From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:26:24 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Slander of Catholic Church
Message-ID: <ade31529110210043f6a@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 5:59 PM 6/11/96, attila wrote:

>        too strong, moroni  --remember _our_ values; not those of a critic.
>    last night in FHE I covered the first mob in Jackson County where Bushop
>    Partridge turned the other cheek to make it easier after the first was
>    tarred by the mob.

Thanks, Attila. I think Paul Penrod and the Archangel Moroni missed my main
point. I was not singling out Mormonism for special criticism, just using
it as an example of a "cult" or "religion" which is in many ways even more
"outre" to many of us than Scientology is. Belief that a body rotting in
the ground can be baptized into one's church is at least as odd as
believing that Mankind is descended from the survivors of spaceships
fleeing an evil overlord.

My point, in using Catholicism as an example (interesting that only my
brief lines on Mormon views were critiqued...Catholicism must indeed be
nearly extinct on lists like ours), was that one's man's "criminal cult" is
another man's "holy religion," and that the "net.war" declared by some on
the Church of Scientology is little different than having a similar war
against Catholics, Rosicrucians, Parsees, whatever.

The Church of Scientology is no more a cult than is LDS or
Catholicism....it is just much newer. Believing that clam consciousness
suffuses our thoughts is no stranger than are the bizarre claims of most
religions.

Talk is of some belief systems being "cults" and others being "religions."
When the Constitution speaks of "Congress shall make no law regarding the
establishment of religion...," it is clear that this is not just for
"recognized" and "established" religions.

(Before the usual suspects jump in with quibbles, this does not mean that a
religion may not be constrained in various ways. The laws against polygamy
constrained the Mormons, the laws against certain drugs constrained certain
Native American religions, etc. Constitutional law classes are the best
forum to debate this.)

I am no supporter of the CoS, nor of any religion. I find it hypocritical
for folks bashing the "clams" and bombarding a.r.s with copyrighted CoS
material to now be whining that the clams are "unfairly" using a.r.s.

I also find it "unsurprising" that the CoS is taking steps to preserve what
it thinks is its copyrighted, proprietary material.

(I am  not interested in debating the ins and outs of whether the NOTS
material should or should not have been published, nor of whether some
investigators went overboard in investigations of Grady Ward, etc. This
stuff is boring ephemera to me, just another religious war.)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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