[Chock]

Out of curiousity, I've read up quite a bit about Scientology, and I've come to the conclusion that it is very questionable to say the least. I even went to one of their exhibitions they held in Manchester a few years back, which was kind of hard to take seriously with some of the 'cod-psychology' and 'pseudo-science' that appeared to be central to it.

So I'm not a fan, but I don't think 'these scientology bastards ' is a very balanced way to start a thread about them Skybird, even if I personally tend to agree with you, although perhaps not in such black and white terms.

It's actually quite hard to find a lot of defamatory info about Scientology, as websites dedicated to that sort of thing tend to get targeted and hacked very quickly, which is another reason to be suspicious of it.

What you have to remember is that L Ron Hubbard (its founder) was not a very well man. As many of you know he was the commander of a converted ASW trawler (USS PC-815) in WW2 and made some questionable decisions, including a somewhat dubious claim for a battle with a Japanese submarine, which almost reminds one of something out of The Caine Mutiny. But like that movie, which initially portrays Queeg as a hate figure, we come to understand that he was actually nonetheless, brave and hohourable, and like the movie and book, I always react to the ridicule of Hubbard in a similar fashion. In that people with a mental illness are not really a very fair target for ridicule. At least he did enter service during wartime and try to serve his country, which is more than I've ever done.

When one inspects Hubbard's claims about his life, it's clear that he is something of a Walter Mitty character, with a vivid imagination; he embellishes events in his life to make himself seem more likeable, which should get alarm bells ringing as far as psychological stability is concerned, but is not something which really does anyone any harm. Having undergone some medical teatment for this, it's clear that his dislike of the assessment of him manifests itself in both his writings and in the form and theories of Scientology. Much of it being based on convoluted adaptations of post-war psychological theories. This is the era of Dr Spock's writings on child care and the like, and much of this reflects attitudes from less enlightened times, so you have to view things in context to make a fair assessment of these.

Hubbard's most famous work, Battlefield Earth (subsequently made into an abridged movie) is often regarded as a thinly-disguised advert for Scientology, but this is most often put forward by those who do not have any love for Scientology. As I stated, I'm not a fan of the 'religion', but I would never confuse the two. Whilst it isn't Shakespeare, Battlefield Earth is actually a good page-turner, and it's apparent that many later sci-fi stories liberally lift ideas from it. If you've not read it try, I'm betting you'll like it.

Many other sci-fi writers that started out as pulp 'amazing-fiction'-style writers have undergone similar accusations of political or religious understories appearing in their work, most notably, Robert A Heinlein, whose Starship Troopers, also underwent similar scrutiny and also got made into an abridged movie. Again, if you've never read it, give it a try, I bet you'll like that too!

In any case, as ludicrous as Scientology's core ideas are, when viewed in the context of Hubbard's issues and seen as a personal exorcism of them, they are not quite so threatening. The problem lies with his later extrapolation of the thing turning into his attempts to create a Navy with him as the commander in chief. This is quite obviously the action of a very unwell man, and I think that the cronies around him seeing him as a meal ticket are more to be hated than an ill man at the centre of a world he created for himself. Since Hubbard's death, it's these people who most definitely need to be slammed, at least in my opinion.

Like any other subject, do not take someone else's word for it about matters, find out for yourself. I suspect you'll come down on the side of thinking that Scientology is preposterous, but don't let someone else make that decision for you.