Finally watched the HBO Scientology documentary 'Going Clear"

These are questions that commonly come up when asked to define the difference between a cult and a religion.

In a cult, there's a person at the top that knows it's all lies. In a religion, that person is dead.

If you want a better understanding of how people get pulled in to such groups:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUhR-tRkHY

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

In a cult, there's a person at the top that knows it's all lies. In a religion, that person is dead.

If you want a better understanding of how people get pulled in to such groups:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUhR-tRkHY

Thanks for the video suggestion - I'll give it a watch this evening. What's interesting about Going Clear is that by all accounts of people that were the closest to L.R. Hubbard, he actually DID believe it. Apparently he had an "advanced" E-meter built specifically for personal use on himself.

The doc painted him as a very mentally troubled man. The audio interview with his ex-wife was interesting. It makes me wonder if he started to believe all that stuff after decades of telling it to the masses, or if it was a sign of a seriously deteriorating mental condition which left him in a state of mild schizophrenia or something related.

I should clarify, though, that the accounts that he believed the Scientology concepts came only very late in his life.

There was no question that in his younger days, he set out to specifically become wealthy by creating a tax-free religion, as told by his family. He even went as far as to borrow concepts directly from his previous science fiction novels and incorporate them into his religion.

All Hail Lord Xenu wrote:

If any of the major ... religions I just listed were started in today's age, [they] would be considered completely insane.

As I posted and had deleted three times on the random true fact thread: People believing that theirs is the one true religion and all others are wrong means that almost everyone is, in fact, wrong, despite their absolute certainty that they are right.

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

In a cult, there's a person at the top that knows it's all lies. In a religion, that person is dead.

If you want a better understanding of how people get pulled in to such groups:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUhR-tRkHY

I really enjoyed this video, especially the part where they presented a person who is part of a group A. Group A absolutely despises group B, and considers them to be evil. The person in group A comes to find out that a longtime close friend is a member of group B.

The person will then have to find a way to rationalize this revelation, even going as far as to convincing themselves that their close friend was always evil, and that the friend was manipulating them the entire time.

Also interesting was the part about the indoctrination process, and how critical it is to start as young as possible. Children can then accept wild notions without resistance, and they can become core beliefs which can exist forever, and become almost impossible to reverse. Thus, it is no coincidence that to indoctrinate adults, the group has to deploy means which mimic infantile conditions!

Bump. Very interested in other opinions

You ought to watch the movie," The Master." It's a thinly veiled fictionalization of the early Scientology movement. It's pretty R-rated, though. I read a review that said that the writer-director met with scientologists and thoroughly researched L. Ron Hubbard, and put real situations in the movie, covering himself by calling it fiction.

Seen it - loved it. Big fan of both PSH and Joaquin Phoenix