religion has a guy who comes back from the dead (He's baaaaak!) and an endlessly burning bush, to name just a few. The difference is in the details, but not in the believability of the details, so don't go all snobby on the Scientologists just because your irrational beliefs are older.
Germany is especially ridiculous on this. They're banning Scientology but opening their doors to radical Islam? Yeah, that's the ticket.
It's really very possible to be a good person without funding a business based on evidence-free belief in god, and/or without buying into one. Humans are hard-wired for morality. That hard-wiring, for humans to live together in groups, is one of many evolutionary survival strategies.
Where those atheists who wish to persuade others of the value of evidence-based beliefs go wrong, I think, is in not providing outlets for secular ethics -- and groups. (I'm reminded of the woman, head of some college atheists organization, who said something like "Well, the Christian groups attract people with pizza socials," as if this was a terrible thing. "Buy pizzas, lady, people might come."
People find it comforting and even fun to be in groups. Nothing wrong with that.
Heinlein quote via Mike Dunn
My mother has my 13 year old nephew Patrick living with her because his dad is a prison addict. Don't get me started on that. She took Patrick to a big lutheran church down there so he could stay off the street and out of trouble, play basketball with the other kids and such. Patrick likes the church, he was doing real well. He was even working odd church jobs and socials and earning a few extra bucks at each to pay for his church summer camp and other events so he is paying his own way. My mom was doing her part too by working the food bank that the church ran. She did a lot of work there. All was fine, except, they keep needling my mother to start tithing. The woman lives on about ten thousand in Social Security a year, and they think she should spit up ten percent of that. Well, if she did, she couldn't buy food. By the time she pays her rent and all her bills, she doesn't really have anything left. I set up a joint bank account with her and when she needs money, I'll transfer it into that account for her, usually once a month. So now shes considering leaving the church because they won't stop bugging her about it. She keeps telling them, "I just can't do it, I couldn't pay my bills." Their response is, "Have faith, the lord will provide." Churchs are all about money and social power, always have been, always will be.
Bikerken at January 4, 2008 12:09 PM
Not all churches are about money and social power though I will concede that many of them are. I've been to my share of them and left just as quickly when I discovered it.
Dale at January 4, 2008 1:12 PM
Scientology's President David Miscavige should run for President of the U.S. He is smarter than all of the other candidates running by at least twenty on the intelligence quotient scale. He has better ideas to offer us than any presidential candidate than we've ever had.
Another Demican or Republicrat will mean that nothing will be different four years after the next election takes place. President Miscavige would solve all problems facing humanity & have us all sipping exotic juices in another solar system before you can say honorificabilitudinitatibus (honorableness).
William at January 6, 2008 9:52 AM
Is he really that much different than Creflo Dollar or any of these other religion promoters separating fools and their money by promoting ridiculous stuff there's no evidence for? Put down that Kool-Aid, William.
I have read and heard rumors that Scientology gets all sorts of details on a person's sex life and then uses it to blackmail them. True?
Amy Alkon at January 6, 2008 10:14 AM
If we start building Bright temples the idea is to create something more powerful than ourselves. Money & power would be gained but that doesn't mean that the message of Brights has changed or is not sincere.
The blackmailing rumors you describe sound like the result of efforts by older religions to discredit one of their fastest growing competitors.
Where I live there are no Brights or Scientologists, or athiests, or agnostics. If there are any they are smart enough to stay in hiding. You probably know alot more than me about the various groups.
William at January 6, 2008 11:22 AM
What in the universe is this William about? What is a Bright? Does Santa hang out with them? I'll do the research, just having a bit of fun, thanks.
Here is someone who needs authority to tell him how to exist - "more powerful than ourselves...fastest growing competitors...smart enough to stay in hiding".
If a religion is so "sincere" what would be the (legitimate) concern with competition?
I'm going to start my own god gang and initiate a pay-to-pray program that will electronically deposit your money on Pluto, for your next reincarnation, to pay for all transgressions against our beloved BigPapaWantTheMoneyNow.
Click here to make secure payments (to cleanse your soiled soul)!!!
Act now and receive 20% off your next reincarnation payments.
kbling at January 7, 2008 7:52 AM
OK, how can William have it both ways?
