I was reading some online threads this morning about an actor who is also a Scientologist. There was an article about him and his then new found religion, and then the many comments that followed. I read the words fanatic, lunatic, and some other rather colorful descriptions of this person’s conversion to a belief system that makes sense to them.

I read a book put out by the founder of Scientology a number of years ago, and I have to admit, at the time it did not make a lot of sense and appeared to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. That being said, the belief system was already established, and my opinion of it accounts for little, as it still does.

Perhaps if I reread the book now, I am sure I would have a different viewpoint of Scientology. As I have learned over the years, the world is not always what it seems once you scratch the surface and actually look at what is going on, instead of ‘knowing’ what is going on in the world. Things are quite a bit different when one takes the time to observe what they see rather than simply placing what they think they saw into what they believe to be true.

Back to Scientology, I fail to see why there are so many strong feelings about this belief system? I thought maybe it was the name, Scientology, which I do not think you can find many people who would say Scientology sounds religious. So the word, Scientology does not sound very religious in nature so people could be upset about someone believing in something that does not sound religious. People have attacked other people both verbally and physically over a lot less.

Scientology sounds really foreign, way beyond some of those vague eastern religions. I think those ‘vague’ eastern religions are more tolerated because they have been around for a while, and were not invented within the last fifty years or so. This makes them more established, and possibly more acceptable because someone did not just invent them.

In defense of Scientology itself, a belief system sometimes takes on a life of its own. We grow up and are told what to believe and how to perform whatever rituals come with that belief system. When we grow older and realize there are other ways of perceiving in respect to a belief system other than what we were taught. If we are open to possibility it becomes obvious that most other belief systems have the same end goal in mind that our belief system does. Other belief systems simply they just go about arriving at the same end differently. This usually happens because they come from a culture different from ours and they have a different way of viewing the world.

Then there is the question of the actor himself. We determined a long time ago that people have the right to believe as they deem proper for themselves. That does not mean that someone can only have a belief system that meets within the narrow scope of approval of another person’s idea of what is a proper belief system.

People are free to believe what they want as long as it does no harm to others. If Scientology is a person’s belief system, we have no right, and we should have no public opinion on whether it meets our own standards or not. That is not something we as individuals have the right to decide for other people. As the popular saying goes, or at least as well as I remember it, “I don’t have to agree with your beliefs, but I will defend them to te death.