What makes Scientology a pseudoscience and separates the reactive mind from real scie

[Crocoshark]

Okay then, next step. The galvanic response test is meaningless. You can get exactly the same effect by finding an old analog ohmmeter and holding the two terminals. You can move the pointer by squeezing them harder.

It's even less useful than a polygraph test.

Could you clarify what you mean by the galvanic response test? Are you referring to the "pinch" test where they show that the anticipation of being pinched resonates on an e-meter? Or something else?

 

[Crocoshark]

They're not, though. Faith healing is the belief that if you pray to God hard enough, he'll heal you. But there is not God.

You're talking about about a belief system wherein brainwashed alien ghosts infect humans and cause mental trauma, but you can remove them with special training. You're tying to skip all that and just say that just the training itself is useful. It's not, because we're not infected with alien ghosts.

As I said like three times, that's only part of the training until Scientologists reach "Clear". Up until that it's all about the person's own "reactive mind". Then AFTER THAT it's the reactive minds of "body thetans"

 

[ehcks]

Could you clarify what you mean by the galvanic response test? Are you referring to the "pinch" test where they show that the anticipation of being pinched resonates on an e-meter? Or something else?

Everything about the e-meter. Mostly because it is just an ohmmeter to begin with. It's a galvanic response test because it measures electrical resistance in human skin. And that's all it does. I have one at work.

 

[Crocoshark]

Everything about the e-meter. Mostly because it is just an ohmmeter to begin with. It's a galvanic response test because it measures electrical resistance in human skin. And that's all it does. I have one at work.

Okay.

Thank you.

Do you have anything to say about the criteria for "science" I described Scientologists as using in the original post? As that was what this thread was supposed to be about.

 

[stanfr]

.../snip/...
After all, Scientologists say Hubbard tested his techniques on a number of people to see what worked and what didn't work and kept only what was workable. Is the right answer just a matter of "It needs to be confirmed by independent studies or peer reviewed"? Or is that the wrong direction for an answer? That usually gets a response about not needing approval from scientists who know nothing of the subject and thus aren't qualified.

Yeah, I'd say that's about it in a nutshell. Get lots of other independent researchers to do studies, publish them, peer review, repetition...and it's a start.
My impression of Hubbard's stuff was that he basically stole very basic psychological ideas (powers of suggestion, trauma, id/ego, repressed memories etc etc) then fancied them up with cutesy terminology and fancy pseudoscience (e-meter) that caught on with the easily impressed. But, specifically, there were never any real scientific studies (that I'm aware of) that show convincingly that just because you had surgery 20 years ago, you're now an emotional mess...

 

[thaiboxerken]

Thank you.

This is a response to my actual discussion topic.

ok. Can you answer the question?

 

[Crocoshark]

ok. Can you answer the question?

Yes. But my initial answer was a five page essay (edited down to three pages), and I didn't want people to just take what I said in my own answer. I was hoping someone could give a more succinct outsider perspective on the theory of the reactive mind, as well as the logic for Scientology being a science presented in the OP. I don't want my own answer to prevent people from giving their own.

Scientology as a science

In Scientology, you’re told "What's true is what's true for you." which basically means you accept data based on opinion and intuition. Scientology also advertises its “scientific” efficacy through strings of positive anecdotes, which you could use to sell almost anything from gambling to leeching. Some people have been helped thanks to psychiatric drugs and therapy, to a point where they no longer needed it. I brought this fact up to a Scientologist family member and she said that so what, everything works for 20% of the population. Well then, that sure makes the strings of Scientology success stories irrelevant.

Testimonials are not evidence in science.

Science is also not about personal knowledge based on what works for you. That's philosophy or opinion or personal journey.

Also, while applying physics doesn't make you a physicist, following and applying Scientology makes you a Scientologist, which is not a type of scientist. A biologist doesn’t sit indoors all day studying the works of Darwin and never adding to the field; he catalogs new information, modifies, and sometimes overturns previous theories.

Data is made a part of Scientology because that's what Hubbard wrote. It doesn't incorporate any other knowledge, even from it's public followers, unless it has Hubbard's stamp on it. While science fights to test and add to old knowledge, with the possibility of striking 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.

