HOT on the heels of the news that the Church of Scientology had been convicted of fraud in France, comes the bombshell that Oscar-winning director and long-time Scientologist Paul Haggis has turned his back on this vile organisation, citing its homophobia for his decision to pack it in.
Paul Haggis
According to this report, he gave his reasons for ditching the celebrity-riddled religion in a scathing letter to Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre leader Tommy Davis. Roger Friedman of The Hollywood Reporter broke the story, pointing to the main cause of Haggis’ angry departure: Scientology’s support of Proposition 8 in California banning gay marriage.
In the letter to Davis – published in full here – Haggis wrote,
I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated … In that first conversation, back at the end of October of last year, you told me you were horrified, that you would get to the bottom of it and ‘heads would roll.’ You promised action. Ten months passed. No action was forthcoming.
The Million Dollar Baby director added:
The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.
Haggis also addressed the Scientologists’ practice of ‘disconnection’ which Davis publicly denied in a recent CNN interview.
We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification – I didn’t have to look any further than my own home. You might recall that my wife was ordered to disconnect from her parents because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church … Although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them. I refused to do so. I’ve never been good at following orders, especially when I find them morally reprehensible.
Haggis acknowledged the likelihood that personal information shared during his audit sessions would be made public now that he has left the organization, writing:
I am now painfully aware that you might see this an attack and just as easily use things I have confessed over the years to smear my name. Well, luckily I have never held myself up to be anyone’s role model.
Haggis concluded his letter by definitively severing ties with the church:
I am only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.
Meanwhile, a French court has convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France.
Two branches of the group’s operations and several of its leaders in France have been fined.
The case came after complaints from two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into paying more than 20,000 euros (£18,100) in the 1990s.
France regards Scientology as a sect, not a religion.
Prosecutors had asked for the group’s French operations to be dissolved and more heavily fined, but a legal loophole prevented any ban.
Instead, a Paris judge ordered the Church’s Celebrity Centre and a bookshop to pay a 600,000-euro fine.
Alain Rosenberg, the group’s head in France, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros.
Three other leading members of the group were also fined.
Unlike the US, France has always refused to recognise Scientology as a religion, arguing that it is a purely commercial operation designed to make as much money as it can at the expense of often vulnerable victims.
Over the past 10 years, France has taken several individual members of the group to court on charges of fraud and misleading publicity, but this is the first time the organisation itself has been charged.
Tommy Davis, spokesman for the Church of Scientology International, told BBC News that the court had acted:
In total violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and French constitutional guarantees on freedom … The fines will get thrown out on appeal. We’ve had similar cases before and in other countries. If it has to go to the court of human rights we’re confident we will win there.
In the case leading up to yesterday’s ruling, a woman said she was sold expensive life-improvement courses, vitamins and other products after taking a personality test.
A second woman alleges she was fired by her Scientologist boss after refusing to undergo testing and sign up to courses.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 27th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Good to hear. I predict that Scientology will implode very shortly.
Make way for the one true faith. 33% of the world’s population are Christian and it’s been around for 2000 years. That’s pretty amazing odds for something you guys think is wrong.
2% of the world’s population are atheists. And (interestingly) the number is shrinking.
http://richleebruce.com/b/atheist.html
Amen to that Brothers. Time to get aboard the God train.
God Bless you all.
Chin.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Atheism declining? Don’t make me laugh. In my grandchildren’s schools there is a handful of believers in some religion or other. Fortunately today’s young people are less easily fooled.
The churches are empty. There are so few churchgoers that one priest has to look after three or more parishes.
Re scientology: Paul Haggis, welcome to the sane world, and I congratulate the French on their good sense.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Hey Chin, to somebody looking in from the outside I’m afraid your religion, as old and as ingrained as it is, looks just as bonkers as theirs, mate.
And do try and get off that god train as soon as you can. Once you’re aboard you can’t see anything for all the toxic poison that spews out of the smokestack.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
So, it takes him 35 years to figure this out? It helped him enough while he was climbing the greasy pole for him to turn a blind eye to the madness. Now he’s got some Oscars under his belt, he doesn’t need them anymore and can cut free…
What a fucking hypocrite.
