{"id":2065,"date":"2013-01-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wptest\/2013\/01\/12\/the-church-of-scientology\/"},"modified":"2013-01-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T00:00:00","slug":"the-church-of-scientology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/2013\/01\/12\/the-church-of-scientology\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church of Scientology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the fastest growing new religious movements in history, The Church of Scientology claim they possess the ultimate answer to existence, inviting the individual to sign a billion year contract to aid L Ron Hubbard and his missionaries on the road to total freedom. Scientology is a highly controversial movement, labelled by many as a dangerous and abusive religious cult. What is it about Scientology that attracts the masses? Psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung posited a clinical viewpoint on religious belief and practice.   <\/p>\n<p>Philosophers in their own right, their psychological theories of religious belief can be applied to religious cults such as Scientology.  Freud judged religious faith to be a neurotic need, with belief bringing some comfort to our search for a father figure. In contrast Jung posited religious belief has underlying therapeutic value, giving the agent a chance to achieve emotional closure and human \u2018wholeness.\u2019 Nietzsche and Dawkins argue such benefits come at the cost of delusion.  Cults appear to bring contentment  &#8211; at a cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lydia Rowland Greenstone, 2013, Stage 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[609,22,128],"tags":[32,611,174],"class_list":["post-2065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-609","category-abstracts","category-stage-2-abstracts","tag-freud","tag-jung","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}