That’s his real name: Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.
As far as aliens go, yes there certainly is a outer-space connection to their mid- and higher-level teachings: Xenu, a warlord who ruled this area of the universe, kept a concentration camp of aliens in a Hawaii volcano and blew them up with H-bombs; this event, which took place 75 million years ago, is portrayed in the volcano on the cover of the book Dianetics. We humans are infested with the ghosts of these aliens, which $cientology’s costly therapy exorcises. (No, really, I’m serious.) All this and more can be found at www.xenu.net like I said before.
I do not believe that the cult will last more than another 50 years or so; all it takes is public awareness and a few good court cases, followed by the old-age deaths of the post-LRH generation of leaders.
And personally, I think the coy comparison of cientology to Catholicism et al. is the result of being A) completely uninformed about the Co and B) just wanting to play contradictory for contradictory’s sake … All that “Catholic President” nonsense washed right off JFK. I would remind those people that apples are smooth and red, while oranges are bumpy and, well, orange.
John C, That foolishness about a devout Catholic turning control of the government over to the Pope is just so much BS. Catholics that devout are not likely to run for office, or if they did it would be as a member of the Right to Life Party (and when was the last time those folks won even a significant local election?).
I understand your Devil’s Advocating, JMCJ, and I see your point.
BUT, the important word in your (mostly rhetorical) question is “devout.” The fact is, very few politicians can afford to be devout in any religion. Slick Willy is religious when it gets him votes (or keeps him from getting some bad press, or scores some campaign money), same with almost all his predecessors, but devout? Snort. JFK got past his Catholic stigma (NPI), but only by not being particularly vehement about his faith. Reagan have just enough lip service to religion to maintain his Mom and Apple Pie persona.
A “devout” scientologist would hold a very large number of beliefs with which I would disagree.
But then I wouldn’t vote for Gary Bauer either, for the same reason.
But I’m sure they are all skilled at hiding it. I’m sure they could sound like the kind of person you would vote for, just to get elected.
The question still remains, aren’t we all being biased against that person’s beliefs? Just because we all agree doesn’t make it right. The same things could be said about Jews, Catholics and Muslims. Would you vote for a devout Muslim? I think I might not because of the Holy Wars and Talaban etc.
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard. Gracian.
Well, let’s keep in mind that Scientologistsare pretty much authorized to destroy anyone who opposes them. Check out Cecil column about what heppened to an anticult outfit that tried to pull out a few members-- Scientology bankrupted the and bought them, lock stock and barrel.
It’s been uncovered that they’re instructed to use lawsuits as weapons to bankrupt their enemies. The feds once uncovered- this’ll interest David B. if he hasn’t heard it already- a plan by Scientology to link CSICOP to the CIA in the public mind and to tell religious leaders that it (CSICOP) was going to “disprove” them.
They framed Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book exposing Scientology, of bomb threats against the church and told her neighbors she was a sexual deviant with venereal disease.
This comes from the Amazing Randi’s excellent book Flim-Flam. Maybe the organization has changed completely in the past 20 years-- but I don’t think so. This is more than just any religion, it’s a dangerous cult that tends to smash their enemies hard. Obviously, early Christianity is guilty of some pretty bad stuff. And I wouldn’t want an early Pope elected president, either.
Isn’t one of the tenets of $cientology, that your quality of life increase with hours of auditing>? If we had a president who was a $cientologist, we could solve all of our problems by auditing. By the way, has anybody ever proven that this works? According to LRH, after enough auditing, any moron can become a genius.
Tenants have rights! $cientology staffers sign Billion-with-a-b-year contracts of service, must shun family members who disagree with $cientology, and to reach the highest levels of knowledge costs some $350,000 + .
And no, of course auditing doesn’t work. Per se, that is … as administered it has auto-hypnotic qualities with a placebo effect.
