Hmmmm.

Scientology has been in the news a lot recently. Mostly down to their alleged ‘brainwashing’ tactics and campaigns of fear and intimidation against anyone who tries to discredit them. Like the BBC news reporter who received death threats and had his hotel room broken into while filming a “Scientology Expose”.

Ok, so what’s Scientology all about?

Well, here’s the scoop. L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer created this ‘religion’. What’s funniest is that he was quoted as saying “The real way to make money is by founding a religion.” In the pre-scientology days.

Here’s the ‘story’ of ‘Scientology’:

An alien Overlord named ‘Lord Xenu’ was in charge of most of the planets in this part of the galaxy, including Earth. Unfortunately, these planets where massively over-crowded, having on average about 180 billion people per planet.

So, with the help of psychiatrists, Xenu called in billions of people for a fake ‘income tax’ review, and injected all the people with a mixture of alcohol and glycol to paralyse them. He then flew all these paralysed people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes by their hundreds of billions and set of H-bombs inside the volcanoes.

Unfortunately, this left billions of souls flying around (called ‘thetans’ by scientologists). So Xenu captured them all with electronic beams. The Thetans where then packed up in boxes and taken to big 3D cinemas and shown movies that tricked them into thinking they where God, Christ and the Devil.

Then, the souls left the cinema, and started to stick together because they’d all seen the same film and thought they were the same person. Because there where only a few living bodies left, the clustered together and inhabited these bodies.

Finally, Xenu was overthrown and locked away in a mountain on one of the planets behind a force field with an eternal battery. He’s still alive today.

Oh, and the only way we can be a ‘free soul’ is by joining Scientology and paying huge amounts of money to have our Thetans removed. The only reason Christianity exists is because the Thetans living on our bodies all saw that film 75 million years ago.

(Deep Breath).

Ok, I swear I’m not making this shit up. This is exactly what scientologist believe. I could argue with that story all day (Why do people believe things other than Christianity? Where some ‘Thetans’ shown a different movie?)…but the beauty of this is that it’s so ridiculously absurd, I don’t have to.

I’ve got to say I love that story though. The beauty of becoming a recognized religion is you don’t have to pay tax…and the two things this story demonizes is income tax, and the people who are most likely to point out this whole idea is insane.

However, I want to go on a different tack.

People are happy to make fun of Scientology, because it’s just so freaking weird. A religion founded by a science-fiction writer who said it all ‘just came to him’? It’s a ‘religion’ based on a really bad science fiction story, written by a really bad science fiction writer.

Now, while I in no way consider scientology to be a ‘real’ religion, and I’m not defending it in any way…is mainstream religion any more believable? Let’s see.

Once upon a time, there was this guy called God who created himself. He then created the universe out of nothing in 6 days, and despite his obvious power, he needed a nap on the seventh day.

Then he created a guy in his own image…despite the fact that a being who can create the universe in 6 days is really unlikely to have or need arms and legs. Then, the guy he created got bored, so God took one of the guy’s ribs and made a woman out of it, and let them live in paradise forever. (That was either a really tiny woman, or God worked some more of his magic…which makes us wonder why he needed the rib in the first place. He can make the universe from nothing, but needs a rib to make a woman…just sounds like a shallow way to ensure women’s subservience to me)

Then, the woman was tempted by a snake to eat an apple from the tree of knowledge, which made her realize she was nude and asked God for some clothes. Then, despite the fact that God is all knowing, and should have known about the fruit larceny already, he threw a major shit-fit and chucked the guy and the girl out of the Garden for eternity.

So, despite the fact “God is Love” and has infinite mercy and forgiveness, he banishes his own creations from the Garden of Eden for ‘scrumping’. The irony that he created this woman, and her temptation is essentially a design fault, completely escapes him.

Later on, God sends the Holy Spirit, who’s really God in disguise, but also a separate entity to impregnate a woman and give birth to his son. God’s son walks the Earth, tells everyone to be really nice to each other, so he gets nailed to a big piece of wood and dies.

So God gave up his only son to die for our sins (Why, I don’t really get. What did it do?), but it would have been a much grander gesture for God himself to do it, instead of making his own son do it. But then again, Jesus rose from the dead and went up to heaven on a cloud, so it all worked out well in the end.

See? Isn’t that just as weird and fantastical? One story has an alien trapping souls with laser beams, another has a powerful being making women out of guys’ ribs.