v.-.v

I'm trying to get you to realise that people who ARE religious can do terrible things and people who ARE NOT religious can be normal, everyday, "I don't want to hurt anyone" people.

When you say something like: "seeing the kids at my school who are without it... alot of the kids at my school are without religion and they are lost... drugs at a premature age, drink, and have sex at premature ages"
And then you say: "its just that I can tell whether or not they are religious"

Religousness is something that's hard to see, unless you're talking about orthadox teachings about how to dress/act/etc. Morality would be far easier to see, but is NOT religiousness. I highly doubt you can see how religious people are, and that you can see how even people who follow religions end up doing drugs/etc.

This is going to seem weird, but one of the things that made me start questioning, and I mean seriously question the Christian church was Scientology bashing.
The church mocked it for requiring large sums of money.
Collection plate, anyone?
The Church mocked it for having texts based on the writings of a science fiction fan and author.
Hello, Masoretic Texts/Apocrypha/squabbles over cannon, redaction, false attribution, plagiarization from previous religions, texts written at least 40 years after the fact.
Scientology requires you to believe a lot of ridiculous shit.
So? So does the bible! The exsistence of King David and King Solomon, miracles, resurrection, talking donkeys, God-commanded genocide, the Exodus from Egypt and the entire book of Genesis.
So, if you hate Scientology for being ridiculous you might as well hate Christianity.

Not quite the same. A better example would have been the selling of indulgences to relieve sins. Of course, that was eventualy changed. Scientology is a new religion, give it a while and this argument will go away.

...actually, if you look into Scientology you'll find out its texts aren't published publicly. While this may just be a way to get money, it also means that every story/teaching you've heard probably means nothing. The doctorines of the religion are given to those within the religion only. Everything that's been "leeked" by the media is probably made-up crap to sell papers.