Scientology

“ But it does place a burden on Scientologists should they act on that belief. Scientology would be subject to possible monetary loss if someone suffers severe psychological harm during auditing where that auditing is conducted under the threat of these sanctions. Likewise, Scientology may lose some staff members and upper level auditors who would not continue in the Church or continue to submit to the core practice of auditing except for their fears of retribution. ”

“ Thereafter Kember and Budlong were tried and found guilty on nine counts of burglary and each was sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment of two to six years. These appeals followed. The government's evidence at trial established that Kember and Budlong were two of the highest officials of Scientology. At the time of the burglaries charged, Kember was Guardian World-Wide, a position subordinate only to that of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and his wife Mary Sue Hubbard. ”

“ Accordingly, we hold the freedom of religion guaranties of the United States and California Constitutions do not immunize these practices from civil liability for any injuries they cause to “targets” such as Wollersheim.
C. “Auditing” Is a Constitutionally Protected Religious Practice Where It Is Conducted in a Noncoercive Environment But Is Not Protected Where Conducted Under a Threat of Economic, Psychological and Political Retribution as It Was Here Auditing is a process of one-on-one dialogue between a Scientology “auditor” and a Scientology student. ”

“ The Government does not recognize Scientology as a religion, viewing it instead as an economic enterprise; federal and state classification of Scientology as a potential threat to democratic order has led to employment and commercial discrimination against Scientologists in both the public and private sectors. ”

“ There was substantial evidence here from which the jury could have concluded Wollersheim was subjecting himself to auditing because of the coercive environment with which Scientology had surrounded him. To leave the Church or to cease auditing he had to run the risk he would become a target of “fair game,” face an enormous burden of “freeloader debt,” and even confront physical restraint. A religious practice which takes place in the context of this level of coercion has less religious value than one the recipient engages in voluntarily. ”

“ A person who stayed in the Church for five years could easily accumulate a “freeloader debt” of between $10,000 and $50,000. Wollersheim was familiar with the “freeloader debt” policy as well as the “fair game” policy. He also knew the Church was recording the courses and auditing sessions he was receiving at the discounted rate. The threat of facing that amount of debt represented a powerful economic sanction acting to coerce continued participation in auditing as the core religious practice of the Church of Scientology. ”

“ ROBB, Circuit Judge In August 1978 Kember, Budlong, and nine other officials or employees of the Church of Scientology were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The indictment, in twenty-eight counts, charged the defendants with conspiracy to burglarize government offices and steal government documents, 18 U.S.C. s 371, interception of oral communications, 18 U.S.C. s 2511 (1) (a) , theft of government documents, 18 U.S.C. s 641, burglary, 22 D.C.Code s 1801 (b) , and obstruction of justice, 18 U.S.C. s 1503. ”

“ The search warrants were based upon a 33-page sworn affidavit [FN15] which set forth the results of the government's investigation into charges that various officials of Scientology, including defendants, had conspired to steal-and had stolen-documents belonging to the federal government, and further had conspired to obstruct justice by covering up these crimes during a grand jury investigation of a burglary of the office of an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C.
FN12. Fifield Manor is located at 5930 West Franklin Ave., Hollywood, California. ”

“ The existing science is then one of imagination, the fanciful application of crude observations to the explanation of all phenomena. The verae causae are supernatural agencies—science and religion are one. Explanations of phenomena take the form of what we call myths, what the people of the time regard as true histories. There is no place for the conception of miracle; the supernatural agents are all-powerful, one thing is no harder than another, nothing is strange or inexplicable. There is a crude conception of the unity of God and the world. ”

“ With such a strong and iconoclastic hand has Science plied the axe in the domain of Faith. As every one knows, it has been exceedingly painful to many pious souls. It is charged that these reconstructions which modern inquiry have made and are making unsettle all the foundations of religion; that they strip off the bloom of mystery and sacredness from the flowers of faith and conduct to irreverence. Are they, in truth, to be deplored? ”

“ If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the belief in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete religion which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical purpose. ”

“ Beyond the frail premises of Spiritualism, above the grasp of creeds, the divine demonstration of Mind-healing Elevation. stands as a revealed and practical reality, imperious throughout all ages, — a system of Truth and Love, for every man to understand and practise.
For centuries — yea, always — natural science has been considered no part of any religion, Christianity Science as foreign to all religion. not excepted. Even now multitudes consider that what they call science has no proper connection with faith and piety. Mystery enshrouds the popular systems of religion. ”

“ The believers in what are ordinarily called miracles—those who accept the miraculous narratives which they are taught to think are essential elements of religious doctrine—are in the one category; the spirit-rappers, table-turners, and all the other devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in the other: and, if they disagree in most things they agree in this, namely, that they ascribe to science a dictum that is not scientific; and that they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted on science by a realistic argument which is equally unscientific. ”

“ As alchemy develops into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy, as blind faith changes into seeing face to face, as belief changes into knowledge, so the religion of miracles, the religion of a salvation by magic, the religion of the dogmatist, ripens into the religion of pure and ascertainable truth. ”

“ And everything that has happened and is happening in the world of psychological and philosophical research, in the world of historico-critical investigation into the past history and modalities of religion, and in the world of our own present religious experience and requirements, has but brought to light fresh facts, forces, and connections, in proof both of the right and irreplaceableness of the Mystical element in life and religion, and of the reality and constant presence of these its two dangers. ”