Real science can be altered by scientific discovery. The youngest person to publish a study in a scientific journal was a nine year old doing a school project.

Scientologists can't make new discoveries.

Scientologists don't study Scientology and publish an analysis of their findings. The closest they get to is writing a success story.

If it's a science, why not experiment with slight alterations of Scientology processes? In Scientology, that's called “squirreling”. Translation; Hubbard's infallible. Even though Scientologists claim they don't accept anything unless they observe it to be true for them. In fact, you can't follow that with a lot of the things Hubbard talks about, from anchor points as gold balls floating in front of you to past track incidents. If they truly only accepted what they observed, a lot of Hubbard's lectures would have very little to offer.

Science thrives on questioning and challenging theories. That’s how it grows, how it remains alive at all. It operates by theories being reviewed and tested by peers. For Scientologists, the critic is always wrong.

Hubbard never laid out his methodology, his sample sizes for each experiment, what he used as a control group (all important parts of scientific testing). He doesn’t seem to have made such information readily available to be reviewed by other people. What percent of people stick with Scientology until they reach Clear? And how long does it take on average, What’s the rate of customer satisfaction? What measurable ways is the life of a clear improved from the general population? For example, lower divorce rate, higher annual income, fewer illnesses. None of these numbers are available to be evaluated by an unbiased third party. It cannot be criticized, corrected or compared to other data if it is flimsy.

But a greater issue with Scientology’s claim to being a science is that it’s said to be the science of the spiritual world.

In order for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable; there must be conditions where it can be disproven. Scientists investigate theories by attempting to disprove them; that’s how we learn. For example, evolution could be disproven if we found a species that could not be classified in the phylogenetic family tree, or if one animal gave birth to completely unrelated animal, or if a poodle was found fossilized in the Permian, And every time we find a new species or fossil, it’s a test of whether evolution is correct.

How could the soul be tested and potentially disproven? Or any matter of the spirit? Science is a tool for measuring the physical universe, it’s territory is rigorous experimentation and physical evidence. When it comes across something untestable, maybe it will approach it, a hand fumbling as it tries to find something to grab onto, but soon it sighs as it realizes that it has nothing to work with. You can’t have a science of the spirit in the same way you don’t have a field of biology to do with rocks. Rocks don’t have biology to study, and the spirit has no physical nature to observe and measure.*

Anecdotes and people’s memories have the same problem of being untestable. Hubbard can say he remembers other planets and implant stations, and following the power his suggestions other people can say they remember it as well. What do we have to go on that we were once all powerful beings that created the universe and got trapped in bodies? It was revealed to Hubbard, not through a deity but through trillion year old memories, but isn’t it revelation nonetheless? The competing Christian and Muslim gods as well as Buddha’s Nirvana were revealed through a sort of revelation, and I don’t feel fully assured that Hubbard’s revelation is less fallible.

Falsifiability is also an issue for the reactive mind.

Are there any human behaviors or other evidence that would be incompatible with the reactive mind? Behaviors that, if discovered would disprove or be evidence against the reactive mind? Maybe if a trauma actually improved someone’s mental health? I showed the biggest Scientologist I know an article about people who gained amazing artistic talent following brain injuries, including British man Tommy McHugh who had an aneurism and afterward not only gained an urge toward painting, sculpting and poetry he’d never before expressed but ended is lifelong streak of bar violence to become a much nicer, peaceful person. That’s easily explainable; engrams can have positive effects to.

Someone can take any behavior at all and decide without investigation that it's the reactive mind.

How about someone born bad? That’s explained by past lives and the spirit.

Why do pheromones, drugs, surgical brain tampering and some kinds of parasites affect personality traits, memory and behavior of humans and other animals? Why can you selectively breed for certain personality traits in dogs? Why would ones proclivities, IQ, etc. correspond so drastically to what kind of body they’re in? Because the spirit has tightly bound itself to the body and made the agreement to act in all respects like their mind is based in the brain. So all humans and other animals are set to act in every way like their mind is their brain, but you can’t fall for it.

Past life memories

In Scientology, you trust your memory completely, going with whatever feels real to you.

I have memories that I can’t distinguish from dreams and dreams that felt just like memories; one dream where I tried to wake up repeatedly until I was convinced I was awake by the realistically slow, vivid experience of getting out of bed, feeling the bed under my body as I sat up, etc. (satisfied, I went on to play in the ever-growing amusement park in my hotel room). Dreams where I thought I felt stinging cold water, solid ground, and the inability to breathe. Once as a little kid, I woke up mad at my mom for ignoring me. She asked when this happened. *When we were on Sesame Street! It was only when the absurdity hit me that I realized it was not a memory, but a dream.

I knew that was false because it fell way outside the timeline of recent places I'd been. Past lives have no continuity to distinguish true and false memories.

In the 1980s and early to mid-1990s, people under questionable therapeutic techniques used by therapists were recalling memories of satanic ritual abuse by cults numbering in the thousands. They recalled witnessing rituals, being impregnated, and that babies were being raised for sacrifices or sex work. Parents, teachers and schools were investigated by police and put on trial. The FBI investigated and eventually . . . no one found any evidence of widespread satanic cults. Only tiny few crimes had been confirmed that even resembled the horrors described in people’s memories. There was no evidence that many of the “victims” had ever been victimized, impregnated, etc. Innocent people had been sent to prison, families torn apart and jobs ruined under the false pretenses of unreliable memories.

Memories can be created by various factors such as suggestion, more recent information, personal expectations, inferences and imagination, and by existing memories altering naturally with the passage of time. In one episode of the History Channel's Unsolved History a fake crashed military weather balloon being “recovered” was staged on a hiking trail. A group of test subjects were lead past the scene and a year later some of them “remembered” seeing alien bodies pulled from the wreckage.

How do you know a memory's accurate after billions of years? According to Hubbard, only accurate recollection gets rid of the engram. How did he eliminate other variables?

For example, my mom says her arachnophobia stems from having been a giant spider who was killed by humans. Isn’t that like someone having a bad spider bite and thus later becoming terrified of other people? Wouldn’t inheriting the fears of what body you take or being empowered by imagining yourself as the very thing you fear or feeling an understanding from the spider’s perspective all be equally or more sensible ways that that memory, true or false, cured a phobia? Therapy for phobias works by repeated exposure to the feared object, and that also certainly happens when you recall events in auditing

This is a long answer. I was hoping someone else could give their own answer based on the ideas and arguments Scientology proposes to newcomers and beginning Scientologists.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Yes. But my initial answer was a five page essay (edited down to three pages).....

This is a long answer. I was hoping someone else could give their own answer based on the ideas and arguments Scientology proposes to newcomers and beginning Scientologists.

That article outlines why Scientology isn't science. I'm pretty sure many, if not most, skeptics in the forum will agree with the article.

 

[Loss Leader]

and asking where exactly the reactive mind differs from known psychology other than assertions about the subconscious.

Real psychologists don't hold a schizophrenic woman prisoner in a converted hotel in Clearwater, Florida until she runs naked into the street and dies.

Real psychologists don't have individuals ingest toxic levels of niacin.

Real psychologists tend to think that post-partum depression is a physical illness that requires medical treatment and not, say, sending a short celebrity onto a morning show to denigrate Brooke Shields.

LRH had no training in psychiatry or psychology. He made up nonsense. And even if he was accidentally in line with doctors at the time, much has been learned in the past 50 years. Medical practice has changed. Scientology has not.

 

[marplots]

Second, more broadly, what makes Scienology a pseudoscience?

After all, Scientologists say Hubbard tested his techniques on a number of people to see what worked and what didn't work and kept only what was workable. Is the right answer just a matter of "It needs to be confirmed by independent studies or peer reviewed"? Or is that the wrong direction for an answer? That usually gets a response about not needing approval from scientists who know nothing of the subject and thus aren't qualified.

Scientologists point to the scientific method; You make an observation, do an experiment to test it by trying a Scientology technique) and form a conclusion based on the result. This is empiricism, at least to the Scientologist. And that is the scientific method applied on a personal level to find out what works for oneself.

What is wrong with this criteria for "science"?

