Death by Scientology

Tony Ortega did a great job covering the death or Brad Halsey yesterday, but I am going to go one step further and share my opinion: Brad Halsey was killed by Scientology.

I’m sure you all read the story: Mr. Halsey was a long-time Scientologist who was declared an SP by the Church, but remained loyal to Hubbard and his Scientology “tech”. After a motorcycle accident (which is proof to Scientologists that he was a Potential Trouble Source, or PTS, connected to suppression; PTSs are accident-prone), Mr. Halsey was in severe pain, but like a good Scientologist, he refused to take pain medication. (Scientology teaches that drug companies are evil, part of the galactic psychiatric conspiracy. No, seriously, they believe that.) As a devoted Scientologist, it’s a safe bet that he also refused traditional medical care, choosing instead to relieve his symptoms with auditing and “touch assists.”

Eventually, the pain became too much and Mr. Halsey decided to take his own life – or, as he apparently wrote in his suicide note, leave his body. This is what Scientology teaches: If the body breaks down too badly, just get rid of it and let it die. The “thetan” (spirit) will simply pick up another one, and if one has paid enough to be an Operating Thetan, one can bypass the “implant stations” set up by the evil galactic overlord Xenu and continue on as one was.

Now, we all have our own beliefs of what happens after death. You may think Brad Halsey is in Heaven, or Hell, or Purgatory, or you may think he is nowhere. Gone, zero, blanked out, kaput. You may even think he will be re-incarnated with similar traits.

But Scientologists believe that Brad Halsey, the sentient, reasoning, identifiable being, voluntarily left his body, literally flew out of it, and (provided he did not take the option of touring the stars or taking a decade or two off to live as a horse or a dog – Hubbard mentioned that as an option) is, as we speak, occupying the body of some newborn baby somewhere — very likely with all of his knowledge, experience and personality intact, or at least just below the surface.

All he needs to do is wait it out for a few years ’till he’s old enough to pick up the E-Meter cans, then he can get back to helping to depose Miscavige and purify the Tech, or whatever it is the indies think they are going to do.

I’m straying from my point, so let me reiterate: Brad Halsey chose to avoid medication and end his own life based on the outcome promised to him by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.

It’s the same mindset that keeps people like Shelly Miscavige and Heber Jentzsch in Scientology’s prison camps… by their own free will.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe everyone has the right to end their own life – but I’d rather it be a properly informed choice. Mr. Halsay made his decision based on what Hubbard told him. Had Mr. Halsey recovered from his Scientology experience, would he have made the same choices? Or would he have pursued proper medical care, and perhaps managed to live a longer life with less pain… or perhaps no pain at all?

Sadly, we will never know, because Brad Halsey was a believing Scientologist.

To Mr. Halsey’s loved ones, I offer my deepest condolences, and I hope you will understand the spirit in which this article is written.

And to L. Ron Hubbard, I say: Congratulations, you old fraudulent fuck – twenty-eight years dead and you got another one. I bet you’re laughing your flabby, Vistaril-filled ass off.

ML,
Caliwog

A quote for the Hubbard apologists

“I was so excited about the function of auditing and its potential for assisting individuals to become more able and aware, that I was willing to overlook Hubbard’s faults, as they gradually became known to me. That was up to a point of course, the final point being my realization that his intentions were entirely self serving. I saw that he was in it for money and personal power, and his actual intentions were not as stated.

“The basic function of auditing is a wonderful thing, but Hubbard perverted it. The idea of counseling has been around for an awfully long time.”

— John McMaster, Clear #1, in an interview for Bent Corydon’s book L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?

Can I talk dirty to your daughter?

Imagine you have a teenage daughter. I, a grown man, am alone in a room with her, and in response to her questions, I fill her in on the intimate details of my sexual pecadillos. I might tell her how I fantasized about touching my co-worker’s nipples, or about fingering my wife to orgasm under the table at a dinner party, or about the first time I had anal sex. I might get an erection while talking about this – to your teenage daughter, remember – and yes, I would tell her that I am aroused. And all the while, your daughter will be alternating between taking notes and looking directly into my eyes.

In the outside world, I would be charged with a crime.

In the Church of Scientology, I would be charged a hundred bucks for auditing.

Auditing is the process that the Church likes to describe as a harmless and helpful form of pastoral counseling. It’s based on abreaction therapy, in which a person looks at earlier causes for issues that are holding them back. Unlike therapy (and like confession), Scientologsts are encouraged to talk about their sins (“overts and withholds”) during “counseling.” Unlike therapy or confession, auditing is done using a crude electronic lie detector with someone whose credentials are meaningless outside of the Church of Scientology. And that someone could well be a young teenage girl. (Or boy. David Miscavige was an auditor when he was in his teens.)

