Objections to Scientology are not (for the most part) based on their religious beliefs, but their practices and behaviors. They have a history of being aggressively litigious, similar to patent trolls[1], and have used frivolous lawsuits to harass critics into giving up the fight. There are also some indications that they're emotionally abusive to their members, and encourage them to cut off all contact to non-Scientologist friends and family. These allegations are difficult to substantiate, in part because the Church is so aggressive about quelling criticism.

In general, the Intarwebs regard Scientology as an organization that invests substantial financial and legal resources in limiting free speech on the internet. This is generally unpopular, regardless of who is doing it. The Church's status as a religious institution is largely immaterial to this perception.

[1] Very similar, actually. They claim copyright on their religious writings, and use that to sue people who release them.

There is a free book online by an ex member called A Piece of Blue Sky. Once I started reading I couldn't stop.. it a very compelling story and it covers a lot of history in the broader sense (not limited to this specific member's experience). Definitely worth the read if this is something you are interested in:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/

Thanks for posting the link... that was a fascinating and illuminating link. Bookmarked in case someone else needs it later. +1

> There are also some indications that they're emotionally abusive to their members, and encourage them to cut off all contact to non-Scientologist friends and family. These allegations are difficult to substantiate, in part because the Church is so aggressive about quelling criticism.

curious, why aren't the testimonials of ex-members adequate substantiation ? While it was extremely difficult to get access to information critical to Scientology prior to the late 1990s, there is a tremendous amount of critical information and ex-member testimonials available today.

http://www.xenu.net/, http://www.freedomofmind.com/Info/infoDet.php?id=230, are good places to start.

Scientology is not regarded a religion everywhere. In Germany it is considered a cult instead and it is even on a government watchlist. As students we were warned about it in school.

EDIT: I was just looking at Scientology's (English) Wikipedia page and came across this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scientology_warning_leafle... . I though it would illustrate my point. Those are three government-issued leaflets with the title "Protect Our Democracy". One is on organized crime, one on Islamic terrorism and one on Scientology.

In America here, it's a state recognized religion with a Church of their own. Hell, Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. That cult is a money hoarding organization. I wish this hack attack happened in America.

Name a major religion which is not (or does not contain) money hoarding organizations

> In America here, it's a state recognized religion with a Church of their own.

So what? There a lots of state recognized religions, and it doesn't mean much. (The state of CA recognizes weddings performed by folks who bought their "ministership" from an advert in Rolling Stone.)

> Hell, Tom Cruise is a Scientologist.

Again - so what?

The point is that it is regarded as a religion here whether Germany likes it or not.

The point is still moot if we're talking about Austria (just like the reference of Germany was useless so is the US one).

To add some real data: Over there it seems that this organization is tax-exempt, but not recognized as a church or religion. [1, found as reference on Wikipedia]:

  Sensitivity to and fears of Scientology in the country remains an issue. 
  The Church of Scientology reported problems obtaining credit cards, 
  and individual Scientologists experienced discrimination in hiring.
  However, Scientology leaders also noted that the Vienna Provincial 
  Tax Authority granted them tax-exempt, non-profit status. 

Well.. Now this is a nice US centric view here that probably _is_ based on this stuff being a religion in the US after all. Scientology members being discriminated, a paragraph between a reports about Muslims and Jews. Hilarious.

1: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Austria http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27825.htm

> The point is that it is regarded as a religion here whether Germany likes it or not.

Again, so what? The French like Jerry Lewis. The Germans like David Hasselhoff.

There are lots of facts, but few are actually "points".

Rescinding previous comment and dropping out of this argument. I don't have a dog in this hunt nor do I care to.

>Or are you operating on hearsay?

Oh for pete's sake. Go read up on Lisa McPherson and Operation Snow White. There are plenty of legitimate and documented reasons to hate Scientology, not one of which is because they hoard money.

Aside: Let your comments stand and take your knocks. Deleting a comment after it's been responded to is weak.

"Cult" just means "a religion I don't like".

I'm not going to break down the semantics, but I'd say there's a bit of a gap between, say, The Methodist Church and the Branch Davidians or the Peoples Temple.

I'm not familiar with either, but is it a bit like the difference between early adopters and the casual users?

No. Not at all. I suggest looking up the groups on Wikipedia to get a feel for what I'm talking about.

Usually people distinguish a cult from a mainstream religion based on the level of control that the movement exerts over its members.

Don't mainstream religions exert a lot of control over some of their members too? I'm not very comfortable with fundamentalists of any religion...

I'm not defending Scientology, but the line between "cult" and "religion" seems a bit blurry.

Most categories in sociology are blurry, because human beings are blurry things. This may help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_classifications_of...

That's very interesting, thanks. It seems to treat the classifications as a timeline of a religion (from birth/cult to establishment/religion), and not by control or whatnot...

