I think that Scientology is a creepy, over-commercialized enterprise that feeds on people’s irrationality and does not do any good to anyone. In fact, I think the same about all religions and most quasi-religions.
But what was it that a great Frenchman said once? I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to death…
To the point. A French court has sentenced two Scientology centers of “fraud in an organised gang” and slapped a fine of almost a million dollars.
Here’s a link. They are a bunch of other links on the same story, easily accessible through Google, and the stunning thing is that they all use words like “pressured”, “harassed” and so on. Apparently some former members didn’t like all the money that the Church convinced them to spend on vitamins and such like, and so they sued. No, they were not coerced in any way, nor were they shown a forged copy of Nature containing a made-up paper on the virtues of Scientologistic vitamins. Merely “pressured”, and we are not talking about vulnerable body parts either.
I think this is a ridiculous case. But I subscribe to rather quaint notions of free speech and individual responsibility. I happen to believe that individuals and organizations should be allowed to say whatever they wish about heaven, hell or the spiritual succor obtained by eating round bananas. I also happen to think that a conviction for fraud should meet an extremely high threshold of material misrepresentation of facts; for example by selling a handkerchief belonging to Nancy Pelosi to the customer who had asked for one used by Madonna. Short of such objective misrepresentations, irrational nonsense — whether spouted by religious organizations, new age spiritualists, ideologues, vegans or extreme environmentalists — should never be censored or prosecuted. One ought to take responsibility for one’s choices, and following a belief-system is a choice.
That’s my worldview, and I like to call it freedom. France, as I never tire of pointing out, lost sight of the concept a long time ago. I am glad I don’t live there today, and I do not ever plan to either.
(Here’s a related short piece on soothsayers and fraud I wrote a while back.)
And I heart France for this! I have nothing but deep regret over the fact that a legal loophole prevented Scientology from getting banned.
I can’t find many details about this case but if the Scientology practices in the US are any indication then they are an organized gang. Refusal to allow to leave, sale under duress are not just “mere pressure”. They are fraud.
Only one’s initial entry and post brainwashing acts in Scientology are voluntary. Pretty much everything they do would be illegal everywhere if a company did it. The only reason Scientology gets away with it in the US and the rest of the world is because of ridiculous special protections to “religious entities”.
Your arguments about this being “mere pressure” are weak as they stand right now. The French legal system has usually been very sound and it is very unlikely that mere pressure would convince it. I unfortunately can’t find any accurate details either way.
Can you elaborate? Are you saying that Scientology puts a gun to the head of its adherents and says they can’t leave? What do you mean by sale under duress?
Knowing my positions, you realise how useless this argument is to me. I think a lot of things that are illegal for companies should not be. Nonetheless, it would have been helpful if you could give an example of a practise of theirs that would be illegal if it were a company selling a product.
That’s laughable. The French laws and courts are pretty much the worst in Europe for free speech. For example, things that would pass for criticism and satire in the US are routinely prosecuted in France for hate speech. I could give plenty of examples of that and I have blogged about a few. The French laws on economic regulation are also pretty much the most socialist in Europe.
I called France the worst place for free speech in Western Europe. Well, Britain is a close second; they seem to have taken their anti-France stance far enough to recently prosecute a fifteen year old boy for calling Scientology a cult.
In a country that truly respects freedom, neither would Scientology be banned (or prosecuted) nor would its detractors and critics be shut up by legal means.
Unfortunately for Scientology, the numbers are not there . Otherwise they would have been given a red carpet under the pretense of ‘respect for religion’ and ‘culture’. If only Scientology was discovered a few hundred years back ..
The line between rational and irrational especially when it comes to religions and cults is defined by numbers and numbers only. Let the atheists grow in numbers, then all religious activities will be considered ‘Offensive’.
Thats why I have no respect for any religion, cult. Although my likes or dislikes should not infringe on others’ likes and dislikes.
Take scientology\’s auditing for instance. It is essentially a positive command hypnosis session. Once the auditor achieves getting the subject in a hypnotic state, they make the subject volunteer their darkest secrets, fears, bank accounts, personal info and all that stuff. After that it becomes fairly simple to manipulate them into buying more such sessions and the subjects are in a fairly suggestive state. (For those who still haven\’t got the memo, hypnosis exists and works and susceptibility is not correlated to IQ, yada yada yada…) Also, it is notable that these subjects are self selected through false advertising (we will just help you solve your problems in this short nice cheap sweet 1 hour course) and probably in the highly susceptible category. One particular auditing session I am aware of involved staring at the eyes of the auditor continuously for hours. That will put you in a hallucinatory delusional suggestive state and can cause some permanent brain damage if done often. If you try to leave you are threatened depending on the local chapters policies and needs and their at least are implicit threats about not publicly speaking against scientology (or they will destroy your life using $x that you gave them or using family member $y you care about who is a scientologist).
