Scientology is often dismissed as a pseudo religion, a fake faith too recent and too obvious to be taken seriously. That is a mistake. If an institution claims religious authority, grounds that authority in claims that cannot be publicly tested, and seeks the deference or protection religion is granted, then it belongs inside the criticism. What makes Scientology useful is not that it is uniquely strange, but that it makes the machinery unusually visible.
Tag: religious-authority
When God Changes His Mind: The LDS, the FLDS, and the Mechanism Made Visible
The LDS and the FLDS expose a mechanism religion would rather keep hidden: doctrine declared eternal until political pressure makes revision necessary, at which point capitulation is renamed revelation.
When Christianity Borrows Its Morality
Christianity likes to present its moral retreats as wisdom, growth, and deeper understanding. They are better read as concessions. Again and again, Christian institutions have abandoned old certainties only after secular moral reasoning made those certainties shameful. That is not proof of divine depth. IThat is not proof of divine depth. It is evidence that Christian institutions have repeatedly had to import moral correction from the wider world and then disguise the importation as insight.
The Permanent Rebuttal 