“Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he’d got everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And — but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it.

Twenty people sings out:

“What, is it over? Is that all?”

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.

-L. Ron Hubbard

EXACTLY.

Now, boys and girls, think very carefully. Can you think of a time when someone tried to control you by lying to you? No? Never happened?

There’s so much stuff on this, it would fill pages.

There are fairly innocuous lies such as, “Go to bed now, or the Bogey man will come and get you!”

And there is, lest we forget, a whole WAR in Iraq right now, where a culture is being destroyed and hundreds of thousands killed and many, many more injured and traumatized, their lives ruined.

BECAUSE OF LIES.

Try a web search for “Bush lies” and see what you come up with. “They got WMDs – we know where they are ……”

The whole Iraq “war” is based on lies. They lied to the world to bring about this incredible, meaningless destruction.

You lifted this quotation out of context to make it look like Hubbard is recommending a course of action, which he isn’t.

Why?

You have been lied to about Scientology by people who are trying to control you.

There are people who are lying about Scientology on this board in some vague effort to control.

If there is anything that I would like to accomplish on this board, it’s to clean up some of the lies about my religion.

It may be impossible.

It probably is.

But there’s no harm in trying.

John Davis

No religion charges fees for its knowledge… they may ask for money, or for 10% of your income, but no religion withholds their “knowledge” without receiving payment. Too bad after you pay to get your final level and you realize the Xenu story of souls and space-planes and Hawaiin volcanoes is nothing but bad science fiction.

you can read the Moderation Policy via the gray link just above ‘Recent Comment’ on the right. It gives the rationale for disemvoweling.

Not quite, it doesn’t give a rationale for why disemvoewlling might really achieve any desireable goal.

You sir are a liar and a coward.

All that remains is for you to send us a bill for conveying your crap to us.

Oh I get it… so we have to pay to get in, huh?

I know you aren’t asking for money, just an “initiation tax”, like big ol’ stinky puns come for free.. hah!

Well, grumble grumble.. I’ll see what I can come up with, grumble grumble.. just wanted an insecty name.. sacrificing puns.. and to who? grumble grumble..

We’re all just puns in your game of chess :p

“Shouldn’t 32 years of studying Scientology have made you a better rhetorician by now? Or is this one of those things like the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit not including a discerning taste in religious tchotchkes?”

#5. Just plain nasty.

“You likewise can’t talk about your your personal experiences, or what specific miracles Scientology has wrought for you.”

Do you think I’m going to talk about my personal experiences, my most private precious experiences and have you and the other guys pull them to pieces and make fun of them?

I’m perfectly willing to talk about these things. But not in this situation. Of course, you could do your job and moderate this forum so that it is a safe space for me to express the things that really matter, but you don’t seem to be able to do this, do you?

“You know, that’s not actually true. Sure, there’s an element of attempted control in any interaction in which someone lies to you; but there’s also an element of attempted control in just about any other interaction with other human beings. Furthermore, having someone lie to you doesn’t infallibly mean they’re trying to control you, unless you’re using “control” in such a broad sense that it’s practically useless.”

Now this is good. This I can handle. You disagree with something. Great. We could discuss this. This is not knee jerk reaction.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the time, Teresa, I just get the feeling that you are seething with hatred for LRH and Scientology. You have made up your mind that it’s all bad and that I am some kind of devil because I defend it.

I don’t think you are a bad person, but I think you are operating on false data. You only know what you have been given to know, and not all of that is true. I’d be willing to be that you have never actually taken a course in a Scientology organization.

You and other guys on this forum think you know about the material in the upper levels of Scientology. I’m stepping over the line here to say this, but you don’t. You don’t have a clue. You have been lied to by people who would try to control you. I’m not going to discuss this any further, as you say, I cannot. But I can just say this. It’s not what you think it is at all. Not even close.

You assume that I’m here for “damage control,” you write, “It’s increasingly clear that you’re operating under a set of rules.”

Teresa, you are confusing your own assumptions with reality.

