German federal and state interior ministers declared the Church of Scientology unconstitutional on Friday, opening the door for a possible ban on the organization.
Germany does not recognize Scientology as a religion. seeing it as a cult masquerading as a church to make money.
Tip: Talk Left, who has quotes from one of their top officials, actor Tom Cruise, who bizarrely insists that Narconon (a Scientologist organization) is the only successful drug rehab program in the world.
Friends of mine who have been off drugs for decades after joining Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous will be startled to hear this. Ditto for those who did it through finding Jesus. It doesn’t matter how you get clean, just that you do it. And no one method has the universal answer either.
Now Germany will be under verbal and somewhat economic assault because of their disbelief in this.
I don’t know about Scientology, but many are off drugs for other reasons, and some through sheer will.
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was probably fourteen (’67). And as I was reading almost exclusively science fiction at the time, I read it as just that: science fiction. To this day I’ve thought it compared favorably to Huxley’s Brave New World noir. Quite frankly I found the characters to be… obnoxious, and wrote the whole pile of crap off as “it’ll never happenâ€Â. [Ahhh… the confidence we had in the world we were to create forty years ago]
So I have chuckled over the years as ill-informed wishful thinkers, charlatans, and outright thieves have turned it into some kind of political philosophy. Why, that’s as crazy as ill-informed wishful thinkers, charlatans, and outright thieves turning the scribblings of a science fiction writer (or any writer, for that matter) into a religion.
Oh, wait…
And then there’s The Bible…