Daughter and this classmate of hers have been dating since August. She told us him & his whole family are Scientologists. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know anything about it until she mentioned it, my first thought was “oh, they believe in science? That’s cool”. Then I looked it up online… and I still don’t understand anything. Most sources say it’s a bad thing, but I don’t get what it’s all actually about, as in doctrine, beliefs, activities, etc. I don’t even understand if it’s an actual religion or one of those pay-to-level-up self-care courses. One of the most confusing things I’ve ever read about. So if anyone could explain it straight to the point, I’d be very grateful.
A cult.
It started as a fake psychiatry scam, but when Hubbard realized there were laws regulating medicine he switched it over to being a religion where there aren’t any of those pesky regulations or ethical oversight.
This is a good explanation because it gets at the source. L. Ron was a failed Freudian and had some mental issues of his own, he lashed out at the psychiatry community, and built this whole thing out of a hatred for what (rightfully) rejected him. He just happened to write shitty sci-fi, so he channeled that into pseudo-psychiatry (Dianetics). There’s a reason those e-meters exist: bullshit stress response devices to measure “clearing” certain negative thoughts. They don’t actually work, but that’s the principle: you have a “auditing session,” and let’s say you get asked about your propensity for lying in a certain situation. E-meter response is measured until you’re no longer stressed by the thing you were asked about (according to the meter), you pay them absurd amounts of money, they now have dirt on you in case you try to leave, etc. This is its core, reductively. Anti-psychiatry money mill.
You should ask your daughter about Scientology.
Does she explain it like it’s ridiculous, or credible?
You might want to show her that clip from South Park if she doesn’t realize it’s batshit crazy.
Teach her (don’t force her, that never works) before she falls in with a cult and you lose her forever.
I asked her (and the boyfriend) and she’s just like us, also doesn’t get what it’s all about, because the guy himself won’t “share information with non-members”!!!
That’s probably alright, just keep an eye out. Let her know about the crazy stuff before he eases her into it.
Also, it’s not the boyfriends fault. He was raised in it and doesn’t know better. Assuming he’s otherwise a good kid, talking shit on him will not help the cause.
It’s an acronym.
The S stands for “Scam”.
the rest stands for bullshit.
It’s a sect. Their beliefs are completely ridiculous and don’t really matter much.
What matters is that they aggressively recruit new members into their cult, preferably people who don’t fit in well in the “real world”.
They promise that all problems you may have (psychologically, health or financial) can be solved by learning how to “free your soul” from past trauma.
You learn this in extremely expensive internal workshops (the first ones are free, but to raise to higher levels, you need to pay more and more money). The money goes directly to the leaders of the cult.
The methods are presented as scientific, but they are all 100% based on one book written by the founder L. Ron Hubbard, who was a third rate sci-fi author.
Members are encouraged to cut contact to all non-members.
If you try to leave, you are put under extreme pressure, harassed, and even threatened.Honestly one of the most freakish things I’ve heard from my daughter is that even though her boyfriend’s family’s rich, they don’t employ actual household staff, but they use volunteers from an internal organization of the church (Sea Org I think?), and volunteers don’t get paid except for food, board and small allowance - it’s “a life of service”. Which sounds uncomfortably close to slavery to me…
It’s more than a life of service, the Sea Org sign a billion year contract to include any resurrections.
Are you joking or do they actually do that??
Not joking. Obviously it’s unenforceable, but when you’re already ensconced in the larger organization and made the choice to join Sea Org, you’re really committed to Scientology and I’m sure the contract feels real. Makes it pretty hard to leave your cushy $10/day job scrubbing one of their cruise ships.
I believe they only have one cruise ship, and from reports I’ve heard it’s dilapidated and getting worse
Which sounds uncomfortably close to slavery to me…
That’s because it is.
South Park: What Scientologists Actually Believe
Beyond that, it’s a cult / pyramid scheme.
Also, check out Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath documentary for a good insider’s perspective.
Thanks!
its a religion created by a sci-fi writer for monetary gain. he told everyone he was going to do so, and then did it… but just as with every religion once there is a critical mass of idiots, people think it’s “real”.
A very very bad cult. They remove acquired individuals from their (rl) social network and brainwash and get them to give them all their money.
It’s mindboggling to me someone does not know of them.
It’s a cult. The “science” they base their beliefs on is called “dianetics”. You can look that up and get more straigh-up explanations than by looking up “scientology”.
In short, they think humans are possessed by the dead souls of immortal aliens from millions of years ago, but we can’t perceive this due to traumatic memories which must be “cleared” using “auditing”.
Auditing sessions are recorded, and as they involve confessing your darkest secrets to "clear’ the relevant “trauma”, the recordings can then be used to blackmail people into staying with the cult.
It’s a pay-to-level-up religion, except instead of caring for your health they abuse you. They actively reject mental healthcare based on real science, and consider psychiatrists equivalent to murderers.
They don’t believe in the concept of crime, instead considering anything and everything that happens to someone their own fault.