This is a consequence of Hubbard’s concept that children are not children; instead they are very old spirits – “Thetans” – in small bodies. To outsiders, there is a world of difference between a fifteen year old girl and a fifty year old man. To Scientologists, they are virtually identical in age, since thetans live for countless billions of years. Hell, they may as well be twins. What does it matter if he tells her that he likes to grab women by the hair while they fellate him? She probably did the same thing in several past lifetimes.

If I were in law enforcement, I’d be interested to know more about this. Religions are not immune to sexual scandal. Talking dirty to a teenager is not exactly on the level of older men sexually abusing younger boys, but that doesn’t make it okay. If someone were telling my teenage daughter about their sexual pecadillos, I’d want to know about it. And I’d probably want to press charges.

Unless I was a Scientologist, in which case I’d want to congratulate my daughter on being such a good auditor. Attractive and smart, too. Shame her thetan happened to pick the body inside my wife’s womb. Perhaps in our next lifetime we’ll meet under different circumstances. That could happen, you know. In fact, why wait until another lifetime? Why not get intimate now? After all, we’re just a couple of loyal officers…

Far-fetched, you say? Perverted, you say? Well, I bet people used to say the same thing about priests – priests, mind you! – having anal intercourse with altar boys.

Remember, this is a Scientology concept, not a Church concept. I’m sure there are plenty of independent Scientologists encouraging their teenage sons and daughters to become auditors. Hey, what did you just think? That got a read on the E-Meter. You were thinking about being sexually aroused by me? Tell me about an earlier similar incident when you were sexually aroused by someone inapproproately young. Let’s go through the entire incident, everything you were thinking and feeling. Let’s go through it again. And again.

Maybe it’s time for law enforcement to have a closer look at the relationships between adults and children in Scientology – both in the Church and the independent field. Don’t you think?

ML,
Caliwog

Why Miscavige is better than Hubbard

In 1969, Paulette Cooper wrote an article for a British magazine called The Tragi-Farce of Scientology. She then expanded it into a book called The Scandal of Scientology, which she published in 1971.

In retaliation, the Church began a five-year vendetta to drive her over the brink. They sued her, they harassed her, they sent spies to befriend her and to follow her, they wrote her name and phone number in bathroom stalls, and they were nearly successful in an attempt to frame her by writing a bomb threat on stationery they had stolen from her apartment, a stunt they attempted to repeat with threats against the Arab consulate. Ms. Cooper believes the Church was behind an attempted murder that went wrong.

The Church only stopped their campaign of harassment because they were distracted by the discovery of their theft of government documents. Had Operation Snow White not been discovered, they very likely would have hounded Paulette Cooper to her death.

That was Scientology under L. Ron Hubbard.

In 2006, Janet Reitman wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine called Inside Scientology that was equally critical. That, too, turned into a devastating book of the same name.

In retaliation, the Church wrote an angry letter.

That is Scientology under David Miscavige.

In fact, several critical books have been released in the past two years. So far as I know, none of the authors have been sued, shot or framed.

Clearly, the Church’s actions have been tempered by the times and years of bad PR. The Church may be hobbled by Hubbard’s often idiotic way of doing things, but Miscavige and his management aren’t completely stupid. (That said, it’s worth noting that the harassment has been toned down to an even lower level since Mike Rinder was taken out of the Office of Special Affairs and Marty Rathbun left his post as Miscavige’s chief thug.)

David Miscavige is pretty terrible, but the evidence indicates that he’s nowhere near as bad as LRH.

And for those ex-Churchies who remember LRH as a sweet old man, I’ll point out all the current Churchies, including Tom Cruise, who think David Miscavige is equally great. Are we really supposed to believe that the latter group are deluded cult members, but the former group have their wits about them? Those who worked under Hubbard and have since left indicate that despite his well-honed Santa Claus-like image, behind closed doors, the old man was a vindictive, angry, paranoid, vengeful old grouch with a penchant for screaming tantrums.

So, you ask: Caliwog, what’s your point?

It’s this: As the organized Church continues to implode and independent Scientologists have their own civil wars, there is still that core of people who think LRH’s basic teachings were good, and they were “corrupted” – by Miscavige, by the Guardian’s Office, by David Mayo, or even by an aging Hubbard himself.

Don’t buy it. Hubbard was an evil bastard, from his pre-Scientology days when he stole Jack Parson’s girlfriend and bigamously married her to the day he died in a Bluebird motorhome with an ass-full of the psych meds he claimed to deplore.

