Is Tom a nut job? Or just the most recent nut job.

At the moment the web seems to be going bonkers over a leaked internal video of Tom Cruise speaking on his involvement with Scientology. From the looks of it I would say it was produced for a large cooperate style meeting where he was being honored. In the video he seems to ramble on and somewhat confirm that he is a bit off his rocker in comparison to the average joe. This got me thinking again about cults, what people perceive as cults, and religion as a whole.

Here are some things I know about Scientology:
a). They think they are helping people...
b). They have strange rituals...
c). They have beliefs that can't be confirmed through observation...
d). They want to convert as many people as possible to their way of thinking...

Sounds like a pretty typical religion to me. :)

Sure, they seem pretty wacky, and I don't know enough about them to make a judgement wether they are dangerous or bad for our society, but I find it interesting that the religions that we find most strange are the youngest ones. I think time makes us think of unlikely events as more plausible and therefore legitimizes older religions. In actuality, is believing in resurrections, virgin births, creating humans from clay and the like really any different from thinking Jesus visited the native americans or that space aliens are involved with the course of human events?

In another 2000 years I wonder if people will see much of a distinction...