I had a conversation with someone the other night about Beck. The girl I spoke with was saying how disappointing and weird it was that Beck was into Scientology. I personally thought it was an Andy Kauffman-style joke, but the evidence seems to be inconclusive.

This is really a side note in a more interesting point I found about the faux-religion. Scientology is a genuine religion according to the U.S. Government and the government of Australia. Wikipedia provides the following:

In 1982, the High Court of Australia ruled that the State Government of Victoria could not declare that the Church of Scientology was not a religion (Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner Of Pay-roll Tax (Vict.) 1983, 154 CLR 120 (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/154clr120.html)). The Court addressed the issue of belief, rather than possible charlatanism: "Charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers."

Huh? So basically, if you knowingly fool a group of idiots into following your genuinely fabricated and fraudulent system of belief, and they believe it, it's officially a religion?

The interesting thing about this is the possiblity, nay the probability, that the U.S. government has the same idea. I have one word to describe that: awesome. I'm going to start my own crackpot religion. This is just too sweet.