In my humble opinion

I have wide and varied opinions on many things in life. Most of which could be considered arbitrary and of little use to anyone else but me. I have on occasion heard people use my name and the words “a fountain of useless knowledge” in the same sentence. Normally something like this would irk me, but as Art Blakey famously lamented, “Opinions are like assholes… everyone’s got one” and thus they are welcome to their opinions.
So in that same spirit let me fire away with an opinion of my own. In case you are wondering how I got onto this particular subject; a buddy and I had the good fortune of running into a Scientologist at a wedding reception over the weekend. While I normally have a high tolerance for people and their beliefs, the whole conversation kind of rubbed me up the wrong way. Due to my lack of knowledge on the subject and because I firmly believe alcohol and religion are a problematic mix, I told him to fuck off and to harass someone who cares.
It is not exactly what I would call a convincing argument, but then I could easily have fallen back on the clichés and simply poked fun at the Cruise Missile. Some topics have the slogan “alcohol-induced revelry” written all over them, don’t you agree?  But I did not, which in itself speaks volumes to my ability of exercising self–restraint.
I don’t particularly like Scientologists, yet to be fair; I don’t dislike them more than any other religion that I know of. For one thing I do not know nearly enough about them and their religion to have a meaningful opinion.
Most everything I know about Scientology comes from people and publications who oppose the religion. It is like having a Christian talk to you about Islam – it is non-factual, rife with bias and definitely not a reliable source.
Some of the biggest celebrity nut-jobs on the face of the planet, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Isaac Hayes, are Scientologists, and some would say that is reason enough not to take Scientology seriously. (Yeah… no male between the ages of 25 and 35 will ever forgive Tom impregnating” little Joey” and marrying her)
From the little that I know and having given it some measure of sober thought, which in itself is akin to giving yourself a frontal lobe lobotomy, Scientology, for want of a better word, makes No or very little sense to me. I am more likely to endure the teachings of Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism.
At least the Christians have that whole Triumvirate… erm… I mean, Holy Trinity thing going for them. The Buddhists have teaching of Buddha and the Four Noble Truths. Hell, even the Hindus are better off. They have the supreme cosmic spirit Brahman who in its many forms is represented by the individual deities Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti
And the Scientologists? Well, they have L. Ron Hubbard. And as much as I try to, it is hard to elevate him to the same level as the other deities.
They do have that whole Thetan ideology going as well, but somehow it seems more Sci-fi than divine. Scientology is desperately in need of some divine grace to give it a wholesome dose of credibility/essence, don’t you agree?