Scientology – What is it?

I’m a self-confessed frequent visitor of Digg – I fancy it as an alternative channel to news filtered out by the MSM (Mainstream Media). A brilliant example would be Ron Paul, a U.S. Presidential Candidate cum Republican Libertarian that, as far as I’ve seen, gives the most sensible and well thought-out speeches. The little amount of coverage Time, CNN and even our own Straits Times gives him compared to the other candidates is not even funny, considering how he raised $19million in the 4th quarter of 2007 and has a huge Internet following (search Ron Paul on youtube, and see how many results you get and their respective comments).

Anyhow, I digress. Lately the Digg community has been all over Scientology, and the only vague impression I had of it was that Tom Cruise was a Scientologist. Is that some special title celebrities are given when they make remarkable contributions in the fields of research and science? Far from it, I’d say.

As much as I’d love to present a brief introduction on how I view Scientology, I’ll refrain since I personally have not come into contact with neither the church nor any of its members. And let me add, I doubt very much I would want to. What Scientology really embodies is highly controversial, as seen in this video by the BBC.

If that has piqued your interest, here’s an article, with a video attached, of Scientology’s most famous member to date, Tom Cruise.

At the risk of being “fair game”, here’s another disturbing Scientology-related video. Before you watch it though, here’s a Baloney Detection kit, aimed at helping to spot fallacies in logic and rhetoric; see if you can apply it to this video:

And the final article if you’re just as appalled cautious as me.