Could you give a couple examples of criticisms that meet your criteria?
A couple? No. I can't bring myself to be that concise or demonstrate that much restraint.
This is from a document I created in 2013
Criticisms sorted by type. Actually, I DID find a lot of these criticisms online, but mostly on ex-Scientologist websites rather than sites from those who've never been members:
General criticisms
- People get hooked on it for the rest of their life without getting to the point they don't need it anymore. Your capabilities are always in question, life always needing doctoring & further correction. Nobody has reached total freedom or even become fully liberated in life to where they no longer need Scientology, Total Freedom has no evidence and Scientology ensures there never will be by saying OTs are not allowed to prove their abilities to the world. Nor do clears or OTs seem better off based on observation. The treatment never ends and you're never cured.
- The sales pitch of Scientology, or any self help product, seems like it can work the same way psychics and horoscopes do; through the shotgun approach. It describes the “state of Man” or describes its “true if it's true for you” technology and when it strikes a chord with someone, they take it as a hit and perceive a genius and insight in philosophy while the people for whom it strikes a chord with stand and count themselves as Scientologists, the people whom it didn't work for are rendered irrelevant by the phrase “What's true is what's true for you.” as well as by Scientology culture.
- You won't use (or even retain) most of the data you spend thousands of hours going over
Pseudoscientificness
- PCs must report a success story/sees an examiner in the highs of a cognition, testifying before they can test their win, and can't admit they falsely attested (that's an overt) but no one talks about this so it's frequency is masked by the assumption everyone ELSE is doing fine
- Mandatory success stories are institutionalized confirmation bias and may cause cognitive dissonance if the student falsely attested
- The "dating drill" shows the e-meter reads for things with no charge, based on PC's belief, as well as for charge and can't diffrentiate the two
- It's a body of information taught based on source and bought based on source rather than legitimacy, one man treated as functionally infallable and the only wise man despite lip service about personal truth. Inclusion of knowledge in Scientology is based on who provided it, real science is not. It will not update its views of the world based on things that happen after Hubbard's dead, and neither will it's followers.
- While science fights to test and add to old knowledge, with the possibility of discrediting it and strickening it from the books, Scientology fights to preserve it and keep it stagnant, with the possibility of it being altered by official management, like papal decrees.
- Scientology never do scientific studies; of Scientology or its methods. The closest they get is customer testimonials as success stories. No testing for and correcting faulty data or unethecal practices. Just scapegoating of critics which prevents awareness of anything even needing to be corrected
- If you really followed "what's true is what's true for you" you'd experiment with processes and be forced to dismiss all the untestable claims in lectures, but doing either is frowned upon.
- No action or test for if the tech fails, it's just "do it until there's a win"
- As supporting evidence it provides only testimonials, appeal to intuition or personal experience, or bare assertion of untestable claims, all of which mean little.
- No statistics or observations verifying its overall rate of success, and what does exist (statistics and subjective observation) indicates it's getting worse
- Its answers to some questions could be replaced with Freudian psychoanalysis or Yahweh with equal supporting evidence.
The organization
- Scientology cannot be corrected by new imput, and so like any closed system will decay
- LRH designed the church with no way to evaluate or remove bad leaders and no requirements the must meet, but with all power and responsibility, making it as much a magnet for sociopaths as any position of power, and LRH supposedly designed S to succeed after his death? What Would George Washington have done? Better.
- By the church's own logic, it has some mega-overts on psychiatrists, ex-Scientologists and critics
Way To Happiness books are mostly not distributed to people they'll help
- Volunteer Ministers go out as sales recruits and show up at disasters with no food/supplies/medicine
Scientology culture (Warning: May not be true for every Scientology proponent)
- False certainty in Scientology results in followers thinking it should be used for EVERYONE and if it doesn't work on you it just has to be hammered in until it does, that any opposition or doubt is suppression of proven betterment, and that unethical treatment of critics is justified
- Scientology's explanations for things becomes the predetermined answer to every problem without other causes considered. Scientologists can get in the box of waiting for auditing to solve everything without seeking other solutions.
- Missed withholds, reactive mind, etc. - Can be used as an explanation to dismiss problems or criticism without having to think about whether the situation is more complex.
- There's an attitude that exclusively burdens a problem on the one pointing it out without exception; "You pulled it in, nothing happens you didn't agree to, you had overts/with-holds, You have an MU, you're PTS, you misapplied the tech, you have to pay for auditing again if it got messed up, Problem with the org? You should join staff." (This relies on people relating to a negative experience that not everybody's had, so it's shaky and I considered pulling it from my list)
- Scientology's explanations for things becomes the predetermined answer to every problem without other causes considered. Scientologists can get in the box of waiting for auditing to solve everything without seeking other solutions.
- Missed withholds, reactive mind, etc. - Can be used as an explanation to dismiss problems or criticism without having to think about whether the situation is more complex.
Something doesn't work
- Scientology claims to solve and shatter every reason it gives for its failures, it's hyped itself out of any excuse. If only a fraction of its claims were true, it wouldn't be in the trouble it's in
- Clears and OTs don't stand out from regular people. Clears act crazy as anyone, Scientology just claims it's for reasons that require more Scientology
- Tens of millions of people have tried Scientology and stats show 50,000 actual Scientologists (Critical sites do mention small membership numbers but it's more in a sensationalist way ("LIES EXPOSED!") than a way of coldly pointing out a statistic.
