Scientology on the Net.

[Via Amy Welborn.]

Operation Clambake is an anti-scientology website with some really interesting items. For example, there is a biography of L. Ron Hubbard which makes for interesting reading if you have any interests in the "Golden Age of Science Fiction". Also, there are a number of items that discuss the doctrines of Scientology.

When it comes down to it, Scientology is simply reconstituted Gnosticism. Gnosticism postulated that some humans contained trapped bits of spirit which could be freed from evil matter by secret knowledge. So does Scientology. Likewise, Gnosticism created an elaborate mythology about how an evil God had created the material world from which these divine bits of good godstuff had to be freed. Similarly, Scientology postulates some oddball alien warlord trapping thetans into the Terran bodies some 97 million years ago.

Weird; for all of Hubbard's colossal ignorance of, or indifference to, science and history, it's almost as if he had a collection of Nag Hammadi gnostic manuscripts on hand from which to fashion his mythos.

Update: By the way, did you know that the leadership of Scientology runs around in faux-naval uniforms or that Scientology has its own paramilitary organization?

And here is a page of Scientology acronyms. I don't know which is more frightening: that any organization needs to coin terms like "fair game" or "exteriorize" or "Fifth Galactic Invader Force" or that adults buy into this 1930s vintage science fiction claptrap.

Goofy stuff.