Ask Lemmy

I went into one of their "churches" once to ask what they were about, and they literally would not tell me anything unless I either bought a book or stayed there to watch a video along with them.

Not a joke.

https://youtu.be/0FyKQ3HrmII

It's bad, really really bad. Have a talk with her immediately. It doesnt mean her partner is a bad person, it just means her partner is caught up in something bad.

Don't interject yourself in between, just expose her to all the news articles of people who have tried to get out, and the cult like behaviors.

A sci-fi author who considered himself somewhat of a renaissance man created what he thought was a novel approach to psychology which was not accepted by the scientific community. He then made it into a religion to get it going and get tax breaks. As head of the religion he eventually was surrounded by sycomphant yes men zealots and over time he convinced himself it was real as a religion and was like its prophet holy man and expanded on it with sci fi elements that were only revealed to the cult memebers as it was run like multi level marketing where you buy the secrets of yourself and the universe. He died and like in any corpo cult the top ones are the most psychotic.

The most concise way to think about it is to think Freemasonry combined with Star Trek.

To everyone saying that this religion is a cult:

All religions are cults, but Scientology is one of the worst ones.

It started as a fake psychiatry scam, but when Hubbard realized there were laws regulating medicine he switched it over to being a religion where there aren't any of those pesky regulations or ethical oversight.

It's a cult. The "science" they base their beliefs on is called "dianetics". You can look that up and get more straigh-up explanations than by looking up "scientology".

In short, they think humans are possessed by the dead souls of immortal aliens from millions of years ago, but we can't perceive this due to traumatic memories which must be "cleared" using "auditing".

Auditing sessions are recorded, and as they involve confessing your darkest secrets to "clear" the relevant "trauma", the recordings can then be used to blackmail people into staying with the cult.

It's a pay-to-level-up religion, except instead of caring for your health they abuse you. They actively reject mental healthcare based on real science, and consider psychiatrists equivalent to murderers.

They don't believe in the concept of crime, instead considering anything and everything that happens to someone their own fault.

Members are not allowed to report crimes perpetrated by other members to the actual police, instead they must be reported to the church. When scientologists rape other scientologists, the victim gets punished with more auditing.

The most infamous scientologist is likely Danny Masterson, who is finally in prison for assaulting likely dozens and dozens of female members.

They also don't tell their followers what their beliefs actually are, before they've paid so much money for it that the sunk cost fallacy has them too committed to pull out.

You can find more info online about their actual beliefs told by people who have left the cult, than they reveal even to their own followers. Its all deliberately confusing, because no-one would buy into their crazy bullshit otherwise.

Get your daughter out of this relationship asap. Or even better, have a serious talk with her about scientology, explore what it is and what it does to its members, together, so she can then consider the situation and navigate it for herself.

You need to visit https://www.xenu.net/ Aka operation clam bake. The evil these guys spread to the world is insane. And their sea org is slavery.

its a religion created by a sci-fi writer for monetary gain. he told everyone he was going to do so, and then did it.. but just as with every religion once there is a critical mass of idiots, people think it's "real".

A very very bad cult. They remove acquired individuals from their (rl) social network and brainwash and get them to give them all their money.

It's mindboggling to me someone does not know of them.

It's a sect. Their beliefs are completely ridiculous and don't really matter much.
What matters is that they aggressively recruit new members into their cult, preferably people who don't fit in well in the "real world".
They promise that all problems you may have (psychologically, health or financial) can be solved by learning how to "free your soul" from past trauma.
You learn this in extremely expensive internal workshops (the first ones are free, but to raise to higher levels, you need to pay more and more money). The money goes directly to the leaders of the cult.
The methods are presented as scientific, but they are all 100% based on one book written by the founder L. Ron Hubbard, who was a third rate sci-fi author.
Members are encouraged to cut contact to all non-members.
If you try to leave, you are put under extreme pressure, harassed, and even threatened.

South Park: What Scientologists Actually Believe

Beyond that, it's a cult / pyramid scheme.

Also, check out Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath documentary for a good insider's perspective.

It's not the documentary, but here's Leah explaining the scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM-FrI5Hqto

A cult.