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Comment by dirtmerchant | Hacker News Reader

I can’t believe someone wrote an article about Neopets without mentioning the founder, Doug Dohring’s, ties with Scientology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Dohring

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I don't see anything there about it except that he is one. Is there a story I'm missing? To someone who doesn't believe in any religion, it doesn't make sense that his should be called out and not someone else's mainstream but equally supernatural religion. Either we shame everyone for the silliness and crimes done in the name of their respective religions, or no one. It should be the latter.

Don't know this specific human from Joe but scientology deserves a call out, it is active and entirely predatory. Same deal with other religions really, they just get more specific call outs by region.

Neopets was sold to Viacom in 2005 (and again last year). The founder isn't especially relevant anymore.

According to Wikipedia, he did, at one point, try to add Scientology content, but was stopped by the two main people.[0] (Doug is just the business guy.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopets

And now he's just gotten heavily involved in electronic education platforms for young children, and presumably learned his lesson on how to keep from being stopped again.

Seems like this sort of grave implication shouldn’t be made without some sort of evidence.

Wikipedia also notes: "Dohring used Scientology's Org Board to manage the company." That's a management technique that L. Ron Hubbard claimed originated with an 80 trillion year old galactic civilization.

According to Kotaku, an anonymous ex-employee claimed that: "The negative aspects of NeoPets, all came from the side of Scientology-Oriented business structure/psyche." https://web.archive.org/web/20071115124238/http://www.kotaku...

(Link stolen from a post you made 17 years ago. :) )

Seems like someone should make a Scientology-free alternative.

You should watch Going Clear. I'm critical of ~all religions, but Scientology really has achieved a unique mixture of scale and awfulness.

>Scientology really has achieved a unique mixture of scale and awfulness.

This is what bothers me about criticism of Scientology. How many wars have been fought in its name? How many nations conquered and people enslaved? I'm an atheist but of all the lousy things done in the name of religions Scientology doesn't even make the top five.

Scientology started in 1950's. So lets limit ourselves to things that happened after that.

So answer your own question: "How many wars have been fought in its name? How many nations conquered and people enslaved?" for other religions? (People organizing along existing religions groupings during a war doesn't count.)

It's certainly not many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war#Modern_period Seems like: Sudan, Yugoslav, Lebanon is debatable. Could maybe add ISIL.

On the other hand Scientologists have enslaved 5,000 to 10,000 today, right now.

The religious right-wing who have been driving the USA's criminal wars on Islam across the Middle-East surely also need to be factored into your evaluation...

We did not go to war with the desert because of religion, but rather much more boring and banal evils like "It will make me more likely to win the next election" and "it will be good for profits" and "my daddy was attacked by this guy"

I don't believe this - I think that the US' oligarchic/military-industrial classes are very definitely motivated by their religious beliefs, and this gives them the false moral altitude they require to blatantly, with impunity, commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights - in the name of their One True God™ ..

See also: the slavish devotion to maintaining the Palestinian peoples' suffering. A people deemed inferior by religious institutions which have their grasp deep, deep within the American ruling classes' psyche ..

I don’t think the complaint is that it’s engaged in the worst acts religion has ever committed. But it’s doing awful things continuously well under the “purview” of modern US law.

Lots of awful acts happen all over the world, but most of them are not occurring with impunity under functional legal regimes.

Scientology's not in the top five total, but on a per-capita basis it may be winning for number of people enslaved, although it's very difficult to get solid numbers. There are under 50,000 scientologists, and their "Sea Org" members who signed "billion year contracts" may have had as many as 5,000 people, so that's perhaps one slave for every 10 scientologists. But, again, reliable numbers are hard, so that estimate could easily be off by an order of magnitude.

You're comparing religions that have existed for thousands of years to ones that have existed for tens of years. I don't think they're exactly comparable.

generally speaking it isn't the supernatural beliefs that are called into question when one considers scientology, but rather the fraud/abuse/criminality that is related to the church and its' management.

The time in which the Catholic church itself acted like an international paramilitary/intelligence organization is largely over, but that may or may not be the case with regards to certain other religions.

"Silliness"? How about a history of murder, doxxing, and harassmentv of its critics and ex members?

