"Not one religion teaches how to think for ones self and to question authority. There is always unquestioning obedience to its' leaders and the relinquishing of ones' individual identity to assimilate into a controllable collective group-mind."


This is a gross generalization and naive perspective. THere is a tradition in Catholicism that speaks to thinking for oneself and fighting the good fight of the poor, the powerless and the oppressed. THis is seen in many Latin AMerican parishes that take a political stand with the people against an oppressive regime.

An example are the Catholic Nuns of the order of Ursula who were raped and killed by Salvador's US back right wing govt in the 1990's. THe nuns were aiding the rebels by providing food and aid and as such were a target.

Other religious figures are MLK; Ghandi and the Buddhist monks that have been cut down in Burma recently. These acts of bravery would not be possible without the "religious" belief in Truth that allows a challenge to authority.

Buddhist monk Thich Nah Hahn behaved similarly when confronting oppression as a monk during the Vietnam war. His actions caused his exile but drew the attention of MLK who took the unpopular political stand of speaking out against the Vietnam war and gave one of his most eleoquent speeches at Riverside Church in NYC.

Religion is a socially sanctioned mental-illness. Why should any religion be tolerated?

No religion tolerates any other religion, and the same holds true even within any specific religion such as Christianity where the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland are adept at slaughtering each other, as are the Sunni and Shia Muslims of Iraq, and the Hindus and Muslims of India.

As a cultural artifact, religion has caused endless death and suffering with its' competition between monotheistic gods, Inquisitions, and repressive and reactionary Dark Age ideologies that encourage unfettered childbirth in poverty-stricken areas of the world and the replacement of scientific reasoning and analysis with mindless adherence to archaic tribe myths.

Not one religion teaches how to think for ones self and to question authority. There is always unquestioning obedience to its' leaders and the relinquishing of ones' individual identity to assimilate into a controllable collective group-mind.

Now if the watchtower people would just wake up!

As a Zen Buddhist I find I am extremely happy that Scientologist's have put us in that same category that the Jesuit's put us in during their inculcate Japan with missionaries era -they both don't bother with us as we are irredeemably un-savable!
HA!

TomCat gots th demons.

Anyone who says anything negative about Scientology the first thing the Scientologists do is find out if it has legs in court. They are litigious to the point of absurdity. They attempt to control their message and other people's messages against the church through litigious actions. I wouldn't care at all if they weren't wasting taxpayer's resources on their need to control people's opinions of their secret cult. If they didn't have such whacked out ideas and proclaim them to be the best they would find a lot less need to "control" their message and other's opinions about that message.

I certainly refer to persons with a zeal and passion for Jesus or Allah as indoctrinated. Have you not noticed the insanity such adherents have been promoting in recent decades? The mission of all religions is to do exactly that: indoctrinate!The etymology of religion is "to bind." Let's not celebrate our freedom of religion together, keep it in your home or sectarian meeting place.

Would we be calling him indoctrinated, if that zeal and passion was for Jesus or Allah?

It's fair to criticize Scientology for intolerance of dissenting views. It's also fair to criticize them for money-gouging. But they are by no means the only belief system that exhibits these characteristics. (And many mainstream religions exhibit much worse characteristics)

If Tom Cruise, and others, want to believe Scientology, God bless 'em. Let's celebrate our freedom of religion together. Vitriolic, Taliban-like verbal attacks against someone's religion isn't cool. Even if they're against a "weird" religion like Scientology.

Not so long ago, there were a bunch of weirdos in the Roman Empire living in caves, drawing fish symbols, and preaching about some Messiah guy.