It's funny whenever I tell people what the Scientology religion is "about"..
"A mildly successful sci-fi writer, on little more than a dare, took a stab at writing his own religion. In this religion an alien lord named Xenu dumped countless alien prisoners on Earth and threw them into our volcanoes -using Earth as sort-of a penal planet. The spirits of these aliens continually attack and inhabit our bodies causing us to have bad feelings and to act out in negative ways. It is only through Scientology that you can learn to rid your body of these alien spirits and reach an "inner peace" where you may one day hope to achieve immortality."
The looks I get pretty much range from
to
with comments usually ranging around "and this is what they really believe?"
Now, granted, I admit that the idea that a man who was the Son of God who was sent to Earth to teach us of Him and was later killed only to come back days later with the promise of returning "some day" in the future has some "silliness" to it when observed with the same skeptical, un-informed eye as the one viewing Scientology.
I would argue that Christianity and it's offshoots/siblings and other more "main stream" religions have the benefit of being millenia old thus diluting if not eliminating our knowledge of the circumstances of their "creation."
They get a benefit of the doubt for being "true."
Scientology gets no such treatment as we KNOW it was INVENTED by a FICTION WRITER with no claims to prophets or other Divine suggestion as to the true nature of things -as claimed by the prophets who wrote The Bible and others who've claimed to have talked with God.
He. Just. Wrote it. We KNOW this.
Christianity and other religions also have the benefit of one not having to PAY thousands of dollars to advance in them.