As long is there is one person who still thinks Hubbard was a decent guy, the virus of Scientology still threatens our society. Don’t let anyone derail the focus by concentrating on the Church, or on Miscavige, or on other Scientology groups. Scientology is rotten to the core.

ML,
Caliwog

Death of Alexander Jentzsch

Let me start by offering my sincere condolences to Heber Jentzsch and Karen de la Carrriere on the death of their son, Alexander, who was just 27.

Tony Ortega reported on this, and it seems that Ms. de la Carriere is beside herself. How could she not be? The death of a child is one of the worst possible events in the human experience.

Although… if she’s this upset, she’s not a very good Scientologist.

You’ll forgive me if I’m being insensitive, but I think a frank discussion of the Scientology view of death is in order, and appropriate in this case, since both Heber and Karen have done so much to spread the word about the wonders of Scientology.

According to L. Ron Hubbard, Alexander did not actually die; he merely “dropped his body.” Normally, at this point, the thetan (spirit) is whipped away to an implant center and has his internal hard drive reformatted – his memories are mostly wiped, his image of the world re-implanted, and he is slammed into another body at the moment of birth, just as he was slammed into the body to which Karen was about to give birth back in 1984.

If Alexander was able to achieve the Operating Thetan levels in his short lifetime, then he’s all set. He can control his destiny, avoid the implant stations, and either pick up another body at will or whiz around the universe to his heart’s content. Maybe he’ll hang out with Hubbard. He might even come back to spend a lifetime as a dog or a horse, according to Hubbard. And if he was in the Sea Org, he gets his 20 years or so to find a body and grow up, then he’s due to report back for service according to the terms of his billion-year contract. Death, according to Hubbard, is no big deal.

“What happens to Man when he dies? Basically all that happens is that a separation occurs between the thetan and the body… The first thing one learns about death is that it is not anything of which to be very frightened. If you are frightened of losing your pocketbook, your money, your memory, boy or girl friend, well, that’s how frightened you ought to be of dying because it’s all the same order of magnitude.” — LRH, “Death,” Professional Auditor’s Bulletin #130, Feb 15, 1958

Furthermore, according to Hubbard, Scientologists should not get all worked up about death:

“The subject of death is never a very serious one to a Scientologist beyond the fact that he feels kind of sorry for himself sometimes. There was somebody of such terrific elan, who made him real happy and this person was thoughtless enough to dispose of the mock-up and go out of communication and the Scientologist feels unhappy about it, for it is a thoughtless thing for a friend to do. This, by the way, is a very early concept of death. You now more or less progress back to death as it was regarded very early on this particular track in this universe…

“Death is in itself a technical subject. You can, with considerable confidence, reassure some husband whose wife is dying or has just died that she got out all right and she is going someplace else to pick up a mock-up.” — LRH, ibid

Scientology doctrine is rife with the notion that death is no big deal. So why is Karen so distraught? Why isn’t she happy that the Alexander (who, let’s face it, was only her son because his thetan happened to be stumble upon the body that was about to slip from her womb) has moved on to his next life?

Could it be simple human instinct? Her deep-down knowledge that the bond between mother and child is stronger than the mere happenstance that LRH says it is?

Could it be that Karen knows, even if she is not ready to admit it, that Scientology is bullshit?

Because, let’s face it, if she was a true believer, she wouldn’t be so upset about merely not being able to see her son’s body.

LRH designed his king con to divest his followers of normal human feelings such as loss upon the death, divorce, or disconnection of a loved one. Such things got in the way of expanding Scientology and making money.

Problem is, LRH was a sociopath. He did not understand that you cannot entirely separate people from what he scoffed as as “H E & R” – Human Emotion and Reaction. LRH wasn’t much of a father, but most of us really do love our kids. LRH never understood that when you are dealing with healthy human beings, that bond is nearly impossible to break.

Now, I’m sure that we won’t see Karen repudiating Scientology any time soon. I am sure she will turn her grief into more anger towards David Miscavige. He probably fucked up Alexander’s spirituality so bad that poor Alex will wind up back at that implant station, all his Scientology training and devotion for naught. She might not even stop to wonder how, in this day and age, an otherwise healthy man died of a simple fever, or if she does, she’ll blame it on Miscavige, and not LRH’s quack theories of using “touch assists” to cure ailments that need doctors and medications.

But she’s sad about her son’s death, and that’s a step in the right direction – proof that even the most devout Scientologists can’t buy into LRH’s bullshit 100%.

Again, my deepest condolences to both Karen and Heber.

ML,
Caliwog

Caliwog on the Cruise-Holmes divorce

Perhaps Tom and Katie should have read How To Save Your Marriage by L. Ron Hubbard which, according to the Ol’ Fraud hisself, “contains thousands of successful marriages” (skip to 13:05). Or perhaps they should have taken the How To Salvage Your Marriage course. Or used the Marriage Assist, which you can read on this Church site.

