Scientology tower on Chestnut. Still empty after all these years.Submitted by narkj t3_zoyz2q in philadelphia
jbphilly t1_j0q6zwa wrote
Reply to comment by RoverTheMonster in Scientology tower on Chestnut. Still empty after all these years. by narkj
A more important question is "why do we grant Scientology religious status like it's a real church?"
JennItalia269 t1_j0qdsmy wrote
Basically, The IRS was being sued left and right by Scientology so they decided to recognize them as a tax exempt organization and Scientology ended all litigation.
The lawsuits are right out of the Scientology playbook. It’s fucking stupid and they never should have, but here we are. More can be found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_in_the_United_States
siandresi t1_j0qkard wrote
I imagine if an institution wants to not pay taxes, become a church and has enough cash (and scrupules) like many things around, it can just lawyer up and argue they are “technically” a religion. Do the spaghetti monster people have tax exempt status
blowjob215 t1_j0r196t wrote
Pretty sure they’re a disorganized religion, i.e. they’re all out there on their own, believing in the great spaghetti monster individually, not coming together as a congregation to form a church
mjg580 t1_j0qtjjx wrote
They aren’t any different than any other high control religion like Jehovah Witnesses, LDS, or other fundamentalist churches.
MarekRules t1_j0sja38 wrote
Religious organizations should pay taxes, or else more organizations like Scientology will claim religious rights and exemptions.
Separation of church and state PLEASE. Why are we making churches exempt, they are just another business (whether you believe in anyone specific, this is still true).
Embarrassed-Raccoon7 t1_j0srti2 wrote
We allow churches to be tax exempt for the same reason schools are tax exempt, they provide services and resources for the community. I’m not saying all of them but the majority do help the community and the economy. Separating church and state has, in my opinion, little to do with taxes. Now separating Scientology from “religion” makes sense to me but that’s something different.
barchueetadonai t1_j0yy8h0 wrote
Taxes are the state’s ability to compel you to pay them whatever is decided, and for it to be in US dollars. How can you claim that separating church and state has little to do with taxes?
Schools are government-run institutions and are a requirement for every child. Churches are quite the opposite.
classicrockchick t1_j0sw4pd wrote
Because Scientology sicced so many lawyers on the IRS, the IRS went "ok fine you're a fucking religion, now will you leave us the hell alone?".
John_EightThirtyTwo t1_j0vb5om wrote
I don't see how you can give the government the power to decide what is and isn't a religion and still observe the First-Amendment ban on "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
The government tells religions they'll lose their tax-exempt status if they engage in political advocacy. I agree it would be better if they just didn't give them a tax exemption in the first place. But you can't set the government up in the business of deciding which religions are The Truth and which ones are made up and dumb. (For one thing, they're all made up and dumb.)
jbphilly t1_j0w1scx wrote
I agree, there's obviously a lot of sticky issues involved here. But the government does get into the business of deciding what's a real religion or not. If I declare my house the holy site of a new religion, and myself the prophet, do you think I'm getting a tax break out of that? Fuck no. So the question is already where we draw the line, not whether.
>(For one thing, they're all made up and dumb.)
My whole point is, some are vastly and demonstrably more made and up and dumb than others. A scam cooked up by a moist-mouthed creep from the 1950s is a world apart from a millennia-old collection of traditions spanning continents.
Sendit57 t1_j0q7dzz wrote
Who are we to say their beliefs are any less valid than other religions?
jbphilly t1_j0q8ev9 wrote
It's not about the validity of the beliefs, it's that the entire "religion" is transparently an abusive cult.
Although, we can also speak to the validity of the beliefs. While ancient religions like the Abrahamic or Indian ones might ask you to believe things without evidence, Scientology asks you to believe that a drug-addicted, serial-lying grifter from the 1950s holds the key to universal truth.
skip_tracer t1_j0qcpe2 wrote
I have a complex about oral hygiene. I'm incredibly sensitive to bad breath, and I pride myself on mine being fresh. Every time I see vids or pics of L. Ron I wince at the thought of what his mouth must've smelled like.
jbphilly t1_j0qdimv wrote
For real, that fucking video footage of his nasty-ass mouth ought to be enough for anybody to stay far away from anything he invented.
sciencefaire t1_j0qdo9s wrote
I didn't know anything about his teeth but when I went to Google him, "L Ron Hubbard teeth" was like the 2nd Google search suggestion 😂
Yikes. He probably had massive tonsil stone breath too. Bleh.
skip_tracer t1_j0s90zt wrote
I work with someone like this. You can literally smell him when he enters a room and doesn't even open his mouth. It's gag inducing for me.
JennItalia269 t1_j0qe3nn wrote
Fucking hell. I feel the same way. Had to smell like cigarettes and roofing tar a yard away.
beebyspice t1_j0sf5u7 wrote
💀💀 he is super mealy mouthed
downtownwawa t1_j0qek29 wrote
I agree Scientology is goofy and weird but idk the crusades were pretty awful and the Catholic Church routinely shields and protects their pedo priests all around the world. So when you say it’s “transparently an abusive cult”, you gotta look at the thousands of years of abusive a cult-y behavior of Catholicism, judaism, and Islam. Those religions have undeniably been worse for humanity and are responsible for millions of deaths, abuse, and otherworldly harm.
jbphilly t1_j0qgiyy wrote
Sure. The difference is, while mainstream religions all contain examples of abusive behavior, with Scientology, the abusive behavior is the whole thing.
downtownwawa t1_j0qhnel wrote
What? I don’t think you know what Scientology does. Like, do you think people walk in and get abused and keep coming back? Truly curious what you think is happening there.
jbphilly t1_j0r3ev9 wrote
>Like, do you think people walk in and get abused and keep coming back?
Uh, yes, that's literally how cults work. Was this supposed to be a serious comment?
omygoodnessreally t1_j0qgn65 wrote
But you don't have to pay to know what their beliefs are.
AbsentEmpire t1_j0s49qg wrote
Sounds like any other fundamentalist cult like evangelicalism, the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
jbphilly t1_j0sgqzq wrote
Eh, Mormonism fits that description way better than the other two. Mormonism also makes explicit claims about recent historical events that can be flatly disproven, mainly stuff about the history of the Americas (tribes of ancient Jews coming over by boat, the existence of horses and metallurgy when we know those didn't exist here, naming the sites of enormous battles at locations where archaeology can establish that didn't happen, etc.)
omygoodnessreally t1_j0qgvi1 wrote
You have to pay to learn their beliefs.
ItsjustJim621 t1_j0qrv3t wrote
And that’s where they get you…you’ll get close to attaining the next level or whatever it is, and they’ll come up with some bullshit arbitrary revision earlier in the level, which you’re then forced to start over again and buy the new revised books.
People have gone literally bankrupt doing this.
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