Believe me, nobody sent me. I’m not doing this on the Church’s behalf. I’m not operating on a set of rules or guidelines. If I were, I could prove it to you, but it’s very hard to prove one is not doing something.

I’m sorry if I offended you with the “boys and girls” bit. I was patronizing. With all the “Yah boo sucks!” going on, I should have been a bit more saintly and just turned the other cheek. I am not perfect, after all. But then, I know that and admit it.

Do you?

John Davis

If you knew anything at all about Scientology you would know that it doesn’t have anything to do with belief.

“Sciens” = from the Latin “scire” = “knowing”
“logos” = from the Greek “logos” = “study”

Scientology is the study of knowing. It doesn’t require that you believe ANYTHING.

What is the difference between belief and knowledge?

Knowledge is direct perception. You know things you can perceive and/or experience directly. You believe things that people tell you.

L.Ron Hubbard “Look. See what you see, not what someone tells you that you see.”
L.Ron Hubbard

“What you observe is what you observe. Look at things and life and others directly, not through any cloud of prejudice, curtain of fear or the interpretation of another.”
L.Ron Hubbard

“The most flagrant lies can be punctured, the greatest pretenses can be exposed, the most delicate puzzles can be resolved and the most remarkable revelations can occur, simply by gently insisting that someone look.”
L.Ron Hubbard

John Davis

For those who are interested. Here is the exact quotation by L.Ron Hubbard about lies and control:

“They only way you can control a people is to lie to them. And you can write that down in your book – very big letters.

All right. Now, look. When you find an individual is lying to you, you know that the individual is trying to control you. You can put that down, one way or the other, this individual is trying to control you. That’s a mechanism of control. The individual is lying to you, so they’re trying to control you.”

Note the cunning, “minor” changes in the “quote” someone posted above and the actual Hubbard quote.

Above quote: “The only way you can control people …..”
Hubbard quote: “The only way you can control A people …..”
(Emphasis added)

There is a world of difference between “people” and “a people.”

Hubbard is NOT recommending a course of action, he is showing people how they have been duped and lied to so that they can be controlled.

Whoever removed the “a” from the original quotation was doing just this. He/she was lying to you in an attempt to control.

John Davis

I wonder though, is for example the pope’s believing the same as the meanest member of the church? Does he get a bye somehow?

Nobody gets a bye. As Garry Wills has observed, Catholic representations of the Last Judgement have always included bishops and popes in the groups of damned sinners.

If you’re going to compare two Catholics, you have to allow for the normal range of variability. It’s a big old religion, and it hardly ever throws anything away. There are tradition-minded Catholics who pray the hours and know all their prayers in Latin, very modern Catholics who aren’t sure what scapulars are for, leftist Catholics who quote Dorothy Day and Archbishop Romero, right-wingers who undoubtedly exist but I don’t think I’ve met any of them socially, and about a thousand other variations.

With that in mind, let’s say you’re comparing Pope B-16 to an elderly grandmother who’s never been more than twenty miles from her village in the Sierra Oriental. The Pope knows more history and theology. The grandmother gets to leave her workday dramas at the door when she enters a church. Very different lives. But the core beliefs, sacraments, cycles of readings, and underlying form of the service are the same.

You may think it’s crap, but it’s all the same basic kind of crap.

Compare that with the Scientologists. One of the reasons they initially reacted so violently to having their beliefs discussed online was because they’d been telling lower-echelon Scientologists that if they didn’t go through all the lower-level classes — we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of instruction and auditing — the secrets revealed at higher levels could make their brains explode. Yet here these guys were, revealing the secrets on the internet, and nobody’s head was exploding. Worse, the people who were reading their descriptions were laughing incredulously: clams? Volcanos? An evil alien mastermind named Xenu?

They went after the apostate Scientologists by claiming they were violating copyrights, but the real sin was giving away the trick.

