Hubbard calling earthlings. Come in earthlings. Hubbard calling earthlings. Come in earthlings...This is your revered, omnipotent, kind, non-fraudulent, spiritually rich (financially so as well) ever living master! I mean leader. Lord of MEST (Matter Energy and Space Time) L. RON (The Don) HUBBARD! Prophet, sage, humanitarian, immortal, He-Man, Dianetician, saviour of mankind, QUINTILLIONAIRE! And don't you forget it.
As you are all well aware I chose to leave my earthly body behind, having seen the truth of my own existence, and I have become a Supreme Being manifesting itself as an energised ball of dollar bills traversing the many properties of spacetime. I have been to infinity and beyond, and am now an omnipresent somatic thetan floating about 6 feet above your universe (it looks like a dog chasing its own tail by the way). And it has come to my attention - even at the delivery speed of your universe: light, news still takes a while to get here - that a French court has ruled that certain practices by the Church of Scientology have been classified as fraud under French law. Fraud? French law? Those are two things I always avoid. The French can go suck an onion, backwards, through a baguette. Who the hell do they think they are compared to ME! I eat Stephen Hawking's crackpot theories for breakfast! When I fart a newly christened child is given a life sentence in pain! I vacation at the most extreme place in the universe - the event horizon of a black hole, and I live in a singularity! It's a b#stard walking the dog.
Anyway, what is this talk of "law"? I AM the law. It's all part of this cancerous growth of SP (Suppressive People) - that horrid 2.5% of the population who have antisocial personalities, impeding our progress, sewing their malignant seeds of doubt, fear, rational-thinking and common sense, leaving the PTS (Potential Trouble Sources) to grow. If you know an SP, I don't care if it's your own mother, spouse or your newborn child, you must disconnect and sever all ties with them (it worked for me).
And if you're still being affected then you'll have to spend some time at our lovely health spa in Los Angeles, known affectionately as the dreaded Rehabilitation Project Force, where you'll be physically debilitated through the euphoria of unrelenting labour and intensely extreme deprivation. And if that therapeutic course of salvation doesn't work, then my friend, colleague and operating thetan David Miscavige will use physical violence. Anything to help you. That's the Scientology way. Even if it means ostracising you from your friends, family, ideals, beliefs, sanity and physical health - we're that dedicated. We'll do anything but go to jail.
Now as I understand it my dear religion - which is practically a science - is getting a bit of a bad rep down there on Earth. I'm trying to save you humanity, you ungrateful pagan rats. I knew my teachings were too advanced for the small-minded cluster-ridden anti-social personalities called mankind, who use such ludicrous terms as scientific proof, reason, logic, truth, independent thought and...I can barely say the word, I'll have to spit it out: psychiatry - a nefarious disgusting discipline. Our nemesis, dear auditors: N-E-M-E-S-I-S. As I say that word imagine the colossal cosmic fury of a supernova shrinking a million times the size of earth in less than a second, and you will gage a fraction of the level of hate I feel for that loose collection of deluded fantasies laughable called a "science".
But if they want a galactic war, then by Xenu's tyrannical nutbag they've got one. We will MASSACRE them! We will F#CK. THEM. UP! Those SP muthf#ckers would have to be ready to take on the might of our tens of millions of followers (just to clear this little matter up, this figure is gained from the potential followers of The Bridge To Total Freedom, whether they have come into contact with Dianetics yet or not - you see, simple mathematics.) who are world, nay, universe wide.
Like our man on terra firma, close friend, ally, most powerful celebrity in the world, and winner of the coveted and prestigious award that many actors lust after their whole careers. That's right, I'm talking about none other than the famous Freedom Medal of Valor and I'm talking about Tom Cruise - who kindly, modestly, based his performance in Tropic Thunder on moi, but obviously toned it down (thanks Tommy!) - our celebrated solo-auditor, the most dedicated Scientologist I know, OP VII (that's Operating Level 7 - keep up) and star of one of the most important films ever produced - that 10 minute Scientology video that was leaked on YouTube. A f#cking PR disaster.
