Saturday, July 26, 2008

Blog of the day: Counterfeit Dreams

Not much to comment on this Saturday, so I make a suggestion to a blogging site you may want to take a look at: Counterfeit Dreams, a man's 35 year stint in the Church of Scientology and his struggle to break free. Not just any man, but Jeff Hawkins -- someone who part of the marketing team that made L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics a best seller in the 1980s more than three decades after it was first published. After putting the blog in my RSS reader this morning I scanned through the story so far -- still not complete as of this writing.

My observations about Hawkins' tale to date: I note with a bit of discomfort how an organization very tightly run by Mr. Hubbard became even more so when David Miscavige [or Miscaviage, I've seen both spellings in published works] took over the group. This has been told by many including former record publisher Karen Pressley who herself spent 20 years in the sect, and Tory Magoo Christman -- just to name two.

The concerns many have said about Scientology are out there on the Web -- just Google or Yahoo "Scientology" and "criticism" and you'll get thousands, maybe millions of links. My own criticism comes to this: How is it that most churches, most religions, put their most basic beliefs out front for people to peruse at little to no cost, and absolutely obligation to join; and yet this group requires one to spend years of time and certainly quite a bit of money and auditing to get to a level where one gets the right to learn about those beliefs?

If Scientology wanted the world to know what they believe is the truth then put it out in the public domain and let people decide for themselves. The Bible is available for free online, why will Scientology not make OT III et sequens available for free on its website?

Many claim they've found fulfillment in Scientology and I'll let them have that. Many others have said they've felt emptiness or betrayed, and they should be able to tell their stories too without fear of harrassment. If that makes me an SP (suppressive person) in the eyes of Tom Cruise and his brothers and sisters in the group, fine. Believe me, I've been called much worse things -- by my own family and other people I thought were my friends.

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