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Originally Posted by willravel
The thing is that I do feel badly for laughing at something that people take so seriously, and even live their lives for. I realize that it's probably a fad for some people, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who take this to heart and believe it. I know that people joke about Christianity, and I can laugh along too, but not everyone is like that. When I read "...being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller...", sure a part of me laughed. Hard. Does the Catholic church recognise bishops on mars? But upon reflection, this was an infantile response.
Are there any scientologist people out there that want their say?
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The odd thing is that we tend to laugh at scientologists because they think people who lived in the sky came down to earth and made people do stuff.
but christians think a man who lives in the sky came down to earth and made people do stuff.
I guess what I'm driving at is, at what point does a cult/fringe religion become a legitimate religion, and vice versa.
If you look at it hard enough, there's not a whole lot of differences between the scientology story and the story about how the mormons got started. In scientology alien spirits came down to earth and infected people. Pretty far fetched.
But in mormonism, Joe Smith found some tablets written in a language he didnt' know. With the help of a convenient angel who told him what the tablets meant, and by looking into his hat for awhile (and also using the Urim and the Thummim, which are supposed to be Hebrew relics - - -what exactly some dude in the united states was doing with them, is never explained), Smith translated the tablets into the book of mormon. I mean, really, that's pretty bloody far fetched as well.
Yet mormonism is considered a legitimate and often respected religion while scientology is largely considered to be a gaggle of idiots playing make-believe.
It's curious how that happens.