I mean who doesn't want to live on a compound, barely sleeping, eating scraps and speaking in mind-numbingly incomprehensible acronym jargon. That's the price of spiritual freedom.
Oh, Dave, just one quick simple task, could you go over to the Treas Sec PAC and see the ASHO and AO and get the Dissem Secs from WUS. We need to get the EUS T&P BMO lists for SBC promo pronto. Tell Mary she needs the GI cycle for the stats on the SOB to get ready for the annual BS. Cheers ears.
Anyway, we all know the way to a person's enlightenment is through their wallet. And their bank account, their car, money they can borrow off friends, the remortgage on their house, the shirt on their back, the sink in their kitchen, and anything that isn't nailed down that can be sold quickly. Because Xenu is out there my would-be-auditors, poisoning you with engrams, and it's up to you to join the elite and stop him. Look at it as your sacred duty as a potential money river for the Church of Scientology. Scientology cannot live by donations alone. We need to take what is rightfully ours: what's yours.
I'll tell you what I'll do, if you sign up right now, I'll make sure you get a phone call from the man himself, TC, that's the honourable Mr Tom Cruise most powerful-celebrity-in-the-world to you. How about that? Before you know it you'll be moving ashtrays with your mind and travelling the majestic spiritual plans of Operating Thetan. But be careful, for they are extremely powerful and not for the uninitiated, or those with a low bank balance. The grave consequences of premature exposure to them could be catastrophic. You are likely to die of pneumonia.
So remember, you are an immortal alien spiritual being trapped in a physical body on planet Earth covered in clusters of BT (Body Thetans) which contain painful memories. With my moderately priced advanced course at $10,000 you can know the hallowed secrets and rid yourself of these regressive memories which will reincarnate as individuals. Now tell me, what's so unbelievable about that?
I remain
Lafayette the Magnificent
Ps. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is available in all good book stores and online.
is that true...
***************************
jack brosnan
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Added: 11 days ago by jackbrosnan
"Can't evolution be the answer to how and not why" a young, confused fourth-grader named Stan Marsh once asked. Ten simple words uttered by a crudely constructed cartoon character levelled a debate that has been shouted at me from both sides for as long as I can remember. On one hand, there were laughable drawings of 'crocaducks' and leaps of faith that the world was only as old as the Bible says. And on the other, a glaring failure to explain how the universe could be five billion years old without a single, plausible theory as to its beginnings. The Big Bang theory is as much a 'flying spaghetti monster' as any all-knowing and wholly unprovable deity.
Their mutual flaws aside, intelligent design and evolution seem to have little in common. Intelligent design is, simply put, a thinly veiled religious theory masquerading as science while evolution is little more than a naked emperor in that scholars and elite members of the 'intelligentsia' can dream up fantastical hypotheses about 'god' particles that are nothing more than a mile wide and an inch thick.
The alternative, of course, is intelligent design which quite scientifically states that God did it. Specifically, God did it in six days. Even God doesn't roll on Shabbas.
As is written in the original science journal from two thousand and some odd years ago, light was created on the first day, heaven and earth came next, then man, and later woman followed by a 'ta-da' and a bow. After that, man takes over and no more attention is paid to the matter of our origins for roughly eighteen hundred years.
For Stan Marsh's sake, let's briefly assume two things: that God did make the universe and that evolution, while proven, is actually the process by which God continues his ongoing work.
If these two things are true, what would be the benefit of including every detail of this painstaking process at the beginning of the Bible? Surely, the human authors wouldn't comprehend the gravity of what they were writing. That would be equivalent to expecting a toddler to run a marathon. Now toddlers do grow up and some do go on to run marathons, but it takes time and years of experience and even then most do not.
Clearly the main purpose of the Bible is to set a moral standard for society through stories of everyday hardships as lessons for how to live our lives. Cataloguing every last amoeba and missing link would only serve to confuse the greater message.
