CoS Religious practices

Well, they assure us that the CoS is a religion, and to prove it, they have a book detailing "Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology" Some interesting bits:(when in "'s text is Copyright 1959,1966 L. Ron Hubbard) "The Minister should dress in a way that does not upset the accepted stable data of what a minister looks like" My, that is a might high statement of faith and religious doctrine... And fairly characteristic of the whole thing...it describes a wedding ceremony that is bascially just an old ceremony, with one thrilling exception, a long, really pitiful bit of ceremony text written by LRH, it has lots of cool deformed sentences that don't really make sense, like: (formating in original) (after bit about asking if there are any objections, "And silence heard Does speak out plain There're none. [he thinks he is a poet or something...] So now My (bride) Stand steady here And say Do you today intend For him beside you there To be to him a wife?" It goes on like this interminably...what tortured language... Hard to beleive this was supposed to be from someone who was supposed to be a professional writer. (and there is a bit of CoS language here and there, but for a religious ceremony, supprisingly little)

There is also the "Double Ring Wedding Ceremony" which has lots of question response things, with the minister saying "Thank you" after each response...bizzare...why is the minister thanking them?

Ah, but it gets odder...turns out that was the ceremony for non-scienco being married by a CoS minister... If you are one, you get better question answer sequences, like: "And have you communicated your love to (bride)? (Answer) (Bride) have you acknowledged (groom's) love? (Answer)" [...cool stuff about them ARC-ing...] and at the end(after saying they can kiss): "(Wait for the kiss) And I will ask these witnesses present to join me in blessing this ceremony with the postulate that the trust and love of the present shall become ever stronger with each passing year. (Pause) Did you do it? (Answer) Thanks you."

So...what happens if you false attest to a wedding postulate? :-) This is like kinda sad actually...

Now we get odd... Some of the text of the "Informal Christening" (nothing to do with christ or christianity apparently)"Transcription of an informal christening perfored by L. Ron Hubbard at the FREEDOM CONGRESS, July 7, 1957.":

..."Here we go. (To the chiled): How are you? All right. Now your name is ________. You got that? good. There you are. Did that upset you? Now, do you realize that you're a member of the HASI? Pretty good, huh?"

Uh...yeah...(this is again, really kinda sad...what kinda religious meaning does crap like this have?) (there is more...similarly chatty and sad...)

But the crapy poetry wasn't just LRH's...someone named "Tom Esterbrook" wrote "A Funeral Oration for Homo Sapiens" (how about Homo Novio?)(also note, copyright is apparently owned by LRH even so...)

my favorite bit: "Under the clouds of H Bomb pitted Earth You sleep. Where are you now, O Man?"

Sigh...what is he talking about?...(one must admit that his poetry is up to LRH standards...) Also, from the biographical notes about LRH on the dust jacket: "Crippled and blind at the end fo the war, he resumed his studies of philosophy and by his discoveries recoverd so fully that he was reclassified in 1949 for full combat duty. It is a matter of medical record that he has twice been pronounced dead and that in 1950 he was given a perfect score on mental and physical fitness reports."

Too bad noone can find these medical records...and that the only medical exam in 1950 showed that he had never been injured (no records of injures as described above either...) and it was cause he was begging for disability pension...

All in all enough entertainment for the price at a used book store... But not much religion...just standard ceremonies with strange twists in a couple places and crappy poetry...I am not impressed, and this isn't the "religious" material that people pay money for.

William Bardwell wbardwel+@[cs.]cmu.edu