wrote in message
oups.com...
It's no more ridiculous than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam as far as
I'm concerned.
What makes one religion's lies, myths, and superstitions superior to
another's?

Most religions arose thousands of years ago, when the general ignorance the
human race can excuse the introduction of superstions and myths. Today, we
can read the writings from those ancient times and say to ourselves "I know
that story isn't true, but I see the issues people were grappling with back
then with their limited knowledge, resources, and understanding".
Scientology doesn't have that excuse. Scientology arose in the 20th century
when people, at least in the societies where it arose, were generally pretty
smart and educated. People today should be smart enough to know, for
example, that the scientologist's "e-meter" - which they use to measure
negative energy, or auras, or the presence of alien spirits or whatever, and
is probably a light meter - is a big load of doodoo. Today, if you're
gullible enough to let someone measure your negative energy with an
"e-meter", and you believe it worked, you've got some serious problems.
But, just to give SOME credit to scientology: from what I've read (not
much), their founder created the religion because he was horrified by some
of the abuses he knew about in the field of psychiatry. There were
apparently many early psychiatrists who viewed their patients as little more
than lab rats, and conducted inhuman experiments upon them. So, I think the
cult's founder was motivated by trying to help people by providing an
alternative to what he viewed (not without reason, either) as an evil branch
of medicine - psychiatry.
Never-the-less, somewhere along the line scientology veered off into whacko
land, with talk of alien spirits and such.

Why did I just spend 10 minutes thinking about this and responding to it on
RAM where it's completely off-topic? I guess just because I find the subject
very interesting, and there it was. Oh well - I'm going back to drinking my
beer and watching movies.