- The overuse of the "missaplied tech" excuse gives off that the tech so sensitive the slightest variation makes it invalid, meaning it relies on humans already being perfect (or moreso than they actually are) to work. “People have to be perfect for it to make people more perfect.”
- LRH's failure on the first (health), second (family) and third/fourth dynamic (governments after him)
- Experts in the fields of drugs, education and mental health have not found Scientology’s solutions to be particularly different or effective. Independent, unbiased testing has not been done, and is not authorized by the Church of Scientology. There is no evidence available — and the church is making very sure there never will be any independent testing.
Clearing, OT levels, L rundowns, etc.
- Auditing/going clear is a random, inconsistent lottery drawing of results rather than anything reliable/predictable for a given problem. Some people cure their phobias while others get better in some other way but their phobias are unchanged. Scientology just takes credit for whatever improvement they can latch onto and if auditing doesn't work there's just "other aberrations".
I know of no test to distinguish clears with "other aberrations" from normal people or a problem caused by the reactive mind from one caused by something else
- All these OT results are examples of phenomena, not abilities
If exteriorization with full perception were reliably obtainable, Int Managment would've capitalized on it
- Nobody can demonstrate being stably exterior in any test
- No recalled languages/skills either
- Scientology promotes a sort of faith that what feels real is real, when the mind can, has and does create realistic false memories and perceptions when you mess with it just right
- False memories/perceptions are ruled out on an arbitrary basis
- Past life recollections of other planets seem exclusively very earth-like which has an absurdly slim likelihood
- An engram blowing is used as evidence of the truth of a past life memory but it doesn't prove memories real; other possibilities have not been convincingly ruled out**
- Scientology saying it's unsafe for a PC to see their folders because their engrams might kick back in means even the CoS admits they're never cured of they're ailments
General tech
Assists and drills - No action or test for if the tech fails; they're just supposed to be run until the patient feels better which is bound to either happen eventually or make the patient report a win just to get it over with
TRs – Ex-Scientologists report mixed results, some saying when they use them they're told they're not really “connecting” when they speak, some saying it inhibited their ability to express themselves. Seems ill-equipped for real life situations where you have to actually communicate with and respond to words that upset you, not just sit there and acknowledge them. It seems TRs is not designed to help you outside training to be an auditor, unless you're a scientologist representative speaking to the media. TRs may train people into rote autamaticities when communicating. The “Do Birds Fly” repitition may train automatic responses as circuits, theoretically making Scientologists less likely to question orders.*
Study tech – Does not account for all barriers to study and if taken as dogma may train people to never question that a problem is with the coherense/sense of the material they're reading, but always with their own understanding. Also flawed if you or a supervisor blames every yawn or loss of interest on a misunderstood word. Directing attention to single words to critique text distracts from surreptitious changes in context, strawmen arguments, etc. Explaining poor understanding based on single off-words can be like critiquing a painting based on single brush strokes.
Supppressive persons – Some of the criteria for a suppressive person are extremely subjective and are highly prone confirmation bias. Some of the criteria are either too absolute (“always speaks in generalities”) or too cartoonish (“Supports only destruction”) and the church has reportedly declared more people SP than could actually be true.
- Much of Scientology tech doesn't specify beyond what people try to do anyway. Disconnect from bad people, Communicate with those upset with you, etc.
Alternate sources of efficacy (Why it seems to work)
- LRH's genius may have been the ability to attract smart people to his cause, glean "wisdom of the crowds" and take credit for their imput. As evidence, his admin and ethics tech was his alone, and is never defended by the "But the tech works!" crowd and is described as abusive, paranoid, micromanaging and unworkable.
Freely choosing and putting time and effort into a therapy has alone been shown to get positive reports of effectiveness for any therapy
- Hypnotherapy can produce false memories, some auditing sessions may meet the basic definition of hypnotic induction (this is less sensationalist sounding than "auditors hypnotize you!")
"OT type" stories can be reported from many practices, and only prove people have unexplained experiences and attribute them to whatever they're into. These stories are also carefully cherry picked.
- People have very selective memories about what went right (confirmation bias)
- Lots of people willing for something good to happen will inevitably meet unlikely fortune after they'd willed it and remember hits as closer than they were
Results
- Scientology is VERY hit and miss when you look at families or other predetermined groups that go into it
- Hubbard must've been terrible at handling suppressive tendencies and withholds to get so many people who knew him criticizing him. Or the interviews are true. Or some are true and some are just Hubbard sucking at handling people.
- Scientology's promised results are not predictable and expected, consistent or reliable
- Scientologists mainly report greater happiness, awareness & enlightenment, which you can get from a million places
**Notice that the list admits to and addresses specific arguments and evidence Scientologists use as support for their claims. Overall, the list addresses why Scientology seems to work.
*Notice the difference in tone in the general list and especially in the description of TRs; for example rather than proposing that Scientology is EVIL and EXPLICITELY BRAINWASHING everyone it points out that it is EXTREMELY FLAWED and LIKELY endangers critical thinking.
Notice also the categories; the amount of space devoted to how Scientology is a pseudoscience and to deconstructing various common beliefs or common tech.
