Who's closer to Hubbard? (aka who is higher ranked)

Tom Cruise or John Travolta?

;-)

Can Katie catch up to Kelly with a very $izable contribution?

At a used book shop in La Jolla, I had fun looking through these 3 HUGE 800 plus page Scientology volumes seem to have been the equivalent of their "bible". Both were loaded with 22kt gold embossed leather covers, 22kt titles & contents, more vellum leaf pages than any 19th century upscale picture book all lavishly illustrated with photos of their facilities, sacred rooms and filled with...well...stuff.

Clearly they target the very affluent. They must spend more money (per volume) on their literature than any organization in the world.

Obviously if one has money burning holes in one's pocket and another hole in one's head - this stuff must be quite an appealing alternative to conventional religions:

Buying one's way into heaven via Christianity, Judaism, etcetera is cheap, therefore it must be a scam. Scientology charges much more and so it must be legit and on the level.

Clearly such a line of thought has a certain materialistic/consumer logic to it. Afterall "you get what you pay for". You may recall Bhagwan Shree Raneesh(sp?) pulled the same sort of scam/material logic and all his celebrity followers paid enough so he could afford to buy a fleet of Rolls Royces and live like JK Rowling until he got into trouble with the taxman back in the mid 80's.

Now if they just paid heed to P.T. Barnum a bit more they might realize that ALL religions and "organized belief systems" are in exactly the same line of work. Unfortunately, human beings need to personalize something larger than themselves. The abstract concept of an infinite universe just leaves most folks more lonely and ripe prey to any and all deistic or "organized" beliefs.