Monday, February 23, 2009
Scientologists are on the defensive about the Travolta tragedy
Perhaps someone who knows more about Scientology than I do can refute or confirm my suspicion that this Scientology spokesperson is lying about Scientology not denying that autism is a disease. I can't see how a Scientologist can possibly believe that autism is a disease.
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Scientology is a dualism that denies a brain basis for things it considers "purely" psychiatric disease. As a philosophy this is much more dualistic than the position of most current educated western Christians, and has more in common with the demon theory of mental illness common 400 years ago.
However, there are many modern Christians who think depression is a purely spiritual battle, with little or no physical component; that IS precisely the mainline scientology position.
Autism is an "in between" disease, with definable microscopic physical changes and no overt changes except in behavior; it thus has much in common with mental retardation. As such, it is a borderline case for the Scientologist, but not for the typical Christian.
The old line Hubbard's written position was that even things such as retardation and epilepsy were purely spiritual conditions. At the time of scientology's invention, such illness were classed even by some older medical texts with things such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but they are not so classified today. This is why some "anti-scientologists" have seized on the tragedy, though it's not clear whether scientology beliefs had anything to do with that boy's medication deprivation and subsequent death. The scientology speaker is saying, I think, that if autism or retardation or epilepsy are physical then they are not covered under the scientology psychoactive medication ban. He is, in fact, revising Hubbard's older thinking based on more modern concepts of such disease.
Or so I get from the article :).
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