Scientology’s real scandals

This is part of a series of posts on Scientology.

Over the last two years, I have spent a substantial amount of time publicly protesting the Church of Scientology, and in this time I have come to have a good understanding of the public perception of Scientology; most people think that Scientology is a fairly benign religion which is centered around ridiculous beliefs. For the most part, media attention on Scientology is focused around scandals involving celebrity adherents and the Church’s “alien beliefs”.

What is very seldom reported, however, is what makes Scientology such a serious danger to its own members and also to the wider community. As a result, we have a public which is largely uneducated to the bigger issues at hand surrounding Scientology, and they often find it hard to believe the harsh truths, asking “if that’s the case then why are we only hearing about spaceships and silent births?”

As an atheist, I tend to see all religious or faith-based beliefs as ridiculous, and often worthy of mockery and criticism. I am by no means saying that most religions are harmless, and Scientology is an exception. I am of the view that most religious have elements which are particularly harmful to their followers and to the community; often limiting the freedoms of members and campaigning to stop social progression and send the world back to their antiquated views.

Last week, Senator Nick Xenophon said that “in Australia there are no limits on what you can believe, but there are limits on how you can behave, it’s called the law and no-one is above it.” I am not going to focus on the beliefs of the Church of Scientology, but instead I will discuss the policies and actions of the organisation which are criminal and severely strip away the basic human rights of their own membership and attempt to do the same to the rest of us.

I’m going to bring attention to the “we’ve got bigger fish to fry” attitude which is held by many atheist and secular groups towards Scientology, and explain why this view is inappropriate and misses the point entirely. There are many elements of the Church of Scientology’s policies and actions that are so disturbing and extreme that this organisation truly does require our immediate attention, and I will build an argument as to why you should help to bring an end to these disturbing policies and actions.

One of the things which sets the Church of Scientology apart from mainstream religious groups is that Scientology’s doctrine comes in installments; “for a low weekly cost of $99.95, we’ll give you spiritual enlightenment. But wait, there’s more! The first ten callers to take us up on this amazing offer will get a free set of steak knives.” Seriously, though, the full Scientology doctrine is not available to the public, nor is it available to members. Scientologists must work their way along “the bridge” in order to be adequately prepared (read: brainwashed) to read more of the doctrine. One of the great things about Judaism, Christianity and Islam is that I can pick up the Torah, Bible or Quran and see that it’s bullshit. For instance, from Leviticus 20:9 I know that if you see a child cursing its parents, you should kill the little fucker.

As Scientology’s texts are secretive and copyrighted, they are not able to be republished for scrutiny, the claims made are not testable and, to avoid litigation by the Church, the vast majority of analysis and criticism of Scientology’s texts are pushed to the deep, dark underworld which we call the Internet. What is known by critics of the Church of Scientology about the doctrine often surpasses that of the individual Scientologist, as we have access to material leaked from the organisation and the testimony of hundreds of former members.

Scientologists are pushed to purchase more auditing, take more courses and read more books in order to progress along the bridge to spiritual enlightenment.  There is a set of publicly available Scientology texts, and whilst these are full of pseudoscience, quackery and bigotry, they hardly begin to represent the problems with the Church’s views.

Try to imagine if I were Catholic (I know, it’s a real stretch and is probably testing the very boundaries of your imagination); I could freely and privately sit in a confessional and tell the priest all of my secrets in hope that sharing the burden and doing my penance, I will be forgiven for my sins. Scientology has something comparable called auditing, except if I was taking it, I would be paying hundreds of dollars per session, instead of volunteering information it would often pressured out of me, and all of my secrets would are recorded and filed.

Scientology says it has priest-penitent privilege, wherein the information shared during auditing is kept secret, however this is far from reality. Confessional privilege would go straight out the window the moment I tried and cut back on funding the Church of Scientology through courses and further auditing; my file would be read through and my confessions used to intimidate and blackmail me in to continuing  along the bridge. If I ever tried to leave the organisation entirely, the Church of Scientology could publicly release all of my forced confessions in order to destroy my credibility and reputation.

This is part of the reason why it is so difficult for Scientologists to leave the organisation, and why they often find it hard to be taken seriously when making allegations against the Church when every one of their personality flaws, vulnerabilities and secrets are actively used to silence their concerns and criticisms, and to block the exit.

Another factor that makes it difficult for a Scientologist to leave is that their lives are generally immersed in Scientology; many have been brought up in the organisation and have only ever studied Scientology technology and are severely lacking a proper education, many work for the organisation and have developed few skills to deal with the real world. More importantly, being brought up in Scientology means that most Scientologists have no immediate family that are not in the religion. The Church of Scientology has a policy of “disconnection” which states that a person who questions Scientology must be “handled” (brought back in to line) or all contact with them is severed.

So if I were from a family of Scientologists and I tried to leave, not only would my reputation be destroyed by the release of my supposedly confidential confessions, but I would lose my entire family and support network. As a result of this, many Scientologists feel forced to persevere with courses and auditing simply because they feel they have no other options.

To be continued…