His 1st post is about having the Scientology dude (who probably believes a soul goes to Venus and back) becoming the President. The 2nd post is about Brights (who do not believe in the supernatural). Appears to be complete opposites. Do enlighten me of how this is believable. Apparently you can be a Bright that is into Scientology just scrape off all that icky supernatural goo and your in. Being a Bright seems so transparent, what is the point of it? They are setting up another authority. Humanity does not need another damn-ing religion, worldview or whatever belief to follow, creating more seperation and division from ourselves and each another.
To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority.
kbling at January 7, 2008 9:57 AM
If we start building Bright temples the idea is to create something more powerful than ourselves. Money & power would be gained but that doesn't mean that the message of Brights has changed or is not sincere.
I think "The Brights" is an ill-chosen name, but The Brights don't seek to build temples or start cashing in on people's fear-based irrationality. Being a Bright is about having a naturalistic orientation to life; merely not believing in stuff there's no evidence for. For example, the idiotic notion that we're all made of crushed up space aliens or whatever the correct version of that is.
People who believe in this and older and equally ridiculous religious mythology are gullible and not using their capacity for rationality. They're to be pitied and encouraged to use their human capacity for reasoning along with those handy opposable thumbs.
Amy Alkon at January 7, 2008 10:03 AM
So then being a hippie is just too old-school?
New & improved hippie formula!
All of the "I'm ok - your ok" without the smell.
How delightful...
kbling at January 7, 2008 11:05 AM
Geez you're so right about the pizza thing. Atheists are always such a**holes.
And I am one. Perhaps even both.
Christians are quite nice until they start with the creepy-weird Jesus-talk.
Atheists are jerks right off the bat.
Laika's Last Woof at January 7, 2008 3:40 PM
Laika, you're hilarious.
Me, too. An atheist, and a jerk right off the bat.
Amy Alkon at January 7, 2008 4:14 PM
Since 98% of the population believes in some kind of god humans are pretty obviously hard-wired for spirituality. Maybe we atheists are wired differently.
So are molesters, I suppose, but it's not like atheists are bad enough they put us on lists and warn people when we move into their neighborhood. Besides, such safeguards are unnecessary, as atheists feel the need to announce themselves 800 times a day to anyone within earshot.
Anyway, maybe we piss people off, but at least we don't creep them out. Cheer up, it could've been worse.
Laika's Last Woof at January 8, 2008 8:36 AM
C'mon, Amy, stop trying to make being irrelgious as much hard work and as tedious as being religious. I rebel against that sort of thing.
That said we can be social without being herded. What we need to do actually is get away from having those kind of things church-centered. Get back to family helping family, friend helping friend, and neighbor helping neighbor, no church or social services organization involved, which would also take care of the assholes who use people who are kind to them as sooner or later they'd get a rep and everyone would be fed up with helping them and they'd be forced to do what they can for themselves. Meanwhile, the truly needed would still be helped. Sigh. Well, I can dream, can't I?
I hate the name the Brights. It turns me off. It's just plain snobby, implies anyone else is Dim and isn't that just the mentality we hate from religionists? I won't buy into it. I read the theory that we need to come up with something catchy to identify ourselves like the homosexuals coming up with gay and get their point but I wish they had come up with something far less condescending.
Donna at January 8, 2008 11:23 AM
C'mon, Amy, stop trying to make being irrelgious as much hard work and as tedious as being religious. I rebel against that sort of thing.
I don't need that stuff, but a lot of people do. And maybe it would've been nice when I was in my teens and 20s. Denying that is silly.
Amy Alkon at January 8, 2008 11:24 AM
While I feel I'm missing some of the allusions here, L. Ron always appealed to my sense of whimsy. I read some of his devastating wit in sci-fi space opera : the guy was just over-the-top. I buy into the idea that he produced a spoof which the gullible bought into.
I'm hearing cries that 'why don't the real Christians call out' the Satanists who are marketing themselves as Christians the same way as the neocons call themselves conservatives. Amy peeves me somewhat for her buying into the trope which provides cover for these lies.
Monte Asbury has put up a post or two which really points out the differences between the hate-mongers who cry so loud their bullshit and followers of the philosophical points actually made by a radical rabbi; some silliness about community of man and observing the spirit of the law.
opit at January 12, 2008 3:43 PM
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