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Rewriting History: Neil Sarfati’s Sad Lies About Scientology
Neil Sarfati is an old man now, but that doesn’t stop him from remembering the salad days of his youth. The most exciting time of his life, he says, playing sax in L. Ron Hubbard’s Apollo Stars band.
But that was a long time ago, and he since threw it away. Sarfati can now only relive those glory days through a British podcast wherein he tries to trash the religion he left, Scientology—the religion that raised him up from a self-proclaimed stoner textile laborer, with no hope or aim for the future, to a performer with a cause, basking in the ovations of thousands.
Once striving to achieve success as an artist, Neil Sarfati is now reduced to seeking attention by exploiting his former religion.
But it’s common knowledge that the opinions and judgments of apostates like Sarfati regarding their former religion are not to be taken seriously. As eminent religious scholar Dr. Bryan Wilson of Oxford noted, “Neither the objective sociological researcher nor the court of law can readily regard the apostate as a creditable or reliable source of evidence. He must always be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader.”
Once striving to achieve success as an artist, Neil Sarfati is now reduced to seeking attention by exploiting his former religion.
Neil Sarfati has indeed a personal motivation to show himself to have been a victim, but the musician strikes a false note in trying to pin the blame on his former religion for his own regrets.
It’s understandable. You dwell for decades on the high point of your life with no one to blame but yourself for losing it; but a look in the mirror is too much to confront. The solution is to blame the people who tried to help you in the first place. They had their colossal nerve. And so one makes oneself the victim of the very thing that could have gotten him back on the road to joy.
Yes, it’s understandable. But not justifiable. And we could pity Neil Sarfati and his misbegotten pleas for sympathy were he not also trying to take people of good will down with him.
Why broadcast lies about decent people, just because you failed to avail yourself of their help—when it was yours for the asking?
Why seek to prevent others from receiving the kind hand just because you refused it?
“Where are the snows of yesterday?” goes the old poem.
Where indeed? Neil Sarfati once lived what he himself describes as a dream, but he can only permit himself to remember it now by turning it into a nightmare in his mind.
Perhaps he will succeed, at least, in that.
But how sad to cloud a beautiful memory with lies, and sell out truth and integrity for clickbait.