Or maybe they did all those things, but they didn’t work, because a) Scientology is bullshit and b) Katie Holmes wisely realized what this bullshit is doing to her life, her finances and her child.

What happens if a Scientology partner says “It’s either your religion or me?” A proper, dedicated Scientologist will choose Scientology.

Hubbard preached his own version of “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.” His version was “The greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.” The first dynamic is self; second is your family; third is the group; the fourth is the human species. Remember, Scientologists believe that Scientology is the only salvation for mankind. (That’s the crutch that allows Marty Rathbun and other ex-Church members to keep themselves deluded.) Even if you love your spouse, love her with all your heart, letting her go so you can continue with Scientology is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do. It helps the greater good.

And so, like thousands of Scientologists before you, you let your wife go. Hubbard may have been evil, but he wasn’t an idiot – as with his ban on those who had gone through psychiatric care (who might recognize “Dianetic auditing” as totally cribbed from psychotherapy), Hubbard knew the best way to keep his followers from listening to critics was to get the hell rid of them. You can easily get the faithful to ignore the media, even friends and blood relatives, but tuning out the person you sleep with and raise children with, that’s a lot harder. Hubbard knew exactly what to do with them: Cut them off like a gangrenous limb, which is essentially what anyone becomes when they see the real truth about Scientology. Get rid of them before they can poison the body. And so he taught his followers that Scientology is more important than our desires, our loves, our vows.

This is yet another reason why I think Hubbard is such an absolute pile of human garbage. This is yet another example of how Hubbard used (and the Church continues to use) the well-meaning urges of selfless people to like his own pockets. Ron, if the Scns are right and you are still floating around out there, know that this Thetan thinks you are a scheming, steaming pile of shit.

I always wonder what will happen if Marty’s wife Mosey realizes that Scientology is a con job. I truly hope he chooses her over Hubbard. I certainly see signs of cracks in his belief, the lies he just can’t explain. But I’m not optimistic.

So, anyway, no doubt Scientology played a big role in Cruise’s divorce. That’s how you go from jumping on a couch to signing a divorce decree and knowing you are doing the right thing.

Now, who wants to start a pool on how long it takes before Marty and his sheep start blaming David Miscavige’s misapplication of “The Tech” for Cruise’s divorce? After all, if the Church weren’t delivering “reverse Scientology” and “black Dianetics,” Hubbard’s marriage-saving books and courses would have worked, right? Right?

ML,
Caliwog

Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 3

We’ve been looking at L. Ron Hubbard’s “Credo of a True Group Member,” the policy behind Scientology’s “us vs. them” mentality. Let’s get through the last few points.

“13. On the group member depends the height of the ARC of the group. He must insist upon high-level communication lines and clarity in affinity and reality and know the consequence of not having such conditions. And he must work continually and actively to maintain high ARC in the organization.”

Note: The last sentence is italicized in the original.

This deals with the Scientology concept of ARC (Affinity, Reality, Communication), which LRH said is the key to human communication. (It’s high-falutin’ hogwash, which I picked apart in The BS of ARC). The point of this point is that group members always have to put on a happy face, no matter how bad things are going or how much doubt they have. This is part of the reason you always see videos full of happy, smiling, over-enthusiastic Scientologists (who turn all snarling and nasty when Anonymous turn their own cameras on) – they are being True Group Members! This goes hand in hand with the points I talked about in Part Two, in which group members may not “enturbulate” leaders, and if they do choose to exercise their “right” to object, must do so loudly enough for all the other members to see that they are not going with the program.

“14. A group member has the right of pride in his tasks and a right of judgment and handling in those tasks.”

Another one of my favorites. If you’re given something to do, you have the right to be proud of it. This alleviates the group member from having to make any moral judgement about whether the task the are carrying out is right or wrong in the first place. Don’t judge your own actions, just be proud that you did your job! Same deal with having judgement in how to handle it… what about judgement as to whether you should do that task in the first place? Nope, no need to worry about that. (“Ours is not to wonder why…”) And what makes this latter point all the more poignant is that it contributes to Scientologist’s conception that they are free to act as individuals, when in fact they conform to the thoughts and actions dictated by L. Ron Hubbard.

Not that it matters, because in the “group” of Scientology, this point is routinely ignored. Hubbard wrote policy on how to do everything, from the way questions are worded to how the org is to be cleaned. In a Scientology organization (or an “admin tech” company), one is “hatted” in how to use equipment. Few Scientologists dare exercise their “right” as a group member to try to find a better way.