There are many reasons why that is "bad science." First, it relies on subjective anecdotes. Second, there is no clear control. Third, there are no standardized metrics to generate meaningful statistics. Fourth, there is no body of experts to evaluate the material's value. Fifth, there is no underlying theory generating hypotheses, no body of independent researchers generating new knowledge in the field, no transparency or oversight for whatever passes for the current corpus.

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. Hope it helps.

 

[mifune]

Yes. But my initial answer was a five page essay (edited down to three pages), and I didn't want people to just take what I said in my own answer. I was hoping someone could give a more succinct outsider perspective on the theory of the reactive mind, as well as the logic for Scientology being a science presented in the OP. I don't want my own answer to prevent people from giving their own.

Scientology as a science

In Scientology, you’re told "What's true is what's true for you." which basically means you accept data based on opinion and intuition. Scientology also advertises its “scientific” efficacy through strings of positive anecdotes, which you could use to sell almost anything from gambling to leeching. Some people have been helped thanks to psychiatric drugs and therapy, to a point where they no longer needed it. I brought this fact up to a Scientologist family member and she said that so what, everything works for 20% of the population. Well then, that sure makes the strings of Scientology success stories irrelevant.

Testimonials are not evidence in science.

Science is also not about personal knowledge based on what works for you. That's philosophy or opinion or personal journey.

Also, while applying physics doesn't make you a physicist, following and applying Scientology makes you a Scientologist, which is not a type of scientist. A biologist doesn’t sit indoors all day studying the works of Darwin and never adding to the field; he catalogs new information, modifies, and sometimes overturns previous theories.

Data is made a part of Scientology because that's what Hubbard wrote. It doesn't incorporate any other knowledge, even from it's public followers, unless it has Hubbard's stamp on it. While science fights to test and add to old knowledge, with the possibility of striking 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.

Real science can be altered by scientific discovery. The youngest person to publish a study in a scientific journal was a nine year old doing a school project.

Scientologists can't make new discoveries.

Scientologists don't study Scientology and publish an analysis of their findings. The closest they get to is writing a success story.

If it's a science, why not experiment with slight alterations of Scientology processes? In Scientology, that's called “squirreling”. Translation; Hubbard's infallible. Even though Scientologists claim they don't accept anything unless they observe it to be true for them. In fact, you can't follow that with a lot of the things Hubbard talks about, from anchor points as gold balls floating in front of you to past track incidents. If they truly only accepted what they observed, a lot of Hubbard's lectures would have very little to offer.

Science thrives on questioning and challenging theories. That’s how it grows, how it remains alive at all. It operates by theories being reviewed and tested by peers. For Scientologists, the critic is always wrong.

Hubbard never laid out his methodology, his sample sizes for each experiment, what he used as a control group (all important parts of scientific testing). He doesn’t seem to have made such information readily available to be reviewed by other people. What percent of people stick with Scientology until they reach Clear? And how long does it take on average, What’s the rate of customer satisfaction? What measurable ways is the life of a clear improved from the general population? For example, lower divorce rate, higher annual income, fewer illnesses. None of these numbers are available to be evaluated by an unbiased third party. It cannot be criticized, corrected or compared to other data if it is flimsy.

But a greater issue with Scientology’s claim to being a science is that it’s said to be the science of the spiritual world.

In order for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable; there must be conditions where it can be disproven. Scientists investigate theories by attempting to disprove them; that’s how we learn. For example, evolution could be disproven if we found a species that could not be classified in the phylogenetic family tree, or if one animal gave birth to completely unrelated animal, or if a poodle was found fossilized in the Permian, And every time we find a new species or fossil, it’s a test of whether evolution is correct.

How could the soul be tested and potentially disproven? Or any matter of the spirit? Science is a tool for measuring the physical universe, it’s territory is rigorous experimentation and physical evidence. When it comes across something untestable, maybe it will approach it, a hand fumbling as it tries to find something to grab onto, but soon it sighs as it realizes that it has nothing to work with. You can’t have a science of the spirit in the same way you don’t have a field of biology to do with rocks. Rocks don’t have biology to study, and the spirit has no physical nature to observe and measure.*

Anecdotes and people’s memories have the same problem of being untestable. Hubbard can say he remembers other planets and implant stations, and following the power his suggestions other people can say they remember it as well. What do we have to go on that we were once all powerful beings that created the universe and got trapped in bodies? It was revealed to Hubbard, not through a deity but through trillion year old memories, but isn’t it revelation nonetheless? The competing Christian and Muslim gods as well as Buddha’s Nirvana were revealed through a sort of revelation, and I don’t feel fully assured that Hubbard’s revelation is less fallible.

