Well, there's an old saying.

"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.'" - L. Ron Hubbard

This is the same 'religion' that spied on the United States Government. They committed fraud and carried out illegal wiretapping and seizures and earned themselves a pwning by the FBI. That alone should have been enough to strip them now and forever of their religious status.

Hubbard was a schizophrenic, paranoid, and he was full of himself. To the brim. He believed everyone against him was a 'suppressive person' (i.e. interrupting his cash flow) and should be 'utterly ruined'. He condoned the use of barratry and violence against his critics.

Unbelievable.

Shitty sci-fi writer + Tax break= scientology

Hey didn't you hear? L. Ron is dead, aparently scientology is NOT the path to immortality.

But other people's belifs are their reason to live, so as fun as it is, it's not nice to make fun. {deleted unnesesary terrible jokes about the foundation of christianity islam judaisim and the like} But it is like apples to oranges. scientology is the TAX BREAK religion, which is as good of a reason as I've heard to start one.

But I am starting my own religion at this point, and it will be called CommonSenseisim. Where we believe in truth, justice, and the 'merican Way!

Noooooo, you misunderstood the great teachings of L. Run Cupboard! He merely stated that it was time for him to leave his body and then poof! He vanished! He didn't die! He left this dimension of his own free will, using his incredible powers over MEST! Then a special DC-9 transported him impossibly across lightyears of nothing but hard vacuum to his sci-fi heaven!

Typewriter in the Sky was actually pretty good, if you like that sort of thing.

People will believe anything as along as it seems to profit them, it may be somewhat exclusive making dividing lines ("seperating us from them" and that sort of thing) and there are already people who seem to believe it.

When that is known, it's not so hard to understand why someone would listen to utter bullcrap for hours on end and believe every word of it, be it about Thetans and evil psychologists, or that Terrorists are the REAL threat to society.

This is why i liked my Sociology professor. She'd mercilessly rip into the Scientologist when we came up to the Cults unit. She did not like them, and made certain to say that it wasn't a religion set up to help people, but rather a machine to generate revenue. My History of Religion professor said the same thing too (though we didn't cover it in class, it was one of the religions that we had the option of reading up on for a writing assignment).

I've been reading up on the site that Brian posted, and I'm honestly sickened. I knew it was bad, but, I never imagined how bad it was, or the means they used to preserve their revenue machine. Of course, it seems that more and more questioning of Scientology is coming up, and now they have Trey Parker and Matt Stone taking aim. I love this next quote.

It's only an exception because its modern. All religions were started in the exact same fashion--I don't mean by an insidious person, but derided by most initially, and considered cults and "non-religions."

Yet it still isn't okay to discuss why Islam at its roots is a cult of death? I think delineating a border between religion and cult is a phenomenon as old as time itself, but only to protect one set of beliefs from valid criticism, and only works in this case because the religion is of a monetary basis, even though crimes such as death and regression in the face of scientific progress are just some results of "non-paying," established religions.

Walking on water? Transubstantiation? Immaculate conception? Political pull? Wow. How can anyone follow a religion like that?

On Scientology itself: there are some good documents on the struggle between Scientology and the Internet out there. It's done a good job of exposing lots of the scams.

...like Scientology. :D

All religions started by someone making up a bunch of stuff after a semi-successful career as a writer? Well.... yeah, thats pretty much very likely. Thats one of the reasons I don't believe in religion.