Members are not allowed to report crimes perpetrated by other members to the actual police, instead they must be reported to the church. When scientologists rape other scientologists, the victim gets punished with more auditing.
The most infamous scientologist is likely Danny Masterson, who is finally in prison for abusing likely dozens and dozens of female members.
They also don’t tell their followers what their beliefs actually are, before they’ve paid so much money for it that the sunk cost fallacy has them too committed to pull out.
You can find more info online about their actual beliefs told by people who have left the cult, than they reveal even to their own followers. Its all deliberately confusing, because no-one would buy into their crazy bullshit otherwise.
Get your daughter out of this relationship asap, or even better, have a serious talk with her about what scientology, explore what it is and what it does to its members together, so she can then consider the situation and navigate it for herself.
Get your daughter out of this relationship asap, or even better, have a serious talk with her about what scientology, explore what it is and what it does to its members together, so she can then consider the situation and navigate it for herself.
Or even better, she’s already being manipulated and scientology are GOOD at it while you are just yet enother concerned relative they can easily cut off your daughter’s life.
Get her out, even against her better judgement if she is a minor, but honestly even if she is not.
If the guy is renouncing Scientology, MAYBE, he can stay.
Allowing a person to think for themselves is always the best option.
But allowing her to accept scientology should not be an option, and isn’t what I was suggesting.
I simply assume that OP, looking into scientology with a critical eye, is likely to have a good relationship with their daughter. And that the daughter being of dating age, and the offspring of someone seemingly reasonable, they are both capable of having an adult conversation. One that won’t end with their daughter going “fuck you, I’m cutting you out of my life forever” but rather with their daughter accepting reality and intergrating the facts into her mind in a way where they can’t be easily subverted.
If that isn’t the case, then the heavy handed approach is absolutely warranted.
You need to visit https://www.xenu.net/ Aka operation clam bake. The evil these guys spread to the world is insane. And their sea org is slavery.
To everyone saying that this religion is a cult:
All religions are cults, but Scientology is one of the worst ones.
How would you define a cult?
A cult is devotion no matter what. Religions are cults.
Even the people who revere God but not “no matter what”?
If you disregard a belief because it is detrimental to yourself or others, then you are not in a religion, you are not in a cult, you just believe in what makes you comfortable and that is okay. Religion is fine, until it causes detriment to other people, which is what it has done in all of history.
Believe in what you like, just don’t impose that on others. Live and let live.
Yeah, but we reserve the word cult for the most dangerous ones.
Not a joke.
It’s bad, really really bad. Have a talk with her immediately. It doesnt mean her partner is a bad person, it just means her partner is caught up in something bad.
Don’t interject yourself in between, just expose her to all the news articles of people who have tried to get out, and the cult like behaviors.
The part that really stood up to me was that the boyfriend himself won’t talk about his religion’s beliefs or practices with neither my daughter nor us (her parents), if you ask him he’ll only say surface level abstract stuff & will say the rest is members-only. He’ll say the Church “is family and these things are family business”. It’s weird not even being able to get a member to explain things to you.
For a long while their innermost secrets were just that, secret. Members are tight-lipped on any real elaboration, and won’t engage with outsiders.
It also makes it really difficult for outsiders to present any countering logic to their beliefs. People aren’t gonna tell you you’ve fallen in with crazies, if you don’t tell em the dumb shit you’re being told is real.
But a lot of it is now out in the open, if you know to look. Even then, the church AGGRESSIVELY wields the law in an active attempt to suppress public knowledge as much as possible. But as even top-level members have left the cult over the decades, even the innermost bullshit has been exposed.
It’s probable that your daughters boyfriend himself knows much less than what is available online, because members are disciuraged from interacting with any “harmful” media so as to not grow disillusioned, and aren’t told anything substantial until it’s way too late to painlessly pull out.
It’s all quite deliberately set up to be as insidiously prolific as possible, while minimizing the chances people will leave.
And if people do show start to show signs of wanting out, the gloves come off really quick with stuff like blackmail and legal action.
Even its tax exempt status in the US is a complete farce, yet it lends the cult an air of legitimacy.
South Park s9e12 actually does a decent job rounding up and illustrating their beliefs. Might be worth a watch, if you don’t mind South Park.
The most concise way to think about it is to think Freemasonry combined with Star Trek.
Star Trek
… if you bought your Star Trek from a version of Wish that was also bought from Wish. Knock-offs all the way down.
I was thinking more along the lines of original Star Trek, where you had aliens posing as Greek gods, disembodied immaterial Galactus hands stretching out from planets, and parallel universes where evil versions of the characters can cross over from, and yet where at the end of the day, the characters can nod their heads and give a toast to “the godless universe”.
It was very much like Doctor Who if Doctor Who didn’t just explain everything with a simple “it’s all wibbly wobbly”.
I see what you’re saying, Star Trek just has too many redeeming qualities that could have made Scientology cool if they’d become StarTrekology instead.
Or Wizardology.
