Founding Church of Scientology in Washington DC. Photo: Ben Schumin (CC)

There once was a time when the media were scared to report on the madness that is the “Church” of Scientology for fear of costly litigation. No more. While there have been occasional reports over the years, last year ABC News went hard after Scientology leader David Miscavige. Now the New York Times runs a front page story suggesting that the “Church” is losing members fast and may have as few as 25,000 members in the United States, versus the millions claimed by the organization:

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

“Why did we work so hard for this organization,” Ms. Collbran said, “and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn’t understand.”

They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades…

[continues in the New York Times]

(Left) Ria Ramkissoon and her son Javon Thompson, (top right) Queen Antoinette and (bottom right) Trevia Williams.

For more than a week, Ria Ramkissoon watched passively as her one-year-old son wasted away, denied food and water because the older woman she lived with said it was God’s will. Javon Thompson was possessed by an evil spirit, Ramkissoon was told, because he didn’t say “Amen” during a mealtime prayer. Javon didn’t talk much, given his age, but he had said “Amen” before, Ramkissoon testified in a US court in Baltimore.

On the day Javon died, Ramkissoon was told to “nurture him back to life”. She mashed up some carrots and tried to feed the boy, but he was no longer able to swallow. Ramkissoon put her hands on his chest to confirm that his heart had stopped beating.

Ramkissoon and several other people knelt down and prayed that he would rise from the dead. For weeks afterward, Ramkissoon spent much of her time in a room with her son’s emaciated body — talking to him, dancing, even giving him water. She thought she could bring him back.

Ramkissoon told the tale of her son’s excruciating death from the witness stand on Wednesday, at the trial of the woman she says told her not to feed the boy. Queen Antoinette was the leader of a small religious cult, according to police and prosecutors, and she faces murder charges alongside her daughter, Trevia Williams, and another follower, Marcus A. Cobbs.

Read More: AP via the Sydney Morning Herald

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Thought about becoming an end-of-the-world prophet? It’s not the make-or-break enterprise you might think, as much as your gut feeling may be that mobs of angry parishioners await the fortune-teller who talks them into making room on the calendar for the final trumpets, the Rapture, World War III, the return of Jesus, global computer meltdowns, or post-game shows on life hosted by great messiahs stepping out of the pages of history — only for the poor dupes to find themselves paying bills the next week.

Time and again, it hasn’t worked that way. The beauty of blown prophecies is that failure is the beginning of success. That is, if you adopt the techniques of history’s most successful faulty prophets. Through time-tested rebranding methods, they’ve reinvented failure as proof that they were righter than anyone could have imagined.

The very glue holding your congregation together can be a mistaken prediction and what you’ve invested in it. Thousands of apostles of Shaini Goodwin of Tacoma, Washington, known to admirers as the “Dove of Oneness” and to the Tacoma News Tribune as a “cybercult queen,” hold out for a Judgment Day that will justify all of her bad guesses.

Every year is supposed to be the year it happens: the revelation of NESARA (the National Economic Security and Reformation Act), a secret bill purportedly signed by President Bill Clinton. We are just a hair’s breadth away. When the gag order is lifted, NESARA will free the world from debt, stop the Iraq War, and — according to one Utah group of adherents, filmed in the documentary Waiting for NESARA — unmask Republicans as space aliens masquerading as fiscal conservatives.

For other bad prophets, it turns out it’s the thought that counts. Maybe the seer was on the right track but just jumped the gun, the sense is, and interest heightens in the original questions he raised. Just consider theologian William Miller. His followers believed his prediction — based on calculations he derived from the Book of Daniel — that Jesus would return between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. This misfire was soon followed by the Great Disappointment of 1844, when a crowd of 100,000 people, many of them sober, respectable reformers and abolitionists, assembled to see the end-times that Samuel S. Snow, a Millerite (that is, a follower of Miller), had marked down for the 22nd of October. Supposedly using a more precise version of Miller’s formula, Snow had worked out the exact day, and after some initial hesitancy Miller enthusiastically endorsed this specific prediction. As the clock ticked and everyone waited awkwardly for Christ, someone pointed out that the Holy Land had a seven-hour time difference. The sting of failure was worse for all the mockery they took from the townspeople: “What, not gone up yet?”