Falsifiability is also an issue for the reactive mind.

Are there any human behaviors or other evidence that would be incompatible with the reactive mind? Behaviors that, if discovered would disprove or be evidence against the reactive mind? Maybe if a trauma actually improved someone’s mental health? I showed the biggest Scientologist I know an article about people who gained amazing artistic talent following brain injuries, including British man Tommy McHugh who had an aneurism and afterward not only gained an urge toward painting, sculpting and poetry he’d never before expressed but ended is lifelong streak of bar violence to become a much nicer, peaceful person. That’s easily explainable; engrams can have positive effects to.

Someone can take any behavior at all and decide without investigation that it's the reactive mind.

How about someone born bad? That’s explained by past lives and the spirit.

Why do pheromones, drugs, surgical brain tampering and some kinds of parasites affect personality traits, memory and behavior of humans and other animals? Why can you selectively breed for certain personality traits in dogs? Why would ones proclivities, IQ, etc. correspond so drastically to what kind of body they’re in? Because the spirit has tightly bound itself to the body and made the agreement to act in all respects like their mind is based in the brain. So all humans and other animals are set to act in every way like their mind is their brain, but you can’t fall for it.

Past life memories

In Scientology, you trust your memory completely, going with whatever feels real to you.

I have memories that I can’t distinguish from dreams and dreams that felt just like memories; one dream where I tried to wake up repeatedly until I was convinced I was awake by the realistically slow, vivid experience of getting out of bed, feeling the bed under my body as I sat up, etc. (satisfied, I went on to play in the ever-growing amusement park in my hotel room). Dreams where I thought I felt stinging cold water, solid ground, and the inability to breathe. Once as a little kid, I woke up mad at my mom for ignoring me. She asked when this happened. *When we were on Sesame Street! It was only when the absurdity hit me that I realized it was not a memory, but a dream.

I knew that was false because it fell way outside the timeline of recent places I'd been. Past lives have no continuity to distinguish true and false memories.

In the 1980s and early to mid-1990s, people under questionable therapeutic techniques used by therapists were recalling memories of satanic ritual abuse by cults numbering in the thousands. They recalled witnessing rituals, being impregnated, and that babies were being raised for sacrifices or sex work. Parents, teachers and schools were investigated by police and put on trial. The FBI investigated and eventually . . . no one found any evidence of widespread satanic cults. Only tiny few crimes had been confirmed that even resembled the horrors described in people’s memories. There was no evidence that many of the “victims” had ever been victimized, impregnated, etc. Innocent people had been sent to prison, families torn apart and jobs ruined under the false pretenses of unreliable memories.

Memories can be created by various factors such as suggestion, more recent information, personal expectations, inferences and imagination, and by existing memories altering naturally with the passage of time. In one episode of the History Channel's Unsolved History a fake crashed military weather balloon being “recovered” was staged on a hiking trail. A group of test subjects were lead past the scene and a year later some of them “remembered” seeing alien bodies pulled from the wreckage.

How do you know a memory's accurate after billions of years? According to Hubbard, only accurate recollection gets rid of the engram. How did he eliminate other variables?

For example, my mom says her arachnophobia stems from having been a giant spider who was killed by humans. Isn’t that like someone having a bad spider bite and thus later becoming terrified of other people? Wouldn’t inheriting the fears of what body you take or being empowered by imagining yourself as the very thing you fear or feeling an understanding from the spider’s perspective all be equally or more sensible ways that that memory, true or false, cured a phobia? Therapy for phobias works by repeated exposure to the feared object, and that also certainly happens when you recall events in auditing

This is a long answer. I was hoping someone else could give their own answer based on the ideas and arguments Scientology proposes to newcomers and beginning Scientologists.

