"[excuses for immorality ] criminals became victims of their past and not responsible for their crimes."

Here in New Zealand under Helen Clark, society is deemed to be responsible for the crimes of criminals.
Honest law abiding taxpayers are the ones who invariably pay the price of crime, whilst the criminal continues to reap the benefits full citizen rights.

A criminal has the upper hand over all citizens who are disarmed and forcibly dis-empowered to the daily barrage of attacks, assaults, robbery, rapes and murders.

Being disarmed is paramount to capitulative suicide.

"Morality demands that one treat and judge men as responsible adults."

This would make a wonderful slogan for election campaigners.

Great quote for today.  Keep up the good work.

I was just thinking about this the other day, namely the question of what distinguishes Scientology from Objectivism to a reasonable, normal outsider who's been told that these two movements are cults and who probes a little further and finds stories about the Objectivist movement (in the past or present) that throw up signals of cult-like stuff. Put aside the issue of the content of what either system advocates; Scientology has some kind of funny supernaturalist story, whereas Objectivism is secular through and through. But still, I see stories about Scientology, its founder, its adherents' testimonials, and so on, that I see suggestions of parallels to in the Objectivist movement which a critical-minded person should be able to recognize and process.

First off, in pretty much any movement, there are going to be a lot of people involved who practice a "social dynamic." A lot of these people are going to be assholes who use the movement as a means of gaining status in a social circle. Doesn't matter that Objectivism is actually about intellectual independence; there will be assholes who go to it who want to "belong" and/or who basically use it as a justification for being assholes. They were assholes to begin with, and Objectivism doesn't really change or improve them as people; they just happened to glom onto Objectivism as a vehicle for it. A lot of these very same assholes practice a social-metaphysical group-partisanship: the "leader-figure" or some other person said X, therefore I'm going to go along with X so as not to get on this person's bad side. Not having been involved in Scientology, I don't know if this resembles a social dynamic there, or what other forms their social dynamics might take, but Scientology is not going to magically turn assholes into good people.

Moreover, it is illicit to treat the behaviors of asshole self-styled adherents as representative of the movement as a whole or of its ideas. Just because there are assholes attracted to Objectivism it doesn't mean that the Objectivist movement on that basis can be called a cult. Now it is true that some assholes, e.g. Nathaniel Branden, did their darnedest as leader-figures to infuse cult-like elements, enforce and reward loyalty, etc. Didn't exactly work out too well in the end; the movement such as it is has survived and flourished with plenty of ways, in the open market of ideas, for cult elements to be outed and checked. Can the same be said for Scientology?

Now, as to some obvious up-front differences:

Based on my little cursory investigations about what Scientology "offers," a lot of it is shrouded in mystery. Objectivism is not. Objectivism lays all its cards on the table up-front. Objectivism doesn't have official "levels" you progress to as some measure of your status or standing. Objectivism has a very free and open marketplace of ideas -- e.g. here on SOLO -- for people to earn their "status" as someone who's grasped or mastered the ideas. If they're skilled enough, they can go and publish their views as presentations about Objectivism and let people decide on their merits.

(You'll notice that Objectivism -- proper name -- means Ayn Rand's own ideas that she endorsed. You can do all kinds of studies on, presentations about, or applications or elaborations on Objectivism, with a clear-cut distinction between what's part of Rand-the-person's philosophy and what is not something she could have or would have endorsed. Peikoff makes clear that OPAR is not an official presentation but an interpretation by her best student who presented a course that Rand fully endorsed. That doesn't preclude anyone else from publishing books expounding upon, discussing, expanding on, critiquing, etc. Objectivism.)

But let's get to one real red-flag difference:

Scientology offers access to these mysteries at such a financial cost that it would appear you need to be rich to gain access to the full understanding. I hear it's on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The information is proprietary and, again, on that basis, shrouded in mystery. What is required for an advanced understanding of Objectivism? Well, for starters, some familiarity with the basic literature, much of which can be found through libraries, and which amounts in total (including the novels) to a dozen or so volumes and a few thousand pages. The cost of obtaining or reading these can be quite minimal.

Many people in "the movement" will tell you that Peikoff's courses Understanding Objectivism and OPAR: Advanced Seminars are quite crucial to furthering understanding and the unique aural format of presentation is difficult to separate from the content. Say that we throw these courses in as, maybe not absolutely necessary to, but hugely helpful for, an advanced understanding. And say that your only option (which it is not, BTW) is a permanent purchase. So monetarily speaking, your maximum possible investment is the purchase of some books, and these two courses, and what are you looking at is maybe $1,000, tops. The rest is the investment of time, thought, chewing and re-chewing of ideas facilitated in part by open places like SOLO, etc. The only ongoing investment I can think of that might be of considerable use or importance for some is the $120 or so a year to sign up for Binswanger's list.

Why, in comparison, is one's monetary investment in Scientology so expensive? For many a normal observer, the question answers itself.

Combine that with the funny supernatural back story, and it's no secret why folks of secular reason who are attracted to Objectivism would find much interest in it. (I have heard from one reasonable Ob-symp that LRH's early book Dianetics is interesting and not full of gobbledygook; this person couldn't say the same for the rest.)

Kevin Owen, our best weapon against Scientology, continues to post irrelevant Choorch propaganda.

Here is a loving tribute to the head of the Choorch, old Elrawn (click for Youtube video):

WSS

This is a good qoute by Rand.

The subconscious or as we call it in Dianetics and Scientology, the Reactive Mind, can twist and warp a persons natural ability to be moral.

If someone is immoral then something in his reactive mind is directing him to carry out immoral actions even though he/she knows they are wrong. That doesn't lessen their responsibility for those actions. To fix that problem one needs either education or a science of the mind [to handle the subjective abberrration] , not of the Brain [main part of the nervous system]
http://www.rehabilitatenz.co.nz/pages/dianetics-book.html

When psychiatry and psychology entered our court rooms and started labelling many immoral actions as diseases [excuses for immorality ] criminals became victims of their past and not responsible for their crimes.

Sigmund Freud
http://www.rehabilitatenz.co.nz/pages/excerpts-educations-ruin.html

With Freud came the promotion of promiscuity, the demise of religion and the idea that immorality and criminality were simply the result of past psychological trauma. The individual was a victim and no longer accountable