“ To every genuine Occultist and every student of science these doctrines are of immense importance; especially at the present time, when old religious systems are dying out from want of real vital strength, when science has as yet found no means of penetrating into the inner world of noumena, and when the strange manifestation taking place in seance-rooms are rejected by the majority of the men of science as absard superstitions, while they are regarded by the Spiritualists as indicative of the existence of disembodied Spirits! ”

“ Moreover, as originally elaborated and as recently restated, my argument was that in the discovery by Science that it could not do more than ascertain the order among phenomena, there was involved a tacit confession of impotence in presence of the Mystery of Things—a confession which brought Science into sympathy with Religion; and that in their joint recognition of an Unknowable Cause for all the effects constituting the knowable world. Religion and Science would reach a truth common to the two. ”

“ The recent efforts to make light of the work of reason--efforts to which, at the last lecture, I directed your attention, would tend, if taken by themselves, to result in basing religion upon an inarticulate occultism, upon a sort of psychical research that would regard whatever witch may peep and mutter, whatever mystic may be unable to tell what he means, whatever dumb cry of the soul may remain stubbornly inarticulate, as a more promising religious guide than is any form of serious and far-seeing devotion to the wider insight, which ought to survey life and to light our path. ”

“ It only needs the prism of this Science to divide the rays of Truth, and bring out the entire hues of Deity, which scholastic theology has hidden. The lens of Science magnifies the divine power to human sight; and we then see the supremacy of Spirit and the nothingness of matter. ”

“ Science rejoices to measure them by their admirable results, to detect their operations in their sensible effects. Why must the sacramental system revealed in the spiritual world be with equal justice refused its claim to an agency hardly more subtle? Philosophers admit the truth of observations in these occult natural agencies, and have no doubt of their real existence; why do they so contemptuously regard the result of our observations in those which are secret and spiritual, when our observations are as numerous, and their evidence as good? ”

“ When dogmas surviving from the primitive world are brought to behold themselves in the mirror held up by Science, they cry out, ‘That is not my face! You are caricaturing my beliefs!’ This recoil of Superstition from its own ugliness is the victory of Religion. ”

“ And all now that seems wanting to harmonize science with revelation is, on the one hand, the re-examination of the Scripture texts on which are based the principia from which deductions are made, and which we call theology; and, on the other hand, the rejection of indefensible statements which are at war with both science and consciousness, except in those matters which claim special supernatural agency, which we can neither prove nor disprove by reason ”

“ Far better is it to welcome the aid of science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work together in the steady evolution of religion and morality.
The revelations made by the sciences which most directly deal with the history of man all converge in the truth that during the earlier stages of this evolution moral and spiritual teachings must be inclosed in myth, legend, and parable. ”

“ Theology is defined as “the science which treats of God, His existence, character, government, and doctrines,” or the science of religion—a system of truth derived from the Scriptures. The caption of this article—The Devil a Theologian—jars our spiritual nerve centres. There are three things necessary to produce a theologian: experience, information, ability. From every possible view-point the Devil is preëminently qualified to formulate a system of doctrinal statements having all the earmarks of genuineness and credentials of authenticity. ”

“ In investigating phenomena, some of which it is claimed are connected with religion and others with occult forces, it is necessary to proceed without regard to the question of religion, in determining whether the facts can be accounted for upon natural principles, and paralleled by the application thereof. ”

“ The increase of knowledge in the nineteenth century has stripped every shred of supernaturalism from our conception of popular religions. The studies and inventions of modern 234 science have illuminated every corner of the universe; and our discovery of the origins has cleared the greatest stumbling-block from the path of philosophy and removed the last prop which sustained the fabric of organized superstition. The world will one day have to face the truth about religion ”

“ The most important lesson deducible from all the religious systems, commemorated in history, and noticed in this work, is, that all religious conceptions, whether in the shape of doctrine, precept, prophecy, prayer, religious devotion, or a belief in miracles, are a spontaneous outgrowth of the moral and religious elements of the human mind. And to assign them a higher origin is to ignore the developments of modern science, and insult the highest intelligence of the age. ”

“ No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses of Pantheism, Gnosticism, Spiritualism, or Infidelity, and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science; and I find the so-called power, will, or reason of the human mind, to be opposed to the Divine Mind, expressed through Science. In Truth, and its marvellous ability to reveal God, there is nothing supernatural, for this is its normal function. ”

“ For no science is complete which leaves out any department of nature, whether visible or invisible, and that religion which, depending solely on an assumed revelation, turns away from things and the laws which govern them is nothing but a delusion, a foe to progress, an obstacle in the way of man’s advancement toward happiness. Embracing both the scientific and the religious, Theosophy is a scientific religion and a religious science. ”

“ If, in giving the natural history of religion, showing whence and how it originates, what have been its developments, its course, its modifications, changes, decay, and death, by the influence of natural causes, science establishes principles which overthrow all religions, and render preposterous all claims of man to have received a supernatural revelation, to be in communion with the Invisible, or to be under any other providence than that of the fixed, invariable, and irresistible laws of nature, or purely physiological laws, whose fault is it? ”