Scientology, Seizures, and Science

The Atlas Society - The Center for Objectivism ^ | 1/13/2009 | Edward Hudgins

[Ed Hudgins]

Scientology, Seizures, and Science

by Edward Hudgins

January 13, 2009 -- Jett Travolta, the sixteen-year-old son of actors John Travolta and Kelly Preston, died recently of what the autopsy found to be a seizure. The boy had a history of seizures and unconfirmed reports suggest that his parents acted responsibly to ensure he was on medication to mitigate his condition.

We don’t know yet what caused the seizure—a change in medication or dosage, or a worsening of the underlying condition that caused the seizures.

I’ve held in my arms a dear loved-one during her seizures, someone who fortunately now survives and flourishes thanks to modern medicine. Thus I can identify personally with the dangers of such conditions and appreciate the imperative to understand and treat them.

And we can all have sympathy for Travolta and Preston and hope that progress in medical science can reduce the number of such tragedies so that other parents can be spared terrible grief and suffering.

But there’s a sad irony here: Scientology, the religion to which Travolta and Preston belong, and other irrational belief systems have, in principle and practice, always stood in the way of such progress.

Scientology was created by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard. Its secret teachings apparently maintain that 75 million years ago the galactic tyrant Xenu anaesthetized billions of his enemies; flew them in spaceships to Earth; dropped them into volcanoes and nuked them; and collected their ghosts—called “thetans”—in giant theaters to show them movies that left them thoroughly confused and wandering aimlessly on our planet.

“So what?” you might ask. “All religions have weird beliefs.” True! Mormons believe that God lives around the star Kolob with his wife. Catholics believe that the bread they eat at communion is the actual, real, no-fooling flesh of Jesus.

[DrewsDad]

I agree with most of the article, but haven't seen much in the way of the "hard-won knowledge of evolutionary science" outside of variation within a species and so-called ring-species.

Have there been any new breakthroughs that prove molecules to man evolution?

[Ed Hudgins]

You might think of what happened to John Travolta as a classic (and I would add, symbolic) case of Nemesis. He is a high-profile guy promoting cult views on medicine that can and have led to misery and possibly death. So while he was responsible with respect to his own child, this terrible tragedy occurred in his family that could occur in any other family that takes his religious rantings seriously.

[huldah1776]

“But Creationism results in attempts to force schools to teach fairy tales alongside the hard-won knowledge of evolutionary science, as if they were equally valid; such a curriculum would undermine respect for rational approach to knowledge.”

Lost me right there. I always wonder how God does things and love biology.