Friday, August 19, 2005

Scientology: Alien genocide and religious "artifacts"

for your reading pleasure, this blog has been rewritten AND spellchecked AND has gone through one draft! holy shit this is a Wang. blog first. consider yourselves lucky.


What if I told you that my pop-tart was a reincarnated embodiment of an ancient warrior; a pastry that hurtled from the heavens to earth, only to be set free by a toaster setting of two… or lightly toasted. Now imagine I convinced three of my best friends that it was true and said that the only way we could hope for the ancient warrior race to come to earth and save the pop-tarts was to slather ourselves in a sticky concoction of unsalted butter and ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’. I’ll call it the Church of Trans-fat-pastry-logy. Sound stupid? Well it should and I’m not likely to have any support, government or public. It’s too bad though, I could potentially save thousands every year by not having to pay taxes and having the IRS give me a deduction for educating my new members about proper buttering ritual. I think that’s just really unfair.

What is scientology anyways? Scientology tries to present itself as is one man's epic legacy of melding science with religion; a hope of making the world a better place and purging our minds of irrationality. However, what it tries to combat is exactly what it is at its core, an irrational body of thought.

“In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true. An individual discovers for himself that Scientology works by personally applying its principles and observing or experiencing results.” [from Scientology.org]

There must be something that sets Scientology apart from every other religion on our planet, something other than just good will, life improvement, and moral foundations. From what I’ve seen in Times Square, they have a secret weapon, the “Electropsychometer”, they tout it in the subway as a free stress test. The E-Meter is a tabletop box that supposedly measures changes in your mental activity as an auditor pelts you with stressful questions. How does it do that without MRI technology*? That answer surely will be answered when you become part of the fold.

Aside from using the E-Meter and an auditor to help you purge the bad humors from your body, after donating about $10,000 you learn that a long time ago our galaxy became overpopulated and an evil warlord sent the overpopulated masses to earth in order to hydrogen bomb them-interstellar genocide. The souls of these beings entered humans and are the cause of all misfortune, disease, radiation, etc that human beings face on a day to day basis.

If there was an overpopulation problem, why send them to earth and bomb them? Why not send them to the sun, why not burn them alive? Overpopulation for the galaxy would account for A LOT of organisms; a hydrogen bomb blast killing them off would have to be pretty ginormous. Where are the signs of explosion? Oh I get it, it killed off the dinosaurs. Next time on Unsolved Mysteries. Dun dun dun.

I think it is perfectly rational to believe that aliens visited our planet; you might even go so far as to say they kick started the absolute miracle that turned amino acid soup into organisms. In my humble opinion, Scientology’s claims are hardly believable and are more in line with science fiction than any kind of organized religion. Organized religion usually is thoughtful enough to be based on something, a dusty book, scrolls in a time capsule, the bible, something… anything. Scientology is based on the lifework of a professor/sci-fi writer, a Mr. Hubbard. It is a big mystery to me how the supposed fastest growing religion, maintain its members if you are presented with alien genocide and invasion of the body snatchers; assertions that are based off of zero factual or nonfactual proof, just one man's 'theory'.

Public acceptance of Scientology feels disturbingly similar to the Doomsday Aum Cult that was responsible for the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway. How many normal Japanese professionals and college students were sucked into that, paying for stupid things that their "guru” assured would lead them to further enlightenment (such as a vial of his piss to drink). Their uptight workaholic culture prompted widespread buying into the cult, but it is amazing how many people gave in to the teachings and beliefs of someone who fabricated the entire thing for monetary gain. Hollywood, although not subject to the uptight day-to-day of the Japanese businessman, seems to be on the same track. Theirs is a culture of buying into the newest fad; how many people can be recruited by a fad? I shudder to think, but it’s already gotten an entire page in Teen People. Be warned, Teen People knows all.

I dedicate this journal to freeing Katie Holmes from the clutches of shorty mcshortsalot Tom Cruise.

*Notes:

From [scientology.org]
“E-Meter is a shortened term for electropsychometer. It is a religious artifact used as a spiritual guide in auditing.”

“What makes the E-Meter react is the impingement of these mental image pictures against the body. A person receiving auditing holds two plated cans which are hooked up to the electronic components of the meter. The meter sends a miniscule electrical current (approximately half a volt) through the body, about the same amount of current as in the average battery-powered wristwatch.”

These sorts of things kind of make me cringe. I thought about it after writing this journal and it became very obvious what was going on. It is impossible for there to be a religious artifact of Scientology since the religion was spawned out of Ron Hubbard’s head. Scientology, at least in their literature, proposes a way to live ones life, how to cope with stress, how to deal with drug abuse. At surface value it’s very pragmatic but in no way shape or form did it ever claim to be based off of anything previous to Hubbard’s formulation, it is obvious that there is no such thing as a religious artifact of Scientology.

What is this E-Meter? At first I thought maybe they put a band around your head. That’s not what they do at all apparently. According to the website, they hold conductors in their hands and the meter sends a current through the body. (Not to nitpick, a volt is not a measure of current) What they are actually doing to “measure brain activity” is put an electrical meter across the human body and ask questions that are stressful. The stress causes people to have sweaty hands, sweat which increases or decreases the amount of resistance that the meter sees across the body. This is no religious artifact; it is an analog ohmmeter that they painted red.

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