Quote:
Originally posted by MysticCat81
In the abstract, I would agree with you. But not here.
What sets Scientology apart from other "belief systems" is, well basically, L. Ron Hubbard -- a science-fiction writer who put together the whole Scientology thing as a self-help-and-help-me-rake-in-money-in-the-process business. That Scientology is more a business than a belief system, that it exercises a great deal of control of its members and that those who got out of it definitely view themselves has having escaped from a cult is well-documented.
If you haven't read it before, this article, originally published in Time Magazine over a decade ago, is well-worth reading. (Yes, I know it is now mostly found on anti-Scientology sites on the web that have a definite bias, but it's still Time):
Scientology: The Cult of Greed
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The problem is that that doesn't prove that his intention with Scientology was to make money. Sure, the quote about "If I needed to make money, I would just start a religion" is telling -- but it happened earlier in his life and he could have had a change of opinion. Unless he speciifically said, "I made up Scientology completely in order to make money," we don't really know what his intentions were. The quotes by anti-cult movement leaders in the article are interesting but not exceptionally valid given that -- as religioustolerance.org points out -- most people who study the mind don't believe that "mind control" is possible, and those ACM leaders are a small and biased minority. Sure, it seems quite possible that Scientology uses unscrupulous means to make money or uses its money less than wisely, but at this point, there are few religions that don't.
It's more likely that unstable individuals (hello Tom Cruise!) are attracted to "cult-like" religions that require very deep commitments -- and thus are more likely to have problems with emotional development, mood or personality disorders, tendency to commit suicide, et cetera. Correlation (of emotionally disturbed individuals and Scientology -- or any religious group/"cult") does not equal causation. The stories I've read from family members of Scientology members who killed themselves (or allegedly killed themselves) usually paint pictures of individuals who were very troubled long before they became Scientologists. I'm not a professional or anything, but one might guess that they sought out a very involved, family-like religion because they felt like they were missing something at home. The story that opens this article bears that out, with a family that had no clue anything was "off" about their son until after he ended up dead. Sorry, but I don't buy the idea that Scientology was his only problem.
Not to mention that almost every religion, if not every religion, has been created or co-opted for the purposes of some greedy (or lustful, or power-hungry, et cetera) leader on some level or another. Joseph Smith?* Come on now. No religion is pure.
I certainly think there many things wrong with Scientology, a motivated-by-money factor being one of them -- but as Rob implied, if we're going to define Scientology as a "cult" than you have to put the LDS church in the "cult" category as well, along with a number of smaller sects of Christianity (and come to think of it, larger ones as well). And I don't think any of those groups deserve to be portrayed in the same light as, say, the Branch Davidians or Solar Temple or the People's Temple or whatever. And I certainly don't think "brainwashing" per se is at play in any form that even the most mainstream religions don't also use.
* I'm sorry to keep picking on the Mormons, but they are one of the religions I've read about in the most depth and I see many many parallels between them and Scientology, for better or for worse.