My succinct outsider perspective is that it is in no way a science, it is a (modern, constructed) dogma dressed in science trappings. And a pretty insidious dogma imo. "What's true is what's true for you." is pure anti-science post modernism, and you can use it (as scientology does) to justify anything you want.

Of course if scientology was just a bunch of kooks who believed in the tech it would be mad but harmless, ie. like the free zone. But it isn't, its also an evil corporate cult that exists afaict in order to extort money from its followers. They don't mind committing what amount to human rights abuses to accomplish this.

As far as Engrams and all that jazz, they are as real as psychic powers and ghosts and gods and demons. Real world medicine and science is actually provable. Scientology nonsense only works for those who want to believe in it, of course if the tech fails then it is always because the recipient is 'pulling it in' or whatever victim blaming nonsense they peddle. Reality is not like that.

There are lots of good online resources debunking scientology. Are you totally out? Do you want to find some solace in the tech really being a good and separate thing from the organisation? (spoiler: the tech is bunk, all of it). Or are you just looking for people to agree its all nonsense? (I guess everyone here thinks this).

 

[Crocoshark]

There are many reasons why that is "bad science." First, it relies on subjective anecdotes. Second, there is no clear control. Third, there are no standardized metrics to generate meaningful statistics. Fourth, there is no body of experts to evaluate the material's value. Fifth, there is no underlying theory generating hypotheses, no body of independent researchers generating new knowledge in the field, no transparency or oversight for whatever passes for the current corpus.

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. Hope it helps.

It does. Thank you!

Just to clarify a couple things.
there are no standardized metrics to generate meaningful statistics.

Could you list examples of such metrics?
By this I assume no statistical evaluation whatsoever.

Fifth, there is no underlying theory generating hypotheses,

By that I assume you mean no hypothesis other than "It will do what Hubbard says it will do"? I assume the underlying hypothesis is however Hubbard says it's supposed to work.

 

[marplots]

It does. Thank you!

there are no standardized metrics to generate meaningful statistics.

By this I assume no statistical evaluation whatsoever.

Well, there might be internal data collection of some sort so what I meant was a bit more pointed. If I say "I felt better after X" and you say, "I feel better after X too" - what is it we are describing? How would an independent audit evaluate what X actually did, or how well? Contrast this with a typical objective measure, like: "Body temperature decreased by 2 degrees F."

Without some standard measure (like degrees F), you simply can't generate data in a form that yields useful statistics.

Fifth, there is no underlying theory generating hypotheses,

By that I assume you mean no hypothesis other than "It will do what Hubbard says it will do"? I assume the underlying hypothesis is however Hubbard says it's supposed to work.

Yes. "If you do this, then this will happen" is not a theory. A theory, to be worth having, gives us a framework we can use to ask (and answer) more questions than we had before. These questions are not about individuals but about how nature works for everyone. And these things advance, as technology and science advances. A breakthrough in chemistry leads to one in biology and so on.

Consider engrams as a theory. Without knowing any details about just how they are supposed to explain things (and what things they actually explain), I would be curious how the theory has developed since the 60's (or pick a date). Surely, advances in computer-aided learning, psychology, biometrics and so on would have radically altered the field since it was first created. However, if the same materials are still being used, in more or less the same form (maybe a shinier box), then we are talking about an immutable religious text, not an actual science.

This is even true for mathematics, where you'd expect none of the entry level stuff to change, at all, ever. But for goodness sake, the math classes of today are quite different than the ones in the '60s. Pocket calculator anyone? Online lectures/tutoring? I've seen at least two "new maths" in the last 30 - 40 years.

Good theories live on. Bad theories die. But all real theories change over time. Religious texts and practices resist this, because there was only one Moses, one Jesus, one Mohamed, one Hubbard. In science, there is no sin in having a theory modified. Especially when new information comes along. In religion, modification is poison, because, unlike science, being wrong is fatal.

 

[quadraginta]

They're not, though. Faith healing is the belief that if you pray to God hard enough, he'll heal you. But there is not God.

You're talking about about a belief system wherein brainwashed alien ghosts infect humans and cause mental trauma, but you can remove them with special training. You're tying to skip all that and just say that just the training itself is useful. It's not, because we're not infected with alien ghosts.

