Members of the philosophical society, ladies and gentlemen, fellow Thetans, I have a lot of sympathy with the Church of Scientology, because I am also a member of a small church that is ridiculed by society.

When Atheist Ireland started campaigning against the blasphemy law a few years ago, one of the things that we did was to set up a new church that worshiped Dermot Ahern, the Minister who brought in the law, and that church is the Church of Dermotology.

Our beliefs are pretty similar mainstream religious beliefs. We believe Dermot Ahern created the universe out of nothing. We believe ice cream wafers are literally the body of Dermot Ahern. And like the Mormons, we have magic underpants.

We have over a thousand members on Facebook, so we are bigger than the Ba’hais in Ireland. And like the Scientologists, we have a free personality test to judge members. Ours is slightly simpler than the Scientology test. We have only two questions. Number one: are you vulnerable? Number two: have you money? If you answer yes to both of these questions, you’re in.

In terms of the theology of Scientology, we have heard a bit about the intergalactic warrior Xenu and so on, which is pretty silly to most people. But on balance, when you look at the claims of Christianity, and if you look at the non-anthropomorphic deity of Scientology, and the science fiction underneath it, it’s marginally less silly than Christianity.

Question from audience member: Do you not think that there is more validity to Christianity in that you don’t have to pay thousands of euro to learn about Christianity?

Michael: Yes, I’ll come to that in a second. I’m talking about the theology at the moment. With regard to the practice, I agree with you about that.

The theology is marginally less silly because it doesn’t involve anthropomorphic supernatural beings who impregnate virgins in order to give birth to themselves, so that they can die and return to life and write a book about it.

In terms of the practices of Scientology, and the beliefs of its members, I’m sure a lot of you have seen the video of Tom Cruise saying “If you see a road accident, and you are a Scientologist, you can’t just pass by. You’ve got to stop because, as a Scientologist, you are the only who can really help!

That sounds kind of odd, but we had a major accident in Cork not too long ago, where an airplane crashed. And the local parish priest took it upon himself to get on his bicycle, and go down to the airport, and made his way past the security cordon into the accident area, in oder to bless dying people, who may or may not have been of his own religion, and he was legitimately let through by the accident and emergency people.

Can you imagine if, after this debate, we go out and there is a major crash on the street, and I go over to the police cordon and say “Excuse me, I’m the chairperson of Atheist Ireland, and I’ve really got to get through, because there may be some people dying there, and I’ve really got to tell them that there is no God”.

I think I know the response I would get, and it wouldn’t be “Certainly, Mr. Nugent, take your place in the queue behind Tom Cruise and Father Dougal Maguire.”

So in terms of the theology and the belief systems of Scientology, they are no sillier, and no less legitimate, than those of most other religions.

In terms of the practices, and this is where it does get serious, in terms of the practices of the Church of Scientology, I think it’s fair to say that they are a pretty harmful organisation. They disconnect people from their families, they take a lot of money from people, and they physically abuse people as well. They are a bad, bad organisation.

But this motion isn’t about whether Scientology is a good organisation. It is: is scientology as legitimate as any other religion? And in that phrase, the legitimacy level could be hovering around zero for all of them, and they are still as legitimate as each other.

If you look at the harm that Roman Catholicism has caused over the centuries, if you look at the Pope’s position that condoms are worse than the spread of AIDS, if you look at the harm that Islam causes to women and minorities in particular…

if you brought in here a survivor of child sex abuse and its cover up by the Roman Catholic Church, and if you brought in someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali to tell you about how women suffer under Islam…

you would agree that the main difference between the harm caused by the Church of Scientology and the harm caused by Islam and Roman Catholicism, is that Islam and Roman Catholicism do it on an industrial scale, and that the Church of Scientology are amateurs in the field of harming people.

That’s not to say they are a good organisation. They are quite clearly a bad organisation. But so are the other religions who also cause harm, and on a greater scale.

These other religions call Scientology and other smaller religions a cult. In fact, that is what a cult is. It is what large religions call small religions. Every religion that started off, no matter how old, other than whatever happened to be the first one that somebody invented, started off being called a cult by the other established religions.

The Church of Scientology is a bad organisation. It’s morally harmful. But the reason for that is partly because religion itself is morally bad.

Religion itself, by focusing on claims of faith and revelation, complicates and corrupts the already difficult task of figuring out what is the right thing to do in any situation.