Hubbard founded it on a bet and then it took on a mind of its own with his death, becoming a tax haven and a cult - one of the most dangerous, prolific, and virulent cults there is.

Stop and consider for a moment that someone who is nose-deep in such an organization is aggressively expanding into literacy and education platforms for young children - the age where religious and cult indoctrination is most successful. Recruitment plunges when the age of exposure is after critical thinking skills are developed.

Obviously he would not directly attempt recruitment, but I guarantee there's more than just "he wants to be a good dude" going on. As another commentor noted, he tried to get scientology shit into Neopets.

Well, it's certainly not irrelevant. Scientology principles were used to manage the company and employees were partially evaluated on their friendliness to it [0]. It wasn't ever a major part of the content because of internal resistance by people like the other founders [1].

Managements' religious preferences can have a meaningful influence on how an organization operates, e.g. Hobby Lobby. I don't see why it'd be out of bounds here when it's legitimately relevant to how Neopets was run.

[0] https://theoutline.com/post/4190/neopets-was-run-by-scientol...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/26fwhh/i_am_donna_...

To.the point above, though; this is not really unique? Is it?

It is not at all unique for random internet accounts to pop up and assert that Scientology is a normal religion just like all the other religions whenever it is mentioned even in passing, no.

It just doesn’t seem relevant to the topic at hand. We’re commenting on an article about the longevity, and someone comes out of the woodworks to share their astonishment that we haven’t not discussed the religious beliefs of the founder. It’s astonishing if that doesn’t seem divisive or bizarre to you, at least just a bit.

This is a good point. There’s basically zero current interest in the Scientologist “church” or its involvement in the personal and professional activities of its members. This is evidenced by any cursory googling of the church today. We are all best served by bringing up its equivalence with other churches upon seeing the word online as that serves the best interest of all curious parties.

What? What we need to do is not turn every discussion into an ideological battlefield at the first possible tangent.

I'd suspect it is fairly common for most all religions?

Would be neat to see data on it. I certainly don't like the behavior. Doesn't feel uncommon, though.

Yeah. People’s moral values and breed of sacred cows do have an effect on their management and leadership style. Non-religious people are outnumbered here (here being the planet, not necessarily this specific website but maybe even that too), so being militantly against that sort of thing kind of isn’t worth our time, or I guess more correctly it is a poor investment of our time. Better to live and let live.

I worked at Age of Learning, which was headed by the founders of Neopets after they sold the company.

I definitely had some concerns about the Scientology stuff going into that job, but I never heard a word about it the entire time I worked there. The vibes were definitely a little weird, but nothing overt. The bigger problems were that they were a mess in terms of engineering - for example they didn't even use version control for the first few years that ABCMouse was in business.

scientology is a cult from the top down, more blatantly than many other religions and a lot more centralized

Because it isn't a religion. And I don't mean because I don't believe in their specific beliefs, but because it doesn't act like a religion, it acts like a con artist business.

Have you heard of any other "religion" that charges huge amount of money for access to their teachings?

>mainstream but equally supernatural religion.

Scientology is verifiably and comprehensively different from most other non-cult religions by virtue of how it treats it's members and encourages them to act. Only one other religion of note has such "High control group" style features as discouraging psychiatry, discouraging interaction with non-Scientology family members, forcing through threat of blackmail members to do things, threatening the IRS and getting away with it, and generally treating members as resources.

I think it should be mentioned that the actual creators of Neopets are Adam Powell and Donna Williams, who apparently were unaware of this connection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopets

You can't believe people are having a discussion without bringing up religion?

I believe he is highlighting how Scientology is more of a grift than an actual religion. I would be more concerned, all else equal, if a Scientologist was President than if said President was American Protestant or Catholic.

edit: It could also have to do with Scientology’s history of child sex abuse

Scientology isn't a religion it's a cult/grift. For decades they were denied the tax status of a religious organization because they didn't meet the legal test until they mounted a decade long infiltration and harassment campaign to which the IRS eventually relented.

I heard about that in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI5cu3G5oXk

I may not remember it correctly, but I think the two original creators of the site ran out of money and were recommended to a group of investors who happened to be Scientologists.

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