Darth Wong wrote:Thanas wrote:Probably because they do not charge that much and a lot of money goes to charity?
Total red-herring.
Fraud is fraud, regardless of whether you can say irrelevant positive things about the person doing it. And I take objection to the "do not charge that much" claim. Christian churches in fact routinely demand
enormous sums of money from people. The only difference is that they've built up enough revenue base over the centuries to make it voluntary rather than mandatory. I've known people who "tithed" 10% of their income to the Church.
I can think of several differences between Scientology and Christianity that make the former much more vulnerable to charges of fraud.
For starters, consider the definition of fraud. To commit fraud, I must
knowingly offer you goods or services that I cannot or will not deliver, and
I must accept money in exchange for those goods or services. On top of that, as a practical matter, to demonstrate fraud
you must be able to prove that I didn't give you what you paid for.
(underlining for emphasis; these are the key points)
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Scientology makes more falsifiable claims than Christianity. If my Christian church tells me that giving them money will make me more likely to go to Heaven, it is difficult for me to sue on the grounds that I didn't go to Heaven as promised, because by the time I'm in any position to evaluate their claim, I'm dead. Whereas if a Scientologist sells me a magic box to make me feel better, I can sue on the grounds that their magic box demonstrably does not work.
That makes it easier to convict them of fraud, because it is easy for the prosecution to prove that fraud has been committed by testing the magic box to see if it works. I cannot perform comparable tests on the afterlife. Even if philosophical principles such as Occam's Razor
suggest that I'm making false claims about the afterlife, it will be difficult to provide positive evidence that I have committed a crime by doing so.
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With Christianity, it's harder to demonstrate criminal intent in a 2000 year old religion where the clergy, by all appearances, believes what they are saying. Scientology is relatively new, and originated in a well documented period, so it's easier to find any evidence that may exist which proves it to be a scam. Fraud requires not only that the defrauder is promising something they can't or won't deliver, but that they
know they are making a bad promise. A priest who promises that giving him money puts you on a fast track to Heaven is not committing fraud if he sincerely believes it to be true. He may be full of shit, but he is acting in good faith.
In the case of Scientology, there is less room for the assumption of good faith. The leaders of the movement are actively making up new nonsense, demanding proportionately far more time and resources from their followers than most established religions, and are selling things that are
testably useless, in ways that no honest person could make a mistake about. Thus, there is less doubt that the Church of Scientology is acting in bad faith than there is of, say, the Baptists.
Since the intent to commit fraud is a necessary condition for the commission of fraud, that makes it much harder to convict Christian churches of fraud.
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On top of that, as others have pointed out, most modern Christian churches make effectively
no claims about what you will receive in exchange for money donated to the church. Giving them money will not send you to Heaven, let alone guarantee happiness on Earth, unless some other spiritual condition is met. Therefore, it is impossible to convict them of selling fraudulent goods or services because
they are not selling anything. People may give them money because they believe that the church is a righteous organization that deserves the money, but a charitable donation is not the same as a payment for services rendered.
In short, it is difficult to convict a church of fraud when they haven't actually promised you anything in exchange for your money.