No, they were still here. For now. And yet Miller’s bad guesses, far from leaving a foul taste in everyone’s mouth, made them newly anxious about the great return they’d prepared themselves for. It even inspired the creation of new denominations, including the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that has since slated Jesus’ return for 1874, 1914, 1918, 1941, 1954, and 1975. And Miller awakened the fascination with the Rapture that today drives sales of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind books, which sell in the tens of millions, several years after the year 2000 failed to deliver on the millennial holocaust of non-Christians wished for by many Americans.

How can your sect rebound from failed prophecy in better shape than ever? According to one school of science, the answer starts with understanding the principle of cognitive dissonance.

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Read the entire article and many others in the Disinformation anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick, available on Amazon and in all good bookstores.

About The Author: John Gorenfeld is a writer living in San Francisco. His work has appeared on Salon.com, the Guardian and other publications, and he has appeared on NPR, ABC News and CSPAN. In 2004 Gorenfeld made national news after exposing a secret Capitol Hill party for a cult leader, and then wrote a book about it.

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Religion is an extremely touchy topic. Church members often become angry if anyone questions their supernatural dogmas. (Bertrand Russell said this is because they subconsciously sense that their beliefs are irrational.) So I try to avoid confrontations that can hurt feelings. Nearly everyone wants to be courteous.

But sometimes disputes can’t be avoided. If you think the spirit realm is imaginary, and if honesty makes you say so, you may find yourself under attack. It has happened to many doubters: Thomas Jefferson was called a “howling atheist.” Leo Tolstoy was labeled an “impious infidel.”

Well, if you wind up in a debate, my advice is: Try to be polite. Don’t let tempers flare, if you can help it. Appeal to your accuser’s intelligence.

I’ve hatched some questions you may find useful. They’re designed to show that church members, even the most ardent worshipers, are skeptics, too — because they doubt every magical system except their own. If a churchman berates you, perhaps you could reply like this:

You’re an unbeliever, just like me. You doubt many sacred dogmas. Let me show you:

• Millions of Hindus pray over statues of Shiva’s penis. Do you think there’s an invisible Shiva who wants his penis prayed over — or are you a skeptic?

• Mormons say that Jesus came to America after his resurrection. Do you agree — or are you a doubter?

• Santería worshipers sacrifice dogs, goats, chickens, etc., and toss their bodies into waterways. Do you think Santería gods want animals killed — or are you skeptical?

• Muslim suicide bombers who blow themselves up are taught that “martyrs” instantly go to a paradise full of lovely female houri nymphs. Do you think the bombers now are in heaven with houri — or are you a doubter?

• Unification Church members think that Jesus visited Rev. Sun Myung Moon and told him to convert all people as “Moonies.” Do you believe this sacred tenet of the Unification Church?

• Jehovah’s Witnesses say that, any day now, exactly 144,000 of them will be physically lifted to heaven, where they will reign with Jesus Christ. Do you believe this solemn teaching of their church?

• Aztecs skinned maidens and cut out human hearts for a feathered serpent-god. What’s your stand on invisible, feathered serpents? Aha! — just as I suspected, you don’t believe.

• Catholics are taught that the Communion wafer and wine magically become the actual, literal body and blood of Jesus during chants and bell-ringing. Do you believe in the “real presence” — or are you a disbeliever?

• Faith-healer Ernest Angley says he has the power, described in the Bible, to “discern spirits,” which enables him to see demons inside sick people and to see angels hovering at his revivals. Do you believe this religious assertion?

• The Bible says that people who work on the Sabbath must be killed: “Whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 31:15). Should we execute Sunday-workers — or do you doubt this scripture?

• At a golden temple in West Virginia, saffron-robed worshipers think they’ll become one with Lord Krishna if they chant “Hare Krishna” enough. Do you agree — or do you doubt it?

