Scientology... Yikes!

I have a problem with all organised religions. I know that seems rather harsh, but let me be clear. I don't have a problem with religion. I just have a problem with organised religion. There is an enormous difference.

Luis' father cut out a teeny article from the newspaper about the Roman Catholic church and the Byzantine Christian church sitting down to resolve - maybe - their differences. Apparently, according to Luis Sr., their differences arose from management issues. As is they did not agree on how to vote in the higher management of the church.

He may be completely correct. Gods know that people frequently don't agree on hiring choices, that many times there are managers who don't like each other. How many times have I seen that in companies, being in HR? In the very corporate places this can be very cut-throat behaviour. I have to say that recent experiences have taught me that managers can get on much better than I have seen. But this is not the main point of this posting. Back to the real topic.

The thing about Luis Sr. is that while he is really into the church and fully believes the whole dogma thing, the fact is that he does know his religious history. Please understand that while I intensely dislike him and hate the fact that he lives with us and has committed countless atrocities against me (mostly unwitting and uncaring in the face of his insanity), he is not unread or stupid. He is not good at imparting information, but that still doesn't make him stupid. He's boring and he is a know-it-all. But not stupid.

However, Scientologists are stupid.

There is no argueing this. Tom Cruise is not a model guy. And he actually believes this stuff. That we are descended from clams. That millions of years ago, aliens were dumped into the volcanoes and this is why we have Christians. That we have engrams that for the bargain basement price of $2,000 a session, you can have them cleaned out. Unreal. And L. Ron Hubbard said it himself: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, he'd start his own religion."

On Boston Legal they had a case where a Scientologist was fired for his "religious" beliefs. When Alan Shore made that comment, the Scientologist piped right up with, "You know, people like you always take that quote way out of context!"

Excuse me? What context could that possibly have aside from the obvious?! L. Ron Hubbard pegged it right on. But there is one major flaw in his made-up religion: no figure-head. How do you have a religion without a god?

Well, it just gets better.

Thye have engrams, psychic scars. They do some kind of auditing with an electropsychometer. OTs are able to communicate with animals, move inanimate objects and may be immortal. Scientologists believe that 75000 years ago an evil warlord called Xenu (Zenu?) dumped 13 trillion aliens into the Earth's volcanoes and then vaporised them with radioactive somethings. The radioactive souls invade our bodies. Yikes. Well, L. Ron Hubbard did write science fiction. So how do all these people believe this knowing that he did this? That this wasn't as much fiction as anything else? Shows how gullible the human race is...

Scary.

Here is a great article in the 1991 Time Magazine, which I'd read that year. I remembered it quite vividly so it was a surprise to find it on the Internet and reread it. It gives a lot of insight to this sick, twisted group of money-thieving racketeers.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/time-behar.html