No real need to ridicule "Scientology;" just tell folks the truth about it:
That it was invented on a dare over many beers at a SciFi writers' convention, by L. Ron Hubbard, who claimed - accurately, as it turns out - that he could invent a religion and, no matter how bizarre, actually get people to "believe" in it.
While the scientology episode did poke some fun here and there, the real brilliance of it was that it DID just tell truth about that wacko religion. It's so ridiculous that they even caption the whole exposition with "This is what scientologists actually believe."
Yeah, it's perfectly fine if we ridicule all of those OTHER religions -- and I'll take the paycheck for doing it, thank you very much -- we just better not ridicule MY religion [no matter how stupid it is].
Hypocrite.
Mohammad, smeared with pig crap though he may be, did the same thing 1400 years earlier and didn't need the beer or the bar bet.
Bingo.
Kwanza, anyone?
Same crap....and it all stinks.
I'll make a small wager that this was not religion related - he had been down that road many times before - but one of $$$.
Beotch!!!!!!!!!!!
May as well say "What Islam needs most is to be ridiculed" and see how far it gets you.
"No real need to ridicule "Scientology;" just tell folks the truth about it:"
No real need to ridicule "Islam;" just tell folks the truth about it
Works just as well.
The scientologists don't discuss certain parts of it - the volcanoes, the aliens, etc. If they're so sure of it all, why not be up front.
How do you know that ?
One of the funniest parts of the episode was the credits. Everyone was listed as "John Doe." Great!
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It's actually more interesting than that. In the late 1940s, Hubbard was tight with Jack Parsons--one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a follower of Aleister Crowley's crackpot Thelemic religion. From a recent bio of Parsons:
"It is hard to ignore certain similarities between Crowley's Thelema and Hubbard's Scientology. Both religions have as leaders charismatic men with logorrheic tendencies. Both preach that man is an immortal spiritual being, that his capabilities are unlimited, and that his spiritual salvation depends upon his attainment of a "brotherhood with the universe." While Thelema was born of the Old World, however, Scientology was distinctly a product of the new. The OTO rose out of the Victorian fascination with mysticism, magic, and the secret societies of Europe. Scientology was a direct product of the twentieth century's childlike trust in scientific knowledge, the success of scientific fantasy, and the Californian desire for self improvement."