Tommy Davis on Religious Freedom

"Scientologists as a general rule are opposed to any human rights violation, anything that violates an individual’s right to choose, anything that would reduce a person’s freedom, individuality and ability to think for themselves."

However...

“One can’t be a Scientologist and not be part of the church.”

Coercion and Extortion? In *My* Religion?

Tommy "Foot Bullet" Davis has been at it again. In case you've not heard, Larry Anderson, star of the Church of Scientology's Orientation video, has woken up and walked, claiming that he no longer believes Scientology can deliver what it promises (freedom from "the trap"). He also blames what he regards as corruption in the upper levels of management, citing the fact that the Church, for a period of about two years, was quite happily selling books it knew were no good, while those titles were being revised for re-release. This mis-selling is the sort of brazen nasty that we like to report on at The Beacon because it is irrefutable. The "wrong" books were sold right up to the day before the release of the "corrected" versions. It's so irrefutably wrong of the Church that they haven't even sought to apply any spin on it.

But anyhew. It's what happened next where it gets really interesting. Reports are widespread of the lengths that the Church will go to to retain parishioners it believes are valuable to the church or best kept silent. After making his intentions clear Anderson agreed to meet and discuss with Davis the return of money the actor had on account with the Church for services he had not yet received. Anderson had the foresight to record the "brief meeting" that became a ninety-minute conversation, with the full consent of Davis. Excerpts from the tape are now available online.

Knowing that the conversation is being taped, Davis nevertheless tries on various tactics to ensure Anderson, at the very least, remains quiet about the Church on his departure and does not receive any refunds. He waves the IRS at Anderson, discusses Anderson's impending disconnection (with some wonderful double speak; he says it does and doesn't happen in the same breath), tries to make Anderson feel guilty and/or pay(!) for the projected $2 million reshoot of Orientation and makes veiled threats concerning those Anderson will leave behind in the Church. One can only wonder how differently the conversation would have run had it not been taped!

Davis seems to be making a habit of saying things he oughtn't on tape. Last year saw him reveal that he was passing on former-Scientologists auditing files, collations of things admitted to while undergoing auditing, in the hopes that he could make some kind of ad hominem attack and damage testimonies regarding David Miscavige's violence and brutality. Naturally enough the provision of firm evidence that the Church does exactly what it says it doesn't do did not do much to dissuade the reporters from pressing ahead with their story. One wonders how long Davis can keep hold of his job; his continued ineptitude in handling these situations suggests that Miscavige has no-one with which to replace him. By sticking to CoS procedure, Davis only ever seems to galvanise departing parishioners into the new role of vocal criticism of the Church, its management and its policies. Scientology seems unique as a religion that makes enemies of its footstools.

The French Verdict

The 30 Second Skinny Staff members of the Church of Scientology in France have been found guilty of fraud and fined €600,000. The fraudulent activities in question are not the peculiar acts of a a few bad apples but the same kind of behaviour that is routinely expected of staff members. The situation is similar to that of Operation Snow White in which a number of high-ranking staff members were convicted of breaking into Governtment buildings in America. The individuals were supposed to have been expelled from the church but it seems they never were.

St Petersburg Times - Readers Write

I've nothing much to add to the St Petersburg Times reports on the allegations of Miscavige's violence towards his employees, except to say that we at the Beacon can't quite fathom how the Church can play its "you should have spoken to us" card when, in fact, the newspaper did speak to them, and put the Church's side of the story across too.

Do pay close attention to the Tommy Davis interviews. Along with continuing the performance many of us first witnessed on the Panorama documentary, Davis also offers up further examples of his "almost lying". He describes the accusations as being "increasingly bizarre" in the same way that he said that the OT3 mythology, too, sounded pretty weird, as if the oddness in some way negated the possibility of the existence of either Miscavige's behaviour or the belief in you-know-who. Of the alleged victims, Tommy does not say that they weren't beaten by Miscavige, only that Tommy has spoken to them, and they will say they were not beaten by Miscavige. There's a choice moment where he starts to say "factually..." and then quickly changes tack to the less certain "I have signed affidavits from these people". He also tries to have his cake and eat it. His sorry show of denial begins by declaring that the Sea Org is a highly disciplined religious order, that they are "tough sons of bitches". It's as if he's saying "these guys shouldn't complain, because it's what they signed up for".

