Scientology abandoned by Hubbard's granddaughter & Miscavige's father

[marplots]

They can't intersect. The arts are real, the paranormal and the occult are not. Some people believe in that nonsense, if it makes them happy then fair enough, but they are only deluding themselves.

I'm at a bit of a loss here. In what sense is this real?

"My brother kneels, so saith Kabir,
To stone and brass in heathen-wise
But in my brother's voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his fates assign
His prayer is all the world's... and mine."

So if I like Kipling because it makes me think or produces an emotional response, there's something "real" there, but if I get the same result from some other idea it doesn't count as real?

Truly, I am puzzled by what you mean.

 

[pakeha]

I took a look, but I fear I have lost the thrust of posting them. (The first e-meter link was broke by the way.)

Was it to make the point that they are simple technology being sold at high prices to church members?

This first link should work now.
http://askthescientologist.blogspot.com.es/2010/06/scientology-e-meter.html

The point was to show that E-meters are a simple scam, nothing more.

So why do they buy it?

Why?
For the same reason people are conned out of their money day by flimflam artists.

...
Try this. Science and an appreciation for reality are only valued because they inform us of possibility, give us options and tools to make the imagined substantial. A way to touch more of the world than we otherwise could, but not merely to touch, to impose on our world the products of our creative minds.

One thing is the product of our creative mind, and quite another is a scam.
Don't you agree?

 

[dafydd]

I'm at a bit of a loss here. In what sense is this real?

"My brother kneels, so saith Kabir,
To stone and brass in heathen-wise
But in my brother's voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his fates assign
His prayer is all the world's... and mine."

So if I like Kipling because it makes me think or produces an emotional response, there's something "real" there, but if I get the same result from some other idea it doesn't count as real?

Truly, I am puzzled by what you mean.

Ditto. Kipling existed, his works still exist but gods, the paranormal and the occult do not exist.

 

[carlitos]

Have you read anything on how cults operate?

So why do they buy it?

Because they are in a cult, and do what they are brainwashed to do?

 

[dafydd]

So why do they buy it?

People with delusions often do silly things. Have you never come across any Hare Krishnas or Children Of God?

 

[marplots]

People with delusions often do silly things. Have you never come across any Hare Krishnas or Children Of God?

Hare Krishnas, but not Children of God.

 

[marplots]

Ditto. Kipling existed, his works still exist but gods, the paranormal and the occult do not exist.

So the book, Dianetics exists, but the ideas in it do not? What if it isn't paranormal, could the ideas exist then?

I get the feeling there is something else here that I've missed. Try it this way. Suppose everything Scientology taught was true. How would the world look different?

 

[dafydd]

So the book, Dianetics exists, but the ideas in it do not? What if it isn't paranormal, could the ideas exist then?

I get the feeling there is something else here that I've missed. Try it this way. Suppose everything Scientology taught was true. How would the world look different?

There would be alien overlords, for a start. And games of ''let's pretend'' ceased to interest me a long time ago. If something is not paranormal then it exists, it's called reality and reality is good enough for me.

 

[marplots]

One thing is the product of our creative mind, and quite another is a scam.
Don't you agree?

Sure. Where I might disagree is what constitutes a scam.

A scam is stealing money under false pretenses. There is an exchange of value for something worthless (or, I suppose, worth less). But that remains to be determined, it's what we were talking about. It doesn't do much good just to restate it.

The question was whether Scientologists obtain something of value for their time/efforts/money. If they do, what do they get? If they don't, why do they stick with it, even outside of the church itself?

Just saying it's a scam, or a con, or the product of a bad science fiction writer doesn't explain anything to me.

Suppose I wanted to take LRH's advice and make huge money starting a religion. How would I do it? What's the secret?

ETA: I hadn't watched the video in Carlito's post above (#804) when I asked the starting a religion question. The video answered it nicely. But I'm still wondering what sustains it. It's almost as if a machine were started up and is still running, without anyone having to man the controls.

I don't see how Miscavage could be the only one in control who knows (if he does) the secret behind the secrets. When I read what the high level defectors write, they don't seem to acknowledge being in on the trick.

 

[dafydd]

Suppose I wanted to take LRH's advice and make huge money starting a religion. How would I do it? What's the secret?

Having no conscience.

 

[dafydd]

The question was whether Scientologists obtain something of value for their time/efforts/money. If they do, what do they get? If they don't, why do they stick with it, even outside of the church itself?

Why does anyone caught in a cult keep on doing it? JW, Mormons, Raelians etc. There is never a shortage of vulnerable marks. They will all have their reasons, it's impossible to generalize.

 

[shuttlt]

So the book, Dianetics exists, but the ideas in it do not? What if it isn't paranormal, could the ideas exist then?

I get the feeling there is something else here that I've missed. Try it this way. Suppose everything Scientology taught was true. How would the world look different?

