Why is the Church of Scientology so, so, ...

Question:
Why is Scientology so aggressive? They make a huge deal out of the littlest things.
Question:
It seems that the church can't learn from its mistakes, it keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Why is that?
Question:
Are the people who run the Church of Scientology as stupid as they seem?

Answer:
The answer to all these questions is pretty much the same. The Church of Scientology is very, very authoritarian. Everything it does and has done was laid out very thoroughly in policy letters written by L. Ron Hubbard. Not only must all of these policy letters be followed to the letter, but staff members are not supposed to do anything but what is in these policies.

The policy letters reflect Hubbard's personality and his methods and are considered, by most Scientologists, perfect. So there is no need to ever change them. The aggression and quirky way of doing things comes totally from Hubbard.

As Hubbard died many years ago, and hasn't come back to rewrite these policies, the church is stuck. This means the church cannot change, cannot learn from its mistakes, cannot alter its course, no matter how obvious it is that the policies don't work.

This has led to the Internet pastime of baiting the church -- you say certain things, the church must always react the same way, no matter how stupid it looks and no matter how painful it is to shoot themselves in the foot yet again.

A recent BBC program by Panorama set out to specifically show that the church's methods and reactions hadn't changed over the years. They baited the church and the church reacted exactly as predicted, and shot themselves in the foot.

The question as to why Scientologists still consider Hubbard's policies to be perfect in light of its long history of failure and the subsequent decline of the church is another question -- for another day.