Scientology has every right to be considered a legitimate religion

[Wezil]

So you respect all faiths? Shall I go looking for some bizarre and obscure ones to run by you? I'm sure I can find some human sacrifice examples out there somewhere...

Again, I call BS.

[Nikolai]

Call whatever you want. I'm not interested in playing games.

[HalfLotus]

People should be respected, ideas should be tolerated, behavior should be criticized.

[Wezil]

Good. This idea I will respect whatever someone believes so long as it is their "faith" is crap. If some group came along who's faith required abducting and killing neighbor children I doubt very much you would respect the views.

[Felch]

FWIW I don't see Scientologists campaigning to take away my rights. I do see Catholics and other Christians doing so. Everyone who believes in religion is crazy, people are just crazy in different ways...that's all there is to it.

I remember reading that the CoS campaigned in favor of that anti-gay California prop last year. I might be mistaken though. I'll have to check.

edit:Here's something about Paul Haggis quitting over Prop 8

[Asher]

I remember reading that the CoS campaigned in favor of that anti-gay California prop last year. I might be mistaken though. I'll have to check.

Wouldn't that be something? Scientologists and Christians, arm-in-arm, campaigning in their quest for evil domination.

They're not the same at all.

[Wezil]

I remember reading that the CoS campaigned in favor of that anti-gay California prop last year. I might be mistaken though. I'll have to check.

Here's something about Paul Haggis quitting over Prop 8

Haggis is probably "big" enough to get away with criticizing the CoS.

[rah]

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/1028cannibals1028.html

Indian documentary explores religious cannibals
Ramola Talwar Badam
Associated Press Writer
Oct. 28, 2005 12:00 AM
BOMBAY, India (AP) - A new Indian documentary seeks to shed light on a secretive sect of Hindu ascetics who eat corpses in the belief that ingesting dead flesh will make them ageless and give them supernatural powers.

"Feeding on the Dead," a 10-minute documentary, delves into the closed, little-known world of the 1,000-year-old Aghori sect, whose sadhus, or holy men, pluck dead bodies from the Ganges river.

While the sect has been written about, they've rarely been filmed performing rituals. Director Sandeep Singh, who shut down his transport business to pursue filmmaking, said it took him more than three months to gain the trust of an Aghori sadhu and convince him to be filmed while performing a cannibalistic ritual.
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There are about 70 Aghori sadhus at a given time, and they remain with the sect for 12 years before returning to their families. Unlike other Hindu holy men, most of whom are vegetarian teetotalers, the Aghoris consume alcohol and meat.

But it is their consumption of human flesh - a practice whose origins remain a mystery - which has earned them the condemnation of other Hindus and relegated most Aghori sadhus to living around crematoriums in the hills of northern India around the holy city of Varanasi, where the documentary was filmed.

Singh and three cameramen waited with an Aghori sadhu - whose name is not mentioned in the film - for 10 days in June before finding a floating corpse. Hindus generally cremate the dead, but bodies are sometimes ceremonially disposed of in the Ganges.

"The body was decomposed and bluish in color, but the sadhu was not afraid about falling sick," Singh told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "He sat on the corpse, prayed to a goddess of crematoriums and offered some flesh to the goddess before eating it."

Singh said the sadhu ate part of the corpse's elbow, believing the flesh would stop him from aging and give him special powers, like the ability to levitate or control the weather.

Singh did not see any of those powers on display.

[Wezil]

Now you gotta respect that.

[Boris Godunov]

Eating already-dead humans is still morally better than making living humans dead.

[onodera]

I see nothing wrong with such forms of cannibalism. Cremated, buried or eaten, who cares? Well, the relatives might, but they've already dumped the corpse in the river.

[rah]

I'm sure we can find something more obscure that involves living people.

[Wezil]

The point is, everybody will draw a line somewhere. We can spend forever exploring where that line may be, but it exists.

[rah]

http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/C/CAN/cannibalism.html

It was the Aztec worship of the war-god Huitzilopochtli which brought on the enormous prevalence of sacrifices of prisoners; to obtain supplies of such captives became a motive for frequent wars; and it was the limbs of these victims which were eaten in the sacrificial feasts that formed part of the festivals. (For particulars and authorities see Prescott, Conquest of Mexico ; Bancroft, vol. ii.; Waitz, vol. iv.) In Africa, also, canni-balism has in some cases evidently a sacrificial character (see Lander, Records, vol. ii. p. 250; T. J. Hutchinson, Ten Years among Ethiopians, p. 62, &c.)

[Boris Godunov]

I see nothing wrong with such forms of cannibalism. Cremated, buried or eaten, who cares? Well, the relatives might, but they've already dumped the corpse in the river.

Probably not--Hindus cremate their dead. If it was a ceremonial disposal, I would think it would be obvious. It was maybe an accident, suicide or murder, so the relatives might want the body back. But then again, what are the odds of identifying a dead body from the Ganges or finding the relations up river? Or maybe he had no relatives anyway?