There seem to be lots of forms of Scientology under discussion here. Wouldn't - emeters would actually measure something worthwhile do?

Really though I think a better question would be, "what does Scientology say that adds to, or disagrees with more conventional descriptions of the world?"

 

[marplots]

There seem to be lots of forms of Scientology under discussion here. Wouldn't - emeters would actually measure something worthwhile do?

Really though I think a better question would be, "what does Scientology say that adds to, or disagrees with more conventional descriptions of the world?"

That is a very pragmatic and a very good question.

 

[shuttlt]

Suppose I wanted to take LRH's advice and make huge money starting a religion. How would I do it? What's the secret?

I would take a bunch of stuff that everybody knows makes people feel better. Talking, listening to the mark whine about their problems. If you get people when they are low you'll get a lot who will be fixed by regression to the mean and who will then attribute their improvement to what you've done. You then surround that with some kind of made up theory of illness that allows you to make up conditions for the patient and make up a narrative explanation for their recovery or lack of recovery. Made up equipment that only works if you are "properly trained" would be good to so that it's unclear what you have actually measured so nobody can prove you wrong. It's important that you have an explanation for why they may at first feel worse after a bit of treatment as you may need to wait for regression to the mean to kick in. You probably also want an explanation for why some people will resist getting well so you can blame either them, or something else.

That's basically how you go about inventing a made up "cure". To turn that into a cult I'd add some kind of dysfunctional relationship stuff to it as well. The kind of stuff that keeps a spouse coming back to be beaten while maintaining that their abusive partner really loves them. Be nice, then be hard on them, but when you are being hard on them explain that it's for their own good.

You want to build up to this progressively. Be sure to isolate them from external frames of reference. It would also be good to develop a paranoid view of agencies that might try to undo your hard work - psychologists/mental health workers.

Again, all of this has to be done step by step. You need them to gradually build up dependency on you and lose their connection to their old frame of reference that would have told them what was and wasn't "normal". If you hit them with the hard stuff, or the paranoid stuff too quick they'll see it for what it is and won't have much to lose by running.

I don't mean Scientology specifically by this. Some things/many things may not apply, but it's what I would do if I wanted to start up a cult based on some kind of "cure".

 

[shuttlt]

That is a very pragmatic and a very good question.

It shouldn't be a hard question to answer though, should it? If it is, that kind of speaks for itself.

 

[marplots]

Why does anyone caught in a cult keep on doing it? JW, Mormons, Raelians etc. There is never a shortage of vulnerable marks. They will all have their reasons, it's impossible to generalize.

I was kind of in a cult once. At least it had a lot of parallels with the video clip I mentioned above. The people I knew stuck with it, at least partially because it made them feel special, part of an elite group. But you are right, there were probably lots of other reasons I didn't know about.

 

[dafydd]

It shouldn't be a hard question to answer though, should it? If it is, that kind of speaks for itself.

It adds nothing and disagrees with rather a lot. Including not conning people out of their money.

 

[marplots]

It sounds like the descriptions I've heard so far rely on obedient minions instead of independent thinkers. I would expect such an organization to implode at some point. Too many indians and not enough chiefs, so to speak.

 

[Marcus]

I don't believe in AAP in a binary way or necessarily giving a decent rank order. However, to ignore what other humans think seems too shallow to work either.

One escape clause from AAP is to try to generalize so that groups can be usefully combined. That gets your populum numbers up. Ideally, you get it large enough that you only have to explain why the few you couldn't shoehorn in are the exceptions.

Personally, I'm moving toward a kind of emergent property of humans acting as an organized collective. Applied to Scientology, this would make for fewer bad guys and no puppet master. It would also apply broadly, across religions. I'm not convinced yet, but I think the idea has legs.

I don't see how the right vs. wrong framework really fits here. If it did, you'd expect only a single religion to emerge (or none at all) wouldn't you? Survival of the fittest idea. That framework doesn't fit what we see. We see an ecology. We see a lot of niches. It rather reminds me of style of government.

The argument that Scientology must work because 10 million people believe in it (or is it really only 100,000?) doesn't hold water, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean that it's useless either.

In evaluating the value of Scientology, I think it's important to look at it's origins, the claims and motives of its founder. the supposed powers of Clears, all the falsehoods that Lron spouted, and yes, all the wacky details that committed members like Justinian really wish to avoid. Look at the video that someone posted here a few days ago, Lron wasn't joking or presenting some kind of corollary, he really expected many people to believe in the sci-fi origin myth that he wrote, and he was right.

 

[shuttlt]

It adds nothing and disagrees with rather a lot. Including not conning people out of their money.

I don't think "not conning people out of their money" is a description of the world, certainly not in the way I intended. I'm perfectly happy to believe that Scientology contains some kind of moral teachings, but unless it goes beyond that, it's not actually making any claims about the world.

To clarify, I mean something that established Science/medicine disagrees with/doesn't cover.