BTW, Tommy Davis is the one that had the shouting match with John Sweeney on the BBC documentary. He’s also Anne Archer’s son (yes, another $cientology nutjob, I’m afraid).
And I see Chindeki Iwuji is trotting out the same old trope that equates the number of xtians to the population of nominally xtian countries.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
L. Ron Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To use the dog and bone.
When he got there
The cupboard was bare,
Because the Haggis was gone!
October 27th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Alternative last line : “Because his lawyers were rubbish and he was 600,000 Euros out of pocket!”
BTW I nearly collapsed with laughter (again!) at the suggestion that the proportion of atheists in the world’s population is 2% AND FALLING!!
October 27th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
One person resigns but sadly more gullible people are sucked or coerced into the cash making business that is scientology. We could say that about all religions, they are all in it for the power and the money and the bigotry……
We haven’t had an attack of the trolls for a couple of days and along comes Chindek Iwuji with his xtain bullshit: one true faith? tell that the muzzies matey!
October 27th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Chindek, if you are going to post a link on this blog, make sure you read it properly first. You claim the piece says that the world’s atheist population is shrinking. Granted – for the moment. But what the author goes on to say is:
“Atheism and non-belief in general may gain strength as an increasing portion of the world’s population lives in rich, industrialized, First World democracies.”
In other words, in educated, well-off societies, superstition is given the brush-off; it thrives only where there is ignorance and poverty, which is why it is in the interest of Christianity (and the Roman Catholic Church in particular) to keep people in Third World countries stupid and poor. Ditto Islam.
I should also point out the the NON-BELIEVING population of the world (atheists, agnostics etc) make up around 16% of the world population – in third place behind Christianity and Islam.
If you add Buddhism, which is not a theistic religion, more of a philosophy, the figure rises to 22%, which would then put it in second place.
And if those people living in oppressively Christian and Muslim societies were to admit that they were only claiming adherence to religion because of family, peer or political pressures, non-believers would make up the MAJORITY of the world’s population.
See http://www.adherents.com/Relig.....rents.html
As for Christianity being “The one true faith”, try telling that to those, like Muslims, who insist that their religion is “the one true faith”. As Christians and Muslims cannot both be right, it follows that both must be equally wrong.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I don’t believe it either, Angela. How do they find us? I reckon Barry has an ad somewhere, saying: “Imbeciles wanted to post fatuous comments on atheist website. Good rates of pay.” Either that or he is making them all up himself!
It is more than obvious to even the casual observer that even in the most extreme fundamentalist societies vast numbers of people are unbelievers. Just look what happens when mad mullah overlords have their rule interrupted for even a short while: women who were formerly dressed in tents are seen virtually cavorting bikini-clad in the streets! It reminds me of the spectacle we used to see every Spring when I was young, and the farmer let the cows loose in the field for the first time since the previous Autumn – they went wild with excitement!! (Clotted cream for a few days, I should imagine!!!)
October 27th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
The more time goes by, the more and more of us unbelievers there are going to be. The lies don’t work any more!
October 27th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Let me AGAIN provide the correct statistics to persons who repeat religious progaganda because they either do not know where to look or refuse to look for the accurate figures.
Nontheists: 2.2 billion worldwide;
Christians: 1.1 billion worldwide;
Muslims: 1.0 billion worldwide.
Nontheists in USA: 36 percent;
nontheists in Europe: except for Ireland and Poland, where the godphuqt are a majority, the figure ranges from over fifty percent in France to over ninety percent in Scandinavia.
See the sources listed in Ronald Aronson’s Living Without God, which I reviewed in http://www.midwestbookreview.com, December 2008.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
If there is a Master of the Universe that wants all humans to be Christians, and it has the omnipotence to achieve its wants, why do Christians constitute only 16 percent of the human race? Indeed, why are there ANY non-Christians?
If there is a Master of the Universe that wants all humans to be Muslims, why…… You get the idea.
If there is a Master of the universe that wants all humans to be Scientologists, and has only been able to persuade 100,000 of humankind’s most gullible suckers to sign up for the Hubbard confidence swindle … likewise.
Perhaps its omnipotence needs a Viagra boost?
October 27th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
“…a sectr, not a religion.”