The pointlessness of Scientology’s upper-level revelations is a genuine structural problem, because they’ve laid claim to major insider knowledge and power. It’s their big come-on. Given the claims they’ve made on behalf of their teachings, and the length of time they’ve been in business, by now we should have seen an appreciable number of Scientology’s upper-level adepts hit the Transcend and emerge as minor superheroes. This hasn’t happened. Advanced Scientology initiates get old, get sick, and die just like anyone else, and they aren’t obviously wiser or saner or happier in the meantime.

You can say that all religions promise more than they deliver, but grant this: most of them don’t promise results in this life. Scientology does promise worldly knowledge and power, and they don’t deliver. Moreover, their organization’s leadership demonstrably acts to obfuscate that specific point.

I could go on at length, but I need to finish up here. Is your question answered?

Q. Why can’t you just tell everyone to ignore the trolls?
A. Because they can’t. Everyone automatically reads the text that’s there. If it’s nasty or unpleasant, they get a dose of that. If there’s too much of it, they stop participating. There’s far more internet discourse lost to trollage and casual rudeness than is ever lost to moderators.

Also, disemvowelling doesn’t mess up the numbering, which is a big issue in lengthy threads where commenters are responding by number.

What do you know about Xenu?

♫ow-ow-ow♫

The subject of the original post is a child holding a sign with words on it and then being arrested for his efforts. That is the subject of the post. Not Scientology. Not religion. It’s about one’s right to use words to express opinions in public. It makes absolutely no difference what direction a forum takes in its discussions. I am free to post my ideas as they pertain to the subject matter of the article at the top of the page.

I am amazed at how little people seem to understand about language. I am also amazed at the hostility to controversy and language being expressed by the BoingBoing staffers. It just does not fit the image the site works so hard to maintain. I wrote a poem about language and how is scares people. I posted it because you people provided me with a ‘post’ button. Fair enough. You then removed the vowels and engaged me in a back and forth that was actually rather interesting.

But now you seem to have my little poem stuck between your teeth. Have you ever seen ‘The Vagina Monologues?’ Do you know who wrote it? Do you know why the playwright used the ‘highly charged’ words in the play? Go make your speech about highly charged words to some of our great poets and writers. See what they will tell you. If you worry about highly charged words then you will never write a single useful one of your own. There is nothing ‘highfalutin’ about it. Highly charged words are where our society exposes its hypocrisy and its deep-rooted fears. Does the slang word for the male organ offend and frighten you? Why should the one for the female?

And why should the kid’s use of the word ‘cult’ offend British police officers? That’s the question. But perhaps those British police officers part-timing for BoingBoing forums.

My calling the early followers of Jesus a ‘cult’ is therefore wrong; since he and his followers were Jews, their efforts formulated a sect, an offshoot of their original faith. While Jesus was alive it would have been a cult only if he had repudiated Judaism and started afresh, much as L. Ron Hubbard did.

So…Jesus founded a sect, Hubbard a cult.

Today Christianity, a Jewish heresy, is one of the world’s major religions; and $cientology is…a two-bit hustle.

Do you understand the questions “Do you believe in Xenu?” and “What do you know about Xenu?”? Because you haven’t answered them.

This may not be the only thing we’re interested in hearing from you AFTER you answer it, but until then, it really is.

Years after I’d moved away from the region, Patrick happened to mention that the things have a serious bite. I would never have known if he hadn’t told me.

I’m immune to poison ivy, too.

“I find creationism offensively stupid.”
But if people find it true, surely they have a right to believe it?

“I find the stoning to death of female rape victims for supposed “adultery” offensive.”
Of course! Or even if it were adultery, and the woman was just as responsible as the man, stoning either or both to death is more than offensive, it’s a repulsive anachronism.

“I find the billions of dollars worth of human effort that goes into absurd religious monuments offensive, when children are starving.”
Small fry indeed when compared with the incredible amounts of cash Bush, Cheney and crew are spending on the Iraq “war.” The Guardian newspaper estimated it at THREE TRILLION DOLLARS.

John Davis

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Dear Teresa
I wonder though, is for example the pope’s believing the same as the meanest member of the church? Does he get a bye somehow?