Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

Alleged actor Tom Cruise, while busily promoting his latest movie, is claiming that he has been forced into hiding following death threats from opponents of Scientology. According to ’sources’, Cruise has called in the FBI to provide him and his family with protection.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes (also a Scientology cult member) now live separately and go everywhere in bomb-proof vehicles.

Quite what the FBI can do for them is a moot point. The grotesquely overpaid Cruise can afford much better protection than the cash-strapped Bureau could provide.

Of course, Cruise is in need of some publicity for his movie, Valkyrie, which has come in for some considerable criticism. And paranoia is not unknown among fabulously wealthy actors. As Hemingway put it, “Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.” As YouTube videos and appearances on Oprah have confirmed, Cruise isn’t always in full control of his emotions.

The people who allegedly have Cruise wetting his pants are the members of Anonymous – the net-based loose association of anti-Scientologists notorious for extreme acts of … well, wearing masks. Maybe a bit of hacking. But, of course, if you want to crush opposition in these paranoid times, one effective method is to brand your opponents as terrorists. This is, undoubtedly, what the Scientologists are up to.

The Church of Scientology is not known for its honesty, ethics or morality when it comes to those who oppose it. As the Religion News Blog points out, if the stories of ex-members are to be believed, the cult itself isn’t above savage, vindictive and illegal acts.

So, it would probably be safe to treat Cruise’s claims as: a) publicity; b) paranoia; c) an attempt to silence the opposition with lies; d) pure fantasy; or e) all of the above. Unless, of course, Cruise can produce any evidence. But then, evidence doesn’t play a strong part in the lives of religious cult members.

It’s always amazed me that certain religions, which claim to have a route to illuminating and transcendental truths, so often resort to underhand, aggressive and even immoral methods to get people to see things their way. People, it seems, cannot be trusted to come to the light purely through the self-evident beauty and purity of the truth itself: they must be forced.

Among the cults most notorious for this kind of behaviour, the Church of Scientology (CoS) stands the most frequently accused of malicious and unethical tactics.

Most of us have experienced the cult’s mendacious ways. When I lived in London, I lost count of the number of times I was offered a ‘personality test’ by glassy eyed Scientology footsoldiers in Tottenham Court Road. As we all know, the so-called test is just the false cover for a psychological trap designed to suck in the dishearted, disenfranchised or vulnerable.

That’s bad enough. But at least in the street you can hurry by with little more than a faint creeping of the scalp. Two men in the US weren’t so lucky, they say. They have brought legal action against their ex-employer – software company Diskeeper – for unfair dismissal. The men refused to go on training courses laid on by the firm. The reason they give is that these were Scientology-based courses.

Diskeeper’s boss, Craig Jensen, is a Scientology evangelist. His name previously hit the headlines because the company’s product was included in Windows 2000. Rumours abounded about the possibility of the software sending data from users’ hard disks to the Church of Scientology. The idea so disconcerted the Government of Germany (where the CoS is outlawed) that it demanded that Microsoft show it the source code before approving Windows 2000 for government use. Microsoft refused but provided a tool to delete the utility. That didn’t help quash the rumours.

So, what kind of message does Scientology have that it can only get it across by tricking or forcing people into hearing it?

Of course, the CoS is famously averse to criticism. A book, The Complex, by ex-Scientology warrior John Duignan remains unavailable from Amazon’s UK store – indeed, as far as I can work out, it’s unavailable from all branches of Amazon except the US. Even there, it was pulled for a while, with rumours that Tom Cruise himself was behind the intimidation of Amazon.

What is it they fear? If what the Scientologists claim is true, we would all migrate naturally to their way of thinking. If the attacks on the cult are untrue, surely they could gain no traction against the power of the church’s message.

Any philosophy or science that relies on legal threats, intimidation, coercion, violence and forcible indoctrination to assure belief and allegiance among its members is inherently suspect. These are the tools of totalitarianism, and totalitarian regimes – as we all know – are built on lies.

The Complex by John Duignan is available from:  Amazon.com