It seems that the Church of Scientology has had a pretty bad week, and if it’s one thing the CoS hates it’s bad publicity because they prefer to do things in utter secrecy. This, in addition to a number of other loathsome practices – including brainwashing their followers and forcing them to cut themselves off from friends & family (called “disconnection”) – have widely earned the CoS status as a cult. Fortunately, in recent years, starting with the high-profile flipping out of celebrity nutwad Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch, the CoS has been attracting a lot of unwanted attention.
Most recently, there was an embarassing batch of news coverage from a recent ABC Nightline investigation which featured a lot of things about the organization that the CoS wishes people didn’t know. Here’s a Youtube link to the Nightline story…
Worse yet, just in the last few days there was the defection of high-level Scientologist and Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis from the Church. And, from all appearances, he’s publicly digging up lots of dirt in the process; below is a blog post by Marty Rathbun, also an ex-Church member, which outlines the letter that Haggis sent to the Church announcing his plan to leave. I have reproduced the text of Haggis’s letter below in its entirety…
The Skeptical Teacher 