Religion
Related: About this forumWhat Scientology tells us about religion
July 6, 2012 7:36 pm
By Christopher Caldwell
The casual reader of tabloids could be forgiven for assuming that the actress Katie Holmes, who filed for divorce this week, is not so much breaking off a marriage as breaking out of a gilded prison. Her husband, the actor Tom Cruise, is Hollywood’s highest-paid star, earning $75m a year. He is also its most prominent Scientologist. Ms Holmes wants custody of their six-year-old daughter. Reports suggest that one source of discord is whether the girl will be educated according to Scientology’s tenets and groomed for a role in the church.
Scientology was founded in the 1950s by Lafayette Ronald (“L. Ron”) Hubbard, a Nebraskan writer of pulp science fiction. Its doctrines involve extraterrestrials who arrived on earth 75m years ago. These doctrines are secret. The faithful pay big fees for instruction in them. US tax authorities over the years have questioned whether Scientology is a religion at all, although it has had tax-free status since 1993. The church runs “celebrity centres” in north Hollywood, London and Paris and recruits prominent personalities. The actors John Travolta and Kirstie Alley are members. It is easier to get into than out of Scientology, which has a reputation for harassing critics and apostates. In the early 1980s, Hubbard’s wife was convicted of masterminding the infiltration, bugging, and theft of files from the Internal Revenue Service.
Whether any of this is grounds for ending a marriage is up to the spouses. Whether it is grounds for awarding child custody to one parent or another poses hard questions about freedom of religion. If the case is as the newspapers describe it (the divorce papers were not immediately made public) then the court may have to take a stand on whether religion is good for children per se and whether some religions are better than others.
Freedom of religion is a harder right to describe than, say, freedom of speech. Religious people often engage in conduct that others engage in non-religiously. Sometimes this involves a religious obligation, as when Muslims practise the charitable giving called zakat. Sometimes it does not, as when Belgian monks make beer. Certain activities are protected when done in a religious spirit – American Indians’ ingesting peyote, for instance – but outlawed otherwise. Courts need to think their way into the minds of believers, which they are ill-suited to do.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/575f767a-c695-11e1-963a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1zsSZjAtn
In my view, Scientology has a use in studying the structure and organization of religion. On the other hand, from my delving into it, which is scant, I have yet to find a god in it. The best I can find is "Infinity", the Eighth Dynamic.
A free e-meter to anyone who can find a god in Scientology.
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cbayer
(146,218 posts)Does it matter?
I think the list of questions that constitute the interrogation of children of Scientologists could be considered psychological abuse, OTOH.
rug
(82,333 posts)Without a god, a religian is simply a peculiar and unwarranted human arrangement.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)maybe like the AA higher power concept.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,405 posts)Would you call them just an 'arrangement', let alone 'peculiar and unwarranted'?
rug
(82,333 posts)Can you point me to a Buddhist school that does not require the trappings of a religion?
muriel_volestrangler
(101,405 posts)Whether many Buddhists go through their lives with no connection with anything like a temple, I'm not sure. But that was rather my point - that they can have temples, traditions, holy books, etc. without the veneration of gods.
rug
(82,333 posts)
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Lets not get wrapped around the axle here.
rug
(82,333 posts)When you engage in religious practices and trappings, it is almost inevitable to fall into theistic thinking. I don't know the numbers but I suspect there are many Buddhists who would disagree with its characerization as atheist.
The point is this: why use religious terminolgy, engage in religious practices, and erect religious organization if there is no belief in the divine or god(s)? Without that concept, it has more in common with philosophical societies, charities, and social organizations. Without a god, how is a religion any different from any other human organization? And if it is, why call it a religion?
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Because religion holds a special place in most humans' mind. If it is considered a religion, then it automatically get elevated to a position of respect, above normal criticism and skepticism. At least the older religions do. The newer one get SOME elevated position, but the new one are seen as a threat to the old ones and get called cults, etc.
That is why they use religious terminolgy, engage in religious practices, and erect religious organization. For the benefits that being a religion brings.
rug
(82,333 posts)But I don't think that makes it a religion, as opposed to, say, amn affinity-based organization.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,405 posts)Buddhism has scriptures such as the Pali Canon, for instance.
rug
(82,333 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,405 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)From my POV, it would seem that most religions follow the same path of indoctrination of children. Do you see the same abuse when it comes to christian and muslim indoctrination of children?
David__77
(23,598 posts)...
cbayer
(146,218 posts)was potential for harm?
There was a previous discussion here about this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/121834060
David__77
(23,598 posts)It's a difficult thing, but I would err on the side of joint custody. I think that one should have to have demonstrated a pattern of clear abuse to be deprived of custodial rights.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)And then the input from the child themselves, depending on age, has additional bearing.
Would not want to be the judge in this case.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)Catholics subject their youth to that at a very young age, too. Nobody is taking their kids from them for that reason.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)Xenu may not have been a cuddly lovable god like Cupid, but he certainly had the classical attributes of a god--extraordinary powers, control of human destiny, blind rages, the whole deal.
rug
(82,333 posts)It is a movement without a god.
No e-meter for you.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)to freeze souls, and according to Lafayette Ronald Hubbard he did, then he was a god.
Emperor Palpatine maybe less so.
rug
(82,333 posts)dimbear
(6,271 posts)If he wants to correct me personally, let him carry thru on his promise and come back from the dead.
Scientology is rife with misnomers. Rife.