Say, for instance, you're living on your uncle's water farm where life is simple, if a little boring. Occasionally, you have to fend off a pack of Tusken raiders or repair a faulty droid. Mostly, though, you'd just like to go into Anchorhead with your buddies or shoot some womp rats. Sure, you have some lingering questions about your father and that weirdo in the hills, but your immediate concern is learning the family business.
When Ben Kenobi needs to convince Luke Skywalker to leave the farm and come with him to Alderaan, he doesn't go into unnecessary details about Padme or Palpatine. Shmi Skywalker never comes up. He simply tells Luke what he needs to know at the time: Darth Vader killed his father. It's not entirely true, but it'll do for now. Through young Luke's eyes, Darth Vader is to Anakin Skywalker as evolution is to the Bible.
Episodes one, two, and three of the Star Wars canon, bearing the trials of young Anakin from his humble beginnings to his inevitable turn to the dark side, have zero immediate value in convincing Luke to do anything or go anywhere after the princess's message is received. Ben Kenobi trusts that Luke will learn all of this on his own as he experiences life outside Tatooine. Inside the cave watching the princess plead for his help, the old Jedi does not have the luxury of a lengthy history lesson.
In Episode five, Yoda attempts to further enlighten an older, yet still immature Luke. Even after saving the princess, aiding the rebellion, and seeing Obi-Wan come back as an ethereal spirit, Luke does not fully understand his father's fall and the temptation he himself will have to overcome. Yoda warns the young Jedi not to face Darth Vader on Cloud City to no avail. In fact, it's not even until Luke stares past his own artificial hand at his father's severed, metal limb on the second Death Star that he fully realizes how Anakin had been deceived and what that implies for Luke's own path.
By seeing the twisted machine his father had become, Luke was able to avoid the same fate for himself. Evolution may be the road map for which we decide what direction to take in life in the short term and as a species in the long term. It is not necessarily the road itself nor even the means of travel.
This is ultimately what Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, are suggesting when Stan Marsh redefines the question evolution attempts to answer.
Now let's say the Bible is written not by human vessels of God but by men alone. Even with all of our technology and generations of discovery and invention, we still cannot explain with absolute certainty from where and whence we came. Two thousand years ago, a mythical super-being reaching down from above blinking all life into existence within a week would have sufficed as a prologue to a larger purpose. Sometimes, a few over-generalized words can establish all the context and setting you need. After all, the greatest modern story ever told opens with 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...'
i'm reading through your blog again, and just wanted to make one more comment that i overlooked. your argument is based on a false premise and at least one major logical fallacy. your false premise is that you seem think scientists just throw conjecture around and treat them as facts in the face of what you seem to perceive to be common sense. this is just not the case. hypothesis are created often, but for them to morph into theories, they have to have sufficient evidence supporting them. this takes the form of fulfilled predictions, replication of experiments, and so on. the age of the earth, dna, and transitional fossils were not discovered when darwin wrote his book. discovering them decades later (and in the case of fossils, continuing on into the present day) fulfilled some of the predictions that he made. the main logical fallacy that impacts the rest of your argument is the argument from ignorance. you are basically arguing that because we don't or maybe even can't know how the universe was formed, that god is an acceptable answer. it is not. "the big bang" is not a complete theory. it is a way to refer to that of which we are unsure, much in the same manner as "dark matter." science does not claim to have the answers to everything, only that they believe those answers to be found in nature.
Added: 43 days ago by mmorrisson
1. Atheism is just another belief system, in effect, it is a religion itself.
I do not support any football team in the English Premiership. But is my not supporting a team, in effect, supporting a team? Of course not. Atheism is not a belief system it is the denial of belief in faith based ideologies. Atheism is a starting point for me, cleaning away the obvious lies I was indoctrinated with as a child and allowing me to look at the world with as much rational thought that my meagre two or three pound brain can muster. Neither my personality nor my morality is defined by my disbelief in God any more than it is defined by my disbelief in Santa Claus.
2. How could something as perfect as an eye not be the work of a divine creator?
This is how.
