Holy shit, Fenris. Thanks for the explanation. It’s amazing what some folks can be hornswoggled into believing. Truth is always stranger than fiction.
Look here for information about what information the FBI has collected on CoS over the last 4 decades.
There is some truely scary shit that Hubbard and his cult have engaged in.
Part of what makes the CoS so dangerous is that the general population believes so firmly in freedom of religion that most people think, “Hey, it’s not my thing, but whatever,” and do no research about it. They think that since it’s a religion, it must be okay. The CoS feeds off that belief by tossing around the words “religious bigot,” “freedom haters,” and so forth.
Since freedom of religion is a good idea, it’s what allows the CoS to survive. I’ve read almost everything on the Xenu.net site, the novel, Bare-faced Messiah, which you can access from xenu.net, and several other anti-Scientology sites, and I can honestly declare that the CoS is a dangerous, mind-altering cult that will stop at nothing to quiet dissenters.
It gets weirder: there’s something about how clams have vast psychic powers or some such.
Fenris
Whenever someone tries to get me interested in Scientology, I just say, “Nah, I prefer Robotech.” Hell, Robotech makes more sense, plus it had better writers.
Fenris, actually, Xenu was the ultra bad guy who had a bunch of innocents sent to Earth (which had another name), forced them to watch bad movies for eons THEN blew them up.
Also, I read that Hubbard’s son committed suicide.
But it had Minmei (sp).
Nothing’s more evil than Minmei.
Guin: are you sure? I really thought that Xenu and his minions were the ones exiled to Earth after being blowed up.
Fenris
One of the biggest ironies of Scientology is they give you a big clue about how they’re going to suck you in when you’re on the way in the door:
One piece of Dianetics “tech” that really does work well is “matching tone.” (LRH published a “tone scale” which organizes every human emotion on a linear chart, w/ assigned numbers. – they’re not decimals, so it looks really scientific-like.)
They teach you early on how to get people to agree with you. The idea is, different “tones” are antithetical to each other. If someone is a grumpy SOB, and you come in with Pollyanna energy, they’re going to be irritated. So you use a technique Hubbard called, imaginatively, emulation. To bring more jargon in, you’re working on adjusting the “A-R-C Triangle” – our relationships are governed by Affinity, Reality, and Communication, working synergetically. So Grumpy Gus from the warehouse is unapproachable because there’s no ARC there. By emulating him, you share his reality, gain his affinity, and increase communication. You bitch about the same things he bitches about. Agree with everything. Then lead him into your reality with baby steps. Often, people value having sympathetic people around enough that they’ll be easily persuaded in order to preserve the relationship. If you work patiently at this, you can easily manipulate the hell out of people.
Xenu made them watch Battlefield Earth? That’s just cruel.
Yeah, but I’ve never met a Scientologist who watches anime.
Actually, that gives me more ideas for ammo! How about these?
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Transformers “You must help me defeat the Decepticons! You see, on Cybertron there’re the Autobots and the Decepticons. The Decepticons are evil and…Wait, what’s that? Excuse me for a moment.”
“MEEEEEEGGGGGGGAAAAAAAATTTTTRRRROOOOONNNN!”
Neon Genesis Evangelion “Well, I’d love to join, but the end of the world has been foretold in the lost Dead Sea Scrolls. I’m afraid I won’t have any time to think about converting until I’ve crossed the ego-threshold and have been completely dissolved in LCL. Until then, I’ve got to fight these Angels while simultaneously confronting my lousy relationship with my father and my own inadequacies.”
Plus, this show has lots of other good pseudo-Christian babble. Just memorize some of the highlights.
Akira <some random mumbling>, then “Wait, what have they done to me? KAAANNNEEEDDDAAAAAA!!!”
This’ll work best if you’ve got a friend that can then follow up with “TEEEEETTTTSSSSSSUUUUUUOOOOOOOO!!!”
Excel Saga On second thought, this show is just too weird to inflict on even a Scientologist.
Key: The Metal Idol “[your name here] must have 30,000 friends. [your name here] is a robot and must have these 30,000 friends to become human. Will you be my friend?”
Slayers I find threating people with Dragon Slaves and bitching about how hungry I am routinely scares off anyone with even a little sense. However, I don’t know if that’d work on Scientologists.
Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Combine talking to an invisible entity on your hand with some of the highlights of Wesley Snipes in Blade. Make sure you carry around a big sword and wear fake vampire fangs.
Pokemon “I’m on a journey to be the Religion Master. Sure I’ll spend a little time with you! After all, you gotta catch 'em all!”
Well, I admit that I started to run out of steam. But how’s that for a start?
Bloody brilliant 
I haven’t read that OT3 intro in awhile, but IIRC Xenu was banished to a mountain prison inside some sort of electric fortress walls, where he still lives today. The ones banished to earth (Teegeeack), then blown up in the volcanoes (a la the cover picture of the Dianetics paperback), and then shown the wacky films, were the innocents he was killing to solve his overpopulation problem. Xenu was eventually overthrown by “Loyal Officers” or something like that.
Battlefield Earth, by the way, is Co$ propaganda in disguise. Note that the bad guys are the “psychlos”, coinciding with $cientology’s long-running attack on the psychiatric industry.
Really, $cientology is so ridiculous that nobody would ever join if they knew the whole story upfront. That’s why there are sites like Operation Clambake, to expose them as the lethally dangerous, oppressive cult that they are, and prevent people from falling for the $cientologists’ lies and tricks. The story is so ludicrous, nobody would buy into it. Don’t even try to equate it with real religions as to believability. Even the most far-fetched religions, like Hinduism with all those weird-looking gods and “pointy deities” (thanks Homer Simpson), or even the Greco-Roman or Norse pantheons of gods, seem normal in comparison.
Is the reason John Travolta stays in $cientology because his ‘misadventures’ are on tape. 
How did they come up with these stories?
Did someone just yank them out of their ass?
What’s their “Bible”?
I suspect that celebrities wishing to leave the church are pursued with even more vigour than other disaffected members and that the church tries very hard to ensure that their departure is not made public; this makes it difficult to know which celebrities are still active members of the church.
So, L. Ron Hubbard is actually…
Doctor Clayton Forrester?!
In the totally-distant past–
'Round three billion B.C–
There was a guy named Xenu,
Not too different than you or me.
He worked in an dif’rent universe,
Just another Thetan, except much worse.
He did a good job killing Teegeeacks,
But his bosses didn’t like him
So they shot him into spaa-ace!
I spent an hour or so reading various websites (off of the operation clambake link) and this whole thing seems like one of those rule the world plots a Bond villain would come up with.
The whole Sea Org(anization) thing is just odd.
Not to hijack, Rexxie, but take a look around. Doesn’t the world seem to be run by committe these days? And by Someones with a Discworld god’s opinions on high entertainment?
You have to admit, gods that randomly rob, rape, and transmorgrify sidestep the problem of evil nicely.
They don’t come up with anything. The CoS doesn’t allow their members to think independently. L. Ron Hubbard was a pulp science fiction writer in the early part of the 20th century (my memory’s fuzzy, but I think the 30s - 50s).
According to some theories, and mentioned several times in the book, Bare-Faced Messiah, yes, that’s exactly what he did.
Anything written by L. Ron Hubbard, but most specifically the book called Dianetics.
I can’t think of anything they could have that would be more embarrassing than Battlefield Earth.