Oh. Ok. So you meant to ask "can any religion claim to be more legitimate than any other religion?"

In my opinion, the answer is clearly yes.
On the one hand there are some religions that came to exist because people needed answers to the things they could not explain. There are some religions founded by people who were completely convinced that they really had a vision, that some God really had chosen them to start a church.
Those are legitimate, because they really believe the things they say/teach/claim to be.
I am not so dumb to say which religions I would count among these, though ...
And of course there is a lot of grey area where some members really believe while others just enjoy the advantages.

But:

On the other hand you have Scientology or the Mormons. Those are illegitimate, because Smith and Hubbard were making it all up for their own benefit.

Anyways, you did not ask this. Instead you made a poll on Scientology ...

Oh well.

I was Making a broad statement that my core question is “is there a way to delineate true religions from cults and frauds”.

to do this, I used the basic poll/discussion Bart, if that's okay with you.


It basically goes to your point of separating which ones could be a scam and which ones are a scam.

Bart, how would you say that Mormonism is any less legitimate than Islam Christianity etc?

What is the objective standard?

a previous poster in this thread discussed a very interesting equation that would factor in the age of the religion, number of followers, etc.

The problem with this equation, is that it will select against any “true” religions that are new.

Alternatively, maybe all new religions should be scrutinized, to the point that they are founding members must take a polygraph test to attest to the credibility of the fact that they even had a vision.

Instead of a polygraph test, I propose using an E-meter.

Your ideas are problematic and illogical.

It really doesn't matter how a religion came into existence. And most don't really know how it came about or the motives of the people who did it. Most followers of a religion don't know or care about the answers to these questions.

Nor do these factors speak to their truthfullness.

It doesn't matter if they were convinced. If religion A is started because some person has a vision of something and religions B is started because some person wanted to create a belief system because he wanted to be the head of a cult.... it tells us nothing about the truth of the religion.

You're making some odd assumptions that a vision (dream, whatever) has some magical power to it and should be treated as if its credible.

A charlatan could unknowingly create a religion that happens to be true.
A person could start a religion around a vision that has no bearing on reality.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Whether a religion starts like A above or B, it could have followers for hundreds of years who believe its true. They would both be religions and both, either or neither could be real.

This is horrible logic. What someone believes has no bearing on its legitimacy.

If I teach people that 2+2=4 but I don't believe its true: does it change its legitimacy?
My kids really, really, really believe in Santa Claus.... does that make him legitimate?

All you're commenting on is if specific people believe the claims they're making about their religion. But how earnestly they believe the claims has no bearing on the legitimacy of their beliefs.

I can do some theistic-like back-bending apologetics here. (i learned it from this forum ) What if Smith was a con man but God used him to spread his message because he knew he would be effective? God works in mysterious ways.

(its very easy to argue for illogical religious beliefs because many theists embrace the very fact that it doesn't make sense... if its nonsensical simply accuse the non-believer of being arrogant for thinking they can understand how God operates.)

It's even worse than that. The chances of a modern educated person with all the accumulated knowledge of humanity available to him or her getting fundamental metaphysical questions right is actually much GREATER than the chances of some ignorant person who thought the stars revolved around the earth 2,000 years ago getting it right.

So metrics that privilege old religions simply because the evidence that would quickly establish that they are false has been buried for a couple of millenia are really getting things quite wrong.

It also fits with the mythology of many religions for the teachings to be "updated" in a time of extreme change or upheaval. Which seems like right around now to me. I would expect new religions to generally be favored over old religions, at least when it comes to the exclusivistic religions.

This may help people decide. The founder of Scientology didn't like religion and didn't think Scientology was one either:


The Creation of Human Ability, L. Ron Hubbard, 1953.
"Society, thirsting for more control of more people substitutes religion for the spirit, the body for the soul, an identity for the individual and science and data for truth. In this direction lies insanity, increasing slavery, less knowingness, greater scarcity and less society."

"Scientology has opened the gates to a better World. It is not a psycho-therapy nor a religion. It is a body of knowledge which, when properly used, gives freedom and truth to the individual."

Very interesting point. Yes I can agree that age should be taken out of it.

Is there any possible equation that could be put together that would exclude fraud religions? Judging from some of these responses, the Easy answer of having an equation like this is probably unlikely, and definitely won't make everyone happy.

In this case let's just go straight to the polygraph. Let's get
polygraph system and rigorously put anyone who id a "religious leader” or claims to have had visions of the Almighty etc.

Thanks for your detailed reply. It fails for one simple reason:

There is no logic in calling a religion legitimate or illegitimate. It makes no sense to use those adjectives to describe a religion in the first place. Therefore we are just talking opinion here, nothing more.

And my opinion is that religions that have been invented by a single person are a little less 'legitimate' than religions that have slowly developed over centuries with many many people involved. Christianity was not started by one man at some point in time.
But Scientology and Mormonism were.

I definitely Agree that religions that are started by one man should be highly scrutinized.

to the 14 people who responded in the affirmative to the poll, if there are any true Scientology believers out there, I would love to hear your opinion. Don't you get worried that it could be a fraud?

