Battlefield: Scientology?

For those of you who haven't been following the ongoing war between the BBC Panorama Film Maker John Sweeney and the Church of Scientology... You guys are missing out.

I first found out about the BBC doing a documentary on Scientology from Digg.com. Most of us have gotten our view of Scientology from South Park... So at the time I did not know much about Scientology, so I decided (like anyone who would rather find potentially boring information by watching something, than by reading it) to look the subject up on Youtube to see what I could find out. Well, that's where I found that during the taping of the BBC documentary, the host John Sweeney had gone ballistic on some Scientologists at one of their compounds. As pointed out in that video there are two separate versions of the John Sweeney outburst: the Scientology version and the BBC Version (Part I, II, III).

The Scientology version of the events makes them seem very passive, that it was actually Sweeney's own manipulative techniques that failed him. I'm a fair guy for the most part, and I can understand not wanting your religion to be referred to as a cult; but that's when I started finding out that the situations Sweeney had gotten into were not far and few between.

Xenutv.com producer, Mark Bunker, had videotaped an international demonstration against the Church of Scientology on March 13th, 1999. By the following day, Scientologists were at his door protesting Bunker as a religious bigot... that was fast. On July 2nd, Bunker decided to go to a Scientology fair being hosted in LA. Guess who Bunker ran into at this fair. Yes, that's right, the same guy that was protesting Bunker at his house. This time Dan, the protestor, was much braver with lackies following behind.

What other religion would try and goad people into becoming angry? There is a clear difference between people like Ray Comfort and Scientologists.

The war online is still raging on... Youtube actually being in the forefront. One of the editors from the BBC, Kevin Marsh, wrote in his blog that he believed the Scientology backlash against the BBC documentary to be a good thing, saying, "Journalism that has integrity and honesty in the first place has nothing to fear." Marsh believes that we should continually question the integrity of the journalists who are feeding us the "facts". Amen to that.

I believe the same should be said of people who follow any religions. While you might not want to question your faith, make sure to continually question those who would try to lead your faith. No matter how you look at it, religion will always come down to personal belief, and because of that, I believe that you should question anyone who would impose their beliefs on you.

Stephen