Outrageous accusations against the Church of Scientology are coming to light in Australia, including the use of labor camps, torture and pressure to get abortions.

There's a lot of people who want to automatically believe every horrible tale about the CoS. To them, its obvious that the CoS is a monster, willing to do anything and everything to keep followers under control.

Let me remind people than in the Middle Ages, it was also "obvious" to many people that wells poisoned by Jews caused the Black Death. In the Renaissance it was "obvious" that tens of thousands of people were working in league with Satan to magically destroy Christendom. And just a few years again it was "obvious" to many people that JonBenet Ramsey was killed by her parents, both of which have now been cleared by police.

Also, as tales of these accusations spread, they get embellished. In some articles about these newest allegations, there is mention of pressure to have abortions. Pregnant women are told that having a child is contrary to the aims of their organization. But other articles imply women are forced to have abortions. There's a world of difference between the two scenarios. And as people get more and more angry, they tend to repeat the most foul version of the tales they hear. That ultimately doesn't accomplish anything positive.

The death of actor Edward Woodward this week, who starred in the British cult film The Wicker Man back in the 1970s, got me thinking of just how easily perceptions can be shaped by fiction.

One of the reasons The Wicker Man is notable is because the plot fuses some modern neo-pagan beliefs with modern paranoia about pagans. The result is a plot about a community that ritually sacrifices humans in order to appease a nature god they depend upon for survival, which periodically get quoted as examples of what modern pagans are "really" doing.

The Wicker Man, however, certainly isn't the only film to wield that kind of power over people imaginations. There are people who dislike the Catholic Church for no real reason other than what they saw in The DaVinci Code. There are accusations that Harry Potter teaches kids about Wicca and other occult paths, which is news to Wiccans and occultists.

Quite simply, anything considered a movie and not labeled as a documentary contains fiction. Even those movies labeled "based on a true story" (which none of the above movies are) contain invention, often considerable amounts of it, and watchers need to remember that. It's not just religions that get this treatment either. As a historian, I've had to train myself not to wince through historical movies and then have to do damage control when students accept such films as fact.

CNN reports about a growing number of cyber-churches, where services are broadcast and parishioners view it and even take part in it from the comfort of their homes.

Some insist that things will be lost, that one cannot simply "grab grape juice and a cracker from the fridge and watch a computer screen, thinking they are truly participating in a gathering of the faithful."

Why not? While many might not find meaning in such a scenario, they can attend traditional services. But if it is meaningful to someone, who is anyone to argue?

People gripe about lowering attendances at traditional services and people pulling away from faith, oftentimes because they feel they do not have time. The world is changing. Why should faith be expected to stay stagnant? This is how we evolve intellectually: we try new ideas and see if they work, and if they better someone's life, if it keeps someone closer to God than they would otherwise be, why complain?

In the wake of Ft. Hood shootings, conservative preacher Pat Robertson has stated, "Islam is a violent -- I was going to say religion, but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination."

It's a powerful statement, but the power isn't in the accusation it makes. Rather, the power is in the attempt of redefining Islam as not a religion. Religions have particular rights in Western countries. Talk of not calling Islam a religion is tantamount to suggesting those rights are not deserved by Muslims.

And the suggestion on a logical level is so absurd that Robertson has to use the smoke and mirrors of fear to distract readers from what he's actually said. Regardless of what else Islam may or may not be, what is may or may not espouse, it is without a doubt a religion. It has belief in a higher power, dogma, rituals, ethics, theology.

There's another threat in changing how we categorize Islam: by saying its not a religion, Robertson is isolating it, labeling it as something even more foreign and alien. His listeners are religious. But Muslims are to be seen as something else, not merely a group with different beliefs but a group who is not religious at all.

And from there, it's an easy step to accuse them of being anti-religious, which whips all sorts of people up into fits. It's juvenile and childish. Unfortunately, too often it also works.