Hey it’s not my idea but it’s not sillier than prayer cloths and Dead Jew crackers: France looks into ‘magic cheese’

A tragic accident. Or was it? Perhaps, but the unspoken contributor to this death was the deranged founder of The Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Although he was a moderately successful science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard is best known as the creator of Scientology, a pseudo-scientific UFO cult – the claims of which sound suspiciously like one of L. Ron’s B-level sci-fi yarns. Prior to his career as a con man, I mean cult leader, he had a brief and highly exaggerated military career. He also suffered from mental illness.

Jett Travolta: Time to Audit Scientology’s Anti-Medicine Stance

Whatever the cause of his seizures, a Travolta family lawyer now says Jett had been taking Depakote, an anti-seizure medication, but had to stop it because of liver damage. Liver damage from Depakote is rare; more recently, the FDA has been concerned about its link to suicidal thoughts — exactly the kind of condition Scientologists they believe they can treat through the religious coursework they call “auditing.”

We’ll never know if Jett could have been helped with proper medication. We’ll never know how many people have been duped by Scientology into avoiding medications that could have saved them – with the inevitable tragic results.

What we do know is that people like Travolta continue to choose blind faith over reason and logic, and sometimes other people have to pay the price.

1) If there is anything to be gained by manipulating you, controlling you, getting you to believe things that aren’t true, there will always be a percentage of people who will try anything and everything to accomplish this goal.

2) Even the most ham-handed attempts at lies and manipulation will attract at least SOME believers. The better the liar, the more who believe – but you really don’t have to be good at it.

Of course, commercial advertisers can be fined for making false claims. Religions are kind of like James Bond; he has a license to kill, they have a license to lie.

And then there’s government, where lying is the new truth. But that’s a story for another day….

Happy New Year!

mental_floss Blog » 6 Cases of Shamelessly False Advertising

Miller convinced the woman that she was cursed and needed “spiritual cleansing,” authorities said. The woman gave Miller $108,000 from her checking, savings and retirement accounts as well as cash, jewelry and gift cards. She also financed a Corvette for Miller, authorities said.

You can make fun of the victim if you like, but not until you are DEAD sure that you haven’t been talked into believing something stupid. Just how sure are you, anyway?