3. Without a higher force to enforce it where do you get your morality from.
Do you own an item of clothing that is 50% cotton and 50% polyester? Do you own a razor? Do you like shellfish? Have you ever been disrespectful to your parents? Ate bacon? Bad news, at best you have to be banished from your community but more likely you are to be killed brutally and immediately. There are an enormous amount of rules from the various holy books that are ignored in our more enlightened times because they are quite clearly Bronze Age idiocy.
Thou shall not kill is always a good one if you believe that no-one had thought of it before Moses spoke to a combustible shrub. And what does it say about people who need an omnipotent sky wizard to threaten them with eternal damnation in order for them to not kill people? Are all religious people homicidal maniacs barely held in check by their faith? (Well actually...).
For example:
"Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead! So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths"
(2 Kings 2:23-24)."
Do you believe that the punishment for mocking a bald man should be you and 41 of your friends getting mauled by bears? Then yeah, the Bible is for you.
4. You cannot disprove God.
True, no one can disprove the existence of God. And rather wonderfully we don't have to. It should be up to the person who proposes a proposition to prove it. Otherwise we'd be up to our necks in invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, celestial teapots and my own contribution to this crowded ethereal collection of wonders that can't be disproved, the undetectable 10,000 fathom cup of tea and the neverending digestive biscuit. Glory be upon them.
What we can say is that all available evidence points to the existence of god/unicorns/spaghetti monsters being so extremely improbable that they should be allowed no more serious consideration than a man who claims to be a sponge cake.
5. There are no atheists in foxholes.
George Orwell. Rather a lot of Soviet soldiers during the Second World War. (But besides being incorrect would it really be such an indictment of atheism that we non-believers weren't thrilled to be involved in the brutal dehumanising business of war?).
6. Albert Einstein believed in God thus proving that science and religion are compatible.
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
Einstein used the word God frequently that's true, however he was not referring to a supernatural entity, he and other scientists used it as shorthand for the unknowable, the mysterious symphony of the universe or as a personification of the forces of nature.
Speaking about a religious God, here's what he had to say in a letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954:
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
7. Science has a history of getting things wrong, of changing its mind and has certain things that confound it, religion is constant.
I'm using this as an umbrella for all the "well people used to think the world was flat, Tyrannosaurus rex walked with their backbones vertical, the age of the earth went from 100,000 years to 4.5 billion in the last 200 years of scientific investigation, who is to say that the current theories aren't wrong too?"
Personally I don't consider this an argument for religion, quite the opposite. The great strength of science is that it is constantly trying to disprove itself. It does not treat its established theories as untouchable, never to be questioned, and as a result the human understanding of everything has increased at an amazing rate.
8. Human beings need transcendence to lead fulfilling lives, atheism doesn't provide that.
I can get by with just the awesome spectacle of nature, the neverending amount of human expression that manifests in art, literature, music and movies, my friends and family and the rather wonderful Natalie to keep myself content. (In fact, it seems that myself and my fellow atheists are more capable of experiencing the numinous than the faithful. The swirl of a galaxy, the changing of the seasons or the majestic scenery that is outside my door are all the more marvellous for knowing why they are the way they are.)
9. Hitler was an atheist!
Hitler was a heterosexual! Hitler was a vegetarian! I assume you believe that all vegetarians and front bum lovers are inherently predisposed to genocide too?
And, he was actually a Catholic. Every Nazi WW2 belt buckle was inscribed with 'Gott Mit Uns' or God With Us. Indeedy.
10. Pascal's Wager, where they say that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
If you believe in a god and there ends up being no God or heaven, you won't know the difference, but if you don't believe and there is one, you're f#cked.
The arguments sucks though, because there are so many different flavours of religion and so many rules that are impossible to obey, it's almost guaranteed you'll pick the wrong one and be condemned to a particularly gruesome eternity by an unforgiving God anyway. If the price of a billion to one shot of ending up in heaven means a lifetime of servile worship, or proud ignorance and immoral morality you can count me right out, thankyouverymuch.
In the spirit of being fair there are some very good arguments against atheism that remain unanswerable. You can check them out here.
an interesting argument for number one: [link deleted]
Added: 2 days ago by MonkeyKing
