A weird new trend which started in Los Angeles has spread to Vancouver, Canada. The trend is “Scientology speed running” and involves running through Scientology buildings.
While this may be amusing as a prank or a dare, it’s probably not going to dissuade anyone from being a Scientologist.
Why? Because what changes people’s minds is hearing a different viewpoint from friendly people.
Ex-Scientologists have commented that they don’t believe it will work to dissuade people from following Scientology.
Scientology speed-running — Wikipedia
How to change people’s minds
When I was an evangelical Christian, what changed my mind was listening to my friends.
One of my friends was an atheist pointing out the uncontacted Amazon tribe problem (the idea that if people who never heard the gospel will get into heaven on a technicality, why bother to send out missionaries? If a missionary tells the message of the gospels to an un-contacted Amazon tribe — all of whom would have got into heaven prior to being contacted — but only 50% of them accept the message of the gospels, then that missionary has condemned the unbelieving 50% to hell for all eternity, according to evangelical Christians.)
Another friend came out to me as gay, and the evangelical Christians who I knew said that he would go to hell if he acted on it. As he’s a very altruistic person and very definitely gay, that seems very cruel.
I also went to see the film Gandhi and realized how many millions of adherents of other religions there are in the world.
Another example: a member of the Westboro Baptist Church was on Twitter, and instead of being hostile, people asked her questions and debated politely. She ended up leaving the church because of these discussions.
Fundamentalism is like a badly knitted sweater: there are many inconsistencies and contradictions. All you have to do is pull gently on a loose thread. It may take years for the sweater to come unravelled, and maybe you won’t see the results, or it may never come unravelled: but making people feel persecuted for their beliefs will only serve to entrench the beliefs further, in spite of the internal contradictions.
And in some cases, there’s no point in discussing it with the fundamentalist, and you just have to protect your boundaries.
Changing Paths 
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