Don't miss the 2nd letter down below...
flojr
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-08- ... tters.html

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Scientology Needs No Defense
Here are 281 words of not being offended, just in case: Harmon Leon, you must be losing your touch. I'm a Scientologist and I'm not really offended by your article about my church ["World Recruiting Championships: Scientology Versus Crunch Gym," Infiltrator, Aug. 3]. I suppose your reference to our E-meters as lie detectors should offend me. They don't detect lies, they detect thoughts, especially stressful thoughts. This of course is proven since your whole trip to our church was a lie, and nothing happened when they put you on the E-meter. I guess you can lie and attempt to make fun of people's lives with no stress at all. But then since lie detectors don't detect lies either, I guess you could call anything a lie detector.

I suppose you hoped to hold our church up to ridicule as we "sell" our services. The entirety of our movement (religious, social, or business, whatever you think of it) is dedicated to helping people live better lives. This requires addressing all aspects of life, spiritual and material. To really help someone, there needs to be a change in his or her life, one that they agree upon.

Forcing change on people doesn't help anyone. For instance, we could just feed homeless, but that would just help them stay the same. We could throw them into housing they don't want, but they would just leave or ruin it.

Ultimately convincing a person to change is a sales job. Anyone who helps anyone change is selling them on changing. That's what we do. If you don't like it, don't be a Scientologist. Be something you want to be. We would like that, particularly if it was something that contributes to the lives of the people around you.

Richard Scott Trafton
Lower Haight

A more concise view: I enjoyed your article and the comparison of Scientology and Crunch Gym. Pretty sad analysis in that they seem to use the same recruiting techniques.

Chris Mentzer
Mesa, Ariz.

Chris Mentzer? Is that you? I did a little googling...is he a musician? I'm not up on the latest rock stars.

Anyhoo...Here's the scieno who wrote the first letter. He's written letters before.

Operation Clambake Forum: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
http://discus.xenu.net/discus/messages/ ... ?982476371

and his SCN cookie cutter pages

ABOUT MYSELF

Hello, my name is Richard Trafton, and here is a little bit about myself:
  
   I've been in Scientology for over 20 years. I live in San Francisco and work in a large reprographics firm. I've live in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Southern California and Mexico, but I've found the mix of the beauty and the variety of people in San Francisco to be the most appealing to me.
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MY SUCCESS IN SCIENTOLOGY

     Being a Scientologist has given me stability in my life. I've continually been finding out new things about myself and the world around me. The day I was first introduced to Scientology I knew right then that this would be my religion. I saw not only how the doctrines would help me make sense of the rest of my life, but also make sense of what life I had already lived.