21 June 2006

A writes:

A small site (codebot.org) has published an article critizing scientology that has been "dugg" (meaning recommended by digg.com), at

http://digg.com/links/Amazingly_Scary_In-depth_Look_at_Scientology_

Subsequently, the scientology sent a Cease & Desist letter threatening the owner (http://codebot.org/notice.html). They used their usual legal threats (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversy#Alleged_abuse_of_Copyright_and_Trademark_laws for reference).

Would you mind hosting a mirror of the page for the sake of the freedom of expression?

[Note: Verio hosts Cryptome.org]

http://codebot.org/notice.html

This office represents the L. Ron Hubbard Library, the owner of the copyrights to a number of scriptures and trade secrets, the founder of the Scientology religion, has issued the following notice to Verio Inc, a subsidiary of NTT Communications. The website "codebot.org" under your control registered to IP address 161.58.73.89 is in violation of federal trademark and copyright laws.

This information summary contains the details necessary for you to understand the events, background and issues of the equity and law that pertains to the Church of Scientology's fight for its property and First Amendment right of free religious exercise.

A small portion of the Church's scriptures were broadly released on said website, and made available to the general public who have not completed the prior steps of religious study and counseling. Conspiracy to disseminate Scientology's copyrighted and trade secret scriptures is a crime and will result in arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisoned for theft. Additionally, The Church faces economic harm from what would be essentially black market trafficking in its protected works and attempts to dissuade individuals from becoming Scientologists by holding its scriptures up to derision. As a result we request you suspend the account holding this website, and place this notice up in reparation for our damages. Your prompt attention to this matter will result in no further legal action.

We appreciate your attention.

[From a mirror site.]

...dedicated to all the victims of scientology, free speech, and, Lisa McPherson. Mirrored from codebot.

Scientology hurts people a lot. It hasn't stood the test of time, which makes it more of a cult than anything else. I researched Scientology for my college journalism graduate studies project and here's what I found.

As it's core tenet, Scientology teaches that all the bad things in the world come from negative life experiences. For example, if you were bitten by a dog as a child, without realizing it you might develop an irrational fear of dogs (preventing negative life experiences is why they insist their babies be born in complete silence). Using special auditing techniques and e-meter technology, both of which Scientology claims L Ron Hubbard created, they believe they are able to remove these bad thoughts from your body.

This premise of Scientology, when explained as being part of science, seems reasonable enough to get people started in the cult.

In actuality though, both auditing and the e-meter existed before L Ron Hubbard created them. Auditing was an early type of psychoanalysis experimented with in the early part of the last century. It was soon discarded when the experts of the time came to the conclusion it had no real lasting therapeutic value. The e-meter is based on the same technology as a primitive lie detector.

At first they introduce you to courseware and studies using seemingly innocuous subjects such as tapes on how to have a happy marriage, and how to control you’re eating habits. Where things get really weird is when they teach you to hate psychology and require you to pay money, lots of it, for the courses and auditing sessions. These materials and sessions are required to progress up the Scientology ladder.

As you progress up the ladder, the church begins to reveal more information about itself to you. They contend it can’t be revealed to you all up front, because the information is so powerful, that if you were to hear about it with an unprepared mind it would kill you (it's that powerful). What they begin to reveal is that all the negative energy trapped inside you are actually thetans, and that thetans are wandering immortal souls carrying past life experiences.

If at some point you cannot continue to pay for the courseware and the auditing sessions, you will be offered a thousand year contract to serve the church for free, in lieu of the fees. You see, the church begins to teach their followers that by following the courseware they will eventually become immortal, and a thousand years is pittance in comparison to forever.

Working for the church is something that can turn quite unpleasant. It's like an army structure without the organization. Superiors abuse and degrade their workers. They make them do the worst jobs, and can have them locked away using a special confinement technique.

Eventually the courses teach you that once you reach the state of "clear" all thetans will be purged from you body. After "clear" you progress to an OT (operating thetan). As an OT you will begin to develop supernatural powers (John Travolta is a high level OT).

It's in the OT levels that the church begins to tell you the true story of the universe. They teach you that the thetans were actually hundreds and hundreds of billions of interplanetary space beings placed on Earth by the evil galactic ruler Xenu. They were killed by Xenu when he placed their bodies around volcanoes (somewhere around Hawaii) and bombarded them with H-Bombs. Their souls attempted to escape after death, but Xenu anticipated this and had machines ready to capture them. The souls were taken to giant 3D cinemas and brainwashed into believing all kinds of bad things, like the story of God and the devil. Finally, Xenu released thetans into the atmosphere, where they began to clump together and make their way into our human ancestor's brains.

To protect all of this information, the church uses its vast sums of money to litigate into oblivion those that speak out against the church. They have an entire dictionary of terms and plays to use against people. For example, if you were in the church and knew someone critical of it they would label you a PTS, or potential trouble source. The outside person would be called a suppressive person. As a PTS you are required to get rid of the suppressive person. This leads to the Scientology policy of disconnection.

Another trick Scientology uses is spying, threatening, and record keeping. See, the contents of your auditing sessions are kept by the church. They have all your deep dark secrets, and if you ever leave and are perceived as a danger in any way, they won't hesitate to threaten you with this information. Watch the scary video of scientology doing it's spying.

Scientology is dangerous cult. They have ruined lives and killed people. If your are interested in learning more the many true life stories of people hurt by the cult, search the Internet. Just don't join their cult.