Marbahlarbs

Penet.fi

In your statement on Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology, you state: "I'm still pissed about penet.fi" - Marbahlarbs[1] What about penet.fi are you "still pissed" about? --AI 23:01, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Nice use of quotes.

I'm upset about the loss of an anonymous remailer because of the Church wanting to go after someone who posted copyrighted information.

The IP battle on the Internet that is going on right now is doing more bad than good. I understand the Church's need to protect its property, but taking penet.fi to court was a step away from freedom. On the other hand, it did cause other anonymous remailers to wake up and change their systems so that no log and no evidence is left.

The litigious society we live in REALLY needs a complete facelift.

What I'm "pissed" about is the completely horrid PR job the Church does when it comes to critics. Once the Fishman documents had been leaked, the cat was out of the bag. Scientology's answer to the whole mess was a whole lot of lawsuits, and not say a word about Xenu.

What is the Church's official stance on Xenu? How/when were the OT documents stolen and by whom?

The Church's PR machine is transparent and ineffective. Bad things are covered up, creating conspiracies. I also don't like the push in the forced religion direction. The cross is an ugly symbol, completely designed to create the appearance of religion. Church documents are now called "scriptures". Sunday Service is held. The list goes on and on and on. Scientology is a religion because it teaches you about your soul and the nature of the physical and spiritual universe. That's it. Everything else makes the Church look cheap and fake.

It's not just anon.penet.fi that I'm mad about. It's Scientology versus the Internet. They've done so very much wrong in this fight. I expected better. The dreadful "personal pages" of Scientologists, created from forms filled out at some event. anon.penet.fi is a huge case of wrong target. It created a huge amount of bad PR and started the "war". Suing websites to take down copyrighted content happens every day. Using the DCMA to get Google to remove pages from its index? Cover of slashdot. All that did was make MORE people look at what the Church doesn't want them to see, and make the Church look really bad. /rant Marbahlarbs 01:27, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous remailers are a problem because they are a wide gaping door for abuse. --AI 09:44, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

So is encryption. Marbahlarbs 21:00, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Weren't you also pissed-off with freakout and snow white?--Mongreilf 11:53, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and say no. It's hard to pity the IRS. Marbahlarbs 17:46, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you pity Paulette Cooper?--Mongreilf 16:38, 14 September 2005 (UTC

Also no. Could the Church have handled it better? Probably. But let's go through the facts.

1. Paulette Cooper wrote a huge pack of lies about Scientology.

2. The Church of Scientology shows no mercy and takes no prisoners when attacked.

3. The parties on both sides of Scientology do a fantastic jobs at making themselves look like complete wackos.

I'm not going to say that Paulette Cooper was "asking for it", but I'm also not going to feel bad for her when her actions cause her problems.

This is different from penet.fi because Paulette Cooper was not an innocent bystander.

I'm a huge supporter of freedom of speech. However, free speech doesn't include copyright violation or libel.

Marbahlarbs

Thanks for the reply. Before I continue, I'd just like to say I'm not baiting you. I'm very interested that a Scientologist is working with quite a few anti-scientologists on the wiki-project. I admire this, in fact. Forgive me if I continue this conversation, but you offer answers I couldn't get from other users.

My own partly informed view about Scientology is similar to my views about the cult I used to be in: Rajneeshism. That is a community of a lot of good people, some very beneficial theraputic techniques and outlooks, but a corrupt, sometimes criminal, heirarchy. I couldn't stay in the cult, knowing about the higher up problems, but you have and I'm interested to know why. I am not a rabid anti-cultist by the way, as some ex-cult members are.

The problem I have with the PC case you admit yourself in point 2. No mercy, no prisoners. Saying this is the case, as you do, does not make it acceptable. And of point 3, it isn't a case of "scientology making themselves look like complete wackos". It's them actually being "complete wackos", if by "complete wackos" we mean criminals/conspirators, etc.

The central problem is that if someone lies about you either take in on the chin or sue for libel, use the PR machine to counter it, or have some other sane and legal response to it. Don't conspire to get them locked up/institutionalized by criminal means. If you do that then it's not a case of making yourself look bad, it's actually being bad.

Anyway, thanks again, for your time--Mongreilf 15:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying that whatever happened to Paulette Cooper was acceptable. I'd never heard of her until you brought her up. I'm just saying that I don't pity her for the choices she made.