The issue may be how we're defining what we mean by legitimate. I was using legitimate to mean that it is true... Which is really the only important factor in answering legitimacy.

The factors you're looking at have no bearing on it's truthfulness. In other words, the truth does not change depending on who presents it or how many people developed the theory.

Furthermore, I have to ask... If there was a god he couldn't get the truth out by one person? Seems like you're putting limitations on god. We have no idea if there is one true god how many humans he would have to use to get the word out. Maybe.. Just maybe the fact that others are involved is evidence suggesting there is no god? Maybe an all powerful god would just have people born with all thevinfo on the truth? Assuming that a religion is less likely because you know it started with one person assumes you know not only how god would disseminate his religion but how many people would be involved at the start. Seems like no one here could possibly make such claims other then admitting it's just a random guess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ

I voted "yes", - although a case can be made that "legitimate religion" is something of an oxymoron, if it is possible to apply the term to anything, I cannot see an argument that it should not be applied to Scientology.

All religions have several things in common. They involve human beings coming up with ludicrous ideas, ascribing them to some supernatural source and imposing them on other people using the two techniques of threats and rewards (either or both being genuine or unverifiable).

But Scientology takes this time-honoured business model to a new height. It is on public record that L. Ron Hubbard stated candidly when he was merely a churner of pulp drivel that a great way of making a lot of money was to create a religion. He clearly used his (rather limited) intellectual abilities very effectively by turning this idea into a very successful business plan.

But the very public cynical basis for Scientology is not the worst thing about this putrescent scam. L. Ron Hubbard's most contemptible legacy is that he devoted enormous effort into learning how to use the techniques of psychological torture to extract the greatest amount of money and effort from his foolish victims. And that is the model that the "church" of scientology continues to execute today, intimidating, torturing and extracting every penny from its members until there is not a drop of blood left or they commit suicide.

A poison is a poison whatever box you put it into, so it does not really matter at all whether Scientology is labelled as a religion. It should be crushed and dismantled using all legal means as a service to humanity.

All religions have several things in common. They involve human beings coming up with ludicrous ideas, ascribing them to some supernatural source and imposing them on other people using the two techniques of threats and rewards (either or both being genuine or unverifiable).

But scientology takes this time-honoured business model to a new height. It is on public record that L. Ron Hubbard stated candidly when he was merely a churner of pulp drivel that a great way of making a lot of money was to create a religion. He clearly used his (rather limited) intellectual abilities very effectively by turning this idea into a very successful business plan.

But the very public cynical basis for Scientology is not the worst thing about this putrescent scam. L. Ron Hubbard's most contemptible legacy is that he evoted enormous effort into learning how to use the techniques of psychological torture to extract the greatest amount of money and effort from his foolish victims. And that is the model that the "church" of scientology continues to execute today, intimidating, torturing and extracting every penny from its members until there is not a drop of blood left or they commit suicide.

A poison is a poison whatever box you put it into, so it does not really matter at all whether Scientology is labelled as a religion. It should be crushed and dismantled using all legal means as a service to humanity.

Don't be so wishy-washy, Elroch. I agree.

Just as there pseudo-science or junk science there is likely a valid way of identifying pseudo-religion or junk religion. But I have to say I haven't seen definitive guidelines for any of these terms yet.

It's just as legit as any other religion, imo.

Do you think 'sincerity of founder' is a requirement for a religion to be legit?

There aren't too many religions where we can identify the founder (any others besides Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard?). However, I think it's pretty safe to say that many early religious leaders/rulers of most religions were not sincere. The early popes were insanely corrupt.

I guess what I'm saying is that even if I respond 'yes' to the question of "Do you think 'sincerity of founder' is a requirement for a religion to be legit", it wouldn't affect my view that Scientology is just as legit as any other religion.

I think I may have said something along these lines but I want to answer this question with the same self-serving faith based logic we see a lot here.

A god could use an effective but insincere person to spread his word. I've seen "God works in mysterious ways" to wave away any other critiques of things that don't seem to make sense, why should this be any different?

Also - to second what another has already pointed out; we don't know the founders of most religions. It seems silly to give them more credit as being legitimate simply because they're unknown.

We all (er... most of us) know that sincerity of belief has no bearing on truth.

Fits all the dictionary definitions of religion, so yes it "qualifies." As to whether it's "legit," either they're all equally legit, or none of them are.

Yeah, i don't think truth/sincerity are correlated. However, if I found a religion earnestly believing I'm on a mission from god, I think that is qualitatively different from founding a religion to fleece gullible people.

I think the first is a legitimate religion and the second not (even if the second turned out to be true and the first false!)

lol

If sincerity of founder is the metric, I find Scientology more likely to be legitimate than Christianity (assuming that neither are true). We know that Scientology had one founder, who may have been suffering a dellusion. I don't think this is likely, but it is plausible. The origins of Christianity are less murky, but we do know that The Bible had multiple authors so it looks like a collaborative effort. I find it less plausible that multiple people suffered the same dellusion than one person suffering a dellusion.

You should lol at bunny too. Because if the sincerity of the founder is necessary for a religion to be legitimate. Then i dont know if any religion is legitimate because i dont know if any of the founders were sincere.