I mean, really, this guy is on every newspaper, tv promo, magazine, yikes.
If this is Gilder’s described corporate media bus, I definitely wanna hoof it…
Ooh, you’re gonna join Nano on the Enemies List! 
He is lovingly misinformed.
He’s just another silly bugger who thinks celebrity is the same as importance.
I heard him gush over his new love, what’s-her-face, and couldn’t help thinking about how he bungled his relationship with Nicole Kidman. He traded a woman for a girl and thinks he done good.
Roger
I think its really unfair to attack Phil Hardy in this way . . .Opps sorry wrong thread. I’ll get my coat.
Nice, Perrins!
I know this is possibly kerosene on the campfire, but as far as I can tell, a Scientologist can not truly love another person, because then they would no longer be “clear.” They spend a fortune getting “clear” of those many human emotions, like guilt, obligation, blind faith, that actually define most people.
Which leads me to the very dark conclusion that Cruise is on the ego trip that comes with the primary infatuation period of love, NOT to be followed by the deep love that lasts.
Aw, go ahead and discuss…I’ll put on my flame-retardant helmet.
And PS, yeah, Nicole Kidman rings my chimes.
I’m goin’ to puke now! And save myself from a rant!
MarkB
Hey, Weeks! Welcome to The List. 
Un-Clear and proud,
Nano
completely muddled and murky here.
I’m also unclear. I think nobody on this forum is a Scientologist, although a couple have dated them.
Scientology, I’ve heard it said, claims many millions more members that it actually has, but the ones it does have are often quite wealthy and famous, so the religion seems to have more of a presense in the world than it really does.
Scientology is a cult that preys on the weak of mind. Check out Operation Clambake at:
http://www.xenu.net/
They use celebrity members to lure ordinary saps. As far as I am concerned, Scientology is not merely bogus but so obviously bogus that a person has to be severely emotionally or cognitively damaged to buy into it at all.
If Nicole had only returned my calls, I could have saved her a lot of heartbreak.
Roger
I don’t generally like to comment on people’s appearance, but I’ve often wondered something–what do people find so alluring about Nicole Kidman?
Hollywood tells everybody they have to be tan and blonde to be pretty or sucessful, but Nicole Kidman is obviously neither. I guess she is super-thin (and tall), though…
She’s got a cute little nose, and a twinkle in her eye, and she’s flat chested … oops! … er … and she’s got a cute little nose … I guess … 
djm
I have known two Scientologists, one was my boss, about 12 years ago. She was an emotionally unstable person with many “issues.” She lived very simply, and saved all her money and periodically parted with sums like 6,000 and once 12,000 dollars to get to some next level of “clear.”
We had very long phone conversations and from everything I gathered, the whole point was to eliminate negative emotional feelings and ties. But to me, the larger implication was that it created, in the absolute sense, a truly AMORAL person, constrained only by the logic of the results of the legal system. In other words, one could be clear to do just about anything to anyone else who stood in the way of acquisition and progress for the person, but it would be smart to stay within the bounds of the legal system so that nothing negative would happen. Now, I didn’t say IMMORAL, because it SEEMED to me that morality was sort of irrelevant in the way I understood it.
I never felt it gave her happiness because she was always steps away from it. I knew another casually who was also always trying to raise money.
I read a very detailed book that was critical of Scientology in the mid-90s, I wish I could remember the name of it. It went into great detail of the history of it, the behavior of its founder and its executives, who were apparently very successful at squelching negative publicity about the group via lawsuits, harassment, etc. The book seemed pretty thorough but of course much was allegations, etc. written from a critical viewpoint.
To me, Scientology will ultimately result in Seamless Sociopathy and I find it one of the scarier aspects of secularism.
Please explain what “Seamless Sociopathy” is and how a religion can be secular.
I keep seeing parallels to EST and Werner Erhard, except for the fact that EST is kind of off the radar now.
(but I well remember attending one of the meetings in someone’s home, and getting my telephone call from “the Washington Center…” and you’re there on your end of the call thinking ‘the Center of what?’ until the drone on the other end has so numbed you that you either say yes or hang up without closure to the ‘conversation.’ I hung up.)
"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. " --1 St. John 2:18.
They don’t worship any God. The religion part is a way to be tax-exempt, which I believe was successfully challenged in Germany.
By seamless sociopathy, I mean that the adherents, by becoming “clear” and intellectually and completely convinced that they are correct in eliminating what they consider “lower” needs of inferior “unclear” people. The sociopathy is what I understand to be the ability of a traditional sociopath to have no feelings or regards for anyone besides himself.
Ditto to Weekender’s comments about Scientology. With regard to the title of the topic, I feel similarly about the idea of an anti-christ. There isn’t such a thing as an anti-christ. As a humanist, I am more interested in making sure that people have the opportunities for a good life.