Cruise, control yourself

Let's face it, most actors don't have a background in science. It's understandable because you'd expect that they got where they are by learning "the craft" and probably never had the time for much outside that.

Even so, that doesn't stop them having at least a smattering of common sense. There are a whole bunch of actors who at least appear to have some: Anthony Hopkins, Sandra Bullock, Morgan Freeman and George Clooney, for example, come across in interviews I've seen to be reasonably smart people.

Not so Tom Cruise, however, and that's a shame because his soapboxing about scientology (sorry, I can't bring myself to capitalize that "s") just makes him look more and more like a total goon. Cruise's tirade against psychiatrists is straight from the spirit of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of $ciento£ogy. I just hope I can take my mind off Cruise's crap when we go to see War of the Worlds, because I'd hate it if being reminded of scientology spoils the movie for me.

Cruise was studying to be a catholic priest before he became an actor and I suppose that might explain part of it, but when you think about it you might realize that there's something not quite right; if he knows something about religion, how is that he can't tell scientology from the real thing? Because, sure as eggs are eggs, scientology is not a religion. It's a scam that messes with people's health and minds to make money.

A long time ago L. Ron Hubbard said that the quickest and easiest way to make a lot of money was to found a religion. Then came his book "Dianetics", in which El Ron claimed to have scientific proof that every disease, from the common cold to cancer, is caused by nasty racial memories and that we can be cured of all illnesses by just cleaning out these memories. After the book came the "church" of scientology. Voila, El Ron had founded his religion. And it's still with us today.

You might think it's harmless for people to believe what they like. If you think that, you should read this. Or this. Or this. Or most especially this. In fact, take a look at the Operation Clambake homepage to find links to a wealth of information.

(If you think those pages are biased, check out the Wikipedia entry - Wikipedia is open to all to edit and as a result articles that are contentious tend to balance out over time, and these articles have been there a long time.)

With all the bad experiences of people who have been victims of scientology you'd think something would have been done about it, but of course that's not so (at least, not in the USA - the governments of Germany and Greece aren't as easily fooled, though, and those countries have outlawed scientology). The "church" continues to pretend to be a religion so that it can maintain its tax-exempt status; it continues to persecute ex-members that speak out against it, sometimes to the grave; and it still makes money hand over fist (generally by persuading its victims to give them all their money). And, it claims that all the bad publicity it gets is unfounded smear campaigning, and its own members fall for it. Including, it would seem, Tom Cruise.

Well, I suppose there is one good thing about Tom speaking out and that is that he raises the profile of the whole "church". Maybe with the lights on them, a few more people will take a good look at scientology and start asking some tough questions. We can hope.