I am not sure what freedom of speech related issues are at hand and it becomes fairly difficult to prove any of these in a court, but in my book, that is cut and dried scam. The french have taken up a position of isolating facts in such incidents that can be demonstrated to be fraud and using them to get a ruling and I applaud them. In the US, they claim all those were religious and spiritual activities and not scam and medical ones and successfully claim protection and tax exemption under freedom of religion laws.
I probably dont need to explain why any of this would be illegal to do as a company.
It is also very difficult to put up public resources calling scientology out because they use their ill-gotten wealth and power as well as possible to censor dissent.
I am not sure of the libertarian position on such matters.
PS: Paint me paranoid but I will not risk putting my name to anything but the most measured of my opinions on this matter. India, anyway, has never had much of good track record when it comes to defending freedom. I think you know my position on that issue.
An undercover report from 1999. This also has the staring bit.
It’s like we all fantasize or kid sometimes about world domination and Hubbard figured that using mind control, religion as a loophole, he could actually do it!
[Comment cleaned up on request by author -- Abhishek]
1. I believe no rights are violated by auditing someone who agrees to be. Vulnerable or not.
2. Threatening people with legal pressure/suits is not illegal even for companies. And in any case here the real fault lies with the absurd copyright laws that has allowed scientology to win some legal battles against critics.
3. If there is a advertisement for one thing and the thing sold is completely different, I agree it is a case of fraud. That should be dealt on a case by case basis. I dont think the specific French case I mentioned had anything to do with false advertisements.
I have no idea what the libertarian position on scammers and spammers is but I have a feeling I won\’t like it. ;)
Soliciting to help vulnerable individuals, but putting them under a hypnotic suggestive state without prior explicit consent is a fraud. Acquiring personal information through such means is a fraud. Selling stuff to people under such a state is fraud. A company (and thankfully, at least in France a cult) is allowed none of these.
Also, one of the petitioners was fired by her scientology boss for not buying a scientology course. That is discrimination.
To your last comment: So what? I believe that private companies should be able to hire and fire people for any reason whatsoever (unless they have it in the contract that firing etc has to be for well-defined reason).
The proper way to combat discrimination is by social means. Publicize these actions, shame the company, boycott their products. When you strip someone of his liberty to deal with his own company and hire and fire people in any goddamn way he wants, you commit a far greater wrong, for it violates the rights of the person who owns the company.
To your previous comment, if there is a case where Scientologists have put a person in hypnotic control *without* his consent, I’d fully support legal action. The trouble is, the French case appears to have nothing to do with that, but instead seems to be a case of people who joined the Church voluntarily, had the legal right to leave anytime they wished, yet chose to remain for a length of time during which they consented to auditing and everything else. Also while during years of stay in the Church, they were ‘pressurized’ to buy a lot of stuff. They could have refused to at any point of time and left but they chose to go along. Once they finally decided to leave the Church, they were unhappy about all the money they had spent, sued and apparently succeeded in winning the case. However much one dislikes Scientology, it seems clear to me that they did nothing that violated the plaintiffs rights and the only reason the plaintiffs won the case is because a certain social democratic country believes that its citizens are children and do not bear responsibility for their actions.
Exactly! The proper way to combat apartheid was by social means and publicity. All those laws banning white-only restaurants – EPIC MISTAKE!
(I am bowing out of this discussion. This appears to be one of those amazingly pathological points of view libertarians appear capable of thanks to blind application of neat sounding but not so sound principles.)
If you are doing that, bowing out a discussion, “I don’t agree” is a better way of doing it than “you are kooky Utopians!”
A libertarian is not an amoral idiot relying on unsound principles. He differentiates between the immoral and the illegal. All you have to do is look at history and you will know that every act of mass discrimination has occurred with state sanction. The discrimination against blacks, gays, people of Japanese descent…the list is endless, was only possible because the state enforced certain laws.
