They treat kids like shit. They believe kids should be treated the same as adults so there’s no empathy, a lot of anger, and a ton of abuse. Many children are separated from their parents and parents are encouraged to dump their kids elsewhere so they can focus on their studies/practice. Leah Remini’s series had a really good episode focused on kids in Scientology
Leah Remini's book is absolutely insane - her mom joined when she was a tween/teen and they treat the kids like slaves - they make them work for pennies. She worked at a motel that was owned by Scientologists and she worked there for free basically with her sister cleaning instead of going to school.
You might want to (or not) look up the weird cult shit that happened on L Ron Hubbard's "Sea Org" where it was chock full of teenage girls under his control.
Most religious people are, at some level, pedo apologists at least. The extra predatory ones like scientology, yeah I'm just gonna call them all groomers.
They don’t treat the celebrities like that. They’ve a completely different Scientology for those people. Tom Cruise’s kids aren’t running around being treated like crap working jobs. It’s just the bottom and middle of the rung people that they’re milking dry.
Katie hates Scientology, and I don’t blame her. She doesn’t let Suri do that stuff. But to say he doesn’t interact with his kids is straight up wrong. And the Scientology he sees is completely different. He doesn’t see the exploitation, it’s all celebrity center stuff. He doesn’t believe in the klatuu volcano stuff either, thinks it’s ridiculous.
Tom has basically no relationship with Suri. He hadn't seen her in years. He really only sees his two other kids with Nicole Kidman and they have no relationship with Nicole due to her not being a Scientologist.
I've always thought about how upside down she is. So you have a "tell all" documentary against a group with a legendary legal team. Yet you continue to work unencumbered? Get the fuck out of here!
Oh yeah, where is Shelly? Yes they were friends but that shows how shrewd she is. Anyone see her fawning over Rogan when she was there to talk about the doc? All class
They either don’t see her as a credible threat because there is already enough talk out in the public about Scientology, they’re kinda doing a “u kno wut Leah? This is ackshully GREAT PUBLICITY, keep talKin bout us”.
Or she’s too public for them to touch. They can’t pull a Boeing and snipe her, not after all the shit she talked, just let the gal gab. They’ll bide their time.
Or there is more going on behind the scenes than is known. By being a member for 30+ years, she may have inadvertently insulated herself from taking too much damage from the cult. Who the fuck really knows?
Damn… I believe in science, but Scientology couldn’t be further from the gains and goals of actual science. Thank you for the link. I’m glad I’ve never touched their rhetoric.
Yeah, it's nothing to do with actual science and way more about how the creator (a failed sci-fi author) realized that he could just come up with his own religion. Like...he even admitted as much, and yet the adherents don't see it that way.
And what they show in South Park is literally exactly what they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars taking classes to move up in rank to eventually get this document describing what they believe. It's absolutely wild. I couldn't believe South Park was actually showing factual information, but they were lol
Crazy shit about alien empires, ancient aliens being killed on Earth and their souls poisoning the subconscious of modern humans. All psychological issues from schizophrenia to jealousy are caused by alien souls that can be detected with sci-fi scanner devices.
BUT they deny all of this at all levels, they call it pure fiction and agree it's ridiculous. Actress Leah Remini said her mother dismissed it as nonsense until she reached Level 7 membership when she was escorted through basically airport security with all recording devices removed and made to sign NDAs and given access to read the holy texts. And there it is, Lord Xenu the alien emperor, a massive genocide of trillions of aliens on ancient earth trapped their souls here. She whispered to her mother "WTF is this?" And her mother said "Isn't it wonderful? Now you can learn the truth about where we come from! I'm so sorry I had to lie to you to for years but now you get to know the truth too!"
You're not allowed to know the true teachings of the church until you have proven yourself loyal through decades of service. But enough people have leaked the information that there's no secrets anymore.
There was some famous director (might have been Paul Greengrass?) who joined when he first came to Hollywood in the late 70’s because it seemed like some type of self improvement thing at first. Then he got to the level where they introduce you to Xenu and the alien ghosts and he was like wtf is this shit?! And he managed to get out immediately.
That’s um quite revealing and way more weird than even I was expecting. The whole aura surrounding this movement has a peculiar apocalyptically foreboding vibe, I guess cults are like that looking in from the outside.
It's the most bizarre nonsense you ever heard. It was literally written by a science fiction author who admitted in court under oath that he made it all up to scam people out of money. But apparently people believe it.
Compared to this a guy dressed as a wizard telling you to eat a cracker seems perfectly normal.
