So what if Tom Cruise worships lizards? Lots of us have weirder beliefs

Whenever someone discovers that I once spent a day with Tom Cruise, they always do the same thing. They adopt a serious expression, inject some gravitas into their voice and say, ‘You know he’s a scientologist, don’t you?’

Of course I do. There are three facts that everyone on the planet knows without knowing how they know. One: Princess Anne once had a Reliant Scimitar. Two: a swan can break a man’s arm. And three: Tom Cruise is a scientologist.

It’s odd. Many things are interesting about Tom Cruise – his teeth, for example – and many questions need answering. Why did you think you could play Jack Reacher? Did you know when you were making Top Gun that it would do for the air force what the Village People did for the navy? And Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder – where the hell did that idea come from?

And yet it’s this scientology business that seems to fascinate people most of all. Because being a scientologist is a bit like being a murderer: you can’t tell by looking at someone that they once killed a man but, when you find out, it changes the way you think about them.

Scientologists are billed as being a cross between the Moonies and the mafia. We’re told they will let their wives die during childbirth and that, in their world, an abortion can only be performed with a spoon. We’ve even heard that they’ve carved symbols into a remote desert that can be used to guide lizard aliens to Earth. We’re also told that if anyone actually makes these claims in print, they get sued and followed by sinister characters in G-man suits.

So the message is clear: behind the ready smile, Cruise and all of the others in his weird church are lunatics.

I’m really not sure why. Because if you go to the scientology website, it seems to be a jolly sincere thing, helping people all over the world to get off drugs and working to improve human rights. Though, as is the way with all religions, if you dig a little deeper, the founding principles do sound a bit bonkers.

They believe, for example, that 75 million years ago a chap called Xenu, who ruled a confederacy of seventy-six planets, froze billions of his people using alcohol and then flew them in a fleet of DC-8s to Earth. After they’d all been killed by hydrogen bombs placed in the planet’s volcanoes, he captured their souls on an electronic ribbon and made them spend thirty-six days in a 3D cinema until they were fully indoctrinated by nonsense, and they they latched on to humans, which is why humans are stupid, unless they’re scientologists, who get rid of the age-old indoctrination using money.

This is obviously mad. But is it more mad, I wonder, than worshipping a man who could apparently walk on water? Or celebrating the life of a woman who told her gormless husband that God had made her pregnant? Or wailing at a wall? Or growing a beard underneath your face and driving around Pennsylvania in a horse and cart?

At least scientologists don’t come round to your house when Pointless is on to ask if they may have a bit of your time. But this, say the detractors, is because they are not interested in your time; only your cash.

Worse, because scientology is officially classified in many countries around the world as a religion rather than a glorified Star Trek convention, it is tax exempt, so it keeps all the vast sums it receives from ‘gullible fools’ such as Mr Cruise and John Travolta.

Hmm. Is that so different from the plate that is passed up and down the pews by Hector the Rector at evensong? I’m not saying the Church of England uses menaces to raise its cash. That would be stupid. But it certainly did in the olden days. ‘Give us your money, you potato-faced old crone, or you will go to hell when you die.’

And then you have the Catholic Church, which insisted that the world’s best artists created masterpieces that it then kept for itself.

Islam isn’t self-funding either. All those mosques have to be paid for by someone, and it isn’t the prophet himself who’s writing the cheques.

As you may have gathered, I’m not a religious man. I believe that there’s no one in the heavens; just a lot of hydrogen. But I have absolutely no problem with anyone who believes there is.

Only last week I sat with a straight face as someone explained that God is almost certainly a horse. This does seem unlikely, as any supreme being choosing to take on the form of a living thing would, in my mind, go for something with opposable thumbs, rather than something with hooves.

Because, let’s be honest: if you’re going to go to all the bother of coming to Earth to spread your message of peace and goodwill, why would you choose something that communicates by whinnying? And that is frightened by a paper bag?

She listened to these reasoned arguments and said, ‘OK, then. Maybe He isn’t a horse. Perhaps He’s a tree.’

There’s nothing wrong with this theory. It’s harmless. She believes that the creator of all things is rooted to the spot in a Peruvian jungle, unable to prevent earthquakes in Nepal or a Miliband victory in Britain, and that’s OK. If she wants to give all her money to the Westonbirt Arboretum, that’s her lookout, and it affects the rest of us not one jot.

It’s the same story with scientologists. If they want to give their cash to a group that believes the rest of humankind has been brainwashed by an outer-space dark lord called Xenu, fine. It’s no worse than a little old lady giving the vicar 10p from her pension to help repair the church roof. Which was damaged by a lightning bolt that God couldn’t prevent because He’s quite literally rooted to the spot in Peru.

So, the next time someone says, ‘You do know Tom Cruise is a scientologist, don’t you?’, I shall be forced to explain that it could be worse. He could be a supporter of Ed Miliband.

3 May 2015