Scientologist Relativism

So I thought I'd take another look at Scientology again, and dissect one single thing on their website.

This time, it's a video called "What Scientologists say about Scientology"

The video is fairly generic and consists mostly of headshots of smiling people talking about helping people. No specific details about Scientology besides "helping you" are mentioned in this video, so on an intellectual level it isn't very convincing at all. It is quite obvious that they are playing the emotional card here, ambient background music in a major key and smiling people saying motivational things in very colloquial language, to relate to the average viewer... I think you get the point. Oh yeah I almost forgot to mention that there are a lot of good looking people in the video. I think it's time we looked at a quote from the video.

"Once they see it they can actually be like 'Oh Scientology that's... oh I didn't know it was like that I thought it was something else' and you're like yah, it's not it just helps you that's all it does that's what it's there for."

You can see what I mean by the colloquial language.. The young man quoted here has a giant smile on his face while he's saying this, and is talking enthusiastically in a very friendly-sounding voice.

 Many of the people in the video talk about aid-work in places like New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, and ground zero in New York, saying "Scientologists were there", as if that is some kind of reason to become a Scientologist. Great, some Scientologists helped some people. There are millions of Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus every day that help people too, should we join all of those religions too?

What really grinded my gears was when these quotes started popping up all over the place "What you believe is what you believe", "Whatever is true for you is true for you", "Whether you're Christian, Baptist, Buddhist, Scientologist" and "I think everybody has the right to decide for themselves, and believe what makes sense and helps them through life". This kind of modern religious relativism is not just an innocuous fad. It seems to be spreading like a plague, and needs to be gutted like a fish.

"True for you" or "True to me" is an abhorrent application of the word 'true' and it should be plainly obvious to anyone that has a functioning brain. Here is the first definition offered on dictionary.com

true
adverb, verb

1.being in accordance with the actual state or conditions; conforming to reality or fact; not false: a true story.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but contradictory claims can NOT both be true. Religions that present contradictory world-views can NOT both be true. How do religious relativists not realise this? You can't have it both ways, either your religion is true and theirs isn't or vice versa. Perhaps these people are missing an important part of their brain that allows people to smell bullshit. Maybe they missed some important lessons growing up, when you teach a child the difference between blue and red, yes and no, black and white etc.

What I find particularly ironic is the part of that last quote "believe what makes sense", considering Scientology makes absolutely no sense at all.

The Scientology Creed

I was just having a read through the Creed of the Church of Scientology, much of which is actually quite honourable, but some statements were absurd, and others were dangerous.

Here are some examples from the creed, which starts out saying "We of the Church believe"

- That all men of whatever race, color or creed were created with equal rights.
- That all men have inalienable rights to their own lives.
- That all men have inalienable rights to their sanity.
Enough with the decent statements, lets have a look at something humorous.

-That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others.

So let me get this straight, the same organization that is famous for filing lawsuits against anyone that sheds unfavourable light onto them, states in their own creed that free speech is an inalienable right? Oh that is just far too ironic to be a coincidence.
Scientology vs. the Internet


-That all men have inalienable rights to the creation of their own kind.

This is probably just strangely worded, but it sounds to me like Scientology is in the business of 'creating' artificial people. They should have just avoided any confusion and said something like "all men have inalienable rights to sex". They would probably run into problems there, as sex is not a right recognised by any real human rights manifesto. In fact, with that wording it actually sounds quite misogynistic.

-That the souls of men have the rights of men.

Uhh.. What??? This is rather ridiculous, even if the soul could be proven to exist, does this mean that Scientology would have us give rights to the souls of the deceased?

-That the study of the Mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in nonreligious fields.

This is where they step away from being a fairly innocuous religion to being something dangerous. They are suggesting that mental health care should only be provided by religion. Any science-based mental health care  should be abolished in their belief system, because the E-meter solves everything. As long as you have several million dollars to give to the Church of Scientology, they'll fix all your mental health problems! Yeah right. This kind of medical quackery is dangerous and should always be regarded as so, it is in the same vein as alternative medicine and praying for cures. We all know how effective those are.... So effective that children die, and then their parents are charged with negligent homicide.

-And that no agency less than God has the power to suspend or set aside these rights, overtly or covertly.

What gives 'god' the right to suspend our rights anyway? Is Scientology unknowingly teaching that Might = Right?

To finish off their creed they end with this statement.

And we of the Church believe
That the spirit can be saved.
And that the spirit alone may save or heal the body.

It is quite obvious that Scientology is an enemy of modern medicine and an enemy of science reading a statement like that. The spirit alone may heal the body? What spirit are they talking about? The one that has never been shown to exist?

L. Ron Hubbard on Atheists

Since I've been posting about creationists a lot, here is something that is rather different. I thought I would go to the website of the Church of Scientology, since it is advertised on my blog fairly frequently and see what they say about themselves. On the third page I went to on their website called "Does Scientology have a concept of God?" I found the following statement quoted from Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard.

“No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical and less valuable to themselves and society....A man without an abiding faith is, by observation alone, more of a thing than a man.”

I find this kind of statement to be rather offensive as you can imagine. So here is an extremely short list of of some people who most certainly are capable, ethical and valuable members of society.


Patrick Blackett: Nobel Prize winning experimental physicist.
Noam Chomsky: American Philosopher and father of modern linguistics.
Francis Crick: Nobel Prize winning biologist, co-discoverer of DNA structure.
Richard Feynman: Early contributor to the development of quantum mechanics.
Sigmund Freud: Founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.
Democritus: Pre-Socratic philosopher who proposed one of the earliest atomic theories.
Sir Julian Huxley: Founding member of the World Wildlife Fund.
Ernst Mayr: Renowned taxonomist and evolutionary Biologist.
Peter Singer: Australian philosopher and humanist known for his works on Utilitarianism, strong advocate of animal liberation.
Richard Strauss: Famous German composer of the theme for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There are many more lists availiable on the internet that are much more comprehensive than this snippet. Here is one such example. Wikipedia even has extensive lists of notable nontheists here. All I wanted to demonstrate was that Religious people are simply lying outright when they claim such things as L. Ron Hubbard did in the quote above.