Having watched Valkyrie recently, I've been thinking about the intersection of art, commerce and religion. I know, that's probably not the kind of discussion the filmmakers intended to provoke, but here we are. Germany started it.

Every so often a big kerfluffle flares up in the media or the blogosphere about what famous entertainer is or isn't a Scientologist, and why. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Isaac Hayes, Beck, Chick Corea, Edgar Winter, Chaka Khan, Mark Isham, Greta Van Susteren—we're supposed to avoid giving them money so we don't inadvertently support their reprehensible "church." Leonard Cohen, Paul Haggis, Jerry Seinfeld, Courtney Love, Gloria Gaynor—once were Scientologists, but now they're on the okay list. Neil Gaiman—wait, what's the controversy with him? I'm not supposed to read him because his relatives are Scientologists?

Frankly, keeping score like this is ridiculous.

As much as I dislike Scientology, discriminating against artists because of their private beliefs is a losing game. I hate the fact that there were Crusades, and a Spanish Inquisition, and institutional coverups of child sexual abuse, but that doesn't mean I'm going to deny myself the work of Catholic writers like Graham Greene or Tim Powers, or Catholic filmmakers like Kevin Smith. Will some of the money I pay for their stuff end up in Vatican coffers? Possibly, but I'm not naive enough to think that any of the money I give or receive is pure. We live in a pluralist society. We can't help the fact that our money is going to circulate through parts of the body politic that we don't like. The only judgment we can really make is how we respond to the art, how pure and universal and human it is, how ennobling or demeaning or thrilling or dull, how free from or full of agenda or polemic.

And let's face it, Scientology is no more ridiculous on the face of it than Catholicism or Zoroastrianism or Islam or Greek mythology. The claims of these other religions are just as extraordinary. The only difference is that the origins of the rest are shrouded in antiquity—as if mere age confers some kind of stature or holiness or untouchability. In historical terms, Mormonism is nearly as recent as Scientology, and in cosmological terms makes claims every bit as grand and silly, but how many of you Wheel of Time readers are going to boycott the new volume just because Brandon Sanderson wrote it?

The value of the work is in the work itself. If the work makes your life better or more pleasant, support it. Pay for it. It's that simple. Clint Eastwood's a libertarian who supported McCain? So what. I love his movies. Beck and Chick Corea give money to L. Ron Hubbard's successors? Big deal. I get a lot more pleasure from their records than from most Cruise or Travolta movies—hell, than from most Mel Gibson movies or Orson Scott Card novels these days—so I'm happy to give them my money. I, an atheist, have given money to causes devoted to overturning the Defense of Marriage Act in the United States, but that mere fact hardly makes my fiction superior to or more worthy of support than a Catholic like Gene Wolfe's.

As for Neil Gaiman, I'd be an awful hypocrite to avoid his books just because his father was a big muckity-muck in the Church of Scientology. I myself am a direct descendant of Edward Partridge, the first Mormon bishop. No, I avoid Gaiman's books because I simply don't care for them.

Artists, like most people, are more than just the religions they profess. So get down off your high horse and give the poor Scientologists a chance. The rich ones, too, if they're your thing.

Dear email forwarder—

Please don't mistake my opinion on the email as any condemnation of you or your character. But here's what I see as the danger of forwarding emails like that one: The information in them is only vaguely sourced, and the contents may not be accurate. The email has been forwarded a hundred times already, and may have been changed or added to along the way. The people who receive the email may just hit delete, but they may also read it and decide that it's true without doing any thinking or investigating of their own. I think that before you forward an email like that, you have a responsibility to investigate it for yourself and find out whether or not it's accurate. Otherwise you are spreading something that is no better than gossip, and potentially very damaging.

I did some investigation online and discovered that the account by Rick Mathes has been disputed by credible sources that were present at the event in Missouri where he claimed the discussion took place. You can read all about the doubt that has been cast on his account here:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/allah.asp

When you forward an email like this, how can you trust that the recipients will investigate the truth of it for themselves when you haven't even taken the trouble to? The most likely outcome is that people will just accept what it says without thinking, because the email tries to sound credible, and most people are fooled by credible-sounding messages that only reinforce their fears. I would encourage you to send the link above to all the people on your list who received the first email and offer them an alternate point of view.

Muslims around the world are no more unified in their beliefs than Christians are. (Think about how differently Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists all believe.) Some of the most interesting conversations I've ever had came from sitting down across a table from people with opinions very different from my own, everyone from Anglican ministers to old Egyptian men in Queens to regular joes in Jordan, and talking honestly about our separate beliefs. What I've always come away from those conversations with is a feeling that, however divergent our beliefs, the only way we're all going to get along and stop hating each other is through talking and learning to see that the other person is not all that different from us deep down where it matters.

Sincerely,
Bill

When you absolutely, positively have to be a smug asshole to your friends and love ones one last time, there's:

YouveBeenLeftBehind.com

In a nutshell, the site queues up messages from you to your infidel friends that will be dispatched after the Rapture. And how does the site know that the Rapture has happened? Because at least three of the site's five designated holier-than-thou's will have failed to log in for three days running.

This begs the question of what would happen should, God forfend, a catastrophic but non-Rapture event should wipe out those saintly designees all at once. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue should all those ha-ha-I'm-in-Heaven-now messages get sent while their authors are still miserably earthbound? I hope someone hacks the site and makes it happen.

Of course, maybe the opposite will happen, if Jesus frowns on seeing people profiting from the anticipation of the Rapture. In that case, maybe none of the designees will get lifted up, up, and away on that great and fateful day.