So you have questions about Scientology...

Null and void | 11/14/05 | null and void

[null and void]

As a former member of that, ummmm, organization, I have a standing open offer to answer any FReeper's qusetions about Scientology, either in open forum, or via FReepmail.

I will do my best to answer as promptly, concisely and accurately as possible, but as I left some time ago, I'm not always privy to the latest wrinkles.

Still, from what I can gather from my few remaining contacts not that much has really changed!

[null and void]

By popular demand...

[null and void]

ping

[hole_n_one]

What's John Travolta really like?

[Nihil Obstat]

Tom Cruise.... gay?

[null and void]

John Revolta? Never met him.

As near as I can tell, he's a nutter...

[null and void]

Ya THINK!?!?!

(Never met him either)...

[birbear]

What/who encouraged you to become a scientologist in the first place?

[Nonstatist]

So whats the deal? These guys came from another planet, and blah,blah,blah? So what happens next?

[null and void]

I read Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health. Something (many somethings) in it just clicked for me.

I read the whole thing in one night, I knew several scientologists who had been in for years and never managed to get through it. ;^)

The thought of being free of unwanted hidden influences in my own mind was very attractive, and I thought it might give me an edge in life.

[null and void]

So what happens next?

All of the insanity we call our history.

[birbear]

I can see that. As somebody who has suffered from mental illness, I can totally understand how one would want to be free of it.

I remember seeing seeing Dianetics in a bookstore years ago (like when I was 12 or 13 -- 20 years ago). Then I noticed the author was a sci-fi writer, and I thought... how...uhm...weird.

So I tried to read some of his fiction, and I was completely put off by Hubbard. Good thing. I think the Dianetics would have hooked me.

[Alex Murphy]

Was Battlefield Earth any more bearable to watch when you were still inside the organization?

[Army Air Corps]

I never saw that movie because of the reviews. Just how bad was it?

[null and void]

*shrug* I think I wasn't any crazier than average.

'Course, these days I'm on Paxil...

Hubbard's fiction sucked. What Asimov would call type 1 science fiction stories, adventure stories with a thin veneer of (not very accurate) science.

Good thing. I think the Dianetics would have hooked me.

Yeah, very good thing. It can be quite seductive...

[null and void]

Never saw it.

[Salvation]

Ping!

[null and void]

Ping.

[Alex Murphy]

- The year is 3000.

- Earth was "once mankind’s home." Actually, as the film’s events portray, it still is. So I’m not sure what the point is.

- For a millennia -- give or take, one must assume, writing from the vantage of the year 2001 -- a "cruel alien race" from the planet Psychlo, imaginatively named the Psychlos, has ruled the Earth. The Psychlos are mining our ores, as, we’re told, they’ve done on "countless other planets," and teleporting them back home. Imagine the surprise of the environmentalist crowd upon learning that the Earth could be ruthlessly strip-mined for a full thousand years and still be coughing up valuable metals.

- Gold is the rarest and most valuable metal of them all. A universal constant, I guess.

- The remnants of the human race, living in "radiated areas," are "on the verge of extinction." Yes, that’s what living in radiated areas for a thousand years would probably lead to.

No man man has greater love than this, than to sit through a bad film and review it for a friend...