Scientology is Complete Crap

So, one of my meet-up groups has been doing a tour of different religions.  I am new to the group, and I am pretty sorry that I missed pretty much every one of these talks.  They have had nights centered around all sorts of different faiths, including Baha'i, Muslim, Hindu, and even Mormon.  This week they were sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel and we went to explore the Church of Scientology.

The inside didn't really look much like a church, it looked more like the room of a top-rate nonprofit, with a main meeting room and classrooms and offices at the side.  The meeting room walls were advertising various books and workshops with "L. Ron Hubbard" spattered in every available niche.  (For someone that is so philanthropic, as we learned later, the guy sure seemed to like his name spread around.)

Anyway, the first part was a viewing of thier new DVD (based on the book "The Problems of Work").  This was basically a poorly acted but generally well-produced "dramatization" (so we were told, no I have not read the book) of the different chapters.  They are geared to help improve communication at work as well as one's own being.  One of the things that they talked about were "Tones".  Someone at the bottom of the stack feels "sub-apathy", and the idea is to move them upward through the various tones to Serenity.  Now although tones are really just a rip-off of Kübler-Ross's grief model (Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) I do have to admit that for me, a chronic depressive, there is a bit appeal and dare I say logic to this model.  We were told that people get stuck at various tones and need help to pull them out.  When the video talked about how people who were stuck in apathy saw the world as (I am paraphrasing here) "like looking at shades of gray through water" I have to admit then had it not been freakin' Scientology, I might have considered actually picking up a few pamphlets and maybe checking out their books in the library.   I mean, after dealing with despression for more then half my life, that stuff spoke to me and I am long past the point where I will try just about anything.

Anyway, after the video we had a guy who looked remarkably like Kyle MacLachlan with a beard  (Cooper from Twin Peaks or Orson from Desperate Housewives) jumped up with a smile and ask if we had any questions.  He quickly established that he was one of us (sane) by saying that he is an engineer and Catholic (probably figuring that would cover pretty much everyone in the group in some way.)  Kyle took our questions, and being that we were a pretty nice and respectful group, we started out with some easy ones.  Is there a service in the Church?  How does the church see god?  Are other faiths accepted?    As Kyle took our questions with his smile, the other Scientologsts that were standing around holding thier free DVD and other stuff slowly inched in as the questions started to get more difficult.  When one gentleman asked about Scientology and it's believes towards physics and other established sciences, Kyle's little posse started to edge in protectively, smiling at us with suspicious eyes.

Finally, someone got around to asking about money.  After assuring as that "no one has ever gotten rich over Scientology" he said that this would be the last question, as he knew that "we" had to go.  I looked around and didn't see that anyone in my group looked particularly interested in leaving.  The Scientology posse was getting nearing and started making "alright" gestures- nodding and looking like they were ready to give us our DVDs and get us the hell out.   Before this happened, however, one girl did manage to ask about Tom Cruise and his views twoards Psychiatry.

Now here things got interesting.  Kyle gave a sort of fake laugh and then went all Jekyll and Hyde on us.  I inched towards the edge of my sheet, thinking that Kyle was going to go off on Tom Cruise and what a lousy representative of Scientology he was.  Instead, Kyle started to rail on psychiatry in general, stating that people are spirits and can not be controlled chemically.  Although he did come out in favor of Phycology and it's "talking cure" (every psychologist I ever had referred me to a psychiatrist for a prescription) he stated that pushing pills and chemistry was simply a way to control the natural spirit.  There was no pill, Kyle insisted, that would help the spirit.  Pills were a way of pushing buttons to control people, and Kyle said with a snear, do you know who started these vile experiments?  It was the NAZIs!!!!!


There was a definite change in the room at this point.  The Scientologist bouncers looked ready to jump and the audience was just getting started.  One woman in the back quickly jumped in and identified herself as a clinical psychologist.  She pointed out that although the "talking cure" was well and good, there were many of her patients that suffered from visual and audio hallucinations that talking really could not cure.  Kyle seemed to see that he had gone a bit too far and then back-peddled, saying that there were people who were "insane" that Scientology didn't really claim to help.  Apparently the door was closed to the "insane", non-insane people who didn't hear voices were welcome to join their own brand of "medicine"-- provided they were willing to toss their antidepressants and anti anxiety medications.  Obviously, that was the end of our little talk.

Anyway, my opinion of Scientology has gone from mocking it to realizing that this is a pretty scary concept that should be stopped.  They target people who are depressed, lonely, and scared and lure them in with promises of a cure.  They encourage them to abandon their established methods of treatment and throw their mental health (along with their wallets) into the hands of what is essentially a group of quacks.  This is wrong, and this is unethical.  It is no different then those people who claim that they can cure cancer with no more then clean living and a special concoction of vitamins and snake oil.

Scientology isn't just a cult, they are evil.