The right thing to do morally is based on the consequences of your actions, the impact of your actions, on the suffering or the wellbeing of other sentient beings. And that’s a pretty complicated set of interactions. You can’t really figure out exactly what is right, you can just make your best judgment as to what you think is the best thing to to do in any given situation.

But what religion does is it adds in a corrupting factor, which is the imaginary consequences for imaginary souls, or Thetans or whatever, in imaginary afterlives.

And where those religious values clash with our natural sense of empathy and compassion, religion gives priority to the religious claims. And it allows people to justify causing individual people and other animals to suffer unnecessarily, because they believe that the creator of the universe has told them that is the right thing to do.

In terms of the overall claims of Scientology, I’ll just summarise the key points that I made earlier.

The theological claims are as silly as other religions, and arguably marginally less silly than the anthropomorphic personal deities of the Abrahamic faiths. And I’m not giving them credibility, I’m not saying that it is likely to be true, I’m just saying that it doesn’t break the normal laws of nature in the way that the Abrahamic gods do. Aliens are marginally less improbable than the Christian god.

In terms of the believer, most believers of all religions are basically decent people, doing their best. In most religions, Scientology included, I think it is kind of like a pyramid scheme, with innocent people passing on false ideas to other innocent people, believing them to be true.

And in terms of the organisation, the Church of Scientology is a morally bad organisation, that is as legitimate, or as illegitimate, depending on what way you want to look at it, as any other religion that also causes harm, on a far greater scale than Scientology.

Thank you very much.

1. First proposition speaker: Oisín Brogan Sch., JS engineering student and ex-Pro-DC of the society.

2. First opposition speaker: Matthew McKenna, a prominent Irish anti-scientology activist.


3. Second proposition speaker: Mike Rinder, former chief spokesperson of the Church of Scientology. Mike Rinder left the Church in 2007 and is now an independent scientologist.

4. Second opposition speaker: Glen Rogers, JS law student, ex-Pro-Librarian and current Treasurer of the society.

5. Third proposition speaker: Derwin Brennan, who is currently studying for an MA in law in TCD.

6. Third opposition speaker: John Duignan, who was part of the Church of Scientology for 22 years before leaving the religion. Mr. Duignan is now a prominent speaker against scientology and an undergraduate in UCC.

7. Fourth proposition speaker: Michael Nugent, Chair of Atheist Ireland.

8. Fourth opposition speaker: Ricky McCormack, JS Drama & Theatre Studies student and Registrar of the society.

For context, Professor Bocking founded UCC’s Study of Religions Department, which studies theories of religion and atheism in a methodologically agnostic way. For clarification, he has said on our YouTube channel that the arguments that he made in this debate apply as much to theism as they do to atheism, and that his argument was against the elevation of any ‘-ism’ over the service ethic in matters of government.

Paul Hannah of Brisbane has written the following response to the specific arguments made by Professor Bocking in the debate.

As atheism is not a religion we have no supreme leader to speak for us, nor could that be possible. Atheists can be conservative, liberal, racist, homophobic, democratic, communist, socialist, sports mad and sports indifferent. We are so diverse that no one *could* represent us. However, as an atheist I feel qualified, at least in some respect, to correct a few misapprehensions you appear to have in relation to people like me. So when I say ‘we’ below, I speak only from my experience and not as any sort of spokesperson.

1. No atheist I know wants to run your life or anyone else’s, we strive for a life untainted by theistic influence and oppression.

2. Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive terms. Atheism (and Theism) is about what you believe whereas Gnosticism is about what you know. Consequently one can be an agnostic atheist and an agnostic theist which is someone who doesn’t *know* there isn’t or is a god respectively. Therefore one can be a Gnostic theist.

3. Atheism is not an expression of certitude or even certainty, we just reject all current arguments for the existence of god or gods. A – theism – we are without god. I, and all atheists I know, would believe in a god if there was any credible evidence to support the proposition. I am as certain as I can be, but that is far from saying I am certain by any common definition of the term.

4. The idea of Institutionalised atheism is absurd. I must say it is a bit rich to be accused of this from the theistic side, the institutions of religion cover the globe, there must be 5 or 6 churches within a couple of kilometers of my house. There is even a church that claims to be an entire country! Everywhere I have been in the world (I have so far visited 20 countries in five continents, admittedly North Korea is not on that list ) religious institutions abound. Yet I have not seen a single office, let alone building devoted to the promotion of atheism. I belong to a group, but this is so bent on not being an institution, no records are kept, no fees extracted and no one is excluded. it is hard to think of what binds us until we remember we all just don’t believe.