“15. A group member must recognize that he is, himself, a manager of some section of the group and/or its tasks and that he himself must have both the knowledge and right of management in that sphere for which he is responsible.”

More intelligent-sounding bullshit that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The idea is that you must take ownership of whatever little scrap of responsibility you are given. Take my earlier examples of my old-car group or my monthly poker game. Am I a “manager” of some section? No way. I do nothing to help with organization of the car group and my specialty is playing bad hands of poker, not organizing the games, so how, per LRH, am I a “true” member of the group? Now, I know how a Scientologist would answer this, because I have had similar discussions: They would say that I “manage” my individual hand of cards or the old car that I own. Well, I suppose that’s true – but it has nothing to do with the spirit of the point LRH was making, which is that one must feel one is in a managerial role, even if one is just doing shit work to feed the machine. But Scientologists will go to great lengths to make LRH’s bullshit seem workable and true, even when it isn’t.

“16. The group member should not permit laws to be passed which limit or proscribe the activities of all the members of the group because of the failure of some of the members of the group.”

Man, I love this one. Remember, this was a quarter-century before LRH would go into hiding while his wife and a few other expendable accomplices went to jail for Scientology’s crimes. Reading this, I can’t help but think that even as early as 1951, LRH knew that in order to make his scam succeed, he’d have to skirt the law to get around the objections that Dianetics was already facing. Today, this serves Marty and the Indies well as an argument for prosecuting the practitioners of Scientology policy, without bringing the policies and creeds that led to such activity under the scrutiny of law. This is impossible and illogical, but Hubbard never let reality get in the way of a good con.

“17. The group member should insist on flexible planning and unerring execution of plans.”

In other words, get it done no matter what. Another constant theme in Scientology: “Make it go right.” Doesn’t matter if the plans are flawed, or illegal, or morally wrong, or a PR disaster, as Scientology plans often are; a group member is not to question, but is to simply insist that the plans are executed unerringly. This helps to explain the extraordinarily high number of foot-bullets fired by both the Church and independent Scientologists.

Last one:

“18. The performance of duty at optimum by every member of the group should be understood by the group member to be the best safeguard of his own and the group survival. It is the pertinent business of any member of the group that optimum performance be achieved by any other member of the group, whether chain of command or similarity of activity sphere warrants such supervision or not.”

This is the grand finale, and it’s a good one: Not only must everyone must do their best for the group, but they must insist on similar standards for others. This helps explain the rationale behind “crush regging,” the relentless harranguing for money and the berating of those who don’t give ’till it hurts: Everyone must do what they can for the group. Indies love to blame this behavior on David Miscavige, but there we see it in LRH’s words: It’s part of being a True Group Member.

LRH was right about one thing: This level of commitment is necessary for the survival of the group, or at least the group of Scientology. Unless everyone works together to hold the scam of Scientology together, it’s bound to fall apart… as it already is. People leave Scientology when they see the truth through the cracks.

But Hubbard was wrong when he said that the survival of the individual relies on the survival of the group. If my poker group breaks up, or if Emma closes down ESMB, the individuals who make up those groups will be just fine. And if Scientology comes to an end – all of it, not just the organized Church – I have no doubt that the members of that group will be much, much more able to survive.

ML,
Caliwog

Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 2

In Part One, we started looking at how LRH used the Credo of a Group Member to keep Scientologists looking inward, never outward. Let’s continue, shall we?

“6. Enturbulence of the affairs of the group by sudden shifts of plans unjustified by circumstances, breakdown of recognized channels or cessation of useful operations in a group must be refused and blocked by the member of a group. He should take care not to enturbulate a manager and thus lower ARC.”

This is an important one. The first sentence basically charges group members with keeping others in line and moving in the same direction – no flying off on tangents. The second sentence, couched in Scientologese, says not to give bad news or negative feedback to the group leader, for fear of reducing Affinity, Reality or Communications (in other words, good feelings. Read more in The BS of ARC). I have learned this one through experience, by the way – being frank with management about problems and obstacles may be welcome in most companies, but it is severely frowned upon in Scientology organizations.

And this plays an important part in the next point:

“7. Failure in planning or failure to recognize goals must be corrected by the group member, for the group, by calling the matter to conference or acting upon his own initiative.”

Okay, got that? If the group isn’t going in the right direction, it’s the responsibility of the group member to do something about it. BUT – what about point #6 which says that a group member “should take care not to enturbulate a manager and thus lower ARC?” So acting upon one’s own initiative and telling the boss where he or she is going wrong violates the Credo, but not doing so also violates the Credo. This is an example of the contradiction that is frequently found in Scientology policy – and I happen to think that Hubbard did it intentionally.

