Why restrict it to New Age religions?

I didn't see a whole lot of basic differences in how Lutherans (the
religion of my youth) and Scientologists reframed events to fit into
their 'agreed upon apparency of existence'. It's the nature of the
beast, as they say. Be it religion, politics or whatever, whenever
groups of people get together and agree on things they'll soon find
non-agreers lacking in the truth department.

Hubbard was certainly bright enough to not only recognize this, but to
DA (so to speak) the potential for his philosophy to be weakened by it.
All we're talking about here is the perception of value. Most critics
assert there is no value to the tech. The most outspoken are people who
willingly and enthusiastically promoted just the opposite while
Scientologists. It's pretty easy for me to see that folks like Erlich
and Noscieno are vehement partly because they were passionate enough
about their belief to feel equal passion when they perceived they were
betrayed. But then that's the way I see it. They might disagree.

My own dispassionate view of the tech is probably what pissed people off
when I was a member and no doubt causes many here to view me as an
apologist for the CofS. With that in mind it's pretty simple for me to
seperate the 'tech' from the actions of individual members. In the case
of Lisa McPherson I blame the individuals directly involved and see no
reason to blame the 'tech', whatever I may think about the value or lack
of value of the Introspection r/d. For the record, I think the
Introspection r/d is bullshit. But I also thought it was bullshit to eat
wafers and drink red wine while the minister mumbled about the body of
Christ.

Wolf