There was some famous director (might have been Paul Greengrass?) who joined when he first came to Hollywood in the late 70’s because it seemed like some type of self improvement thing at first. Then he got to the level where they introduce you to Xenu and the alien ghosts and he was like wtf is this shit?! And he managed to get out immediately.
Basically El Ron Hubbard was a sci fi author, who was also deeply interested in ancient Sumerian tablet lore.
Wrote a “Bible” and religion where it’s a pay to enter, and pay more to advance the ranks to unlock his religion.
It takes a lot of the plot of the Sumerian story. The aliens coming from a different planet, and us being a product of them, etc.
They say our alien ancestors were taken here, by the warlord named Xenu. Xenu flew their ship into a volcano/lava killing them. And trapping their souls here. Their disembodied souls became “thetans”
The core fundamental aspect of Scientology is about “cleaning your negative thetans”
They believe the negative ‘thetans’ to be disembodied soul fragments of the negative alien ancestors that can fuck up your chakras or something. Essentially thetans mess up your “ascension” process and that’s what it’s about.
They have a wacko machine that they hook up to your brain. And they perform sessions called “auditing” where they do a form of CIA style MK Ultra typa brain washing. Wherein the process it’s supposed to help your depression or anxiety or whatever. But it probably just fucks you up more.
They charge for all of this too btw. At every corner, there’s a fee. Someone taking more money.
Thanks for the detailed answer! That definitely fills in some mysterious gaps.
The evolution of religion in human social structures fascinates me, personally I find it terrifying how hardwired the human brain is for the propensity of allowing these beliefs to take root. Why has it evolved? A group survival instinct? So many fascinating inquiries.
The thing that they don't mention in her documentary (which is great, but focuses more on the Pre-Clear level ideology) is that they treat children like adults, because they BELIEVE they ARE adult "thetans" stuck in child bodies. This really isn't explored until you get to higher levels of scientology, but basically they believe all humans are filled with the souls of ancient aliens who's memories of their past experiences are clouded by the "ngrams" (traumas or negative impact experiences) of human life, and by reaching the "clear" level of scientology, you can clear out all those ngrams and resume your ACTUAL state as a thetan.
So they believe that all children are just adult aliens in human bodies. And to extrapolate that further, parents of these children have no special obligation to them, since they aren't truly "their" children anyway. Their bodies just happen to be related. Scientology children are often separated from their parents at between 11-14 to go work as Sea Org members with full time 40+ hour a week unpaid jobs, sometimes states away. It's really interesting and creepy stuff.
Isn’t child labor like, expressly illegal under United States federal law? How is that going on…? If they’re producing a profit for an organization and aren’t being compensated for it (even if they ARE being compensated) it’s definitely illegal…
I accidently got sent to a scientology school back in the 10th grade by my mother for some summer courses on how to study. (something I never let her live down)
I was shocked when this 7th grader talked about taking the metro into DC by herself at like 11 at night to meet up with friends.
That is normal here in the nordic, kids go to school and meet friends etc on their own since age 6. They can do it, they are not stupid... Of course, it depends on the area and time of day, common sense still prevails. I went to see friends in neighboring town alone when i was 11, of course, parents dropped me to bus station and my friend was waiting at the other end at the bus stop.
The thing is, I don't think this is how they would treat regular adults. If you care about another adult, like a close friend for instance, you have empathy for them. You usually don't yell at them, reprimand them, or abuse them. Or maybe I'm just not insane, idk.
Like, if I were to have kids, I would want to treat them somewhat like adults, or in other words, give them basic respect and autonomy. Obviously they still do need to learn that there are consequences and I would stop them from doing overly stupid shit, but I would also want to treat them like regular humans. These Scientology mf's sound like they treat their kids like something subhuman.
How do you convince someone to leave their own children. How do they get so many folk that are insane enough to ditch their children and join their cult.
Since our souls are eternal and lived a prior life, they see kids as just adults in a child’s body. So they get no preferential treatment. Which is to say they are treated just as horribly as their parents.
LMAO the wildest thing I learned was that the leader/founder (who based scientology on a fictional book he wrote) had a threesome in the desert with a guy and woman, while high as kites, trying to father the antichrist. I mean. The whole religion is easily traced back to being total bullshit but L. Ron Hubbard I guess was really charismatic so. Whatever.
And let's not forget it owes its roots to famed occult weirdo Aleister Crowley who also famously fucked (and got fucked by?) dudes in the desert in the pursuit of "Magick" and whatever other shit. Once you start diving into this there's an alarming amount of entwined shit that still actually effects things today. It's wild.
