Submitted to a Candid World

Fantastic post, Ames.

It does present an interesting problem and, of course, it wasn’t long ago that Christianity was the radical and dangerous new sect. Good-faith faith (funny phrase) is actually a great way to judge it.

When the founder of your “religion” says the following, you should stop listening to everything he says after that:

“Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion”
- L Ron Hubbard

Scientology does make historical claims. Specifically, that all that we understand about all religions other than Scientology was fed to us in brainwashing by the aliens. It makes a far more sweeping historical claim than any other religion.

And the Scientology cross with the X through it? L Ron explains that the Christian cross – as introduced to us in our brainwashing – was actually a stolen version of the true Scientology cross. It strains the limits of credulity to such a point that you have to wonder whether even L Ron ventured a truth claim (which I think is an essential element of a religion.)

Pardon my youthful ignorance, but why should the state be narrowing the definition of religion? In a liberal democracy, people are allowed to pursue their own conception of “good”. They may join an organization, dedicate time and money to that organization, and so long as they do no harm to others, the state should not intervene.

Two potential problems arise with Scientology: (1) it currently has tax free status as a non profit. The test then becomes whether it appropriates its funds in such a way that it warrants such status. (2) There is potential for adults to coerce their children into strictly adhering to Scientology to the detriment of the children.

All religions share both problems. For instance, there is nothing legally wrong with multiple consenting adults cohabitating and calling it “marriage”; however, we have seen in some fundamentalist Mormon sects, children are coerced into polygamist marriages and therefore harmed. The state has decided that children cannot consent to certain things, therefore it will intervene if a child is being forced into an action or situation in which he/she cannot possibly consent.

Assuming that Scientologists do not make a mockery of these basic rules, there should be no reason why the state should take any notice of their practices, no matter how bizarre or unorthodox. Remember, when you give the state the power to go after people or groups you don’t like, you give them the power to go after you (should your ideological adversaries assume control of government).

Apologies in advance for the tremendous length of this post.

Scientology certainly does make historical claims, but I don’t know that anything it’s saying is more sweeping than creation ex nihilo or the Flood. Its claims are certainly less improbable, if only because they’re on-face possible (again, contrast with the Flood) and aren’t actively refuted by physical evidence (ignoring the psychiatry stuff). I think you’re tending to give the miraculous in Christianity a free pass simply because the claims are ancient and popular; by any other criterion, it seems to me that alien brainwashing strains credulity less than miraculous resurrection or a global Flood.

To be perfectly clear, I have no respect for Scientology, but neither do I have much for Christian fundamentalism. On the other hand, I really have no problem with the vaguely Christian spirituality of a lot of Americans, and very little problem with those Christians who believe in just the resurrection. I think the latter are primarily concerned with metaphysics, and that the few historical claims that liberal Christianity does make (the resurrection, notably) are accepted only because they’re seen as undergirding the belief structure as a whole.

I also think you’re focusing a bit much on the history of Scientology. Why ought it to matter how a religion was founded? If you were to hop into a time machine, and if you were to find that Jesus, Muhammad, or Siddhartha was just making things up, would you then not consider Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism to be a religion?

As Ames intimates, Scientology also seems like one of the easy cases. If a man shows up tomorrow, claiming to be bringing the word of God and promising eternal paradise for those who follow him, will he have founded a religion? Are the beliefs of people that follow him worthy of as much respect as your average Christian’s? We’re inclined to say no, but, upon reflection, it seems to me that this inclination is purely a result of longevity- and familiarity-bias.

But perhaps there’s some excuse for basing respect on longevity. Someone’s (to you, mistaken) belief in what their parents, peers, and culture all embrace is much more understandable than someone’s belief in a prophet of today. Nonbelievers may find powerful religions respectable because of a “there but for the grace of God go I” intuition – almost all of us would be believing Christians had we been born in certain circumstances that have actually obtained at some point in history. Relatively few of us can imagine being believing Scientologists. Because we see ourselves as sensible about these things, we assume sensibility on the part of people who believe the things that we might have believed had circumstances been slightly different.

