Scientology

I have been meaning to write this blog for a long time. Anyway, at the end of last year Adrian and I went to a couple Holiday parties put on by Ron Paul supporters. At one of these, we met a couple (the woman was the most vocal) who were Scientologists. This was pretty cool because neither Adrian or I had ever met anyone who claimed to be a Scientologist. We had a very interesting discussion, though unfortunately, I still can't quite put my finger on exactly what Scientology is? Firt of all, in discussing beliefs with her, it quickly became apparent that we had different definitions of different word. For instance, she says that Scientology is a religion, because it deals with one's spiritual life; yet, it's not an excluse religion. You could be, say, a Christian and a Scientologist, or a Hindu and a Scientologist. I got the feeling, however, that one could not be an atheist and a Scientologist. Still, Scientology is only meant to tell you how to live, not to tell you what you should believe about God. She even said at one point that there might be different truths for different people.

The woman said that all of us are trying to survive, and that the survival of each one of us depends on the survival of others. One thing to note here is that I have always thought of survival as having a rather binary definition: either you are surviving, or you are not. However, she seems to see various levels of surviving, such that you could survive worse or better. Anyway, I don't mean to get nit-picky, but in order to understand I felt that was important to point out.

Another definition was that of being "basically good." She said that Scientology posits that all people are basically good. now, this is something that I thought I disagreed with, because I believe in original sin. However, I asked her about the problem of evil. She definitely believes in evil, and even believes that individuals may become irreversibly evil, for example Hitler. The difference is, that she believes that everyone starts out being good. Trying to reconcile her belief that man is "basically good" with her obvious belief in evil, I asked where evil comes from, but I never got a really straight answer. As best I can tell, she believes that it is a choice, yet why would someone who starts out "basically good" ever choose evil? I'm left with a syllogism type statement that doesn't quite make sense: All men are basically good. Hitler was evil. Hitler was a man. Therefore... the condition of being "basically good" is compatible with the condition of being evil? (in my mind, this renders both descriptions meaningless). This didn't seem to bother her - but it bothered me.

This brings us to the idea of autonomy, or self-direction. She kept insisting that Scientologists pretty much believe that you have absolute control over your life. Basically, nothing bad can happen to you without you somehow condoning and accepting it, and you can't do anything bad to others without it somehow coming back to bite you (because your survival depends on the survival of all others). But later, she did admit that she believed some things were accidents. She gave an example of a driver who accidentally hits a pedestrian. Now, if I wanted to, I could think of all kinds of reasons why that might not really be an accident. If the driver had been paying more attention, or had more cautious habits, it would not have happened. So, while the driver may not have intended to hurt the pedestrian, it was still within his control to prevent the accident. I did not mention this, and she did not bring it up either, but I just found it interesting that she would make such a strong case for the fact that nothing was an accident, when at the end of the day she really believed that some things were accidents. This made the question of evil even more stark in my mind, "How does something good become evil if there are no accidents?" (mind you, even within Christianity I think that's a messy question).

Throughout the discussion, as she would describe Scientology as a way of life, Adrian kept taking it as a pragmatic sort of belief, and asking, "So basically, scientology is just something to help you in this life?" which I never really heard a straight answer to either. Given that she defines Scientology as something to help your spirit, and she does believe the spirit is eternal (more on that later), I would think that the answer would be "No, it's helping your spirit which will always live." However, I didn't mention this, and she seemed to tak more towards answering "Yes." She kept emphasizing that Scientolgy is merely a set of "formulas" for life that have been found to work (that's the "science" in scientology - note, however, that there seems to be be great animosity between Scientology and psychology). Formulas for having a heathly body, a healthy mind, a healthy marriage, raising healthy kids, running a successful business, etc. Scientology doesn't cover alot of things, and she personally doesn't want to claim knowledge in anything she doesn't have experience with, therefore, I think she sort of ducks the question by asking why we need to be concerned right now with anything beyond the present life?

