I had heard vaguely about the religion founded by the bad sci-fi writer having a backstory more vapid than you could believe. When I actually learned the details from the South Park episode, I found it was. I’m an atheist with some interest in various religious stories, and I still can’t believe someone would be so loony to think this is an important story about their religion. This wouldn’t get published in a bad 50’s sci-fi pulp, much less be something that would last through the re-telling. I can see why they were trying to keep it secret. They were hoping to re-write it into something worthwhile before it got released publicly, right?
If the bastard had the decency to eat a ton of hallucinogens, it would have at least have been incomprehensible and inconsistent in a manner that wasn’t just stupid.
I don’t have a cite, but I feel like the standard Scientology dogma is: L. Ron Hubbard was fortunate enough to discover reality, purge his own thetans (probably by using the correct combinations of uppers and downers (an acceptable process to people at the time akin to Timothy Leary and LSD), and was talented enough of skeptical atheist to write down the sci-fact story.
Try this:
Christians: Jesus is the Son of God, and God, and revived himself from the dead
Jews: Well, he may have existed, and he said some useful things, but …
Muslims: Aw, you just stole the body and made up the whole story, see, we got the correct revelation and …
Buddhists: Say, did you know you can get get revelation, just by contemplation, particularly under a Bodai tree?
Scientologists: You were all watching movies before you were born.
Notice: Scientologists are able to efficiently do what each one does, knock the one above, efficiently all at once with one blow. That’s what dogma does – knocks out a false dogma.
Rational atheism doesn’t have to do that. But that’s not what Scientology is.