Scientology: America's Established Religion

Some people are starting to sit up and take notice of the fact that for years now the United States government has been giving Scientology a sweet deal that hasn't been available to anyone else. Scientologists who pay large sums to the Church of Scientology for "auditing" and "training" can write all of that off on their taxes, but members of other religions can't write off their own religious education. So why does Scientology get special deals and favored status?

Ben Shapiro writes:

What exactly are Scientologists writing off? Thousands of dollars worth of pure baloney. As authors Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner detail in their fascinating book, "Hollywood, Interrupted," Scientology itself is a load of psychedelic babble, and an expensive load at that. It costs over $300,000 to reach the top levels of this cult. "Auditing" -- the service that the IRS allows Scientologists to write off -- is a method of purging "thetans."

Breitbart and Ebner describe what thetans are: "Over 75 million years ago, in a universe far, far away, evil alien overlord Xenu captured all the rebel souls by calling them in for tax auditing and, after injecting them with a mixture of glycol and alcohol, they were transported in B-1 bombers to earth and flung into volcanoes. Then the volcanoes were exploded with neutron bombs. The souls of these immolated aliens, called body thetans (thetan is L. Ron's word for souls), now cling to us like nasty body lice, through reincarnation after reincarnation, and can only be removed through hours of auditing at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once members have completely cleared themselves of thetans, they become all-powerful, according to Scientology: They "can now create life; they can create universes; they have cause over matter, energy, space and time; and they are free of the bonds of the physical -- functioning totally on the spiritual."

I'm not sure how any of that qualifies as any more "baloney" than the average religion in America. What's so much more plausible and believable about a god becoming incarnate as a human, then allowing itself to be killed in a brutal manner because suffering and death are the only way to wipe clean the sins of humanity? Thetans may be silly, but as theology goes it's not unusually silly.

Read More:

• Scientology: Basics
• Scientology: American Critiques
• Scientology: Court Cases
• Scientology: Books
• Scientology: L. Ron Hubbard