Cruise Sees No Scientology in 'War of the Worlds'

June 24, 2005 — -- An angry Tom Cruise took on a reporter who asked if "War of the Worlds" resonated with him because Scientologists believe in extraterrestrials.

"That's not true," Cruise told the reporter Wednesday at a press conference with director Steven Spielberg to promote the new film. "It has no resonance whatsoever. There's absolutely no relation to that whatsoever."

Cruise, who is a devoted member of the Church of Scientology, was so stunned that he questioned the reporter's credentials. When told that the reporter worked for the Boston Phoenix, he asked, "Is that a good paper? Really?"

While only Cruise himself can explain what motivated him to star in the film, religious experts say that space creatures do play a role in the Scientology belief system.

Still, it's not so easy to find E.T. references on the Church of Scientology's official Web site and informational material, and some who question the church's legitimacy say that's done to keep from scaring away new members.

"It would be more shocking to recruits to find that the link between science fiction and Scientology is so strong," says professor Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at Canada's University of Alberta, who has written extensively about Scientology and been critical of its practices.

Kent has never been a member of the church, but says he's studied church materials that are not widely circulated. The religion was founded by L. Ron Hubbard, after the 1950 publication of his wildly successful book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health."

To advance in the studies of Scientology, church members must take classes, and the information taught is largely proprietary. "There is a series of documents where you'll learn how Hubbard visited other planets, and even heaven," Kent says.

Kent has not yet seen Cruise's new movie, but he says the space invasion story bears some similarities to the Scientology teachings of the "Marcab Confederacy," which he says is described in a church document as a group of planets. It is a vast civilization that has spaceships, but is worse off than Earth in many ways, Kent says.