Serving Miscavage is always complicated.
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I definitely assume the latter. I wouldn’t expect anything better from a mid-century hack SF writer.
There’s a long article about writer/director Paul Haggis that describes the WTF moment that led to his leaving $cientology. He’d achieved whatever level you need to access the closely guarded secret knowledge about evil intergalactic overlord Xenu, etc. Once he read it, he was essentially offended as a writer and that was the beginning of the end for him.
ETA: from the New Yorker article.
In the late seventies, the O.T. material [i.e all the Xenu hogwash] was still quite secret. There was no Google, and Scientology’s confidential scriptures had not yet circulated, let alone been produced in court or parodied on “South Park.” “You were told that this information, if released, would cause serious damage to people,” Haggis told me.
Carrying an empty, locked briefcase, Haggis went to the Advanced Organization building in Los Angeles, where the material was held. A supervisor then handed him a folder, which Haggis put in the briefcase. He entered a study room, where he finally got to examine the secret document—a couple of pages, in Hubbard’s bold scrawl. After a few minutes, he returned to the supervisor.
“I don’t understand,” Haggis said.
“Do you know the words?” the supervisor asked.
“I know the words, I just don’t understand.”
“Go back and read it again,” the supervisor suggested.
Haggis did so. In a moment, he returned. “Is this a metaphor?” he asked the supervisor.
“No,” the supervisor responded. “It is what it is. Do the actions that are required.”
Maybe it’s an insanity test, Haggis thought—if you believe it, you’re automatically kicked out. “I sat with that for a while,” he says. But when he read it again he decided, “This is madness.”
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Definitely the latter. Hubbard wasn’t even a good science fiction writer and the religion is based on the stupidest shit he wrote. Even crazier is that he was open (at times) about it being a scam. He’s on record saying, “Forget work or business. If you really want to make money, start a religion!” before it was founded.
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And who better than someone that already wants to start a religion to reveal the Truth to?
…Or however that works in Scientology. It occurs to me I don’t actually know how Hubbard is even supposed to have discovered all this.
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Worth re-posting…
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In keeping with the “sciencey” angle of it all, there’s no revelation or stone tablets or anything. He claims to have sat down and just “figured out” all the secrets to human thought and mental well being. The faithful simply consider him the smartest man to have ever lived, so everything he wrote is accurate. Nothing more than that. What’s astonishing is how transparently stupid it all is. At least with traditional religions, the really stupid stuff can hide behind being ancient and possibly mis-translated or non-literal.
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They should free the thetan within his corporeal shell by expedient means.
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I could buy someone being smart enough to figure out we are plagued by alien ghosts.
Deducing they were sent here by an evil alien overlord is really pushing it.
Deducing his name is much too far. 
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Check out Aaron’s channel. He’s a former Scientologist who is on a mission to take them down.
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Given his access to money and all that, he could have easily high-tailed it for another country (one that won’t extradite him to the US) on a private jet.
Guesses as to which one?
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Former-believer me hopes there really is a ‘hot place’.
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Child’s play, when one can, at times, purchase the White House and Congress cheap.
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I’d say UAE (Dubai) or Maldives (tropical tourist islands). As long as he’s not pushing his cult and arrives with lots of cash he’ll be allowed to stay as long as he wants, just like the other wealthy sleazeballs already infesting those places.
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Those were at the top of my list as well. Same with Qatar.
Was also thinking Solomon Islands and Indonesia.
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I’d say, whoever hides the money of the rich and has no extradition agreements with the US.
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It’s a cult.
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Also obligatory:
They did a huge deep dive in 2016, signing up for the “classes”, working their way up, going to their parties, etc. It’s something like 15 episodes? A really epic series.
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It really is a testament to motivated reasoning that a religion can exist wherein the founder was open about it being bullshit and it’s all clearly bad sci-fi he wrote on the toilet, and all that is still in living memory. Everyone has to know it’s bullshit. It’s on record as bullshit. People who knew him are still around to tell you it’s bullshit. I can’t imagine a stupider premise for a belief system, yet it’s one of the largest in the world. I can’t even comprehend it.
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The plaintiffs allege that they were imprisoned on that big fancy ship, which is full of blue asbestos. Two of them say that they were exposed to blue asbestos.
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