Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

I used to find it quite interesting to map the rigour, rhetoric and "set plays" demonstrated by a number of pro-china/anti-Dalai Lama redditors who I'm sure were tasked by the People's Liberation Army to do that for a living... Now THAT would make for an engaging AMA! They were actually quite effective at gently nudging the hive mind sometimes - I found the only way to cancel out their influence was via what amounted to incessant trolling and arguing semantics. This usually meant they were too caught up in my tomfoolery to properly engage in the more substantial conversation; it was an interesting experiment, but I don't really have the time or energy for all that these days.

I don't think that this is the result of someone reading all their emails and releasing the ones without personal information (which I don't think would be okay, I'm not sure how you got that impression), but a result of everyone using @scientology.co.at email addresses.

As I said above, I do not think that the lack of personal information by itself makes releasing them okay, but I do think that the combination of the CoS being secretive and "evil" gives this particular hack some (moral, not legal) legitimacy, because it is difficult to get this information using less dodgy methods.

There's no way to tell if most religious leaders truly believe, unless you catch one in an incontrovertible statement of disbelief. Even someone like the Pope could be going along with it for the prestige, or simply not knowing what he'd do with his life outside of the Church.

From a non-religious perspective, either someone is brainwashed, or they are fraudulent. That distinction matters in law, but it doesn't have any bearing on the value of the religious institution.

With that said, there may be a feedback-theory reason why these things often connect. In the case of governments, for example, bureaucracy allows you to marshal much vaster quantities of resources, especially for your military: so as we look for a positive feedback loop, the most successful governments were probably bureaucracies. (Yes, I would also classify evolution by natural selection as a feedback theory.)

It may therefore be the case that there is a competition for a limited believership and the religions which control their believers most tend to grow themselves in this competition. If you want an interesting perspective on what Anonymous is doing, it is trying to increase the cost of religious control, to the point where the feedback goes from positive to negative. If each exertion of control (however that is defined) tends to lose believers rather than gain them, then religions will either have to adapt to a policy of less-control, or else will naturally die out due to negative feedback.

How can you assert something like that? It's really quite preposterous.

All religious organizations have a strong need to fundraise in order to continue to exist. Many churches I've visited are lined around the entire periphery with money receptacles that have candles on top. You pay a donation and then you may light a candle and access God, etc.

The idea that faith motivates anyone (from clergy members to suicide bombers) is absurd. No matter how religious a person is, it's well known that faith is a goal and not a reality. Humans suffer from tremendous doubt. Angels, on the other hand, are faith robots which do not doubt... which is a consequence of their lack of free will.

Humans are mostly the same. A sampling of San Francisco residents is likely to be just as prejudiced as a sampling of Alabama residents. Similarly, a sampling of Scientologists are just as likely to be corrupt as Catholics or Buddhists.

As an even more general rule, all organizations tend toward corruption. What prevents corruption is not the virtue of individual members but things like transparency, competition, accountability, focus on results, etc.

Religious organizations (and to a lesser extent political and corporate ones) have evolved and continue to evolve clever ways to avoid accountability, to avoid transparency, etc. Secular organizations suffer a big comparative disadvantage in that the results they claim to have delivered are typically expected to be observable by humans.