But wait, it’s about to get more convoluted:

“8. A group member must coordinate his initiative with the goals and rationale of the entire group and with other individual members, well publishing his activities and intentions so that all conflicts may be brought forth in advance.”

So wait, if you see something wrong, you’re supposed to take your own initiative… but you must first coordinate it with the group. In fact, you must publish it for the whole group to see.

See what LRH did there?

He started with all this rah-rah shit about how you are a key part of making the group succeed, and if you see the group going wrong, you are obligated to say something. But you have to make sure everyone knows about your disagreement, which gives them the opportunity to decide that you are violating the first point in the Credo by not approximating “the ideal, ethic and rationale of the overall group” or by “enturbulating” the group leadearship. And so the hunter becomes the hunted! When you do see something wrong and point it out, you run the risk of being labeled as “against us” rather than “with us.”

SP declare, anyone?

“9. A group member must insist upon his right to have initiative.”

Except that initiative, as the earlier points make clear, can get you in trouble. On the surface, this sounds like a cry for individual freedom. In practice, it means that if you’re going to put your head up, you must raise it high enough so that when the axe swings, it gets chopped off.

“10. A group member must study and understand and work with the goals, rationale and executions of the group.”

In other words, you must know the reasons why the group does what it does. Fair enough.

“11. A group member must work toward becoming as expert as possible in his specialized technology and skill in the group and must assist other individuals of the group to an understanding of that technology and skill and its place in the organizational necessities of the group.”

This one seems pretty innocuous, but it takes on its own meaning when applied to Scientology. Because, of course, being an expert in the “specialized technology” and “assisting others” means immersing yourself in the religion… and in Scientology, the only way to do that is to spend money or volunteer your time and labor. (And at the time Hubbard wrote this, it was all about money, not labor – the Sea Org was a few years off.) So we can translate: “If you want to be a true member of this group, open your wallet.”

“12. A group member should have a working knowledge of all technologies and skills in the group in order to understand them and their place in the organizational necessities of the group.”

This goes hand-in-hand with #11. The fact is, it’s complete bullshit. Can I be a member of my old car group without an intimate knowledge of my car’s inner workings? Of course I can. Can I be a part of my first-of-the-month poker group without being an expert poker player? Of course I can, and in my case, my fellow group members are all the richer for it.

So why did LRH include this obviously-false point? I would think the answer is just as obvious: As with #11, in order to be part of the Scientology group, you have to spend money on Scientology.

We’ll finish off the last six points of the Credo in our next installment.

ML,
Caliwog

Science catches up to L. Ron Hubbard

When I set out to write my series on the Credo of a True Group Member, I promised myself I would spend a straight week writing about LRH tech and not get distracted by any Marty Rathbun fuckery. But then he posted Life After Death and the Scientology Axioms, and it’s so farging funny that I just… can’t… help… myself!

Here’s the gist of the post: Marty starts off with a few of LRH’s “Axioms” – I’ll get to those in a minute – and then cites a pair of articles by Robert Lanza as evidence that LRH was right. Robert Lanza is an acclaimed doctor who has made great strides in the field of stem cell research. He is also a proponent of “biocentrism,” the theory that biology is the highest of the sciences and that the presence of life is what brought the universe into existence, and not the other way around. It’s a belief that loosely aligns with LRH’s idea that “thetans” (spirits) “postulate” the universe into existence.

Marty links to two of Lanza’s articles, Does the Soul Exist? Evidence Says Yes and Is Death An Illusion? Evidence Suggests Death Isn’t The End. (If Dr. Lanza owned L. Ron Hubbard’s album The Road To Freedom, he’d know that “Death is only an invention.”) Here’s the over-simplified version: Since what we experience of the world around us (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) is actually our brain’s interpretation of stimuli, and since experiments seem to indicate that the act of observing an experiment affects the outcome, then the universe around us is actually our own creation; and since fields like quantum physics have shown that many of our scientific theories break down at a certain level, science is wrong about the nature of life and all bets are off. Dr. Lanza’s opinions have met with mixed reactions; personally, I think they’re a bit too simplistic, indicative of the human need to come to firm conclusions rather than accepting that there are things we can’t quite understand. (It’s the same phenomenon that leads to our belief in God.)

Anyway, back to Marty, who uses these two controversial articles as proof that science is finally catching up to Hubbard. Wait, let me use his own words, because the jab at the organized Church makes them even funnier:

“Is it not a travesty that corporate Scientologists would be burned at the stake (figuratively) if they were to dare to even take a peek at such a magazine? Is it not a travesty that Scientology Inc is busy using the billions you have donated to them to stage public demonstrations of their flat earth mentality while science catches up with L Ron Hubbard?”

