Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Scientology

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “Minor 2” came with a note that it’s “a resurrection today, from the more innocent time of 2007.”

This is a good strip because it makes the point that the claims of many “standard” religions, when laid out in black and shown to someone who hasn’t been religious, seem just as silly as the claims of Scientology, which do involve Xenu, space travel, volcanoes, and hydrogen bombs. (They don’t tell that to novice Scientologists.) For example, Wikpedia lays out the beliefs of Scientology in its “Xenu” article:

Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/ ZEE-noo), also called Xemu, is a figure in the Church of Scientology‘s secret “Advanced Technology”, an esoteric teaching held sacred by adherents.  According to the “Technology”, Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a “Galactic Confederacy” who brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as “Teegeeack”) in a DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.

These events are known within Scientology as “Incident II”, and the traumatic memories associated with them as “The Wall of Fire” or “R6 implant“. The narrative of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in earthly events, collectively described as “space opera” by L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that the “R6 implant” (past trauma) was “calculated to kill (by pneumonia, etc.) anyone who attempts to solve it”.

The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the Xenu story to members who have completed a lengthy sequence of courses costing large amounts of money.  The church avoids mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story’s confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of copyright and trade secrecy. Officials of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public via court documents and copies of Hubbard’s notes that have been distributed through the Internet.

Scientology has done a lot to try to prevent its dictates from being known, but it’s too late. And those dictates are not that much sillier than the Christian myth of a scared Jesus who was God/Son of God, came to Earth, was killed, came back to life, and ascended to Heaven, with belief in this being helping you to have a pleasant eternal life rather than burning in hell.  Every faith I know of, down to those of Cargo Cults, is based on irrational beliefs or unproven claims about the supernatural (some forms of Buddhism may be exceptions so long as they don’t belief in karma or successive rebirths).

But I digress. Here’s the cartoon: