If you really want bugfuck crazy Christian fundies, look up Steve Maxwell from the Titus2 blog.
Holy shit. A brief description:
- Came to the realisation that his children's friends were causing his kids' hearts to turn away from him, so no friends outside the family
- Sports are evil because competition so no sports, only boring mandatory family exercise time
- Fun is satanic and is specifically stated as being not allowed
- No books in the house except instructional manuals and of course, the bible
- Grown "children" (in their teens - thirties) must share a bedroom for the purposes of "accountability" (couldn't have a Maxwell masturbating!)
- Female "children" can't help by answering the phone/e-mails in their overpriced christian IT business because they would have to talk to males
- They spend New Years Eve literally crying over the souls of their neighbours and others who are damned to hell
- They live on a compound, even the Maxwell boys who are married
- Forbade his wife Teri from drinking Pepsi, as she was 'making an idol of it'.
- Refused to treat his wife's crippling depression
In particular, the parents' corner is a goldmine of crazy wtf. Also worth checking out are the Moody books, written by their poor daughter Sarah who I can't make fun of because I feel so sorry for her. She writes like a child (she's 32), and she was one of the lucky 'kids' old enough to remember a time when friends were allowed. All she wants is to be a wife and mother, but since Steve likes to keep her around the house and because other fundie men threaten Steve he won't marry her off, meaning she has to sit by trusting 'God's perfect timing' (which is really entirely on Steve, since she can't meet guys) while her younger brothers get married and have kids and she has to pretend to be delighted 24/7 because Maxwells don't feel negative emotions.
It's pretty insane shit.
I find it sincerely, genuinely hard to believe how anybody believes in Scientology. It's so obviously, demonstrably, flagrantly bullshit. All culled from the scribblings of a second-rate dime-store science fiction writer with acute megalomania and psychopathic tendencies. Apart from being born into it, from which it is nearly impossible to escape, I don't understand how anyone believes it. If you come willingly to Scientology as an adult who presumably ought to know better, you should lose your rights to vote and reproduce.
Same goes for Mormonism, except it has even more evidence of fraud. The guys who made it up had a looooong and glorious pedigree of scams that follow the same lines of the basic tenants of Mormonism.
Sorry to double post, but I just wanted to explain some of the Scientology stuff, why people fall for it.
People have to approach Scientology with the mindset that they want to be helped, they want it to help them. If you go in and read Dianetics with a critical mind you'll of course think it's total bullshit because it is. But if you're seriously looking for help and want that book to help you you'll find things of worth in it. It especially caters to a certain kind of person, because Dianetics basically tells you that you've always suspected you're unique and special and guess what? YOU ARE. That was basically how people got in in the days of yore.
Now people are drawn in by free personality tests. Scientologists ask you hundreds of questions and of course there is ALWAYS something drastically wrong with you... but guess what? They can fix it all! They show you their introductory movie which can be found on youtube and isn't too crazy (although I literally snorted water out of my nose when they claimed that religion is generally peaceful. Because, you know, it's not like any major wars were ever started over religion). If that doesn't scare you off, the cult behaviour begins. The love bombing in particular, where they flatter and cajole and encourage. They get you doing (and paying for) the basic coursework and of course you get massive "wins" in Scientology lingo,. This is in stark contrast to when you are in deep, where you basically never get enough stats.
It is VERY gradual. We all know about the crazy Xenu shit, but they don't tell you about that until you are literally at the highest level of
financial obligation spiritual enlightenment and you're in so deep you've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (bare minimum) to get there. Also, they teach the members that if they expose themselves to the super sekrit shit they will quite literally die. LRH only survived because he's LRH. So that's a good incentive to not spoil yourself.
There is also a MASSIVE culture of 'don't ask questions' in Scientology and most of their drills are about letting go of the critical mind and just accepting things as they are. If you ask questions you're labeled PTS - potential trouble source - and you're likely to be booted off to Clearwater to pay thousands of dollars to be audited to sort out your "problems".
So thanks to careful use of classic cult tactics - the love bombing, encouraging with big spiritual gains, only releasing so much information at a time, only letting members learn the most insane shit when you're sure they're in deep - people do believe and they believe hard.