I realize it’s splitting hairs, but shouldn’t that say “cult” ?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:19 am
It has never seemed to me that Scientology as a belief system is any more absurd than any other religion, no matter how recently that religion has been devised.
(By which I mean why stop with Scientology?)
R
October 28th, 2009 at 8:55 am
“I realize it’s splitting hairs, but shouldn’t that say “cult” ?”
Quite. But then again that word can be used for all religions. Just because they are “large” doesn’t stop them from being cults which ensnare and impoverish the gullible.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I’ve always said this; “cults” become “religions” when their numbers are large enough. Just suppose some madmen suddenly appeared upon the scene today saying: “Our leader could walk on water, heal the sick, raise the dead, and feed thousands with two little loaves, then was assassinated, but rose from the dead three days later, showed himself to just a small number of his fathful followers, and then floated up into heaven right in front of them, promising to come back soon to set up his kingdom on earth. All this is 100% true.” We all know what the response would be! But just because these daft stories are two thousand years old, and a large number of people believe them, they are perfectly acceptable!!
October 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
The daily mash have it spot on as usual
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/.....910282176/
October 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
A sect is a cult with an army. They’re all religions.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I know the terms are often used interchangeably, but I think you’ll find that a sect is more properly a subdivision of a belief system, whereas a cult would best describe any new movement, like $cientology.
BTW Is there any truth in the statement that the ‘L’ in L. Ron Hubbard stands for ‘lunatic’? (Someone’s going to say: “No, none of them are mad – just look at the money they’ve made out of it!”)
October 28th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I suppose the vast numbers of christians (supposed) includes the vast numbers who have not a thought in their head, never mind having read anything about the background to what they say they believe. The question they never cope with when preaching about their “god” is what do they mean by god.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Interestingly, the “disconnection” that is spoken about in the article is mentioned in the New Testament, sorry can’t be arsed to look up the references. I think that this shows that Christianity started out as a cult, just like Scientology or JWism. Dr. Harwood may correct me but I believe that the Christ-cult died a death and it was Paulianity that took off having stolen the Christ-cult’s god.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Both the Ebionites, “the poor”, the communist cult founded and led by Jesus until his death, and the Nazirites, the cult that converted from Righteous-Rabbi-Essenism to Jesus-Essenism after Jesus’ death, were exterminated no later than the sixth century–by the Christians, the gentile religion invented by Paul that had no more connection with its posthumous figurehead than the John Birch Society had with John Birch. See the entries on Ebionites and Nazirites in Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:09 am
I’m confused now. I thought the Nazirites were an OT sect, and that it was the Nazarenes who were contemporary with the Ebionites(?).
October 29th, 2009 at 6:46 am
A nazirite was for several centuries BCE a fanatic under a vow of no-haircutting, no liquor, and other forms of masochism for a specified period. There is a suspicion that, as a known drinker and glutton, Jesus was first called “the Nazirite” by his detractors, analogous to calling a bald man “Curly,” and he then adopted the title as a badge of honor, the way “Rats of Tobruk” was adopted by the Australian soldiers to whom Lord Haw Haw first applied the derogatory title.
On the difference between Jesus’ actual title of “Nazirite”, and “Nazarene” to which it became changed, see my piece in December Freethinker. Luke used Nazarenos in 4:34 and 24:19, but Nazoraios in 18:37 and 22:57. Mark used only the former, and Matthew only the latter. “of Nazareth” is a particularly indefensible mistranslation.
October 30th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Hey kids,
It’s delightful debating this with you all. Thanks for your comments.
Not sure I understand the comment:
“As for Christianity being “The one true faith”, try telling that to those, like Muslims, who insist that their religion is “the one true faith”. As Christians and Muslims cannot both be right, it follows that both must be equally wrong.”
I’m sure being a freethinker you must be pretty smart. However, you may recall the church claimed the world was flat. Science claimed that the world was round. Were the equally wrong? I don’t believe so. I believe the scientists won out did they not? “It follows that both must be equally wrong” just doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you can explain it to me.
I’m still punting for the law of averages on this. If a third of the globe is Christian and the faith has been around for 2000 years then there’s probably something there – savvy? Or are we all being deluded and you guys are the only ones capable of free thought? Pride comes before a fall folks.
Chin.