Post by ava on Feb 18, 2006 3:58:03 GMT -5
Some basic beliefs of Scientology:
• A person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a "thetan") who possesses a mind and a body.
• The thetan has lived through many past lives and will continue to live beyond the death of the body.
• A person is "audited" to determine the contents of their past lives
• Once a Scientologist gets to advanced levels – as an "operating thetan" – they are taught the "hidden truth" of the Universe, that an evil alien emperor named Xenu deported some of his planet's excess population to Earth and detonated them with hydrogen bombs 75 million years ago. This destructed populace then became "body thetans" who haunt and infest all humans, thereby causing all of the world’s problems. Xenu is supposedly still alive today, imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery.
Is this sounding like a poorly-written sci-fi novel to you, too? Funnily enough, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a sci-fi author before he became inventor of Scientology. (He was also an alcoholic and was drunk and on drugs for most of the time that he was "researching" the higher doctrines of his new religion.) Taking all that into account, it’s natural that one would take his "religion" with a (large) grain of salt, but the beliefs are ridiculous enough even without help.
For example, the "auditing" mechanism consists of nothing more than an instrument identical to one of those metal-handle stress test machines at the mall. If the earth was really pummeled with a host of nuclear blasts, one would think there would be some surviving evidence of it, but of course there is not. I’d think that if these aliens were advanced enough to flit about in space and so forth, they’d have weapons more advanced than mere hydrogen bombs (us humans invented such bombs a mere twenty years after inventing the model A car, surely these aliens would have far more advanced technology than this after having untold millennia of growth). If they were so advanced, why didn’t they have lasers or death rays or something to simply abolish the unwanted population cleanly, rather than go for a clumsy 1940s-style "final solution" scenario that didn’t even work, since the destroyed beings are supposedly still around? And an alien trapped in a mountain by an eternal forcefield? I saw a Godzilla cartoon similar to that once. This is getting so ridiculous that I can’t even go on.
oh, and in Hubbard's own words: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." Looks like he took his own advice.
• A person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a "thetan") who possesses a mind and a body.
• The thetan has lived through many past lives and will continue to live beyond the death of the body.
• A person is "audited" to determine the contents of their past lives
• Once a Scientologist gets to advanced levels – as an "operating thetan" – they are taught the "hidden truth" of the Universe, that an evil alien emperor named Xenu deported some of his planet's excess population to Earth and detonated them with hydrogen bombs 75 million years ago. This destructed populace then became "body thetans" who haunt and infest all humans, thereby causing all of the world’s problems. Xenu is supposedly still alive today, imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery.
Is this sounding like a poorly-written sci-fi novel to you, too? Funnily enough, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a sci-fi author before he became inventor of Scientology. (He was also an alcoholic and was drunk and on drugs for most of the time that he was "researching" the higher doctrines of his new religion.) Taking all that into account, it’s natural that one would take his "religion" with a (large) grain of salt, but the beliefs are ridiculous enough even without help.
For example, the "auditing" mechanism consists of nothing more than an instrument identical to one of those metal-handle stress test machines at the mall. If the earth was really pummeled with a host of nuclear blasts, one would think there would be some surviving evidence of it, but of course there is not. I’d think that if these aliens were advanced enough to flit about in space and so forth, they’d have weapons more advanced than mere hydrogen bombs (us humans invented such bombs a mere twenty years after inventing the model A car, surely these aliens would have far more advanced technology than this after having untold millennia of growth). If they were so advanced, why didn’t they have lasers or death rays or something to simply abolish the unwanted population cleanly, rather than go for a clumsy 1940s-style "final solution" scenario that didn’t even work, since the destroyed beings are supposedly still around? And an alien trapped in a mountain by an eternal forcefield? I saw a Godzilla cartoon similar to that once. This is getting so ridiculous that I can’t even go on.
oh, and in Hubbard's own words: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." Looks like he took his own advice.