In today’s Slate, book critic Mark Oppenheimer has a piece about the relative validity of Scientology. His premise boils down to this: don’t look too closely at how wacko it is, because you’ll only invite people to look at just how wacko Christianity and Judaism are. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone to think that religions based on zombie worship, virgins giving birth, flaming bushes, and all those other assorted “miracles” were somehow not quite believable. Laugh all you want about Xenu, folks, YOUR worship of imaginary omnipotent grandfathers is TOTALLY legit. Riiiiight….
Zombie worship… that’s a good one.