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Originally Posted by Mantus
To me a cult is a religion without political power. Thus I qualify Scientology as a religion.
I have nothing against their beliefs, a burning bush in the middle of the desert telling some guy how humans should live their lives is pretty out there as well. Oh sure you can say Christians don't take is seriously, well perhaps Scientologists don't take their teachings seriously either.
Religion in general provides three things for people: a comunity, sence of purpose and therapy.
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Oh, I'm not saying that Christianity is a shining example of what a religion should be. Don't get me wrong. I am only occasionally Christian, most often preferring a troubled agnosticism. But, unlike Christianity, there is a lot more literality (don't know if that's a word, actually) in Scientology teachings.
Of course, there's the other side of the coin, where you could make a persuasive argument of Scientology as a tax shelter for the well-heeled, but it doesn't look like that's what Tom Cruise is going for. He seems to have dived into the deep end, when I would have had him pegged as a tax shelter guy.
Either way, the prime tenets look largely borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism (reincarnation, subjectivity of truth, and Nirvana in the guise of a "native state of total freedom"). And I'd frankly become a Buddhist or Hindi long before following anything manufactured by a misogynist, bigoted, homophobe convicted of fraud and extortion and whose top-ranking officials have also been convicted of fraud, burglary, forgery, obstruction of justice, breach of public trust, filing frivolous lawsuits, interfering with witnesses, involuntary homicide, money laundering; and pending trials regarding false imprisonment, assault, extortion, kidnapping, defamation, invasion of privacy, racketeering, wrongful death, practicing medicine without a license, battery, and oh, brainwashing.
Yes, I'm sure you could find examples of high-ranking officials of other faiths engaging in such crimes. But you have to admit that this particular group has managed to rack up an impressively sordid history in a relatively small amount of time.
Here's a handy little library of data to pore over:
http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html