Lesson learned: Do not drink soda while reading Marty’s blog. My nostrils still hurt.

(Marty’s “burned at the stake” comment stems from the fact that the articles appeared in Psychology Today, which Scientologists are about as likely to read as Pedophelia Today. Shame, though, since Scientologists usually grab right onto anything that purports to prove Hubbard right. That said, given the scientific community’s mixed reactions to Lanza’s biocentrist theories, the Church might be smart enough to think twice about casting their lot with him.)

Marty’s evidence is the first ten of Hubbard’s “Axioms” (if you don’t want to read them on Marty’s site or a Church site, here they are in PDF). The Co$ says the Axioms are “truths which are proven by all of life and which represent the most succinct distillation of wisdom regarding the nature of the human spirit.”

In fact, they are made-up baloney that rely on a) careful redefinition of words and b) the utter certainty that Hubbard knew what he was talking about, and wasn’t just a blowhard who couldn’t tell an ion from an eon.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

“AXIOM 1. LIFE IS BASICALLY A STATIC. Definition: a Life Static has no mass, no motion, no wavelength, no location in space or in time. It has the ability to postulate and to perceive.”

One could spend hours arguing the intellectual merit of this. (A jellyfish has no brain; it can perceive but probably not postulate. So does it lack a life spirit? Or is each jellyfish inhabited by the spirit of some poor fucknob who meant to inhabit the body of a dolphin, but missed?) However, to accept this as a “truth” is completely and totally absurd. There is no proof and no way to prove it. But that doesn’t matter to Scientologists, who accept what Hubbard says as fact.

“AXIOM 4. SPACE IS A VIEWPOINT OF DIMENSION.”

Not according to Webster’s dictionary it isn’t. It amazes me how a man so obsessed with dictionary definitions was so willing to abandon them when it suited his purposes to do so. Scientologists do the same thing; tell them LRH was a fraud, and they’ll whip out their dictionary, look up “fraud,” and explain why, even if Scn is a scam, LRH isn’t, by definition, a fraud. But give them something ridiculous like “Space is a viewpoint of dimension” and they’ll buy it without question. Unfuckingbelievable.

“AXIOM 9. CHANGE IS THE PRIMARY MANIFESTATION OF TIME.”

Sounds legitimate and defensible. But there are a host of other theories about time, and ironically, both of the Lanza articles Marty mentions cite an argument, based on an experiment, that time is more liquid than we thought, and that change can occur irrespective of time. But I don’t want to get into an intellectual debate, because that is another Scientology tactic: Argue the minutiae of something until your audience’s brain turns to mush and they just accept it, assuming that the reason Hubbard’s arguments make no sense is because Hubbard is smart and they are stupid. (Considering they’ve probably just paid $1,000 for a “course” that involves screaming at ashtrays, they might be right.)

“AXIOM 10. THE HIGHEST PURPOSE IN THIS UNIVERSE IS THE CREATION OF AN EFFECT.”

I love this one, because after nine axioms that can be explained away, Hubbard drops in this non-sequitor. I’m tempted to say that I could just as easily claim that “THE HIGHEST PURPOSE IN THIS UNIVERSE IS THE CREATION OF A PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH,” but Hubbard apologists will dismiss that as a “glib” non-argument. Fair point, so let’s try this:

I would argue that since Hubbard’s axioms say that change is the primary manifestation of time, and a change in relative position of particles is a natural occurrence, then the creation of an effect is not the highest purpose, since effects are a by-product of the passage of time. A higher purpose would be to impose one’s own order on the universe – to stop the effects of time. So I would say that the highest purpose in the universe is the cessation of an effect.

That makes sense, right?

Of course it fucking doesn’t. I made it up without the slightest bit of thought. But because I can talk my way around it, it seems to make sense. I always talk about Scientologists mistaking verbosity for intelligence. There we are, I’ve just made it work for myself. (Give me a grand and I’ll give you an ashtray to scream at.)

Let’s get back to Marty’s premise: The fact that someone wrote an article in 2011 that happens to correspond with some of Hubbard’s writings does not lend even the slightest shred of legitimacy to his theories, let alone prove the absurd idea that science is “catching up” to L. Ron Hubbard. Both Lanza’s and Hubbard’s theories are questionable, and Hubbard wasn’t the first one to think of them, although he would like his followers to think he was.

That said, I will accept that science is catching up to L. Ron Hubbard when they prove the following theories, which you can hear in Hubbard’s own words:

• Space is warm, not cold
• Lung cancer is caused by not smoking enough
• There is intelligent life on Venus
• There are freight trains on Venus
• Blindness is caused by guilt, and sight can be “turned back on” with auditing

ML,
Caliwog

Read more about Hubbard taking legitimate concepts and completely fucking them up in Positioning, Misunderstanding Of.

Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 1

I’ve talked a lot about Scientology’s “us vs. them” mentality. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard realized early on that in order to keep people in the scam, he had to keep them facing inwards and give them a way to reject outside influences. Hence the Credo of a True Group Member, which he wrote in 1951, shortly after the establishment of Dianetics. (Marty Rathbun and other independent Scientologists also believe in the Credo.)

Scientologists unquestioningly accept the Credo as gospel — but let’s go through it point-by-point and see what it really says. (You can read the original at this Church of Scientology site.)

“1. The successful participant of a group is that participant who closely approximates, in his own activities, the ideal, ethic and rationale of the overall group.”

In other words: Conformity is paramount. In order to be a member of the group, you must mold yourself into the group ideal. This is one reason so many Scientologists sound alike, and often (subconsciosly?) mimic the behaviors of LRH – they emulate his writing style, use the same phrases he wrote into policy (Marty does this all the time), and even disregard the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

“2. The responsibility of the individual for the group as a whole should not be less than the responsibility of the group for the individual.”

This may sound noble, but in fact it’s one of the most dangerous aspects of the Scientology mindset. People ask how well-meaning Scientologists could lock Lisa McPherson in a room and allow her to starve to death. Well, here’s their excuse: The group was “taking responsibility” for the individual. Rather than turn her over to the “evil psychs” who could have helped her, the Scns administered Hubbard’s Introspection Rundown. Hubbard famously said “We’d rather have you dead than incapable.” That’s exactly what happened to Lisa McPherson, thanks to a group of Scientologists following Hubbard’s Credo of a True Group Member and “taking responsibility” for Lisa.

“3. The group member has, as part of his responsibility, the smooth operation of the entire group.”

Again, the idea here is that if one is a member of a group, one must be fully committed to it. This sounds noble, but it just isn’t true. Example: I own an old car. I belong to a few online owner’s groups for that car. I do nothing to contribute to the “smooth operation.” I don’t help run the board. I can’t contribute much knowledge. I just stop in once in a while and ask questions like “How the fuck do you loosen the fucking power steering pump when the fucking bolts are hidden by the fucking air conditioning compressor? Fuck!” (If anything, I’m sowing discord!) Does that mean I’m not a member of the owner’s group? According to LRH, I’m not!

“4. A group member must exert and insist upon his rights and prerogatives as a group member and insist upon the rights and prerogatives of the group as a group and let not these rights be diminished in any way or degree for any excuse or claimed expeditiousness.”

I love this point, because it shows LRH at his most devous. He starts out talking about the group member’s rights, but that’s not really the point he’s making – this is really about the good of the group. The meat in this sammy is that every member must fight for the rights of their group, which Scientologists do with vigor. (Funny that LRH wrote this so early in Scn’s history — he must have known how much controversy his then-fledgeling con was going to cause.) But it’s that first innocent-sounding bit – actually, just the fact that it’s there – that gives us some clue to LRH’s thought process, that he was even then trying to hide his true motivations from his own followers. Sneaky little fucker, wasn’t he?

“5. The member of a true group must exert and practice his right to contribute to the group. And he must insist upon the right of the group to contribute to him. He should recognize that a myriad of group failures will result when either of these contributions is denied as a right. (A welfare state being that state in which the member is not permitted to contribute to the state, but must take contribution from the state.)”

Okay, first, he’s wrong about a welfare state – as far as I know, there is nothing in the welfare system of any country that prohibits members from contributing, or requires them to take benfits. Even the most right-wing conservative knows that, and yet Hubbard spouts off this wee bit of bullshit, and his followers just buy it. Remember when Debbie Cook said she was ignorant of her legal rights until she hired a lawyer? Well, this is why – she just blindly believed in what LRH and Scientology told her.

As for the rest… “exert and practice his right to contribute to the group”??? Fuck me. What LRH is saying is that working for the group is a right that might be denied or taken away if not constantly used. Well, yeah – if you have a job at a company and you don’t do it, you get fired. But that’s not about rights, its about responsibilities – and LRH seems to be trying to get his followers to confuse the two. This is just another way of getting Scientologists to feel obligated to contribute – if they don’t, they’re not exercising their rights! (What a fucking load, but you have admire the genius, or at least the tenacity, of a con artist who could come up with this shit.)

I’m going to stop here, because this article has gone on long enough, and the next to points of the Credo are closely entwined. Tune in tomorrow to see more of how LRH uses the group credo to enforce conformity and supress bad news.

ML,
Caliwog