Scientolotta Crazy

Wowzers. Don't start reading this late one night, because you'll be up until you finish it: an article in Rolling Stone on Scientology. It's far too long, complicated, and, dare I say, evenhanded to be summarized well, so let me just commend it to you, apologize for eating up the half-hour it'll take to read, and list a couple of the parts that made me laugh:

"Operating Thetans"... are Scientology's elite -- enlightened beings who are said to have total "control" over themselves and their environment. OTs can allegedly move inanimate objects with their minds, leave their bodies at will and telepathically communicate with, and control the behavior of, both animals and human beings. At the highest levels, they are allegedly liberated from the physical universe, to the point where they can psychically control what Scientologists call MEST: Matter, Energy, Space and Time.

That explains Katie Holmes, then. Funny the second:

The most important, and highly anticipated, of the eight "OT levels" is OT III, also known as the Wall of Fire. It is here that Scientologists are told the secrets of the universe, and, some believe, the creation story behind the entire religion... [The elements of that story] assert that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and "implanted" with a number of false ideas -- including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.

That's even weirder, if not sillier, than the Genesis story! Anyhow, the article is full of interesting information about Scientology, from its elite cadre (the "Sea Organization"), unusual focus on making $$$$, and soft-sell recruiting methods to its ruthless attitude toward dissenters, elaborate technical vocabulary, and bizarre educational system. All in all, the article makes it clear that religions are strange institutions and religious beliefs are odd kinds of cognition.