• Members of the Heaven’s Gate commune said they could “shed their containers” (i.e., their bodies) and be transported to a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Do you think they’re now on that UFO — or are you a skeptic?

• During the witch hunts, inquisitor priests tortured thousands of women into confessing that they blighted crops, had sex with Satan, etc. — then executed them for it. Do you think the Church was right to enforce the Bible’s command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) — or do you doubt this scripture?

• Members of Spiritualist churches say they talk with the dead during their worship services. Do you think they actually communicate with spirits of deceased people?

• Millions of American Pentecostals spout “the unknown tongue,” a spontaneous outpouring of sounds. They say it’s the Holy Ghost, the third part of the Trinity, speaking through them. Do you believe this sacred tenet of many Americans?

• Scientologists say each human has something akin to a soul, which is a “Thetan” that came from another planet. Do you believe their doctrine — or doubt it?

• Ancient Greeks thought a multitude of gods lived on Mt. Olympus — and some of today’s New Agers think invisible Lemurians live inside Mt. Shasta. What’s your position on mountain gods — belief or disbelief?

• In the mountains of West Virginia, some people obey Christ’s farewell command that true believers “shall take up serpents” (Mark 16:18). They pick up rattlesnakes at church services. Do you believe this scripture, or not?

• India’s Thugs thought the many-armed goddess Kali wanted them to strangle human sacrifices. Do you think there’s an invisible goddess who wants people strangled — or are you a disbeliever?

• Tibet’s Buddhists say that when an old Lama dies, his spirit enters a baby boy who’s just being born somewhere. So they remain leaderless for a dozen years or more, then they find a boy who seems to have knowledge of the old Lama’s private life, and they anoint the boy as the new Lama (actually the old Lama in a new body). Do you think that dying Lamas fly into new babies, or not?

• In China in the mid-1800s, a Christian convert said God appeared to him, told him he was Jesus’ younger brother, and commanded him to “destroy demons.” He raised an army of believers who waged the Taiping Rebellion that killed as many as 20 million people. Do you think he was Christ’s brother — or do you doubt it?

Etc., etc. You get the picture.

I’ll bet there isn’t a church member anywhere who doesn’t think that all those supernatural beliefs are goofy — except for the one he believes.

You see, by going through a laundry list of theologies, I think you can establish that the average Christian doubts 99 percent of the world’s holy dogmas. But the 1 percent he believes is really no different than the rest. It’s a system of miraculous claims without any reliable evidence to support it.

So, if we can show people that some sacred “truths” are nutty, maybe subconscious logic will seep through, and they’ll realize that if some magical beliefs are irrational, all may be.

This progression is rather like a scene in the poignant Peter de Vries novel The Blood of the Lamb. A gushy woman compliments a Jew because “your people” reduced the many gods of polytheism to just one god. The man dourly replies: “Which is just a step from the truth.”

Meanwhile, it’s encouraging to realize that almost everyone in the world is a skeptic — at least about other people’s religion.

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Read this article and many others in the Disinformation anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick, available on Amazon and in all good bookstores.

About The Author — James A. Haught, in his own words: “I’m an old newspaper editor who has spent half a century chronicling social struggles and cultural tides. Personally, I’ve waged a long crusade for rational, scientific thinking as an antidote for harmful supernaturalism. I’ve written five books and many magazine articles against religion, astrology, mysticism, psychic claims, cults, ‘New Agery,’ fundamentalism, and other magical beliefs.”

Fight them on the beaches if you will. But the descendants of Sir Winston Churchill have decided that a more effective way to prevent the Church of Scientology from hijacking the memory of Britain’s wartime leader involves stern cease-and-desist letters and the threat of a costly PR battle.

In an unlikely dispute that pits Sir Winston’s grandchildren against followers of the late L Ron Hubbard – the science-fiction writer who believed, among other things, that mankind descended from aliens who arrived on Earth via spaceships – the controversial church has been asked to remove Churchill’s image and quotations from its fundraising literature.

