Storm Raven said:
The best part about Tom Cruise's very public melt-downs over Scientology is that it seems to have inspired many new people to actually look at Scientology's claims and practices, and Scientology doesn't seem to be coming out looking too good.
There have been some TV specials on Scientology in the past. A couple of the night time news shows like 60 Minutes did some as well as, I think, A&E.
One of the things they exposed was how Scientology targets it's critics. I remember that they started rumor that one woman used to be a stripper or prosititute. Even when it was exposed as a lie, representatives would still mention it by saying they weren't going to bring it up. You know, "We don't feel it necessary to dwell on the rumors that Ms. So-And-So was arrested for prostitution...".
I once saw a website that had some Scientology e-mails on them about how to deal with critics. I can't find that one, but here's a link to something similar:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/enemy_names/
Hubbard himself seems to have been, well, crazy. He claimed that he saw combat in WW2 and how he helped soldiers with their injuries is how he came to found Dianetics. In reality, while he did captain a ship in the Navy, he never saw combat. In fact, he was relieved of duty after firing on a Mexican island and ordering a depth-charge "battle" against nonexistent Japanese submarines off the Oregon coast.
And, my favorite one, he was a nuclear physicist. He actually only took one semester of nuclear physics, and received an "F".
Even his own son has nothing but negative things to say about him.
