Sean Bartlett’s column is a good start (“Even fourth graders know Scientology is full of it,” March 23, p.7). The only flaw, to my mind, is that it doesn’t go far enough in its dismissal of the Scientology cult. The “facts” presented on Scientology’s homepage are sparse, at best. I would instead recommend going to http://xenu.net, a site that has been “Undressing the Church of Scientology since 1996.”
To call Scientology anything more than a cult and a fraudulent moneymaking scheme is an offense to the intellect of anyone in earshot. Moreover, it is profoundly offensive to followers of real faiths. Scientology’s whole-scale opposition to the field of psychiatry is an offense to thousands of highly trained physicians and researchers, and a danger to their patients. Their practice of extorting money to gain access to written copies of their beliefs is “only” a threat to your wallet.
The simple fact is this: Scientology exists because Robert Heinlein bet L. Ron Hubbard a dollar that he couldn’t make a million dollars by creating his own religion. The tenets of Scientology that describe human origins state that humans are the trapped spirits of aliens who were nuked after being chained in the volcanoes of primordial earth by an overlord who bebopped around the galaxy in a spaceship that looks suspiciously like a Douglas DC-8. This is something to be laughed at and dismissed as lunacy, and nothing else.
Graham Voysey ENG ’06