If you click through to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_religious_movement#Charisma... , it goes into some detail that doesn't explicitly talk about control, but if you're familiar with summaries of psychology literature, it's stated pretty baldly.

You can also think of it in terms of 1 Corinthians 13:11. Maturity, and the turning of generations, does something to an organization. Christianity began as an apocalypse cult, after all, promising hope of the afterlife for the downtrodden; it wasn't until Constantine was converted that it started to learn how to be a state religion; and not until Martin Luther and Henry VII did it learn to be just a religion. (The exile into Babylon and the dissolution of the Caliphate had similar effects on Judaism and Islam.)

In other words, they were forced to let go of their control simply because of historical circumstance. Straight through World War 2, the Vatican continued to exert a very strong influence on European nations... because the Pope was everyone's ambassador, even if he could no longer threaten excommunication with meaningful clout.

Scientology has not had these experiences. It is young and not officially descended from any known religion, so "sect" would be an incorrect term except in cases where you consider the entire whole of Judaism or Christianity a sect. It is dominated by personality cults, from the original of L. Ron Hubbard to its scheme of hooking celebrities to be spokespersons.

It's absolutely a grey line. Keep in mind that branches of mainstream religions sometimes go off in cultish directions -- often focusing on a charismatic figure.

Religions exert as much control as they can. Christianity used to be much more powerful in the West and controlled everything, as Islam does in some countries. Churches don't give up control willingly, it's taken away from them by external factors..

As someone who is building a religion in his spare time, I must say that I don't see something intrinsic to religion which says "they must exert as much control as they can" and "they don't give up control willingly," just as I don't see something intrinsic to government which says "they must form sprawling bureaucracies."

With that said, there may be a feedback-theory reason why these things often connect. In the case of governments, for example, bureaucracy allows you to marshal much vaster quantities of resources, especially for your military: so as we look for a positive feedback loop, the most successful governments were probably bureaucracies. (Yes, I would also classify evolution by natural selection as a feedback theory.)

It may therefore be the case that there is a competition for a limited believership and the religions which control their believers most tend to grow themselves in this competition. If you want an interesting perspective on what Anonymous is doing, it is trying to increase the cost of religious control, to the point where the feedback goes from positive to negative. If each exertion of control (however that is defined) tends to lose believers rather than gain them, then religions will either have to adapt to a policy of less-control, or else will naturally die out due to negative feedback.

And whether they use that control to induce their members to perform illegal acts or provide personally-harmfully large amounts of money to the church.

Not to mention the fact that Scientology (the study of science?) is chock full of ridiculOus BS. Hell, at least some of the mainstream religions have a bit of history to back them up (i.e., Jesus did actually exist, whether or not you believe him to be the son of God).

They're both ridiculous to non-believers. We're just more used to one than the other. I'm sure if Scientology were to be a mainstream thing for a couple of hundreds of years, people would be willing to talk about Hubbard's space DC10s the same way we talk about the virgin birth or the splitting of the sea, with a sort of benign incredulity at what kinds of silly magics people believe in.

Absolutely not. I don't really like any religions, but cult is still a special distinction.

Fear and mistrust of Scientology has nothing to do with their beliefs. They are a secretive organization that seeks to protect itself at the expense of everyone else. They are the perpetrators of the largest infiltration of the US government [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White]. And while their actions today may be legal they are nonetheless still dangerous.

I would day almost every religion has dirty secrets, because with power over people comes evil actions. Scientology in particular has a bad reputation of engaging in particularly dubious activity though, as even a cursory inspection of their history will reveal.

Oh, well then, to hell with the rule of law.

Rule of law? That's a quaint pre-2001 POV.

What is legal and what is ethical do not have as much overlap as you appear to think.

The ethical approach is subversion of the law less often than the internet appears to think.

I am merely to sum of all the politics of those on the internet far less often than you appear to think.

Very yes. It troubles me more than a tiny bit.

What does this have to do with HN? We'd flag off posts about Scientology as irrelevant. So basically, this is at the top of the page as a celebration of hacking organizations nerds don't like. It's how we nerds do bullying.

And I think Scientology is probably a criminal organization.

I have to agree. This seems to fall outside of the general purview of HN, even at it's broadest.

And I don't have any evidence that Scientology is "evil" nor do I have any interest in pursuing such knowledge.

Here's a writeup from an ex-member, who was pretty high up in the org at one point and saw most of what can be seen, describing his experiences since having left. Sure, the whole organisation is unlikely to be "evil", but most religious sects gave up this stuff a while ago. Try to imagine any vaguely normal religion doing this. In a time when people give Google or Microsoft a hard time for being evil, this redefines the term.

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showwiki.php?title=Gerry+Armstron...