Tom Cruise Unauthorized

I’ve just finished the Tom Cruise Unauthorized Biography, which, unfortunatley, is unavailable in the UK. I managed to get hold of a copy last time I was in the States and since then I’ve read it cover to cover and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only has it shed good light on Tom Cruise, but it’s shed a lot of bad light on him as well and is really rather revealing in terms of Scientology.

Tom Cruise, it would seem, is a very good actor and deserves to be where he is in terms of acting career, I can’t deny him that. However, what he does for and with Scientology is devious and aweful. Sitting down infront of Matt Lauer and saying

“You don’t even know what Ritalin is, You have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt. That’s what I’ve done. And you should do that also… you should be a little bit more responsible, Matt.”

It seems his whole thing with Oprah which everyone laughed at, jumping on the sofa, really didn’t do his career well and it ended with him ditching his Sister and going with some real Public Relations guys. It seems like he and Steven Spielberg fell out over the fact that he was overzealous about his religion and didn’t focus on the promotion of War of the Worlds.

The way he treated Nicole after/during their breakup is aweful and really revealing at how ruthless he was before Scientology. How he tried to lure in many a beautiful and well respected Girl into his religion and his life and in the end luring Katie Holmes in, in what seems to be what she thought might be an opportunity to improve her career.

It looks like the future might hold a lot of promotions overseas for Tom and his religion. He’s been pushing it in Germany and lobbying the American government about how the German’s aren’t adhereing to human rights policies and the such. It seems celebrities can get quite a lot of eartime from higher ups which anyone who actually knows about these things doesn’t get, if they listen or not is anybodies guess, so far they haven’t done anything about Germany. However it seems that in the state of Arizona they listen to Tom Cruise more than they listen to anyone who knows.

I’d recommend anyone to read Tom Cruise: The Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton, it’s very telling.

Intelligent Design

Thinking about Intelligent Design I came across two realisations.

1) If God is Perfect then Intelligent Design is not possible. Fundamentally this comes down to the arguement that if God is perfect we cannot apply Human traits to God. Lets say for instance that Intelligent Design is correct, there was a creator, by saying they are intelligent it means that they had to think about and design everything. This means that they are partly human, they aren’t Perfect, therefore there is something more Perfect than they and they are not the most Perfect being. This doesn’t work for a monotheistic religion like Christianity.
I am also aware that this is a little more complicated than I have put forward, but I believe the next point will tackle the issue.

2) The way we define Intelligence is down to logic, thinking, design, perfection, etc. Therefore, for Intelligent Design to be possible we have to have a God that is logical, who can think and Design as we say it. However, if God is all knowing then he has no reason for logic, intelligence or design, so to say that we are Intelligently Designed says that we Had to be Intelligently Designed. Therefore God cannot be all knowing and so is not God.

As an aside, if God is Perfect and all knowing then he knows the future and so cannot design what he knows is going to happen. Also, it means he has no control over what is going to happen and so presumably is not Perfect. Mostly symmantic arguements and applying Human wording to a higher being, but interesting that God appears to transcend our definition of him but Christians still confine him to their definitions all the time.

Seeing isn’t believing…

In the recently released The Orphanage, Geraldine Chaplin’s character sasy teh following.

“seeing is not believing, it’s the other way around”

I think the way Scientology presents itself is that “seeing IS believing”, they will present observable evidence for everything in their religion. But their initial statement of the spirit is eternal I believe needs a “Believe then you will see” attitude, like all theistic religions.

If indeed they have evidence for the spirit it seems something that would have been announced a while ago and could be used scientifically to show that a spirit exists and then the whole religion vs science thing could be [partly] done with.

 I presume for all religions you must believe before you can see and so for Scientology to propose the opposite is quite extraordinary and worth further investigation.

The Dynamics of Life [CoS]

See CoS

• 8:

  “Infinity, God, or Surpeme Being.”
  I’m still going to bang on about it, because I don’t want to forget that Scientology says we don’t have to believe anything which we can’t ‘experience of observe’, so at some point I want to ‘experience of observe’ Infinity, God or Supreme Beings.

• 7: Spirtual

  “Anything Spiritual with or without identity, life source.”
  See 8, though I suppose that I experience these everyday through interactions, presumably I come across Spirits or Thetans everyday.

• 6:Physical Universe

  “comprised of four components Matter, Energy, Space and Time.”
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Science tells us that Matter is Energy and presumably Space is Energy as well. Time I look forward to hearing their definition of as apparently one can have mulitple lives though if this is through reincarnation or not I do not know as yet.

• 5: Life Forms

  “all plant and animal life.”
  I guess this includes Humans as we are Animals.

• 4: Mankind

  “as a species.”
  Ok so we have our seperate Dynamic, we must be special somehow.

• 3: Group Surival

  “friends, club, company, nation, race.”
  I guess this goes under Social Evolution, Group Evolution, etc.

• 2: Family

  “children an all other creativity.”
  An odd one, I guess we have to take these as given, the Church is telling us what it is, we must listen, I would guess this also falls under the 3rd Dynamic (Group survival).

• 1: Self

  “the individual, his body, mind and posessions.”
  So I presume the Thetan is transcendential to the Self, he uses the Self to get to the Infinity, or something, speculation of course.

We are told that by understanding these Dynamics we can progress through them, work out the links and attain the top level 8th Dynamic. I certainly look forward to it.

The Parts of Man. [CoS]

See CoS
Scientology pertains that man has three parts, Thetan or Spirit, Mind which the Thetan uses to control the final part the Body.

Seems easy enough but we should remember this word Thetan is equivelant to Spirit or Thought. I suppose these can be related to the Body, the Mind, and the Primitive Brain in evolutionary psychology, though that’s an mildly educated guess.

What is Scientology? [CoS]

See CoS
“The word Scientology literally means ‘the study of truth.'”

The only qualm I have with this is that, and they agree, ‘scio’ means ‘to know’ so Scientology is ‘The Study of Knowing’. But as a basis for what we’re getting ourselves into, that’s fine, the study of truth it is.

‘Scientology i sthe study of handling the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life.’

From a pedant’s point of view I’d like to shorten this to ‘Scientology is the study of the handling of the spirit in all of life.’ but this is slightly contrary to the definition given above, unless you take as given that ‘the handling of the spirit in all of life’ is the ‘truth’ which seems a little odd. Why give the etymology of the word Scientology if, on the following line, you’re going to tell us that it’s not really about the study of truth, or even the study of the attainment of truth, but instead about a ‘spirit’.

It goes on ‘Man is an immortal, spiritual being. His experience extends well beyond a single lifetime.’, again this is getting quite spiritual, and it seems if I were to join Scientology I would have to conform to these beliefs that there is a ‘spirit’, etc.

Apparently man’s capabilities are ‘unlimited’ and ‘can be realized’, more quite obvious spiritual talk, though one must keep an open mind and if we are believing in a spirit, why can’t it be that we can unleash it’s full potential and ‘not only solve his[our] own problems, accomplish his[our] goals and gain lasting happiness, but also achieve new, higher states of awareness and ability.’

It sounds pretty good, how do I get in, is there a simple truth to follow, will I be enlightened soon, do I have to go to church every Sunday?
“In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true. An individual discovers for himself that Scientology works by personally applying its principles and observing or experiencing results.”

Wait just a minute, so through Scientology I can ‘observe to be true’ a ‘spirit’, ‘Immortal Man’ and something that ‘extends well beyond a single lifetime’? Without wanting to be coy it seems like Scientology has proof of the spiritual realm, if this is true it should surely be the only religion.

Let us keep all of this in mind as we go through Scientology and find out more about it.