SCIENTOLOGY: DANGEROUS CULT, INTERNATIONAL SCAM

SCIENTOLOGY: DANGEROUS CULT, INTERNATIONAL SCAM
By Andrew O'Connor
Daily Egyptian, serving Souther Illinois since 1916

Share this article Published: Monday, July 13, 2009

Today’s topic is Scientology, and the next 500 words will guarantee that I won’t get work in Hollywood.


The Church of Scientology is something many people have heard about, but few know much about it. Allow me to set the record straight: Scientology is a dangerous cult founded by a tax-cheat, B-list science-fiction writer that continues to use its vast wealth and land ownership to harass the critics who dare criticize it.


Scientology is structured in a hierarchal pyramid, where the more “auditing” $essions a person goes through, the more of the founder’s (L. Ron Hubbard) “truth” they are exposed to.


Of course, thanks to the Internet, the highest level “science” Hubbard ever dropped on humanity has been published for more than a decade. And here is the basic gist (familiar to those who have seen the South Park episode): Ahem, 75 million years ago evil space emperor Xenu captured a bunch of aliens, put them all in space planes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs in volcanoes on Earth. The souls of these dead space aliens then tried to float back out into space only to be trapped on Earth by Xenu’s ozone layer-esque alien soul stopper. The souls roamed the Earth for a millennium until they found something to which they could attach themselves in man. These parasitic alien souls, called Thetans, are the reason for our depression and bad television today.


Now let me be fair, I don’t want to defame blatantly individual scientologists. I’m sure that many Scientologists are good, decent people who have just found something of value. It is not my, nor anyone’s, place to disparage anyone’s right to believe anything he or she wants. I was raised Catholic so I am quite familiar with, ahem, more fanciful beliefs (Transubstantiation is just archaic Jesus Magick). My problem here (like my problem with Catholicism) is the institution and specifically the church leadership.


A few weeks ago, Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the two most senior officials ever to leave the Church of Scientology detailed the bizarre, violent and potentially criminal goings on of high-level church management, specifically the head of the church, David Miscavige. Now like all things Scientology, this takes some backstory.


Hubbard founded Scientology a little more than 50 years ago. Since then the empire has grown into a worldwide force, with millions of members, huge amounts of wealth and power and a whole bunch celebrity converts. How do you get all that in such a small amount of time? You lie, cheat and steal every chance you get.


From their tax fraud to their criminal break in of government buildings to extreme intimidation and harassment of family members, governments and journalists, they have cut themselves a huge slice of the pie, which they operate from a cartoonishly evil cruise ship command center (look it up) and the home base in Florida (where else?).


When Hubbard died, there was a power vacuum that was created in church leadership and Miscavige filled that vacuum. The head of the church reportedly beat, humiliated and abused other high-ranking members of the church in order to maintain a dictatorial control. Under his leadership, the church has conducted numerous “black” campaigns, which often use less-than-legal tactics to harass and intimidate anyone defined as an “Enemy of Scientology”(like yours truly).


There is a plethora of credible information available out there on the dangers and evils of the Church of Scientology worth reading, but the real point is this: Scientologists aren’t allowed to read this. Members are conditioned to ignore anything out there that is critical of the church. Any member of the church reading this should know, I love you and so does Jesus, especially when you question your leaders.


So please, if you have family members in the church (especially if they just started) read up on Scientology, and try and persuade them to as well. And if you are approached by Scientologists (or its cover, Dianetics and Business Management Technology) run, don’t walk, toward the nearest escape hatch. Then the 75-million year war for the Earth will be won.


Praise Xenu.

O’Connor is a junior studying
political science and philosophy.