Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Let there be snark.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Please don’t feed the bears.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

You are here: Home / A new religion that will bring you to your knees

A new religion that will bring you to your knees

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If you haven’t yet, you should read that New Yorker article on Scientology that Anne-Laurie recommended. Here are my favorite parts:

“A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu.

[….]

Davis became fiercely committed to the Sea Org. He got a tattoo on one arm of its logo—two palm fronds embracing a star, supposedly the emblem of the Galactic Confederacy seventy-five million years ago.

[….]

In his view, Haggis’s emotions at that moment ranked 1.1 on the Tone Scale—the state that is sometimes called Covertly Hostile. By adopting a tone just above it—Anger—Isham hoped to blast Haggis out of the psychic place where he seemed to be lodged. “This was an intellectual decision,” Isham said. “I decided I would be angry.”

In places, it’s eerily like a Mark Leyner book, in others, it sounds a lot like the comments section at RedState.

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  5. 5.

    PurpleGirl

    Not that I ever took Scientology seriously, after all I’d heard dozens of times of how L. Ron talked about making millions by founding your own religion, but when someone began leaving fliers at science fiction conventions which spelled out the super secret inner knowledge of Xenu, it made me laugh.

  6. 6.

    Citizen_X

    I understand that this may have caused problems for the velociraptors, but what the hell would it have to do with us? Mammals hadn’t even evolved primates by that time.

    Please don’t answer that.

  8. 8.

    beltane

    planet Earth, then called Teegeeack

    Isn’t Teegeeack the planet the teabaggers hail from?

    Scientology sounds kind of like Mormonism, except without a god who has the lack of imagination to show up in such dull places as Missouri and Elmira, NY.

  9. 9.

    freelancer

    No religion reaches full retard unless it addresses the subject of dinosaurs in a truly original and stupid fashion.

    What did those 76 planets look like? Some like Earth today, some a bit different, but all in all they would have appeared quite familiar by today’s standards. A civilization like in the 1950s, says Hubbard on Tape 10. People had bodies, houses, cars, jobs, wives, husbands, children, telephones, television, and of course interstellar space flight based on space-energy and controlled gravitation.
    __
    Earth itself was considered sensationally beautiful and pleasant – tropical plants could be found even north of today’s arctic circle. There were dinosaurs and other spectacular creatures. Small wonder that this planet was a tourist resort and attracted people from all over the galaxy to spend their holidays here. The local population was predominantly white, like today’s Europeans; other races were represented, too, mainly by tourists.
    __
    Are “178 billion people average” possible? Well, if you were granting each person – man, woman and child – 25 square meters living space, 25 sq.m. working space and 25 sq.m. recreational space (that’s 75 sq.m. per person), and if you were constructing a building according to these specifications so as to accomodate the 6 billion people who live on this planet currently, it would cover 450 thousand square kilometers. That’s about the size of Spain. All the 6 billion people currently on this planet could live in Spain on one floor. If you built the building in the style of a condominium three floors high, it would cover 150 thousand sq.km, the area of England (without Scotland and Wales). If you built it nine floors high, it would cover a mere 50 thousand sq.km, the size of Holland, Denmark or Switzerland.
    __
    So all the people currently living on this planet could be accomodated in an area the size of Switzerland and have the rest of the planet for agricultural purposes and as a nature resort. Of course this would demand advanced solutions regarding energy supply and transport, solutions not based on carbon-based fuel or atomic fission, but that shouldn’t worry anyone. Since Nicola Tesla the necessary inventions have been made; all one would have to do is take them out of the security lockers of oil and electricity magnates and actually use them. And food certainly wouldn’t be a problem either, if one reformed today’s wasteful feeding habits (with agriculture already efficient enough to throw part of the harvest away so as to keep the prices up).

    Mission Accomplished, LRH.

  10. 10.

    RSA

    “I decided I would be angry.”

    One problem with rejecting psychology, as Scientologists do, is losing any ability to understand what’s going on in your own head.

  14. 14.

    Mark S.

    I wonder whether Xenu allowed earmarks. It would make sense when governing such a huge galactic empire to have some mechanism so that local representatives could have some say on where appropriations went. But Real Americans prefer to just let bureaucrats in Washington to make all these decisions.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more stupid issue in politics. Banning earmarks doesn’t save any money; it just changes who decides where that money is spent. This country is too stupid for democracy.

