Understanding Scientology

It seems Tom Cruise is pushing his Scientology beliefs more and more these days, including on his current film set where:

Cruise had sponsored a "Scientology tent," offering what his spokeswoman, Lee Anne De Vette, called "assists" - a kind of massage administered by volunteer ministers - along with religious literature

(Snip)

But Ms. De Vette, who is Mr. Cruise's sister, said he had been inviting colleagues to learn more about his religion in order to combat what he viewed as prejudice against a group that some critics have branded an exploitative cult.

(Snip)

"It's lack of understanding that breeds bigotry," said Ms. De Vette

(My bold.)

Well, I hate bigotry, and if that bigotry is the result of a lack of understanding I feel I should do something about it. So I offer information on Scientology from Operation Clambake, specifically the Xenu Leaflet. Read the full leaflet (and the Clambake site), to see how crazy Scientology really is, but here are the key points:

Scientology has been described as a "Bait-and-Switch" fraud. This has a definite meaning in US law. It describes a fraud where a person is seemingly sold one thing only to find out that it is another and more expensive thing and so they pay more than they would have paid had they known what it was all about. Scientology is the definitive example of this. It starts out with Dianetics, a supposed science of the mind that will greatly improve a person’s thinking and health at a seemingly reasonable cost. People are attracted in, they receive some Dianetic processing only to be told that it only works on a few people and so to benefit they must receive the very expensive Scientology auditing instead at $200 per hour. This they do and reach the dubious state called Clear only to be told that they are then "at risk" and must move at all speed to the more advanced level of OT III, parting with thousands of dollars all the while. When they reach OT III a great secret is told them. That is that they are full of the souls of space aliens murdered 75 million years ago and to achieve spiritual benefits they must pay to have them removed. The processing at this level costs $400 per hour. The whole of the Scientology religion is a continuous bait-and-switch fraud with the whole purpose of extracting the maximum amount of money from people.

(My bold.)

Now go back and read how Cruise’s tent will offer “assists” for free. (As with those mythical drug dealers, the first hit is always free.) Note the “along with religious literature” comment – that’s the “Dianetics”.

The leaflet goes on to tell of:

the alien galactic ruler Xenu who was in charge of Earth and 75 other planets in this part of the galaxy some 75 million years ago and how he cured overpopulation by paralysing the people of the other planets, flying them to Earth in DC-8 space planes, arranging them round a volcano to murder them with H bombs. Not done with that these souls of these murdered people were gathered up and boxed, taken to cinemas and shown films for several days. The end result being that the souls clustered together and now inhabit people in their thousands. And of course they must be removed at huge expense.

And you thought homeopathy made no sense.

How do they get people to believe in this crap? The short answer is, in small steps. Each step requires you to believe just a small thing. You accept the first thing and then you are asked to believe another small thing. Plus, if the technology helps you then it’s working, but if it doesn’t help this means you have a problem (not the Scientology), a problem that only more Scientology can fix. (Can you say, un-falsifiable?) Before you know it, you believe a whole load of unbelievable crap. Or, as one ex-Scientologist writes:

If you watch the hour hand of the clock, can you see it move? I escaped from the cult when one day I noticed that although I didn’t see the hour hand move from midday, it was now 6pm! Simply put, I woke up and compared then with now.

Scientology is a half-baked mix of discredited psychotherapy and regression therapy, idiotic and simplistic rules and bad science fiction presented as profound spiritual truth. It was made-up by L. Ron Hubbard (“El Ron”), in the 1950s. It claims to be science-based, but in reality it is the opposite. Science is evidence based, allows dissent, and requires different scientists to check each other’s work. Scientology allows no dissent from the writings of El Ron. He was the one and only “scientist”, his word is law, and since he is now dead nothing new can ever be learned, nothing can ever be discarded. The problems with this should be obvious.

See the celebrities who follow it. Makes you wish for more Kabbalah. Almost.

Comments

[lambic]

I turned on the tv last night to watch Jeopardy, and I was shocked to see an advert for Narconon. Narconon claims to be a drug rehabilitation service, but are a well known front group for $cientology. I figured they were a dying cult after the Battlefield Earth fiasco, but I guess I was wrong.

[Skeptico]

Well spotted. You are right – it is Scientology. And the astonishing success stories claimed for it cannot be verified because they will not allow any independent verification of their results. More about Narconon here.

[OutEast]

There's some great stuff on Scientology at the Church of Critical Thinking (which is rarely updated these days, alas).

http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com/index.shtml

[Paul]

Scientology is making a whacked religious cult promote health talk to get some degree of crediblity. Check it out it was formed by a guy that writes science function books. It has been pursued legally based on its ability to harming others with some ridiculous advice. There is bizarre ritual that only surfaces after they have you hooked. Be very careful this is a dangerous group that gets out of control if you tell the truth about them. There is lots on the internet which reveals there true nature. Some of it has recently surfaced though the aggression of Tom Cruise.
http://bible.ca/scientology.htm

"http://bible.ca/scientology.htm"
Scary the christians are calling the scientologist crazy! One cult knocking another.

"Be very careful this is a dangerous group that gets out of control if you tell the truth about them."

Yeah just like christians. Bring up the council of nicea and see what happens. Bring up the fact the in hebrew the word elowah is the translatated into god and elohim which is the plural of elowah is translated into either god or angles not gods and see what happens. What about the fact that the bible says beware of false prophets yet people go to church and get spoon fed the bible. Its no different the ignorant seek other for faith the true seek inside themselves for faith.

[BronzeDog]

Its no different the ignorant seek other for faith the true seek inside themselves for faith.

I agree with one apparent implication of anonymous's comment: Religion should be a private matter.

I remember one cult website that seemed to be a cult itself: Was touting the old lines about Magic: The Gathering and D&D being Satanic. My angry email to them was answered with crickets.