And yet so many Christians buy into the crap thats been passed down from pre-christian pagan religions. the only thing is that Middle eastern religions don't get much study time here in the United States, so the Majority of "Christians" and other religious people fail to realize the similarities... Such as:

The Virgin Birth
Jesus Walking on Water
Jesus preforming miracles
Baptism
Death on a friday and Resurrection on a sunday
The Age of a Jesus
The "fact" that jesus was a "Carpenter"
The list goes on...

If you like to read Check out these books: They explain that christianity was basically stolen from early Middle Eastern Cults such as:

The Cult of Mithras (a Cult that was found in modern day Iran)
The Cult of Isis (Egypt)
The Cult of Apollo (Found in modern day Greece, Turkey, and what's known as the "fertile crescent")
And the list goes on... again

heres the book names:

Mack, Burton. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins. San Francisco, California: Harper Collins, 1994.

Sheehan, Thomas. The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity. New York, New York: Random House, 1986.

Teeple, Howard. How Did Christianity Really Begin: A Historical-Archaeological Approach. Evanston, Illinois: Religion and Ethics Institute, 1994.

lpfan

Very true.

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"Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy." -fortune cookie

Sounds like you made that up just now.

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"Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy." -fortune cookie

Here's a neat video that matches the south park description of scientology to L Ron Hubbards own words, it's worth a laugh:
Scientology Explained

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb discussing what's for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb willing to contest the majority decision!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie! while you're looking for a rock. ~ Wynn Catlin
"There are no innocent civilians." - Gerneral Curtis Lemay. A.K.A Bombs away Lemay

It didn't link me to a video. ????????

I thought about looking into scientology, but my wife said she wouldn't go for any of that jumping up on the couch shit.

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I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

ooops, should be working now

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb discussing what's for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb willing to contest the majority decision!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie! while you're looking for a rock. ~ Wynn Catlin
"There are no innocent civilians." - Gerneral Curtis Lemay. A.K.A Bombs away Lemay

So why are they so secretive? That guy CNN was interviewing really didn't want to talk about it. They suck at spreading their "word" which is not going to get them additional church members. I don't get it.

They want to slowly work you in. Cults don't tell you everything up front. At firs they just give you a Thetan reading with a e-meter.

I think what separates scientology from most other religions is that it's ultimatly about money. Supposedly information about the religion is revealed to you in a series of sessions over a period of time, and each session costs big money, apparently you need to spend something crazy like $400,000 to learn all the secrets of scientology. Also, like Partofme said, they probably assume that if they gave you all the information at the get go, it would most likely scare people away

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb discussing what's for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb willing to contest the majority decision!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie! while you're looking for a rock. ~ Wynn Catlin
"There are no innocent civilians." - Gerneral Curtis Lemay. A.K.A Bombs away Lemay

I enjoyed the drugs of the 70's , but evidently we didn't have anything near as potent as what L Ron had in his stash box.

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I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

I think that the hollywierd crowd may be looking to buy these "answers".....answers that most people cannot afford to learn. That way we won't be clogging up their "clearness".

I actually read about half of Dianetics in the early 80's . I finally decided that if I kept reading I was as whacked as L Ron.

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I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

Scientology seems to have two parts, the religion itself and Dianetics, which it derived from.

If you want a look at early Dianetics, the best source is the classic, "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" by Martin Gardner, which gives a view of it as the pseudo-science it started out as, beginning in the early 50's.

L. Ron Hubbard was considered one of the "Grand Old Men" of early modern SF. He had a special typewriter made up which had the word "the" on one key and used rolls of paper so he wouldn't have to be slowed down changing sheets

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Alizee Jacotay, the reason god invented hips

You could get two of every animal on the planet on a boat if it was DNA.

I have wondered for a long time if the ancients were cloning.

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I thought that Operation Snow White was their best trick. The largest single infiltration of United States government involving over 5000 agents. Operation Snow White at Wikipedia. Lets not forget the Scientology Naval Operation Sea Org. If you wanted access to a secret army, money and power then Scientology would be the place to be.

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Many of those pagan references are actually made up. Or superficially similiar. those gods were like humans - fighting amongst each other, dieing in battles, falling in love with one another. they are not at all like the Christian God. I recall one story that I read that was compared to jesus because he died and ressurected.. well he was killed in battle, and the sunsets were what occurred when he died, and the sun rises when he is ressurrected it was repeated daily.

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