Scientology

Yesterday night I saw Tom Cruise on The Hour. This was actually quite interesting and Cruise seemed to be quite a normal guy, unstable childhood with many moves and an unreliable father. Cruise is very driven, hardworking and determined, which led to his success. Then George mentioned scientology so I looked up scientology in order to better understand what it is about. Their main idea is to"clear" people form their reactive instincts and instead to focus on rational behavior. They claim that this reactive instinct stems from past experience, which are in our subconscience and influence our decision making. Hence, the focus is really on making oneself feel better by better controlling irrational impulses. Overall, this is understandably appealing to some people, specially those who deal with certain issues and like the idea of a rational solution. To some extend this sounds like a pretty standard therapy, which probably works in many cases. The more surprising aspect, I find is the packaging in terms of a religion. To me it sounds more like a therapy technique than a religion. What is religion? To me Religion is more about inter-personal relationships like love your neighbor in addition to a spiritual component, which is personal. But any attempt to rationalize religion is contradictory. If it is rational it is science and not religion. By definition, religion is a belief, hence not rational. So I really don't see how scientology can be considered a religion. It's basically a possible well being therapy imbedded in a very powerful organization.