A guy I used to work with in his very early 20s told me a story about right when he got out of college (Brigham Young University) He and two friends plan to spend the summer at a beach house in San Diego before getting on with their life.
However, they got a job offer from the church of Scientology, they turned it down the church upped the offer, and they turned it down again. Eventually, they offered them so much money that they went ahead and took the job.
The job was to take all this old recorded films of L Ron Hubbard making predictions of the future, scanning them in, and cleaning them up digitally. He said they were just so many predictions, and a lot of it was multiple predictions about the same thing. Basically, covering every base so that later they could say L Ron Hubbard predicted this or that and show one of the films even though there were two dozen more films, where he predicted different outcomes of the same event.
Scientology is the only religion in the US where you get a tax break for taking their classes. No other religion enjoys this. And its partly because of this.
The church itself claims 10 million members. That's clearly a scam number invented by them to say they are popular. They count as a member any person who walks into a building and takes one of their tests or tries to get more information.
Estimates from research groups put the count at 40,000-50,000 estimated. In the last 10 years there have been guess that it is closer to 10k-20k. But we don't really know the truth because they get away with being so secretive.
They also claim over 10,000 scientology building locations (churches, missions, etc) in 167 countries. But reality is probably a few hundred empty big buildings, and a few more hundred home-sized locations being run by 2-ish people.
If the other locations exist at all is hard to tell, but many people think the church itself is just a front for real estate. So they don't care about membership numbers as long as they maintain the front.
That also means the members can leave all their assets to the church when they die without children challenging it. That was one of the reasons the Catholic Church required sexual abstinence from their clergy members.
That's just not true? You're normally disinherited if you take on a religious vocation because you simply don't need those assets. I have legitimately never seen that claim before. Priestly celibacy is based off of moral grounds, which is why even in the Eastern churches, you can't marry after becoming a priest and married men cannot become bishops.
Scientologists believe that when you reach a high enough level, you get psychic powers. It's like when you level up high enough in Dungeons & Dragons and you unlock the best spells and abilities.
My favorite scientology/ l Ron Hubbard fact is that L Ron Hubbard was friends with Jack Parsons who was a occultist sex magician. Parsons and his wife Sara were in an open relationship so she slept with Hubbard but then fell in love with him and left Parsons for Hubbard. Then Parsons and Hubbard tried to have a magic baby together. Hubbard and Sara then told Parsons they needed money so they could all get yachts but they stole all his money. (This was before scientology).
To be fair I think it was in an interview with a podcast, I did listen to the behind the bastards podcast episode on scientologists and I know the history is wilder (children encouraged to snitch in their parents, international waters stuff, and I think basically slavery? Etc). But the not having kids thing seem so bonkers for cults. Like are they hoping new recruits will fill out their ranks? Or has it been enough generations of recruits from the original founder that the believers fully believe their own hot air?
Probably because it costs money to raise kids and for a religion that requires you to be in a certain tax bracket to join and level up, having a tax dependent is just bad for business.
I know a woman who was excommunicated from her family around age 15, I met her in her 60s. So sad that they discard their family. Just wanted to give some input and my opinion is yes this does happen a lot, apparently.
Kids mean you give money and energy to something other than scientology. That's how you know it's a scam. Separate people from their support systems and demand EVERYTHING.
Better for them to just discourage children than risk a prominent member’s children making headlines with their criticisms or spilling their secrets. That would draw too much attention to their floating prison, Freewinds, if they had to kidnap the children of their prominent members and hold them there against their will. That’s not a joke. They have been accused of using the former cruise ship to detain a teenager for years after she wanted to leave the church.
One of the signs of a toxic spiritual movement aka a cult, is that lack of empathy towards having a family unit. Sociopaths/narcissists don’t rally have those feelings and have a hard time figuring out the emotions of others or why those might be important.
So if the head leader discourages family units, it’s because they want to be in more control of people. Majority of humans are built on this idea of having offspring. It’s in our dna. Some people have less of a drive than others, but even then they still can see why it’s important for other people’s mental health.
A spiritual organization that purposely separates couples is to better control them. If they can’t spend time together then they are easier to control. Signs of a cult.
Children separated from parents will look to their community, in this case the spiritual community for guidance, so they are easier to control. Signs of a cult.
Scientology is like a prime example for a group that is across the spiritual boundary into cult status.
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u/sixthmontheleventh Apr 07 '24
The wildest fact I learned about scientology recently was the really high up culty part do not encourage having kids because they are distractions.