Of course we aren't. That's just silly. There's no such thing as ghosts.

Obviously it must be real live aliens.

 

[Donn]

Marplots says it well.

If you can, visit operation Clambake (I think, on mobile here) and start digging. There are several good books out there. Also try Youtube for Tory Magoo and others.

Hubbard was a psychopath who could play people like a piano. He created a maze that traps and enslaves with eyes wide open.

Good luck breaking away. It can be done.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm not sure if there is a bigger warning sign that a "religion" is nothing more than a con to fleece stupid people than the person he founded literally saying he was going to start a fake religion in order to con stupid people out of money.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Saying "Scientology=dead aliens" is like saying all anime is naughty tentacles.

I am talking about the actual majority of stuff Scientologists focus on, not just the sensational stuff.

But the problem, it seems to me, is most clearly manifested in the dead aliens aspect. The aim of the scientific method is to come up with a current best understanding of a field that survives testing against all the evidence available at the time, rather than to prove theories, and the aim of medical science is to use that understanding to achieve significant positive results. Scientology doesn't do that; it defends its own pet theory and explains away its failures by adding levels of complication - the scientific equivalent of adding arbitrary parameters to fit contradictory data - to the point where, ultimately, new information has to be fabricated in order to save the hypothesis. Once an organization has to resort to making up that sort of nonsense just to explain away its own failures, it becomes clear that its successes owe more to coincidence or placebo effect than any actual merit in its ideas.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

As I said like three times, that's only part of the training until Scientologists reach "Clear". Up until that it's all about the person's own "reactive mind". Then AFTER THAT it's the reactive minds of "body thetans"

Which seems to me to be the problem. If a positive result is achieved, it's credited to the methods used; if negative results are achieved, they're blamed on body thetans. This serves to avoid falsifiability of the methods used, because all failures can be attributed to an external cause.

Dave

 

[Donn]

The other thing to note about Scientology's data is: where is it? Where is the raw data? Where are the academics pouring over it and repeating it in tests?

It's in Hubbard's very dead head, is where. That and the Dwarf's very long pockets.

 

[Crocoshark]

Consider engrams as a theory. Without knowing any details about just how they are supposed to explain things (and what things they actually explain), I would be curious how the theory has developed since the 60's (or pick a date). Surely, advances in computer-aided learning, psychology, biometrics and so on would have radically altered the field since it was first created.

Out of curiosity, how might engrams; the theory that wrods and stimuli in moments of pain and unconsciousness cause negative symptoms later on, have evolved with advances in the fields you've listed? I know in concept you're absolutely right, but in practice I'm having trouble coming up with examples.

I'm not sure if there is a bigger warning sign that a "religion" is nothing more than a con to fleece stupid people than the person he founded literally saying he was going to start a fake religion in order to con stupid people out of money.

That's not very convincing when Scientologists feel Scientology has helped them overcome their problems or given them heightened awareness or uncovered vivid memories that feel as real as actual memories. Even if Hubbard said starting a religion was a reall

But the problem, it seems to me, is most clearly manifested in the dead aliens aspect. The aim of the scientific method is to come up with a current best understanding of a field that survives testing against all the evidence available at the time, rather than to prove theories, and the aim of medical science is to use that understanding to achieve significant positive results. Scientology doesn't do that; it defends its own pet theory and explains away its failures by adding levels of complication - the scientific equivalent of adding arbitrary parameters to fit contradictory data - to the point where, ultimately, new information has to be fabricated in order to save the hypothesis. Once an organization has to resort to making up that sort of nonsense just to explain away its own failures, it becomes clear that its successes owe more to coincidence or placebo effect than any actual merit in its ideas.

Dave

I admit, I never saw body thetans as a post hoc rationalization before, even though I acknowledged they made "clear" meaningless.

Which seems to me to be the problem. If a positive result is achieved, it's credited to the methods used; if negative results are achieved, they're blamed on body thetans. This serves to avoid falsifiability of the methods used, because all failures can be attributed to an external cause.

Dave

To be clear, body thetans are only used to justify the fact people still have problems when they go "clear", there's plenty of other justifications for different negative results; misapplied tech probably being the biggest one.