8 Totally Batsh*t Things People Actually Believe
6. Scientology
The inherently secretive nature of scientology has meant that most people have little to no insight into what it is that scientologists actually believe. Through reports from defectors and undercover investigators, we've managed to piece together to bits and pieces of the beliefs and doctrines and, boy, are they nuts.
Okay, so to kick things off, Scientology teaches that humans are actually "thetans" - a sort of spiritual cosmic being house in a physical body - and that you are actually made up of millions of thetans from all of your past lives. The "god" figure of scientology is an alien overlord by the name of Xenu. To enter into the church, you must sign a billion year contract, presumably to cover all of your future lives as well as you present one, and go through an "auditing" ritual which attempts to clear trauma using an electrode that measures galvanic skin response (quite how this does this is unclear).
The list of insane practices is frankly too long to go into here, but the final aim appears to be to clear out all of the other thetans from the system and eventually transcend. It's basically sci-fi buddhism, apart from the fact that you have to give them literally thousands of dollars in order to progress through the ranks (enlightenment, it turns out, has a lot of overheads to cover).
The really astonishing thing about scientology is its popularity with the great and good of Hollywood. For a cult that has its own labour camps and prisons, regularly harrasses its followers to the point of suicide, enforces abortions, demonises homosexuality, and discourages followers from using modern medicine to the point at which people (including John Travolta's son) have died, it seems bizarre that the likes of Tom Cruise would want to fling considerable amounts of money at a space alien called Xenu. The fact that anyone can use the terms such as "The Serenity of Beingness" and "Super Power Rundown" without twigging that this has got to be a wind-up is frankly suspicious.
Who knows, we may someday find out that it was all just an elaborate tax-dodge for the super-rich that got way out of hand.