Much has been made of Rathbun and Rinder being "ex-scientologists" as if leaving the church instantly invalidates whatever they may say about their experience (for what it's worth I suspect they both class themselves very much as practicing Scientologists, and they have every right to). The Church has suggested that they have both talked up their position in the church, but their positions were well-known. The Church has suggested that they were incompetent, and were fired from the church, rather than left of their own volition. Rinder, according to Davis, is psychotic. So we have high-up members of the church who, according to the church itself, were incompetent and mentally ill. How could this have happened under the watchful eye of Miscavige with all his micromanagement and sec checks? How does someone with as much auditing therapy under his belt as Rinder end up so mentally ill that the Church's own spokesperson declares him psychotic? To suggest that Miscavige was blind to this incompetence and sickness seems as unlikely as L Ron Hubbard himself failing to ensure that the books he was slaving over were being edited out of all functional use prior to being published.

The article has led to a number of responses, mainly from scientologists complaining that the paper is biased in its reporting, and that they should run articles about all the good the church is doing. Well, we know why they don't. The rest have been from individuals writing to thank the paper for such focused and unflinching reporing. This letter in particular stood out, because it concisely makes very clear the "big picture" problem that people have with the Church of Scientology and what it does to people.

Irrational movement
Thank you for your excellent, thorough expose of Scientology. It makes for absorbing reading and, appalling as the Lisa McPherson pictures are, one sees evidence of careful research and the  professional restraint from any sensationalism.
Religion, cult, whatever one calls it, this description — its history and its astonishing growth and power — is a remarkable case history of the power of man's imagination and his infinite cunning. For here is a vivid picture of what happens when men and women deliberately turn away from reason. Here we see the scope of human gullibility and of human greed.
Scientology's goal is "to create a world without war, insanity and criminality." It opposes itself to psychiatry, whose goals are dismally opposite, seeking to make men and women "drugged or robotized" so they can be controlled. The result is vividly presented in the St. Petersburg Times account.
Lisa McPherson, terribly ill, was certainly "drugged and robotized" and deprived of proper care. Stripped of her money to pay for what care the organization gives her, and for any education in its tenets, she stands as a tragic symbol of what a determined, irrational, emotional movement can do to human beings.
Abigail Ann Martin, Brandon

Xenu or not Xenu

One of the first curiosities a critical thinker will encounter when researching Scientology is the cloud of confusion that surrounds what is one of its most central beliefs, the infamous Incident II in which, 75 million years ago, evil galactic emperor Xenu incarcerated billions of people in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs. According to information given over in Operating Thetan 3 he then incarcerated the resultant "body thetans" in holographic cinemas in order to confuse them as to their time, place and true nature. Many of the symbols of world religions formed part of the holographic show, and it is around these symbols that all other world religions are based. This belief that other religions are implants flies in the face of the other oftentold lie, that Scientology is compatible with all other religions. It offers up an explanation of other world religions, certainly, but it is not compatible with them, no more than psychological theories on the origins of religion are compatible with the religions they explain.

The body thetans or BTs then attached themselves to the nearest reasonably sentient life-forms, human beings, and it is the BTs discombobulated confusion that causes most of our day-to-day problems. Scientology's auditing procedures and OT courses offer a solution.

