Grandiflorum.net

Have you ever heard about scientology, the mistery ‘religion’? Tom Cruise, Madonna and other wealthy celebs are fooled and are donating lots of money to the Church of Scientology all the time.

Well, James Randi, my favourite sceptic uncovers or at least gives a quick peek into the essentials of the CoS. It is a very interesting reading…

I have taken it out from the newest SWIFT :

SCIENTOLOGY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

An Internet site that has examined some of the claims made by the Church of Scientology [CoS] concerning the history of their founder Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, is chock-full of obscenities and juvenile comments, a factor that goes directly into the CoS arsenal and provides them with all sorts of weapons with which to devalue that site – though not the facts stated therein. However, the site’s observations deserve to be disseminated, and I summarize them here:

1: According to “official” Church of Scientology biographies, L. Ron Hubbard was brought up in Montana, on a ranch that took up about one quarter of the entire state. He spent his childhood mastering the skills of hunting & tracking; along the way becoming the nation’s youngest ever Eagle Scout – and at the age of four was honored with the status of “Blood Brother” by the Native American Blackfoot Tribe.

The facts: Yes, Hubbard was brought up in Montana, as a regular middle-class kid. However, the Blackfoot Tribe deny all knowledge of Hubbard’s “Blood Brother” status, and have answered requests by Scientologists for information on this matter, by saying that they don’t even know what a “Blood Brother” is, and no one there has ever heard of the tribesman - “Old Tom” - who allegedly mentored Hubbard during his childhood.

2: Upon obtaining his PHd in nuclear physics at Princeton, Hubbard joined the Navy where he served in all five theaters of World War 2, becoming a highly decorated war hero.

The facts: L. Ron Hubbard did in fact take a class in nuclear physics, but at George Washington University, not at Princeton, and he failed. He joined the Navy, but his most notable accomplishment was being involved in a prolonged “submarine attack” off the coast of Oregon which turned out to be a false alarm, though his ship took shots at the imaginary submarine for gunnery practice.

3: Hubbard’s military career was cut short when he was wounded in action, being blinded and crippled, but through the system of Dianetics, curing himself completely, and while he was at it, eleven other veterans, as well.

The facts: Hubbard was admitted for treatment in a Navy hospital, but for the less impressive ailment of stomach ulcers.

4: While undergoing surgery, Hubbard died on the operating table and went to Heaven. On passing through the pearly gates, he came across a wall of monitors displaying all the knowledge in the Universe, past, present & future. He quickly absorbed this knowledge, returned to life and put it all in a book which was entitled “Excalibur.” He claimed that the knowledge contained in Excalibur was so shocking that anyone who read it would die. He told all this to his then-literary agent, describing how he had once shown the manuscript to a publisher in New York and it had resulted in the reader throwing himself to his death from the twentieth story of a building.

The facts: This might have been a routine hallucination caused by anesthesia, but the publisher throwing himself from the window should have resulted in a news story, which does not exist. And where is the manuscript of “Excalibur”?

5: Hubbard claimed he could “teleport” himself through space via super-powers that he’d gained through Dianetics, powers that could be yours through Scientology, and he regaled friends with stories about how the surface of Venus is heavily populated by human-like beings dressed in fifties attire. Said Hubbard, “They say the surface of Venus is made up of gas, but I know better, having almost been run over by a freight train there just this morning!”

The facts: Don’t think that Hubbard could not have believed such a story to be true. I met him only twice, the first time at a meeting of “The Trapdoor Spiders,” and the second only briefly at a press conference in New York City. He frequently came up with such fantasies, and since he was quite inebriated – presumably via alcohol – on both occasions on which I encountered him, I can accept that he came up with such a caprice. He certainly had to know the surface temperature of the planet Venus – 460°C [860°F] – as well as the fact that its atmosphere consists of clouds of droplets of H₂SO₄ – look it up – and its atmospheric pressure is 94 times that of Earth’s. Those are hardly strolling-about conditions, even for Hubbard, let alone for a freight train…

Of course, we’re asked to believe that high-level members of the Church of Scientology will understand what we ordinary mortals see as absurdities…

Scientologists are told that the “fifties” garb worn on Venus came from the fact that seventy-five million years ago, a Galactic Confederacy led by the ruthless overlord Xenu had adopted the customs and costumes of life that would exist on Earth circa 1950. Duh. This Galactic Confederacy developed an overpopulation problem, so they had to round up billions of citizens under the pretense of “income tax inspections” and send them off for extermination on the prison planet of Teegeeack, which is what they – in their ignorance – called our Earth. These unfortunates were all unloaded around the bases of volcanoes which were then blown up with H-bombs, their souls were subsequently captured and forced to watch a 3-D movie for thirty-six days, a movie which implanted in them the histories of all modern human religions. Those souls, we’re told, are still hanging around the Earth today, randomly attaching themselves to humans and making them miserable. Ah, but they’re neutralized by the magic of Scientology.

The above nonsense is only available at the highest level of the Church of Scientology, costing the gullible $300,000 to $500,000 to hear about it. The proof that Hubbard had a working system of snaring the naïve, is amply proven by the fact that the CoS is still going today, and richer than ever before.

As the referred-to site suggests, visit www.xenu.net for extensive data on the “church.”