To me, the fact that it is basically impossible to distinguish differences in a ‘true’ religion and a ‘for profit’ religion just proves how equally stupid and ridiculous all religions are.

It seems that the longevity argument provides a simple way of validating the majority religions while discrediting smaller ones. While I don’t buy into the entire post-modern argument that catagorizations and arbitrary grouping are used as a source of power and a means of oppression, I think we are verging too close to doing just that.

One cannot create an exclusionary definition of religion without considering the implications (especially since religions are given special protections). Words have specific meanings, and changing them to suit our needs suggests a certain motive. What is ours?

I grant that that’s very sweeping, though it only strikes me as about on par with the claim that the Flood caused the fossils we find closer to the surface to float, etc. Regardless, I don’t really have a problem giving this to you. Perhaps Scientology is objectively so far beyond the pale that there can be no controversy with respect to it, but it still seems to me that if you’re going to attach respect to religions insofar as they don’t make absurd claims about history, fundamentalist Christianity just doesn’t do very well. That is, if Scientology isn’t a worthy religion by virtue of the sorts of claims we’re talking about, it’s hard to call fundamentalist Christianity one, though I’ll grant that there is a place you could set the bar so as to catch one and not the other (but this seems contrived).

Defining what qualifies as religion, while an interesting exercise, is somewhat useless in navigating the sorts of social and cultural instituations one seeks to put under the umbrella of “religion.” (Or leave out in the rain, as it were.)

Because the term “religion” exists doesn’t mean that the pheonemona described by the term exist. J.Z. Smith’s Map Is Not Territory makes that point much more academically and eloquently, along the way addressing the notion of “religion” as a Western conceit that’s only really existed in the post-Enlightenment era. Before that, religion was one of many ways of understanding the world, and, more than that, it was the way of life, with little options outside of it. When the Enlightenment brought about the notion of secularism and the separation of church and state, the contemporary concept of “religion” was born, only to distinguish it from other matters. The notion of “religion” as being thought of as the territory instead of the map grew from that distinction.

The category exists now, of course, so the task is really to define what “religion” is as opposed to evaluating groups on some cavalier notion of what practices are valid or not. (For the record, I think Scientology’s practices are not. For those reading this comment: if you’re waiting to tag me as a “cult apologist,” [and I've already written on the term "cult"] you’re missing the point.)

I argue that the best definitions of what constitutes religion are broad. My favorite two definitions come from very different sources. The first from anthropologist Clifford Geertz makes reference to one’s organization of the world, breaking the notion into five parts: “[Religion is] (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” Rather than define how a given group would look or act, Geertz describes a system which acts a specific way in relation to individuals. The other is from theologian Paul Tillich, describing “faith” as “the state of being ultimately concerned.” The definition is short, and has many detractors (and its weaknesses, for that matter) but it deals with religion in a broad sense. I interpret “ultimate concern” as dealing with how one’s identity is perceived by the self. For example, if one’s “ultimate concern” involves being hyper-patriotic (a simplified example, for the sake of space), that describes the notion of civil religion–not a “traditional religion,” and probably a concept that would slip by the “I know it when I see it” rubric.

Bestowing the term “religion” on a particular phenomenon or social group isn’t an honor, it’s merely a constructed category to help people organize the world a little better. The term itself includes all manner of expressions of good, bad, dishonest and pious. To limit the term “religion” to only those groups which seem legitimate to you, based on whatever criteria you would base that judgment, is to neuter the diversity of the human experience.

“To limit the term “religion” to only those groups which seem legitimate to you, based on whatever criteria you would base that judgment, is to neuter the diversity of the human experience.”

Whose human experience? That of the Scientologists? They don’t care what I think, as long as they’re granted favorable tax status. And my definition of religion has about as little to do with the government’s as yours does.

Does it “neuter” the diversity of my human experience? How would it do that, when Scientology, religion or not, is something I have no interest in studying or practicing?

How do you “neuter the diversity of human experience” anyway? By rendering it incapable of reproduction? Or by robbing it of its gender identity?