Kevin's Watch

PARIS (AFP) - The Church of Scientology provides for several kinds of wedding ceremony for its followers, but according to the most traditional the husband "may promise to provide her (his wife) with "a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat."
US actor Tom Cruise and actress Katie Holmes will provide perhaps the most high-profile Scientologists' wedding to date this weekend.
And according to unconfirmed reports in the Italian media, American Scientology leader David Miscavige will fly in from Los Angeles to preside over the event.
According to the Scientologists' book "The Background, Ministry, Ceremonies and Sermons of the Scientology Religion", there are five versions of the Scientologist wedding ceremony: traditional, informal, single ring, double ring, and concise double ring, all of varying length and formality.
Scientology's "traditional ceremony" includes such advice to the groom as "Now -----, girls need clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them."
The bride is told: "Hear well, sweet -----, for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him that you may have necessities and follies, too."

I've got to invent a religion. There's just too much money in it. It's ridiculous how easy it is to get people to Believe.

www.skeptictank.org/hs/2020.htm

your blueprint.

sgtnull wrote:www.skeptictank.org/hs/2020.htm

your blueprint.

Personally, I want a moneymaking religion without it becoming a sometimes cultish thing where people die and stuff.

All should have faith in Love. Nothing else is needed.

Never really understood t he whole scientologist thing. Too much pop-cultre fame.

it seems to be that the individual is the most imporatant aspect of the religion and that goes well with Hollywood narcisissm.

sgtnull wrote:it seems to be that the individual is the most imporatant aspect of the religion and that goes well with Hollywood narcisissm.

thank you! i'll be here all month, able to solve all of the world's problems, answer any questions.

I think that aspects of certain religious are true. Ideas don't last 1000s of years for it all to be wrong. You know when you get false crap ideas because they only last about 100 or so years. This is only my belief, though.

Queeaqueg wrote:I think that aspects of certain religious are true. Ideas don't last 1000s of years for it all to be wrong. You know when you get false crap ideas because they only last about 100 or so years. This is only my belief, though.

Longevity isn't the measure of veracity. Sometimes it's just a measure of how difficult the problem is. The geocentric model of the solar system lasted 1000s of years. Ditto the idea of absolute space and time. The strict determinism of atomism lasted over 2000 years until quantum mechanics blew that out of the water. Flat earth was around for 1000s of years, and we all know how that one turned out. Most of the time, the older the idea, the less reliable it is. The more modern concepts (evolution, Newton's theory of universal gravitation, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc.) are the ones most rigorously tested and verified.

And sometimes longevity of an idea is just a function of its inability to be tested and disconfirmed. Most supernatural ideas fall into this catagory. You'll never be able to prove that unicorns don't exist, for example, because you can't look everywhere. God is even harder to disprove, for similar reasons.

Yeah, I take your point. I do religion & philosophy at college and when I hear about certain(not all) religious, I think that they might have some truth behind them or are true. A lot ideas come under attack and them seem to survive. I do take your point, though.

sgtnull wrote:it seems to be that the individual is the most imporatant aspect of the religion and that goes well with Hollywood narcisissm.

I think probably for those figurehead types, but for the others, there's the seaorg.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org
www.xenu.net/archive/so/

Billion year contract, oppression of insiders seeking out. Not very positive for the individual.

thanks for the links. these folks are crazier than i thought.

As Muad'Dib once said, "If you need something to worship, then worship life!"

That avatar is WAY cool Queeaqueg!!!