  15. 15.

    James Gary

    “….Black Velvet, if you please.”

    DougJ, I salute the breadth of your lyrical knowledge. Also, Teegeack is on the New Jersey Turnpike between Secaucus and Cheesequake.

  17. 17.

    JRon

    South Park’s summary was spot-on. Watch out for Scientologists, I have friends who’ve advocated for treatment of depression as a medical disorder (which it is) who were harassed a long time by those guys and their sock puppets. It was traumatic for them.

    They were the key funding and activists behind the opposition to the Mothers Act, due to their vehement anti-psychiatry stance. Based on that our whole family avoids anything with Beck, Travolta or Tom Cruise, for example. Especially Cruise. Too upsetting for some of us to even see their fucking faces, no matter what role or song it is.

  18. 18.

    Sad_Dem

    Xenu used nukes to solve an overpopulation problem, so maybe he was Republican. A Democrat would have taxed successful people to pay for the abortions of the poor.

  21. 21.

    Arclite

    A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu

    When a religion is created by a science fiction author, why should I be surprised if it contains science-fiction sounding elements?

    Anyway, Hubbard created Scientology on a lark after betting Robert Heinlein (of Starship Troopers fame) that he could do it. Once it took off, I think he just rode the wave.

  25. 25.

    Ecks

    @beltane: whatchoo got aginst missouri?

    Gooo Mizzou.

    For the truly best part of the article, check out the last 2 pages or so where he fact checks some of their claims about L.R. Hubbard and finds that a) some of his significant claims about his life are wrong (he never sustained the injuries in the army that he claims his techniques had miraculously cured), b) that the document they produced about his army discharge was a forgery, and c) that some of the medals they claimed he had been awarded did not even exist at the time he was supposedly awarded them.

    It’s a thing of beauty to see a journalist doing their actual fracking job.

  26. 26.

    Jim, Once

    @Ecks:

    It’s a thing of beauty to see a journalist doing their actual fracking job.

    This is what I loved most about the article. Some of the best real journalism you’ll ever see.

  28. 28.

    bago

    For those of us playing Dead Space 2 over the weekend and are thinking about unitoligy, and bringing us closer to the marker….

    Awesome game, no? Has a touch of that old school “die until you get it” thing going on, but sweet Jesus, the deaths you can die…

    The severed hand in reference to the first game cover? Classic.

  29. 29.

    SFAW

    Mormons believe that after his crucifixion, Jesus reappeared in Missouri.

    Yes, he appeared in Cape Girardeau, in the form of The Angel Moron Eeee!, to a thetan child. Unfortunately, the thetan child thought it was an hallucination from too much Oxycontin, and thus did not heed the lessons – except for the Moron part – that the Angel was trying to bestow.

    And the rest, as they say, might be history.

    Or not.

  30. 30.

    Rev. Miller

    Every time I want to give Scientologists a hard time for their beliefs I remember that their beliefs are not any more ridiculous than the beliefs of all the major religions. It’s just a question of how much time has passed.

    Totally takes the fun out of it.

  31. 31.

    Snaporaz

    If you are interested in learning more about Scientology, track down these books:

    Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller (definitive biography of LR Hubbard)
    A Piece of Blue Sky
    The Road to Xenu (available for free online)
    LR Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? by one of Hubbard’s sons

  33. 33.

    cthulhu

    @Rev. Miller: The problem isn’t so much their beliefs as their behavior. While Scientology is not the only religion that uses such tactics/practices in the modern day, they stand among a fairly small group. And my sense is that though it is pretty common for true believers of any religion to be upset when others leave, it encompasses a sincere worry about a “lost soul” while Scientology further automatically worries about a “new enemy.” That distinguishes it for me.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    Has anyone pointed out the new movie that was advertised on the superbowl has people going back 75 million years to sort things out? Is it made by Scientologists?

  38. 38.

    Quiddity

    That New Yorker article is thorough. 24,000 words – which is around 70 book pages. For a typical reader, that’s one hour at least. Still, it’s good that it’s out there.

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