If you look at the history of any religion, you'll find a lot of really bad decisions made by the people who represent those religions at the top levels. That doesn't make the religion bad, it just means there needs to be change.

There's a real difference between Scientology and the Church of Scientology. Scientology is a collection of works by L. Ron Hubbard. The Church of Scientology is the organization that distributes and safeguards those works. A good analogy would be to say that Scientology is like the Bible, and the Church is like the Catholic Church before Martin Luther. If you like Christianity and like the Bible, you go to Catholic church, even if you don't agree with the priest taking a vow of celibacy, or the Inquisition.

There isn't going to be a Lutheran church for Scientology. Copyrights and Trademarks will keep Hubbard's writings out of public domain. However, I see a change happening some time in the future. Someone at the Church is going to be able to bridge the gap between the Church of the last few decades, and the rest of the world.

I'm still a Scientologist because it's helped me a lot. There's a brilliant collection of writings, and an entire way of looking at people and the Universe that isn't even touched on anywhere else. I'll support the known works of Scientology to great extremes. It's worth learning, and worth preserving. I can't say anything about Xenu, because it's not real to me. It's certainly not knowledge that helps me in any way, so I don't pay attention to it.

I've pretty much given up on editing the wiki-project. NPOV has made my editing changes quite a bit more conservative than they should have been. Subtle wording and "critics claims" make things that are technically true look bad.

• Critics claim that L. Ron Hubbard was an open supporter of bestiality. The Church has never publicly denied that Hubbard sexually molested cats.

With the major Scientology critics numbering in the dozens, it doesn't take too many critics to form a majority viewpoint.

Also, researching the court cases and documents to find what is really true is completely exhausting. The Church's information about its critics wild claims is virtually nonexistent. Their viewpoint is that negativity isn't worth answering. This makes it very hard to find facts. For example, this paragraph from Scientology

In Australia, critics point to a certain passage in a 1982 ruling by the High Court of Australia. They claim that in the course of litigation between the Church of Scientology and the provincial government of Victoria, that even though the government of Victoria found that the Church of Scientology practiced charlatanism (see: Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner Of Pay-roll Tax[2]), still, due to certain legal technicalities, the government of Victoria could not deny the Church of Scientology the right to operate in Victoria under the legal status of 'religion'

I actually read the entire court document mentioned. That document, by the way, is the most thorough and insightful investigation into Scientolgy that I have ever read. It covers the legal definition of what is and is not a religion, and picks apart Scientology's beliefs and practices. In the end, they determine that Scientologists practice Scientology as a religion, and the topics covered by Scientology are religious in nature. They judges expressed that they would protect the People's freedom of religion, despite how the Church acts and what shows it puts on. Charlatanism is hardly mentioned, somewhere near the middle and nowhere near their final ruling.

Anyway, two final points.

1. If you're looking into what Scientology has to offer, take an objective view, read something (I recommend the Scientology Handbook,) ignore all the critics (and the Church) and decide about everything you read: "Can I use this?"

If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. If the answer is yes, then by all means use it and be better off.

2. Read the [3] document mentioned above. It's seriously fascinating. I'd never thought so deeply about religion in general. Marbahlarbs Marbahlarbs 05:47, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Arnie Lerma's copyright violation

Hi Marbahlarbs, thank you for supporting my addition in Fishman affidavit of the fact that Arnie Lerma was convicted of copyright violation. --AI 02:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

No problem. It was relevant and factual. I'm getting out of editing Scientology-related articles. Reading them is too exhausting. --Marbahlarbs 05:46, 15 September 2005 (UTC) Nice.

Block

This IP has been blocked from editing for a short period of time due to repeated insertion of rude remarks into a talk page ([4], [5]) and personal attacks on another editor ([6]).

In a few minutes I will have opened a thread on WP:AN/I for further consultation. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

The discussion thread is [[7]]. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:04, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject updates

• I have done some updating to the WP:SCN, added some new articles, added a "to do" list to the top of the project, and fixed up some categories and assessment stuff. I suggest we should all pick one article at a time, or at most two, to work on bringing up to Featured Article status. You could give input on the project's talk page... Smee 21:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC).
  • Also, a Userbox for project members, {{User Scientology project}} Smee 21:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

Smile

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Proposed deletion of Jesse Prince

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Nomination of Jesse Prince for deletion

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