For more info, you'll find these on the Freep Forum:
An Ex-Fanatic Speaks Out
Indoctrinated Tyranny
Totalitarian Religion
Religious Hard-Sell
A Means to an End
Kook Apeal
Organization Delusions
Those people do not give up! In 1981, as a college freshman, a friend of mine put my name on one of their fliers around campus (as a joke).
For the next twenty years they hounded me with solicitations and junk mail. They absolutely creep me out!
Hey, if people are stupid enough to fall for L. Ron Hubbard's gag, then so be it.
It's like the idiots who keep sending money to the televangelists hoping for a miracle.
A fool and his money soon go separate ways.
Another excellent column. Thanks!
Welcome. I must have missed your arrival on FR. Please keep writing and talking. People need to understand the scope of the C of $ impact. Beslan, NYC over September 11th, are the tip of the iceberg, imho.
Sometimes I wonder if they put out the garbage about space aliens, thetans and electronic boxes simply to cloak their real plan to take over the world. / sadly only partially kidding.
How many scientologists does it take to change a light bulb?
what is enturbulation?
just want a context - such a different religion
Scientologists are straight up kooks.
It's a fake religion where they eat up all your money suckering you into trying to get to their higher levels (like "OT" or whatever else) and then you find out that some crazy "alien name Xenu(sp?) ruled the galaxie eons ago" and a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about some trapped souls.
I put them in the same category with the Raelians.
Bones
L. Ron Hubbard didn't write all those ten novels, unless you believe he wrote them from the Other Side. He was dead. The first couple of them may have been ghostwritten, too, I don't know.
I started reading SF back when Hubbard was still writing SF, and I have his first two novels, which I bought when they came out. He also wrote for the pulps, at the going rate of 2 cents a word.
I remember reading a letter to the editor from Hubbard in one of the pulps, announcing that he was quitting the SF writing business, because there wasn't any money in it. In that letter, he said that there was much more money in starting a new religion--which he then proceeded to do.
I'm not sure if I still have the magazine that letter appeared in. I tried to find it a few years back, among a stack of old pulps I had put in the attic, but unfortunately I couldn't locate it. But my memory of his basic point is clear enough. There's more money in starting a religion and milking the suckers than there is in writing SF for 2 cents a word. That's what he said, and that's what he did.
The irony is, Scientology itself is L. Ron's joke, and the joke's on the IRS.
[Hubbard declared Scientology off limits to humorous expression. ]
BWAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
Forbidden clam, aaaaaaaaagh. </ homer>
Scientology is a joke.