This launched on Monday.
Are they advertising this on Fox at all? Are we looking at a possible official government religion if certain leaders tune in?
“It’s about making a difference in the world.”
By taking people’s money and making them cut their families out of their lives?
I have never, ever understood how people with the intelligence to fly 747s (Travolta) can stay in a religion where a science fiction writer’s origin story sounds like a bad 1950s science fiction book:
"Hubbard wrote that Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy 75 million years ago, which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as “Teegeeack”.[5][8][22] The planets were overpopulated, containing an average population of 178 billion.[1][4][6] The Galactic Confederacy’s civilization was comparable to our own, with aliens “walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute” and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those “circa 1950, 1960” on Earth.[23]
Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he gathered billions[4][5] of his citizens under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth).[5] The appearance of these spacecraft would later be subconsciously expressed in the design of the Douglas DC-8, the only difference being that “the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn’t”.[20] When they had reached Teegeeack, the paralyzed citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes across the planet.[5][8] Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously,[8] killing all but a few aliens. Hubbard described the scene in his film script, Revolt in the Stars:
Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction ...
— L. Ron Hubbard, Revolt in the Stars[7]
The now-disembodied victims’ souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu’s forces using an “electronic ribbon” (“which also was a type of standing wave”) and sucked into “vacuum zones” around the world. The hundreds of billions[5][24] of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a “three-D, super colossal motion picture” for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard termed “various misleading data”’ (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, “which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera”. This included all world religions; Hubbard specifically attributed Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The two “implant stations” cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.[25]
In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.[8]
A government faction known as the Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and his renegades, and locked him away in “an electronic mountain trap” from which he has not escaped.[14][22][26] Although the location of Xenu is sometimes said to be the Pyrenees on Earth, this is actually the location Hubbard gave elsewhere for an ancient “Martian report station”.[27][28] Teegeeack was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah “prison planet” to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien “Invader Forces” since that time"
You don’t get this until you’ve paid the gazillion dollars it takes to get to the highest level. Before the internet they were able to hide this story. On Going Clear (GREAT documentary on Scientology) you have people who talk about going into the secret room once they got to the highest level, being presented with the case that contains the story, written in Hubbard’s handwriting, reading it, and saying “what? Is this some kind of joke?”
How the Travolta’s of the world stay in this after seeing that baffles me. EXCEPT that a major part of going up the ranks in Scientology is clearing sessions in which you tell every single embarrassing or illegal or immoral act you’ve ever committed. All in the name of being “cleared.” My guess is that a famous celebrity who has revealed all of that, some of which would be a killer to your career, are not anxious to have the Scientology leaders release that information should you leave them.
You are assuming these people actually believe what they themselves preach. I believe those at the top dont believe a single word of what they say to the lay. Which is my opinion of the TV preachers as well.
THEY GOT TO HIM!
:)
I was just going to say that Wikileaks probably considers them a compelling target.
Well, to be fair, although Scientology’s story is, shall we say, out there, if you approach the Christian mythology from an outside perspective, it’s pretty whackadoodle too. Pretty much anyone else’s religion is weird when looked at from outside.
At least with ‘real’ religions, the whackadoodle is free.
True that.
Way back in the 90s, my college paper tried to investigate the local scientology office. The reporter ended up being surveilled by private detectives (at least, we believe they were private detectives), and they were being pretty obvious about it. Pretty fucking terrifying.
Yeah just go on Netflix or whatever and watch Going Clear, the very well researched documentary on Scientology. It’s absolutely scary. There’s a reason the German government’s official view of Scientology is that it is an abusive business masquerading as a religion.
And then watch the two South Park episodes about it.
Don’t listen to this hater! There’s a much better documentary called Battlefield Earth that will give you so many insights on how to live your life.
Seriously, I wonder if they’re going to show that on this channel or they see it as an embarrassment.
How could the greatest science fiction story of all time, written by the greatest author of all time, be an embarrassment?
You are being misled by your thetans, brother.
My mother caught me clearing my thetans when I was thirteen. Embarrassing.
Apparently, you’ve never heard of “tithing”.
That gives me a great idea for a christianity-based spin-off cult.
Join our Church and Become a 9%er! Because Jesus saved you and God says to keep the change. 10% less tithes than the next church!
Who could resist saving 10% a paycheck on their tithes? I can’t see any problems with this scheme. I’ll have a megachurch and a jet in no time. The dancing Angels of Rosy Virtues will come later; they’ll keep the guys in the pews even on Sundays during the big game!
Oh, I’m not saying they aren’t equally money-grubbing, tax evading institutions. But you aren’t paying that for access to the Bible or whatever.
I love me some SCTV.