Google Aids Scientology-Linked Group CCHR With Pay-Per-Click Ads 186
An anonymous reader writes "The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a Scientology front group, has received a 'grant from Google in the amount of $10,000 per month worth of Pay Per Click Advertising to be used in our Orange County anti-psych campaigns.' CCHR believes that ALL psychiatrists are evil. They believe that psychiatrists were behind the holocaust, and these shadow men were never brought to justice. CCHR also believes that psychiatrists were behind the 911 attacks. Scientologists believe that psychiatrists have always been evil, and their treachery goes back 75 million years when the psychiatrists assisted XENU in killing countless alien life forms. Thanks Google! We may be able to stop these evil Psychs once and for all!"
Re:Credible Source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, interesting. It's an unsourced statement from somebody's blog. But it has two of the Slashdot keywords - 'Google' and 'Scientology' so, as someone mentioned in the last thread about some other Slashdot keywords (Guns, 3D printing, drugs and The Feds), grab your popcorn and super size your Mountain Dew.
Re:The Harsh Light of Day (Score:1, Interesting)
getting people to 'believe' utter rubbish is part of the game plan
the people most likely to remove them from the con will disparage these beliefs
this will induce 'cognitive dissonance' in the person who will shrink away from the negative view of their beliefs and back into the arms of the con game
we see this all around us, and not just religions/cults, just look at the tortured souls who exhibit the same behavior with Obama derangement syndrome or global warming denial. The world behaves differently than their beliefs have led them to expect so they surround themselves with people who believe the same way and bark at anybody who does not think the same way
Re:Credible Source? (Score:1, Interesting)
Erm, it is precisely as newsworthy as the headline makes it seem. "Non-profit" does not mean ethical or even not-very-evil - there are some horrific non-profits in the US. If you give a blanket allowance to them - and it is, after all, for your own benefit as it makes you look like a "good corporate citizen" (heh) - you share the blame for the results of that promotion.
Re:Credible Source? (Score:3, Interesting)
One word: Dice and page views.
Re:The Harsh Light of Day (Score:5, Interesting)
beliefs, you say? I don't believe that anybody actually believes all that claptrap about Xenu.. L Ron Hubbard made it all up to bilk money out of desparate people, and plenty of other folk are happy to continue the premise and keep the money flowing.. but does anybody actually believe it? I doubt it..
I may be able to provide a few insights on this.
My parents were in Scientology in the 1970s and early 80s. My mom signed up because of her sister and brother, and my dad signed up to meet girls (he was successful, as my parents are still together, so I guess some good can come from the organization!).
There are a few things you have to realize about Scientology; some of it has already been said. First, the nutso stuff isn't presented early on. It only gets revealed at a certain point, after you have invested years and tens of thousands of dollars. During that time, you are constantly bombarded with Scientologist propaganda and vocabulary, which serves to drive you away from your non-Scientologist friends. When you do "go clear" and learn about Xenu and the other stuff, they have done their hardest to brainwash you into their way of thinking. These days, they even install Internet filters onto your computer to block anti-Scientology websites.
Leaving Scientology presents its own problems. When my parents left, they lost all their friends. Their Scientologist friends would no longer talk to them, and they had already alienated their non-Scientologist friends. People higher up in the organization face more obstacles, including personal and legal threats. (My parents were never high up--an ex-Scientologist told them what it was all about, and they left. The church later sued him for all he was worth, and he had to publicly apologize and retract his words.)
Some of my parents' Scientology friends eventually left the church as well, and they've stayed in touch. One couple in particular was high up in the organization (well past OT3x--I think 6 or maybe even 7). Even after all these years, they still have a hard time not believing in Scientology's teachings, even the Xenu stuff. To paraphrase, they say they have a hard time accepting that they spent so much of their lives believing in a lie. It's not a rational thing, but then, faith often asks people to be irrational. When you've spent so much time having one set of beliefs drilled into you, it's hard to just let it go.
Re:The Harsh Light of Day (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Harsh Light of Day (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm going to start this post by saying I think they're all crap; $cientology, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, any and all brands of Neo-Paganism; the whole lot of them.
But there are some pretty clear cultural differences between, say Hinduism and Christianity on one side, and Scientologists on the other. While the former religions may have started out something like the latter ones (though I suspect it was far more complex than some guy sitting down and writing a religion purely out of his imagination), there are literally thousands of years of cultural and theological development behind them. They have had significant a longstanding influences on the civilizations in which they evolved (or were adopted).
Scientology can be traced no further back than L Ron Hubbard telling some of his far more talented peers he planned to create a religion to prove how easy and profitable it was. Unlike, say, Hinduism, which is a historical evolution of the Proto-Indo-European religion, Scientology has no real antecdent, unless you count the self help movement and Hubbard's fetishistic dislike of psychiatry.
Even the early Christians took the Jewish Bible, plopped a second part on it and mixed in some Hellenic philosophy into it, and thus has antecedents dating back centuries.