scientology makes you crazy

Maybe you've seen the YouTube video of BBC reporter John Sweeney losing it in an interview with a top "Church" of Scientology official Tommy Davis. It doesn't look good, and the Scientologists have been showing it all around as "proof" of Sweeney's bias against them.

But you can read Sweeney's account here of what he had gone through while he was working on a story about that so-called church. For example,

While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.

Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.

As Sweeney points out, the Scientologists show a sweet and cuddly side, with deluded celebs like Tom Cruise and John Travolta at the fore. But they also have their "sinister and dark" side. For example, their practice of forcibly cutting members off from their families. Not to mention the fact that, unlike almost any other significant religion, you pay every step of the way in Scientology for their "help." That makes Scientology quite the profitable little operation.

Not to mention their absolutely bizarre belief in alien overlords and intergalactic spirits. Reminds you, doesn't it, that Scientology was founded by hack science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who only decided to switch his "Dianetics" book marketing campaign from being a self-help volume to a religion because he realized that as a religion, he could avoid paying taxes. Truly a divine inspiration.