5. You said atheism is “a universalist belief” and “atheists think that atheism is a fact and everybody ought accept atheism”. Yes, we believe atheism is a fact. And to some extent many of us believe people should accept this, however, there is no universal compulsion upon us to proselytise, no organisation to exhort us to do so and no philosophical reason for us to do so. Whereas we can say that “X is not a true Christian” as they do not seek to convert all non believers they meet. The same can’t be said of atheists, as the only qualification to belong with us is that you don’t believe in a god.

6. Whilst amongst ourselves we may joke about being evangelical atheists, I suspect few, and certainly none I know, are such. Has an atheist ever knocked on your door trying to deconvert you? I would prefer that the world around us was seen for what it is, simply because of the great harm I see caused by religion and I would like everyone to be as free as I am in that regard. However, providing this mass primitive delusion doesn’t impact on my life, I don’t care what others believe. We argue, challenge and debate the issues, but certainly for me, and I have heard others say the same, we have no hope of converting theists. We play to the crowd, somewhere in amongst them there may be a person unsure of their atheism, unaware that they can have allies and even friends. That theists may shun them but they will not be alone.

7. Your claim that we are extraordinarily similar to a religion is clearly wrong. There is no structure, no hierarchy, no institution, no creed, no dogma but most of all, there are no supernatural claims. We offer nothing but freedom from religion, we propose no reward, no punishment, we lay down no rules for living, or dying. There is no ritual, no compulsion, no claim of eternal truth, no moral injunctions, no incitements to violence, no penalty for leaving us nor no reward for joining.

9. Yes many of us believe in the authority of reason and logic. However, if I met an atheist who didn’t, I couldn’t say he ‘wasn’t a true atheist’ as all that he needs to do to qualify for that moniker is not to believe in a god.

10. I’m not a professor but I do have a degree from a recognised university and I’m both agnostic and atheist. I didn’t stop thinking when I became an atheist, that was when I truly started. Real understanding came from not filtering knowledge through bronze age myths and superstition.

11. You said “Atheists are not the sternest critics of religion” if we’re not I’d like to meet those who are. I don’t see Moslems and Christians publicly debating each other’s failings on the internet or elsewhere. Atheists seem to me to be the ones getting them to face up to their primitive baggage.

12 It’s true, atheism isn’t secularism, if the world governments were secular, we would have nothing to complain about. That is all every atheist I know wants.

13. We are indeed persecuted, I have had a religiously based death threat for publishing an essay on an Anglo-Saxon king, several of the people who have been to our meetings have been similarly threatened.

What atheism truly is, is result of the slow steady march of humanity from the darkness of ignorance towards the light of reason. We no longer need primitive explanations for the natural world, we no longer need the sop of religion to support us when the night is dark and lightning crashes. However churches, mosques and synagogues around the world rely on the science behind lightning rods.

Extract: Atheism, Islam, Morality and the Quran

Part 1: Opening Address by Hamza Tzortzis

Part 2: Opening Address by Michael Nugent

Part 3: Moderator’s Questions & Answers

Part 4: Audience Questions and Answers

More pictures and contact details are on the walk’s Facebook page

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=QeDqae0yQzI

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=9bzHccKIIJw

And this is a playlist of the full debate, which takes about an hour and forty minutes:

If you want to skip to any particular section, you can use the arrows on the right and left of the above playlist to view any of the following parts of the debate:

Opening speeches
1/12 – John Murray opening speech
2/12 – Michael Nugent opening speech
3/12 – Student speeches for motion
4/12 – Student speeches against motion

Questions and answers
5/12 – Relative morality in the Bible
6/12 – Can we live without God?
7/12 – Interpreting morality in the Bible
8/12 – Human rights and true morality
9/12 – Can we be moral with God?
10/12 – Science, morality and animals

Closing speeches
11/12 – John Murray summary
12/12 – Michael Nugent summary

A new art exhibition titled Blasphemous opened (appropriately) on Good Friday in the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art (IMOCA) in Lad Lane, off Baggott Street, Dublin 2. It’s the second art exhibition to highlight and challenge the new Irish blasphemy law, which became active on 1st January 2010.

Since then, the Irish Justice Minister has responded to the campaign against the law by saying that he will propose a referendum, later this year, to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution, thus enabling the blasphemy law to be repealed.

This makes the new exhibition in IMOCA not just a challenge to the blasphemy law, but also a celebration of artistic freedom, and freedom of expression generally. The exhibition runs until 25 April and is open from 12 noon to 5 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment through contacting IMOCA.