Scientology: Get Rich Quick. Form Your Own Religion

What do these Tinsel-Townees have in common?: Kelly Preston, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Issac Hayes, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, Katie Holmes, and Tom Cruise. They belong to a cult that believes humans are an exiled race from outer space.
Styling itself as a religion, the cult was created in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard , a pulp science-fiction writer, infamous for rather strange ideas and behavior. In 1958, he was at a writer’s convention where he declared, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars he should start his own religion.”

As a science fictionist, he began with the declaration that humans are descendants of an exiled race from outer space called Thetans. To introduce a spiritual element he claimed that we are nothing more than temporary vessels for the immortal souls of Thetans. Religions include a fall from grace such as being cast out of the Garden of Eden. He gave a name to the one he invented, Scientology, then explained its own fall from grace. Humans are trapped by memories of past incarnations and thus inhibited from achieving full potential. Painful reincarnational memories must be exorcised through erasing engrams that thwart full potential. More at The Independent, UK.

(This site was hacked by somebody who didn't like my comments. Stemming from L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientologist attitude is to attack, and attack hard, anybody who takes exception to their cult. Their viewpoint apparently is that freedom of speech only extends one direction--theirs.)