Scientology on Anderson Cooper 360

[Libertarian]

Thursday night (8/11/05) CNN had an "in depth" look at Scientology. Cooper interviewed two ex-members of the church who were critical of it. Then he interviewed, by phone, a spokesman for some generic-sounding church organization in NY which the COS had told CNN to talk to. (the COS did not provide a spokeman to refute the claims of the ex-members). While the spokesman on the phone defended the COS, he was not a member of it.

But, what struck me was when this spokesman was asked to comment on the Scientolgy view of our origin, and the fact that it involved "space aliens" etc. He, of course, did not directly answer the question, but what he said just blew me away!

He said something like (I'm paraphrasing): "Well, of course, all religions have their Creation myths...."

This guy is a representative of a NY federation of churches -- and he says that all churches have creation MYTHS!?!?!?!?!?

I was absolutely floored.

The reason I'm paraphrasing his answer was that I went to CNN.COM in order to find a transcript of the show & couldn't find it. I punched in "scientology" for a search term and got a bunch of lame responses.

Did anyone else see the show and hear what I did?

[bPer]

Here's the transcript (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/11/acd.01.html). Scroll down to the very end. It reads to me like the guest was just echoing Cooper's use of 'myth' in the lead-up to the question.

Having said that, I've heard Protestant clergy refer to 'creation myths' before, especially when referring to other religions. Cooper didn't challenge the guest about his religion's creation myth. It might have been amusing to watch

Also, remember that there are several definitions of the word 'myth', and not all of them imply that a myth is fictitious. My gut feeling is this guy was using 'myth' as a subtle put-down of other religions when he referred to 'every religion', not realizing that he had just lumped in his own religion with the contemptable. I expect that he would have retreated to the non-fictitious definitions had Cooper challenged him about his own religion's myths.

βPer

[Libertarian]

Originally posted by bPer
Here's the transcript (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/11/acd.01.html). Scroll down to the very end. It reads to me like the guest was just echoing Cooper's use of 'myth' in the lead-up to the question.

Having said that, I've heard Protestant clergy refer to 'creation myths' before, especially when referring to other religions. Cooper didn't challenge the guest about his religion's creation myth. It might have been amusing to watch

Also, remember that there are several definitions of the word 'myth', and not all of them imply that a myth is fictitious. My gut feeling is this guy was using 'myth' as a subtle put-down of other religions when he referred to 'every religion', not realizing that he had just lumped in his own religion with the contemptable. I expect that he would have retreated to the non-fictitious definitions had Cooper challenged him about his own religion's myths.

βPer

Thanks for the link. I agree with what you are saying -- yes, it would have been nice to have Cooper follow up with some tough questions. He got a bit tiring emphasizing how 360 was fair and always looked at both sides of a subject...............