People need to stop hating Scientology.

RandomName, FYI, you can set the character limit when you create a debate. You left it at 8k, I used just over 6k. It also helps an argument to supply credible evidence in the form of sources. When asked to clarify “horrid treatment,” my opponent only replied: “I speak of intense mockery. But there is no way to know what will happen.” While I think my opponent could easily have come up with a link to a South Park or dated Anonymous video to clarify the mockery he speaks of, he did not. (I'm new to debating in a more formal format, too, so this is meant more as a constructive critique.) His second sentence alludes to the unpredictability of future events, as if this were evidence of anything. “What truths? The bible is based on speculation. No scientific truth of the Bible,Torah, or Quran exist.” I don't know of a religion that claims to be false. Previously, my opponent listed, in satire, some of the truths of 4 religions as he perceives them. These truths are claimed truths. Not all claims are truth. On the other hand, a truth is a truth whether you believe it or not, and true claims have been made. I was careful previously to use the term “claimed truth,” as I can see that a direct proclamation by me that Jesus is Lord might derail this debate, as my opponent has already voiced his personal bias against my religion. For the sake of diplomatic atmosphere, I am attempting to make my language palatable to him. In short, my opponent already knows something of the claimed truths of the four comparative religions he chose in this debate, so I am confused as to why he asked this. This debate is “People need to stop hating Scientology.” Which people are not specified, but later my opponent mentioned Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and professed to know something about their religions as well, so I explained why those people would have reasons to hate Scientology. I went about this not by showing that the claims of the other three Monotheistic religions are true and Scientology are false, but by showing that the other religions' base claims are more believable and logical than those of Scientology. “Christianity had a beginning too.” Judaism and Christianity, and to a degree Islam, claim the same first book of Genesis, which would have been a first hand account of creation that would have been passed down from Adam. This account would have been taken down in his natural life, and we know that people have natural lives. Scientology claims an account by L. Ron Hubbard that would have been taken down in a previous life, and previous lives are not known to science. The Biblical account claims events that occurred 6k-10k years ago, and were passed down by written tradition. We know that written records can convey truth over long periods of time. Scientology claims knowledge was lost for 75 million years, and was not passed down through conventional means, but later revealed through hypnotic “auditing,” to determine what happened in a past life. I think this is not a method of preserving history that most people would see as reliable, as the information Hubbard brought forth was unprecedented and unverified by other 75 million year old sources, as we have no know 75 million year old witnesses. I will concede this debate if my opponent can do this: Demonstrate that information gained from hypnotic auditing of past lives is as verifiable as a source of truth, as information in a book that has been written and past down by people in their natural lives. If you can convince me of this, people of the Monotheistic religions you mentioned deserve Scientology a second look. “There is no god in Scientology. Why is a god needed to have a religion?” I never claimed a god is necessary for a religion. However, if you believe in a god and the consequences of that god existing, it would follow that heresy would be harmful: That is the reason for people to hate Scientology. They see it as heresy, or at the least, a harmful lie inconsistent with the truth they know. They are doing what they think is right by protecting their fellow man from perceived harm. “What's with the "severe lack of credibility over even Islam" thing?” Islam's prophecies brought forth new data about established doctrine that was contradictory to the old data. Either the Quaran is correct, or the Bible is correct, not both. It is more believable that the Bible is correct since the new information contradicts prior eye-witness accounts of the Bible, and Mohammed could not have been an eye-witness to anything before 500 A.D.