The literary agency Curtis Brown, which represents several members of the Churchill family, has written to the church’s London branch protesting at a range of advertising leaflets and posters that liken the Allied struggle against Nazi Germany to Scientology’s efforts to recruit new members.

[Read more at The Independent]

With money, media and promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon became a frequent guest at the White House.

“Moon looked on the media as almost the nervous system for a global empire. Moon was the brain, and the media are to be, or were to be, the communications vehicle for his body politic surrounding the globe.”

In January 1992, PBS Frontline broadcast a film I directed that documented the amazing rise, fall and subsequent resurrection of Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church movement. The documentary showed how, through an adroit combination of money, media and the consistent promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon had rapidly reinvented himself and was soon hailed at the White House.

At the time, few Americans paid much attention to Reverend Moon – and those that did had bizarre recollections of him and the “Moonies,” as his followers once called themselves: mass weddings of complete strangers, flower-peddling in the street, and repeated allegations of mind control and brainwashing.

Even back then, Moon’s movement, once labeled a cult, was more accurately described as a conglomerate. As my film stated, “From media operations in the nation’s capital… To substantial real estate holdings throughout the United States… And from large commercial fishing operations… To advanced high-tech and computer industries, a Fifth Avenue publishing house, and literally dozens of other businesses, foundations, associations, institutes, and political and cultural groups… Moon and his money have become a force to be reckoned with.”

[Read more at Alternet]

On RadarOnline:

Having left Scientology after more than 15-years Marc Headley is lifting the lid on the bizarre religion in his explosive new book Blown for Good. And in an exclusive interview with RadarOnline.com, the author is speaking out about his experiences at the, much talked about, compound.

“Everyone there thought Tom Cruise was just brilliant,” said Headley, who left nearly five years ago. “Absolutely all the employees looked up to him.

“They think he is an exhilaration, which is very high up on what they call the ‘tone scale’.

“People who work within the organization were not given access to newspapers or television shows. The only thing we knew was what we were told or shown.

“At the International Headquarters they would record any appearances on TV shows or even mentions of Tom Cruise, or little stories they heard about him. Then they would re edit them and cut them together into a five or ten minute video of all the snippets of him on TV. But it was never the full interview or story.

“For example the actual footage might have said; ‘Scientologist Tom Cruise, the biggest movie star in the world, acts like a crazy person on Oprah.’ But what we saw was ‘Tom Cruise, the biggest movie star in the world.’ Then it would cut to the next thing.”

Headley told RadarOnline.com he does not remember how many times he was made to watch the videos but it was done on a ‘regular basis, all together in one big hall.’

“It was totally like 1984. It’s propaganda in there. You are told what is happening in the outside world and that’s what you believe. And what they are showing you is on TV so you trust that. I didn’t know it was edited like that.”

It wasn’t until just weeks before he left that he realized the truth.

More on RadarOnline

I didn’t believe this story was true at first — thought it had to be a spoof. But it turns out to be true. The great banks of the world have gone on a p.r. counteroffensive in Europe, and are sending spokescrooks in shiny suits into churches to persuade the masses that Christ would have approved of the latest round of obscene bonuses.

Goldman Sachs international adviser Brian Griffiths explains it this way: that Christ’s famous injunction to love others as one would love oneself actually means that one should love oneself as one would love oneself. This seemingly baffling outburst by a Goldman executive in what appears to have been a prepared speech — someone actually wrote this, and thought about it, before saying it out loud — gets even weirder when one tries to figure out what could possibly have motivated this person, and by extension his employer Goldman Sachs, to make such statements in such a place as St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Disinfo’s Joe points out at Mutate that the Griffiths has a connection to the political cult The Family:

This shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has read Jeff Sharlet’s book _The Family_. This rhetoric is straight out of their play book. This guy is likely a member (he *spoke at* the funeral of Wallace Haines, The Family’s ‘man in Europe’, in 2007). http://www.wallacehaines.com/inmemoryof.htm

Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains rich, has excellent lawyers and, according to the International Scientology News, ”every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L. Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist”.

