A TV ad aired by the Church of Scientology in the UK has been banned for misleading viewers with a claim the church gives aid to tens of millions of people.

I wouldn’t call myself a Scientologist, as I haven’t “practiced” it in any local org, group or otherwise, but i feel that tidbit of information is relevant to this conversation. I wouldn’t however define myself as an ex-Scientologist either.

For the purpose of understanding what I’m going to talk about here, It’s important to define that (while sort of obvious) there’s a difference between one who believes or practices Scientology and the Church of Scientology which as we all know is a great source if you’re looking for controversy.

Anyway.

There’s no doubt that there’s an inherent danger in false information, depending on the source of such information, it’s maliciousness is always debatable. Whether that information comes from scientology, psychics, homeopathic medicine, paganism, christianity, islam, doctors, government, propaganda or hell, even reddit. False information is just that, false. But clearly different from malicious information intended to harm.

I’m not focusing on “malicious information” in this comment. But it should go without saying that I’m sure you could find it and throw it up in an argument towards my text here, which is fine, just make sure it’s relevant.

I feel like the discussion hasn’t progressed anywhere and no matter how much of a sceptic, atheist or a devout pastafarian you are is irrelevant, talking about any given topic is different to advocating it and I want to make it clear I haven’t written any of this to promote one belief or other, if anything I’d like to point out that to really learn and take away from a discussion such as this one should not resort to flaming people with hateful comments since that’s largely just a waste of everyone’s time, no one would leave any wiser and no one gains anything.

I think it’s an interesting conversation to have, Scientology sure is controversial and it’s a good thing I’m hiding behind the relative anonymity of the internet. The amount of rage from people that’ve been observing these headlines and news about the terrible things the Church of Scientology does ever since that South Park episode aired is astounding and almost ironically just as misplaced as these so called “stupid Scientologists” are.

I won’t go into detail about my experience in the Church of Scientology, or my adventures within the Freezone for the fear of having to interact with the CoS in any way again, they can be truly fearsome having experienced some… unpleasantness for having left the org, but nonetheless I will stick my neck out there and fend for Scientologists.

(Note: I realise the Church of Scientology calls itself a religion for tax purposes, there’s no tax breaks for philosophical organisations and I’m not going to debate the ethical, moral implications of branding an organisation with “Church”, I am aware of this, I could talk about it if there was interest, but for the sake of all this there’s little point delving into it now. I’m defining it now as the Church of Scientology as it’s a separate entity to the people that believe and follow their teachings.)

Just like any religious institution, Catholicism for an example, there’s an element of business if in no other sense than just how these institutions are organised to work, operate and to exist. There’s staff, bosses, volunteers, contractors and a bit of grease to keep all the cogs moving. Given the business analogy doesn’t work when it comes to belief and faith, the comparison stops there. The believers are people like you, me, Jack and Jill down the street. They may believe in teachings of Christianity due to having been born into a Christian family, they may be born again Christians that were agnostic their whole life or they might even leave to advocate, become organised and “enlighten” people to atheism or they might just keep to themselves believing in whatever they do. The point is, everyone believes in something. Believing in something doesn’t mean you’re likely to know the inner workings, statistics of anything else specific to your particular institution.

Whether these people are going through a existential crisis, have nurtured, pre-existing beliefs or not, everyone finds answers in one form or another.

The important distinction is that all these belief systems, or even agnostic agnosticism all require the same thing. People, human beings, with all our faults and strengths we’re not so much “flawed”, but confused. From the moment you’re born you’re going to face confusion for your entire life, everyone seeks answers to “why were here”, “what should I do” for a variety of reasons whether aware of it or not. You have a natural inclination to want to utilise this lucky chance you’ve gotten to breathe the air and join a society of others like you and get something done in this life, maybe not in those words but I feel the sentiment remains the same. Would your consciousness exist at all had your father not met your mother? I’m sure everyone has asked themselves similar questions, we’ve all found different paths around it. Some explain it by science (which is good), Some explain it by faith in a higher being (which is fine) and some cling on to facets and pieces of information they’ve accrued over the years of being on this planet from various thought pieces without necessarily even really understanding said information (which is bad).

So whether it’s a philosophical, religious or a scientific take on life. I hope everyone can agree that simply having watched an uplifting or motivating Neil D. Tyson video on YouTube some months ago probably didn’t enlighten anyone, maybe there was a temporary sense of awe in the words of this person or that person but by and large it didn’t change the world. The reason why I feel the need to say that is because everyone wants a better world to live in, we all have different concepts of what that means, but we all want good things. Yet, of the sheer amount of hate people seem to have towards Scientologists here isn’t healthy, It’s not so much that it isn’t healthy for Scientologists, but it isn’t healthy for the individuals harbouring such resentment towards any particular group of people and as such it isn’t healthy for us (mankind) as a whole and it definitely won’t pave the way to a better world for any of us, whatever it turns out to be.

I said I don’t want to go into too much detail about my experiences, but I will say this. People I interacted with during my time in the Church of Scientology were good people, even if you were to disagree with their tenets, I’ve met few people with such genuine care and thought towards your fellow man. It’s easy to judge these people as being bad, they do bad things right? This is why I’ve tried to make a distinction between the Church itself and it’s flock. I can’t believe that there are people here saying that ALL Scientologists are terrible people by default, and it is perfectly reasonable to point out that were you to claim that about Christians, people would unanimously agree it to be a false statement. All stigma aside, It is hypocritical/moronic/ignorant and borderline hilarious to state that Christians are good despite being religious, but Scientologists are bad by default because they believe in Scientology.

Cult or not, similarly, let’s pretend there’s an entity of people who are passionate about helping another, be it a lawyer, police office, personal carer, journalist, politician or a clown. Given how our society functions we do things for a variety of reasons, some for money, for glory or for feeling good about what you do. No matter the motivation there’s always a business involved in this economy, you need money to do the things you want, to get money you need work and so on. Have you ever joined a personal cause of sorts, tried to work towards something to benefit another only to find out what a cruel and uncaring place the world of business can be? Some of which can put a very real stop to what you want to achieve.

While that’s a little vague, I hope you understand what I’m getting at, looking for something that makes sense is not so reprehensible that it deserves condemning people that want to look. I’d even argue that for you to judge another human being for that is what is reprehensible. Regardless what philosophical/religious school of thought you disagree with, calling people within a group you don’t agree with “scum” is a terrible thing to do especially if you’re going to cover anyone involved with this kind of blanket term bigotry. In the context of Scientology, I feel like I have to reiterate that defining and specifying the differences between the different entities is vital, The Church of Scientology, Scientology and Scientologist(s) are three very different things and should be treated as such during a debate/conversation such as this one, if for nothing else then to make sure whatever point you’re trying to make is not misunderstood.

For example, The Church of Scientology has plenty of human right violations under it’s belt, some more horrid than others. There are people within the church who have had a hand in those atrocities, whether they were forced to or because of their own lust for destruction, but by and large, like everyone else that want to find and do good, the intentions of Scientologists are inherently just as good as any Christian’s or Buddhist’s. I wouldn’t even dare to suggest that all Catholics are kiddie fiddlers.

Regardless of what you believe in, there’s just so much everyone could stand to learn from mankind’s very abundant and rich sources of cultural, philosophical and religious materials so easily available. Instead of believing any one bit of information with such blinding vigour that you forget to learn new things and post incendiary comments on forums thinking it’s going to help anyone. Converse, debate and learn.

If there’s any one thing I can say to summarise what I’ve learnt from all the texts that I’ve read; it’s don’t be a cunt.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - theguardian.com