As religions go this is no different in any real sense to, say, Catholicism, where one is weighed down with one's own sin (and, I suppose, the sins of one's fathers) but can attone through the not dissimilar process of confession. That confession is free and auditing costs thousands need not concern us right now. What does concern us though, is this: the Xenu myth is at the core of what is being offered to members of the church whether they realise it or not. Incident II is not a creation myth in the traditional sense, but it operates in much the same way. It is the source of all our troubles. It is the thing we're trying to solve just as much as Christianity promises a solution to that first fall from grace. Where it becomes troublesome is when one considers that most Christians know Genesis. Heck, the Christian text starts at the beginning! The Scientology text effectively starts with a communication course. Scientology doesn't encounter its own serpent until it gets to the third level of Operating Thetan, before which much time and money has been spent.

Why is that?

Well one possibility is that if you pull someone in off the street after their complimentary stress test and tell them that the source of all their woe is a genocidal solution to overpopulation from 75 million years ago they will quite rightly be disinterested in the weighty paperback you're trying to sell them. Another possibility, one that Scientology ascribes to, is that learning about Xenu once you are clear but before you have completed OT1 & 2 will very likely kill you. This, despite the fact that the Xenu myth is by now well known. I dare say there have been several Scientologists who have attained clear in full knowledge of what secrets lie in the OT3 briefcase and yet have miraculously survived the ordeal. Here's how L Ron described the effects of the "research" that led to the creation of OT3:

The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development. One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 1 know someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

But this refers to running the procedures as written, not about sharing the information about Xenu, so it doesn't really account for why Scientologists of OT3 and above lie and lie again about what is a central belief of their religion.

Fortean Times, in their August 07 issue quotes Church spokeswoman Janet Kenyon Laveau: "there is nothing in the theology or philosophy of Scientology about belief in aliens." But if that were the case, then why would one of the Church's own websites list as its definition of Space Opera:

of or relating to time periods on the whole track millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred on the track.

The only explanation approaching legitimacy that this blogger has for the relentless lying about the space opera aspects of Scientology belief is in that very noun - "belief". The Beacon recently found itself in discussion with a Scientologist on the photo sharing site Flickr. During this discussion the Scientologist (M) stated that aliens are "not part of the religious practice of Scientology". M goes on to explain that Scientology does involve "the factual discovery by L. Ron Hubbard that almost any person, with very little effort, is able to access memories that stretch before this lifetime" and that people have recovered memories in which they encounter and belong to alien races1. So in the mind of the Scientologist the Xenu myth is not part of their "belief system" because they consider the "space opera stuff" to be cold hard fact2, just like their glossary states.

Suddenly Scientologists aren't lying about their belief in the myth, they are quibbling over the use of words. But get this - I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and I believe that gravity is a universal force that causes matter to drift towards other matter. I believe that I am sitting in front of a keyboard typing these words. I believe them, and they are facts. The vocal denial that (OT3+) Scientologists believe in Xenu can only be misleading, whether or not the speaker is making a semantic point or out-and-out lying. When Sweeney interviewed Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Ann Archer and Tommy Davis he asked them if they believed in the Xenu myth and each one of them denied it - celebrity Scientologists lying about their beliefs in a media interview. Tommy himself, in challenging Sweeney's persistence in asking about Xenu, provides insight into why the church is so keen to deny it: "it's like loony. It's weird.. makes you look weird." You're not wrong, Tommy.

Allegedly permission to use the interview footage in the documentary was pulled at the last minute due to Sweeney using the dread c-word, but could it just as easily be true that it would be damaging to the Church if such vocal supporters of the church could be exposed as demonstrable liars?

1 This is laid out in the book Have You Lived Before This Life, a collection of 42 testimonials involving past life memories, some of which are of the space opera flavour. No attempts are made to verify these memories within the book so it offers little in the way of proof that these memories are genuine.

2 One of the grand ironies is that this "truth" stems from the use of the e-meter. Hubbard claimed that it was possible to discern real memories from false memories by interrogating them on the meter. When he and others were confronted with memories that were hugely improbable and quite probably disprovable (an endeavour Scientologists are discouraged from pursuing), instead of taking them as a disproof of the ability for auditing to verify memories, they assumed that these memories were proved and the auditing process remained valid.