So unless the world’s supply of fools is melting away, they can hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion. And yet, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans. In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church’s trusty E-meter, a crude polygraph used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to extreme sauna courses.

In Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis cut his ties with Scientology in protest at what he branded their tolerance of homophobia, adding that the church’s claim it does not tell people to ”disconnect” from unsupportive family members was untrue – his wife had been ordered to do so. Meanwhile, Scientology’s chief spokesman, Tommy Davis, stormed out of a TV interview with Martin Bashir, after being pressed on ”certain articles of faith”. The alien stuff, basically.

One assumes that the battery that powers the force field that holds the intergalactic tyrant Xenu captive in an unspecified mountain here on Earth is not as everlasting as billed.

And yet the truth is rather more prosaic. It is the internet wot dun it. During his life, the religion’s inventor, L. Ron Hubbard, deemed the chief enemies of Scientology to be tax inspectors and psychiatrists. Even a sixth-rate science fiction writer such as himself would not have been able to predict that it would be the web that would pose the gravest threat to his church, facilitating everything from the circulation of whistleblower accounts and cult-busting advice to videos of Tom Cruise chuckling maniacally while repeating ”KSW! Keep Scientology Working!”

If you haven’t seen the Bashir interview, it’s on YouTube. Challenged on the Xenu chestnut, Davis knows how loony tunes it sounds, and walking out seems less damaging than having the discussion. And so with the French court case. How could Scientologists have argued that the readings from their polygraph machine justified a penny in the collection tin, let alone hundreds of euros worth of books?

[Read the full story at The Sydney Morning Herald]

A French court fined the Church of Scientology $888,000 on Tuesday after a couple claimed they’d been manipulated into buying between $30,000 and $73,000 worth of church products. The verdict is “a historical turning point for the fight against cult abuses,” said the leader of France’s “government cult-fighting unit.” How does this special cult-busting unit distinguish between cults and bona fide religions?

Vaguely. French law doesn’t define the term “cult.” Rather, it uses the expression “cultlike movements” to describe groups that demand unreasonable financial contributions, encourage nonparticipation in elections, promote anti-social behavior, or cut members off from their families. It’s easier to target bad behavior, the thinking goes, than to get into a semantic debate over what is and isn’t a cult. The French government has, however, tried to define the term in the past. In 1995, a special parliamentary commission compiled a list of 10 cultish characteristics, including the indoctrination of children, a mentally unstable membership, and the attempt to infiltrate public institutions. The commission also released a list of 173 groups that qualify as cults—that is, they meet at least one of the 10 criteria—including the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology.(At least one group—the followers of Anthroposophy—sued the report’s main author for defamation and won.)

[Read more at Slate]

“I am Jesus Christ. It was promised in Israel 2,000 years ago that I would return, that I would come back to finish what was started.”

Meet the Messiah of Siberia, Vissarion Christ, as he is known to his thousands of disciples, who are convinced that he is the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, come back to earth to save the world.

To his critics who accuse him of brainwashing and embezzling his followers, Vissarion is a charlatan [who leads] “a destructive, totalitarian sect”. More prosaically, he is Sergei Torop, a 41-year-old former traffic cop from southern Russia, who moved to Siberia as a youth, experienced his awakening a decade ago, and now leads one of the biggest and most remote religious communes on the planet.

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In this episode, we take a look at the dark events of 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana. What drove the people of Jonestown to commit mass suicide under the direction of the Reverend Jim Jones? Was Jones simply a charismatic cult leader, or was there something deeper involved? In Out There News, we look at the coming of a green Antichrist, and Austin warns us about a roving demon who sodomizes people in their sleep. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

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Join us for this two part conversation with writer Adam Gorightly – author of The Prankster and the Conspiracy and Death Cults. In the first part, we discuss his book The Prankster and the Conspiracy, a biography of counterculture icon Kerry Thornley.  In the second, we discuss a veritable hodgepodge of conspiracy narratives and Adam’s book “The Beast of Adam Gorightly“.