Marina Hyde, Tom Davis, Paul Haggis, and why the pleasure of sideshow cults must continue

(Above: Church of Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis taking a hike when the questions about volcanoes and things get too slippery slope).

Once upon a time, a volcano stood for something. Who can forget the glory days of scientology, when George street in Sydney boasted a classy, aesthetically pleasing volcano, which at night would shoot off sparks like a hyper-active brain of a Tom Cruise kind:

By golly it was tasteful, and a shining example of the value-add that religion can contribute to an urban setting (and there's more happy snaps of scientology buildings here, just follow the links).

Now, judging by Davis's behavior, volcanoes are something to be ashamed of, but try tucking away a volcano underneath the bed.

Now what's worse it seems even characters from leftie liberal rags like The Guardian are having a go at this deeply religious organisation, with columns syndicated all over the place because The Sydney Morning Herald can't be bothered to devise its own coverage. Yep, there's Marina Hyde offering up light Sunday reading under the header in the SMH National Times (we reprint anything we can find) brand Mad Scientologists caught in a web of their own making.

Hyde makes some astonishing claims, including that L. Ron Hubbard was a sixth-rate science fiction writer, when any reader/viewer of Battlefield Earth would know that he was in fact a fifth rate science fiction writer, somewhere below Isaac Asimov but certainly above a self-publishing author with a thousand copies of his tome under the bed. Only just above, but hey he did make money from his craft, before deciding religion-making was a better cash cow.

Hyde references Paul Haggis's recent break with his church, and it seems we must pay attention to Haggis, perhaps because he won a couple of Oscars as a result of Crash, which I always thought was as reprehensible as any other third rate piece of Californian emotionalist tripe.

But in a canny career move Haggis has caught a lot of attention, and rather than just read Hyde on Haggis, you can read Haggis on Haggis and Scientology by going here, with the full text of his resignation letter.

You can also find a handy link to the news that in France the church has been convicted of fraud, here, along with the handy information that the U.S. State Department has criticized some European countries for labeling Scientology a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its activities.

Only in America would freedom of religion be seen as more important than protecting fools from being parted from their money. (Never give a sucker a break must be written into the bill of rights somewhere).

Naturally the LA Times took a different view of Haggis's outrage, with Patrick Goldstein comparing Haggis's outrage to the jottings of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo and Trumbo's habit of firing off letters (yet without once mentioning that Trumbo's most execrable crime came when he got off the blacklist with the help of Otto Preminger and received a credit for writing Exodus. For that he got credit? Bring back the black list).

The quote deployed by Goldstein to link Trumbo and Haggis is an extremely long bow, you can find it here, but he's right about one thing, and that's the way scientology caters to and exploits the fragile egos and shattered souls of the entertainment business (after all, if you constantly appear in mission impossible movies, pretending to be other people in alternate worlds, where's the harm in a volcano spouting truth and justice).

But back to Hyde, and the things she says, blaming the intertubes for the downfall of scientology!

Now I'm terrified. If the age of scientology is over, who will we have to mock, who will we have to snigger and laugh at?

Fortunately she provides some clues:

But when I think of Mel Gibson building his $US42 million church compound in Malibu, telling interviewers that his then wife would go to hell because she was Church of England … I can't find him any less barking than Tom Cruise.

Yes, when in doubt, there's always Mel Gibson, and his Hearst Castle folly (more slightly antiquated pictures here):

Those pictures come from a site dedicated to watching SSPX by a dedicated bunch of SSPX watchers determined to expose the schismatics (here). Now the Pope wants to bring Anglicans back into the fold, at least the ones that don't like women and homosexuals. Now there's a cult ...

But back to Hyde. Somehow she makes an enormous leap, and thinks that others should be held to account:

Scientologists should be forced to justify their doctrinal lunacies - the only sadness is that other religions are apparently exempt from having to do the same. Imagine a Bashir-type interviewing some cardinal. ''So, you're saying that by some magic the communion wafer actually becomes the flesh of a man who died 2000 years ago, a man who we might categorise as an imaginary friend who can hear the things you're thinking in your head? And when you've done that, do you mind going over the birth control stuff?''

Perhaps she could come to the antipodes to expose the heresies of Pellism and Jensenism.

Because if Haggis thinks the church of scientology is homophobic, he should catch a whiff of the fear and loathing emanating from the luddites of Sydney.

Back to Hyde for the wrap up:

What a shame that we see rather fewer of these exchanges, however amusing and useful a sideshow Scientology may be.

An amusing, useful sideshow? Is that what's happened to the once proud Thetan Xenu loving or fearing volcano fanciers? And now all we have left for an amusing and useful circus are the longer running cults that have been peddling their wares for thousands of years?

Suddenly it's a bleak Sunday, looking out on this awful existential void.

I know, time for some comedy stylings. First a bit of Woody Allen:

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

"I don't believe in afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends."

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank."

Then a few from left field:

"I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose."
(Clarence Darrow)

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
(Don Hirschberg)

"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
(Henry Louis Mencken)

And then to the grand daddy of them all, Ambrose Bierce, whose Devil's Dictionary you can find here, but in many other places on the intertubes, so loved is he, and who remains essential reading for all teenagers in search of joyous chortling cynicism as a comfort for the rest of their lives:

"Abstainer, n. Weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure."

"Baptism, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling."

"Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain."

"Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."

"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbors."

"Convent, n. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness."

"Destiny, n. Tyrant's authority for crime, and a fool's excuse for failure."

"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Heathen, n. A benighten creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

"Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity"

"Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does."

"Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

"Prelate, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God."

"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man."

"Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited."

"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based."

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Phew, that's a relief. For a minute there Hyde had me going. No volcanoes?

There'll always be volcanoes, and loon pond full to overflowing like the intertubes ...

UPDATE: eek, and Miriam Hyde's article has already garnered some comments, including true believers. One day loon pond will encompass the world ...

(Below: Ambrose Bierce, still the best guardian against cultism available. Take a sip daily, or as needed).