Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology

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rick davis (davisr@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com) wrote:

Steve (stevea@castlsys.demon.co.uk) wrote:

: Diddley fucking squat, that's what. We'll just keep posting and

: "instigating the destruction" of your filthy, lucre-obsessed Mammon-

: worshipping cult.

I don't think there has ever been this opportunity

to study the workings of bigotry, persecution and

the willful intention to destroy a religion on a

day to day basis.

There might well be bigoted viewpoints circulating on a.r.s. amongst your cult's opponents. However, I cannot see any evidence of them, and, unlike you and your cronies, I am not in the business of hurling unproven accusations.

The "persecution" you perceive is criticism and ridicule. I can understand why you don't like it - no-one likes to be ridiculed; constructive and valid criticism, however, is welcomed by the truly open-minded, and at least some of the criticism of your cult on a.r.s. *is* constructive. Several posters have described the steps that they consider your cult would need to take in order to validate itself. You have to seriously ask yourself why people might find your cult worthy of ridicule - in my experience it is rare indeed that so many people would have such a similar conception of something without there being *some* basis in fact.

As for "wilful intentions to destroy a religion", let's be quite clear about something before we start: your cult has claimed to be a religion only since around the late 60's. Until that time, it was clearly a business venture. Given that the transfer of considerable amounts of money from members to the organisation still represents a major part of your "creed", is it any wonder that we are suspicious of your claims to be a religion?

But let us, for the purpose of discussing this point, assume that the cult of $cientology is a religion: how do you equate the criticism of your organisation with "wilful intentions to destroy" it? Usenet is a medium that allows the public exchange of ideas expressed as text. How can such a medium allow for the destruction of anything? If someone says "destroy the cult of $cientology" in a Usenet posting, how does that contribute to such destruction? After all, if I, as a private individual, said "next Saturday, everybody go and stand on their heads in Main Street and whistle 'Dixie'", how many people do you seriously think would go and do it? Right. None.

In a sense, though, you are right: a.r.s. *is* contributing to the destruction of $cientology, but not in the way you think. Far from being a focus for some mythical "mob" of brownshirted thugs, intent on recreating Kristallnacht with $cientologists as the victims, the only weapon that Usenet has to destroy anything is, quite simply, the truth. If someone reading everything that is written here, both from you, Woody/Rick, and from the critics of your cult, forms an opinion that is adverse to the cult, it is because you failed to convince them that your opponents' arguments were not valid.

I believe that the cult of $cientology cannot survive while the fresh winds of truth blow upon it. Like some festering disease, it thrives out of sight, hidden until the stench of putrefaction betrays it for the vile infection it really is: when the bandages of deception and falsity are removed, it is exposed as a parasitic blight that destroys everything it infects, leaving misery, pain, and sometimes even death in its wake.

Do you guys have any idea how rational, unbigoted

people view your stuff when they see it?

I suspect that I am not alone.

The profile of bigots is the study of ARS. Rick

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