BBC journalist shouts at scientologists

[fraggle]

There's lots of fuss at the moment over a BBC journalist who shouted at some scientologists while filming a documentary about them. This is the BBC's own coverage of the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6653293.stm

This is written by John Sweeney himself, explaining what happened:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6650545.stm

I happened to find the telegraph's coverage of the article particularly hilarious: look at the very last line in this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/nbbc113.xml

[darknation]

heh, should be very interesting indeed.

[exp(x)]

Scientology is so fucking creepy.

[kristus]

Oh lord. Seriously though, how can anyone believe in that shit?

[myk]

kristus said:
how can anyone believe in that shit?

If you think about it, most religions have beliefs one can consider ridiculous, but the problem here is that Scientology is a huge swindle, a political operation using intelligence ("information gathering") and wealth to leech itself into positions of power, in order to perpetuate itself.

If lies in religion are inherited through tradition and ritual, in Scientology the rituals are made of lies in order to create a basis for a group of con men. The nonsense that you see works out in contributing to make the operation possible.

It's what you get when an exwriter of fiction (the writing practice of creating false stories, or narrative lies, in order to drive an artistic or entertaining point) and an intelligence officer wannabe gets fed up with being nobody and succeeds in generating a cult for his needs.

[Doom_Dude]

L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs.

....and these Scientologists think this is fact? Funny.

[fraggle]

Doom Dude said:

....and these Scientologists think this is fact? Funny.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

[deathbringer]

Scientology sounds like one of those spoof religions, such as Flying sphagetti monsterism, that where just made up to piss off creationists... except they are deadly serious

Death threats? that's nowhere near far enough

[MRB_Doom]

Bring me one of Sam Cohen's finest.

[Sharessa]

Hey, yelling at Scientologists is one of my favorite pastimes.

[kristus]

myk said:

If you think about it, most religions have beliefs one can consider ridiculous.

Well, I personally pretty much already do that. But Scientology is just stupid.

[Coopersville]

Scientology is just one of those goofy cults who based themselves off of D&D and sci-fi movie logic, that turned into religion for the sake of making more money, and grabbing a few friends/celebrities to make it look cool. I'd feel the need to elbow a Scientologist in the head a few times, let alone shout at them.

[kristus]

But it's obvious there's not much goofy about the actual Cult of Scientology. Just their fucked up beliefs.
Just look at all those celebrities they managed to rally up. That gives some people the idea that it's not so silly after all.

[VileSlay]

exp(x) said:

Scientology is so fucking creepy.

didn't charles manson use scientology as one of his recruiting tools?

I think the best jab at scientology's bullshit was south park's "trapped in the closet" episode, especially the part where the scientology guy is explaining to stan the religion and they show all the alien stuff with a blinking "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE!!!" on the bottom of the screen.

[fraggle]

VileSlay said:

didn't charles manson use scientology as one of his recruiting tools?

I think the best jab at scientology's bullshit was south park's "trapped in the closet" episode, especially the part where the scientology guy is explaining to stan the religion and they show all the alien stuff with a blinking "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE!!!" on the bottom of the screen.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DAmEO-oLHzA