To take a simple example, fifty years ago, a mildly religious libertarian might have considered homosexuality immoral, but he would have maintained that the state has no business peeping into bedrooms. Today, he might have changed his position and have said, sorry, I was wrong about the immoral part. But his position on law would remain unchanged. This would apply in every case without exception. But the statist, someone whose only solution for every problem is state action, would have definitely supported laws that criminalized homosexuals then, and would have demanded their elimination now. The same principle would apply to blacks and other minorities as well. (It was the labor unions and the people in general, not libertarians or businessmen, who had segregation laws passed and enforced. Read this and this.)
About laws banning white-only restaurants. Would you also ban restaurants that only serve Indians, or gays, or Christians, or some other such denomination? If a white male doesn’t have non-white friends, will the state force him to make friends among minorities? What is the “principle” that makes it okay for the state to throw someone in prison for their beliefs? Let me say that discrimination based on group identity is a sign of low self esteem and morally reprehensible. But if you declare everything that is immoral to be illegal, you give the state absolute power over its citizens. Those who run white-only restaurants are free to do so. But sooner or later they will come to know that it not socially acceptable. Those who still don’t get it will definitely not get it in any case.
I would like to think that morality is objective in nature, but all evidence suggests otherwise. What is moral and immoral changes with time. If you restrict the government only to illegal acts, acts of actual or imminent coercive violence, only then can society function peacefully. Otherwise, you will end up with a perpetual war of all against all.
I dunno about the other commentators on this thread but I sure as hell will (and to the best of my knowledge, that is the legal status quo right now). Not because everything immoral should be illegal but because I choose not to ignore the flows in the other direction. Laws are a very effective means of socially marking certain currently popular means of behaviour as immoral.
A libertarian 300 years ago would have argued that the state has no business banning slave trade. I would only be mildly surprised if one of you guys jump in to tell me that you actually believe the government had no business banning it. You know why, because libertarians just blindly apply the “maximize individual freedom/responsibility” (to the level where they encounter an obvious contradiction in their belief system and then stop 2 steps short of it). That’s basically all they do really.
“A libertarian 300 years ago would have argued that the state has no business banning slave trade. I would only be mildly surprised if one of you guys jump in to tell me that you actually believe the government had no business banning it. ”
And I am only mildly surprised that you are so hopelessly wrong on that.
Libertarians..oh well forget it. I don’t even know why I bother replying to such random statements as the above.
Hah… What about voluntary/contract slavery? What do you guys think of that and what is the current libertarian position on it?
Anyway, my original critique of ATG is perhaps better paraphrased as the following. A libertarian, couple of centuries ago who didn’t think of slaves as complete humans (plenty of them back then didn’t), would be compelled to oppose government intervention and regulation of slave trade. Libertarianism does not enjoy the independence from morality or the historical invariance you accord it.
When you said slave trade, I took it to understand that dealing in actual slavery. The kind that involves taking without consent
For a nice summary of various libertarian positions on voluntarily entered contracts of servitude, see this article. My position is very similar, but not identical, to the author’s.
The key point, in my mind, is that while two people can do anything to each other as long as they have consent, when it comes to enforcing contracts the state or some similar entity funded and propped up by others has to be involved. And as the author of the above article points out, just because a contract is enforceable does not mean it is enforceable by any means necessary. In my view, consent-derived rights that require no external agency (beyond others’ non interference) is a more basic concept than consensual acts that by their nature require enforcement of contracts. I made a similar point in one of my comments to this post.
# “Laws are a very effective means of socially marking certain currently popular means of behaviour as immoral.”
They are effective in “marking,” but laws cannot change people’s minds.
# “A libertarian, couple of centuries ago who didn’t think of slaves as complete humans (plenty of them back then didn’t), would be compelled to oppose government intervention and regulation of slave trade. Libertarianism does not enjoy the independence from morality or the historical invariance you accord it.”
Libertarian law is based on the idea of force. Beyond setting up the basic structure of libertarianism, morality doesn’t enter the picture. The only reason why a libertarian would be “in favor” of slave trade was because slaves were considered to be subhuman. And hence, anyone banning slave trade was infringing upon the freedom of the slave trader.
You show me one case where, in a particular era where a particular system of morality was followed, a libertarian has taken a position that is worse than what governments were doing at that time. The only one I can think of is the (comparatively) recent revisionism w.r.t. the Civil War. Even there, those who consider Lincoln to be a villain aren’t saying that slavery is either moral or legal, only that the methods used to abolishing it only helped increase the powers of the federal government. Which it surely did.