Excuse me for living in a cave, but has the whole world gone crazy?

Good evening troglodytes, I hope all is well. Now before I kickback in my central-heated hole in the ground and play Guess Who with Clint the Stalactite, I have one quick question: Q: What do Isaac Hayes, Kirsty Alley, Tom Cruise & Beck all have in common? A: They're all FREAKING NUTS!! According to Wikipedia these guys, amongst other famous dillweeds are all self declared scientologists. Awesome!!! I hear you say, "it's nice to see Chef from South Park doing his bit for academia and the progress of mankind". So I bet your wondering how Tom Cruise had the time to become an eminent scientologist in between humping the American dream for the last two decades. Well it was easy; all he had to do was sign up with the church of scientology. For those of you who don't know, the church of scientology is a peculiar 'cult' type of movement that was set up in 1951 by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard who's quasi-religious doctrines allegedly bear distinct similarities with the writings of occultist Alistiar Crowley. Now I'll give you a quick background on this Hubbard character before explaining the gist of scientology. In 1981, reporter Nieson Himmel spoke of time he spent with Hubbard in 1945 and has been quoted as saying: "Whenever he was talking about being hard up he often used to say that he thought the easiest way to make money would be to start a religion." Sam Merwin, a sci-fi magazine editor has also been reported to have said about Hubbard: "I always knew he was exceedingly anxious to hit big money - he used to say he thought the best way to do it would be to start a cult." For more quotes and literary references please visit http://www.bible.ca/scientology-1million-start-a-religion.htm So, now you know a bit about Hubbard, the sage of scientology you must be dying to find out what he cooked up to make his 'million bucks outta shmucks (Hollywood or otherwise)'. Scientology's central beliefs are as follows: People are immortal spirit beings (called thetan's), who possess a mind, body and a lesser genetic entity. Thetans have had many past lives, and memories of these can cause problems in the present day. People are basically good, but are "aberrated" by the memories of traumas. Total infallibility of everything Hubbard (Source) has written or spoken. Apparently, all our Thetan's flew to Earth 75 million years ago in an interstellar plane that looks exactly like a Douglas DC-8. If you don't believe me here's a picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera_in_Scientology_doctrine So, if all this has wet your appetite for a trip down the garden path into the mind of Hollywood Flakes with more money than sense, I suggest that you read the entire Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScientologY#Beliefs_and_practices You can find out what other saps have subscribed to the newsletter of nonsense that is scientology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_Scientologists Now here's the fun part, check out operation clambake's site that's been breaking scientology's balls for nearly a decade: http://www.xenu.net/ And last but certainly least (and to show as little bias as possible on behalf of myself), the official website of scientology http://www.scientology.org/ Over and Out