re: #8 Nyet

It’s a usual dumb sci fi scenario, which is still much more realistic than omnipotent and omniscient supreme beings, hosts of angels and demons, talking and flying donkeys and snakes, parting seas, resurrecting corpses and end time prophecies.

It’s really dumb Sci-Fi, just bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Good Sci-Fi is much more realistic than Fantasy is, but this stuff is not good Sci-Fi. I have a box full of SF pulps from the 20s and 30s that are full of stories that are smarter than anything LRH ever produced.

Our religions were much better Fantasy for the time they were created, than Scientology is Sci-Fi for the time it was created.

Imagine what would have happened if someone like Asimov, Clarke, Lem, or Heinlein went off the deep end and founded a cult based on some smarter Sci-Fi. The cult could have been a lot bigger with a talented writer at the helm. If a talented Sci-Fi writer founded the COS, they’d probably have a base on Mars by now.