I did specifically ask her if she believed the spirit was eternal, and she said yes. In fact, she even said she believes that she has lived other lives in other bodies (she didn't elaborate on any details, and I didn't ask). So, I asked if Scientologists believes in reincarnation? And she said no. I asked why not, because if she lived other lives then that seemed like reincarnation to me. She said that she always thought of reincarnation as having the possibility to be reincarnated as an animal, and she believed that people and animals were fundamentally different because people had spirits and animals didn't. So, since this was a bit of common ground, I then went on to ask about evolution vs. creation. Her answer was basically that since she wasn't around back then, she didn't know. However, I then went back to the claim that Scientology is a lifestyle that is neutral about other religious beliefs. Given that Hindus believe in reincarnation, I asked whether, as a Scientologist, she thought that Hindus were wrong? She basically said that maybe that could be true for them. That sure confused me. How could animals have spirits for one person but not for another? Is my cat Luna just a cat in my reality, but a spiritual being in somebody else's? Maybe the Schroedinger's Cat thing was more than just a thought experiment! I guess the important question is what does Luna think she is within her own frame of reference?

I still feel very resistant to Scientology, though I can't quite put my finger on why? Maybe it's because Scientology accepts all religions as more-or-less equal. But, the way she phrases it, that doesn't seem to weird. Scientology is just a set of formulas to help you live your life better, and it doesn't say anything about God or other facets of religion. I can't understand why I should feel so much resistance to it? For instance, I have taken lots of math classes, and I use math, so in some manner I guess that makes me a mathematician. Math is just a set of formulas to help you be more successful in your life, and it doesn't really tell you what to believe about anything else (at least not directly), and I have no resistance to the idea of being a mathematician. So, what's the catch with Scientology? I don't know.

I finally got to some sense of closure in our "argument," at least something that to me unequivocally proved Christianity superior to Scientology (though to the Scientologist, perhaps we were never in competition to begin with). She agreed with me that in this life there is a sort of battle between good and evil, even within oneself. I asked if she believed that one could ever win this battle? If one could ever get to place where one was "safe" from becoming evil, or a place of peace where the battle would be over? She said she hadn't thought about it, and she didn't know. She wasn't sure if that was really important. I guess to me, the hope offered by salvation and heaven is enormously important. I can't imagine choosing to follow a belief system that didn't have something like that to offer. In Scientology there's just no foreseeable end to the struggle. How tiresome.

The couple gave us a DVD to watch about Scientology. Adrian and I didn't finish it, because I guess the DVD was scratched or something. Anyway, it was a fairly interesting presentation, like a series of commercials. One thing they promoted was something called The Way to Happiness. Now, I found this particularly interesting because Scientology claims that L. Ron Hubbard was the first to come up with the idea of a religiously neutral religion based on common sense. However, I found The Way to Happiness strikingly familiar to Benjamin Franklin's The Art of Virtue (and BF tried very hard to make his idea non-denominational, which for his time was essentially the same thing as religiously neutral).

On the surface, I agree with so many of the principles of Scientology that I had to ask myself, "Am I a Scientologist already?" *shrug* maybe I am. I did not put this question to the woman I spoke with, because I did not think of it at the time. But I feel that the answer cannot be "yes," otherwise there was no reason for her to try to convert me. So, the concise answer would probably be something along the lines "No, because you don't belong to The Church of Scientology." However, I'm guessing that I would never have received the concise answer if I had thought to ask. I would probably have gotten an answer more like "Maybe you are. Why don't you join The Church of Scientology and see what you think?"

...which, of course, I have no intention of doing. Although the woman I spoke to never got to the point of asking me to do anything of the sort, after reading about Scientology online, I cannot help but think that was the eventual next step. So, I guess that's another thing that makes Christianity superior to Scientology, you don't have to belong to any church to be a Christian. Scientology is probably all about getting people to pay money to The Church of Scientology. However, in all fairness, the woman I spoke to never tried to get me to buy or join anything. I think she was just all about trying to tell me what I wanted to hear - and I'm not prepared to speculate on her motives for doing that.