Scientology, False Messiahs and Religion

As I'm sure many other people have done over the last couple of years - I have taken a good look at Scientology. I never felt the need to be a Scientologist, however, I was always curious about it. All the secrecy. Why is Tom Cruise so committed? Who is this L. Ron Hubbard guy? The furthest I went on a personal level into studying Scientology is I did pick up an L. Ron Hubbard book at a library many years ago. I don't remember the title. What I do remember is I read about 50 pages of it and said, well, that's enough of that. However, a cursory interest remained. In 2015, answers started becoming available. I watched a documentary on HBO called "Going Clear". "Going Clear" inspired me to take a good study of L. Ron Hubbard. I was stunned. The real reason Scientology is a religion is to avoid paying taxes. The creation myth of Xenu the galactic warlord who 75 million years ago had people killed due to overpopulation and then had the bodies taken in space planes to Teegeeack (Earth) to be dropped in volcanoes is absolutely absurd. Absurd, yes, however, the way Scientology is set up, it takes years of study and hundreds of thousands of dollars of your own money to get to the point where you learn that story. Unfortunately, if you take an objective look at Scientology with no judgement whatsoever while trying to be completely open minded about it, it becomes quite obvious that Scientology is nothing more than a scam designed to get as much money out of its "parishioners" as possible. This reality is becoming well known now due to mass media, the internet, and programs like Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. It won't be long, I figure ten years max, for Scientology to be a thing of the past.

So, I suppose the question becomes, what should we believe? Unfortunately, there have been quite a few people who believed in complete lunatics. Jim Jones, leader of the People's temple, convinced about 400 people to willingly commit suicide (many more than that died however it is generally accepted that 200 were forced and around 300 were children). Marshall Applewhite, who created "Heavens Gate" convinced 38 people (and himself I might add) that they had to leave their bodies behind in order to catch an alien spacecraft so they could leave Earth and reach the level above human.  All of them dead.  David Koresh convinced around 90 people he was the Messiah.   His apocalyptic vision convinced around 60 adults to burn in the flames at Waco.  Then of course the biggest con man of them all, Adolf Hitler, who had a good majority of 80 million Germans convinced that he was the Messiah. We all know how that one turned out. There have been quite a few individuals who walked this Earth and claimed to be this or that and as it turned out - they were nothing more than human beings that lived and died like everyone else.  So, going back to the original question - what should we believe in?

My answer is I don't have a clue. I respect what anyone believes. I would just ask that people never believe in a human being that is suggesting that suicide or dying for them is necessary. Nothing is worth losing your life over because to me - the idea that makes the most sense is that this is it, one life, one existence. When you die, you are simply a living organism that no longer exists. I hope I'm wrong, but as I said, it is the scenario that is most logical. In the meantime, I will continue to abide by the one religious doctrine I have always believed in - following the 10 commandments. For me, that is the extent of my belief system. As I said before though, I respect what other people believe so I would love to hear some comments.......