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Scientology and The BITE Model

Gib

Crusader
I think it all boils down to this:

People accept crowd mentality because they think if that many people believe it, it must be true.

That is a fatal mistake.

Hubbard wrapped everything in Total Freedom because that is what people want. He could say anything he wanted and then say that is the way to Total Freedom and people lap it up.

You will find the goal of freedom in any group think.
well said.

Hubbard most definitely latched onto what you said.

Today, same thing. We have feedback such as likes, dislikes all over the world on yelp, facebook, twitter, followers, even here on ESMB. Le Bon's works of the crowd mentality are worth reading, to save oneself, if anything, LOL
 

Clay Pigeon

Gold Meritorious Patron
1) I disagree. I've read Steven Hassan for years. He's extremely knowledgeable about Scientology and several other cults and those that follow his website are normally ex-cult members with far more intensive, personal knowledge in the subject and the intricacies of individual cults than those who have never been in.

2) I disagree. In fact, I've seen the opposite. IMO, the biggest flaw in Steven Hassan's recent work is over-generalizing various groups and cults to the point where they are seen as equal to Scientology in mind-control and abuse, which is something like comparing North Korea to a local socialist protest. They are not equal or the same. There are some similarities, but groups other than Scientology don't make up fake mental illnesses and then supposedly cure them, other groups don't charge outrageous amounts to do so, other groups don't prey on the naive and uneducated as Scientology does and have an entire technology based on fake science with a ridiculous e-meter instrument to create mental illness and then claim to cure it. Most other groups aren't nearly as aggressive, don't pursue ex-members legally and don't have carte blanche to use unlimited funds to harass others and promote their members do the same. Scientology is a very complicated scam that twists falsities with just enough truth to be convincing and carries group and other threats to continue to keep members in. It has far more in common with North Korea than Walmart.

This sort of over-generalization which you support is its own form of misdirection. By huge generalization, extremes become normalized in a person's mind and the ability to differentiate between groups and various forms or extremes of abuse is stunted. It is not normal for a cult like Scientology to enslave others and for a government to condone or allow this activity. It is not humane and has nothing to do with Walmart.

3) As to your statistics of how many people leave and how easily, please provide your sources. Scientology retains contact with anyone who even bought a Dianetics book for decades afterward and is far more aggressive with those who have spent a great deal or seen inside the cult's deeper workings. No matter how hard a person tries to leave, the cult of Scientology finds, chases and harasses individuals. It believes in extreme control and trains its members to do so in order to "save the planet." It has a huge amount of funds to hire and compromise academics, police, politicians and many other authorities and its scriptures clearly encourage this sort of activity to forward the goals of Scientology. It strives to make its cult appear "just like any other religion" and generalities help to do so.

Scientology is an evil, brainwashing cult. It is not Walmart, not even similar. That is all.
Scientology is a nondenominational applied religious philosophy JS.

Yes. One often finds evidence of bipeds running an evil brainwashing cult.


Is Christianity evil? Five million europeans burned at the stake in the Middle Ages, most charged as heretics by "Christian" authorities.

WE...


Are flawed creatures JS...
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
Scientology is a nondenominational applied religious philosophy JS.

Yes. One often finds evidence of bipeds running an evil brainwashing cult.


Is Christianity evil? Five million europeans burned at the stake in the Middle Ages, most charged as heretics by "Christian" authorities.

WE...

Are flawed creatures JS...
"The most dramatic [recent] changes in our vision of the Great Hunt [have] centered on the death toll," notes Jenny Gibbons. She points out that estimates made prior to the mid-1970s, when detailed research into trial records began, "were almost 100% pure speculation." (Gibbons, Recent Developments.) "On the wilder shores of the feminist and witch-cult movements," writes Robin Briggs, "a potent myth has become established, to the effect that 9 million women were burned as witches in Europe; gendercide rather than genocide. [See, e.g., the witch-hunt documentary "The Burning Times".] This is an overestimate by a factor of up to 200, for the most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20 to 25 per cent were men." Briggs adds that "these figures are chilling enough, but they have to be set in the context of what was probably the harshest period of capital punishments in European history." (Briggs, Witches & Neighbours, p. 8.)
Brian Levack's book The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe arrives at roughly similar conclusions. Levack "surveyed regional studies and found that there were approximately 110,000 witch trials. Levack focused on recorded trials, not executions, because in many cases we have evidence that a trial occurred but no indication of its outcomes. On average, 48% of trials ended in an execution, [and] therefore he estimated 60,000 witches died. This is slightly higher than 48% to reflect the fact that Germany, the center of the persecution, killed more than 48% of its witches." (Gibbons, Recent Developments.)
Nonetheless, in the view of Gendercide Watch, even such a reduced and diffused death-toll should be considered "gendercidal," in that it inflicted mass gender-selective killing on European women. Such killing does not need to be totalizing, either in its ambitions or its impact, to meet the definitions of gendercide and genocide that we use. Indeed, it is arguable that at no other time in European history have adult women been targeted selectively, on such a scale, for torture and annihilation.

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zab...Witchcraft and Grimoires/case_witchhunts.html
 

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
I think it all boils down to this:

People accept crowd mentality because they think if that many people believe it, it must be true.

That is a fatal mistake.

Hubbard wrapped everything in Total Freedom because that is what people want. He could say anything he wanted and then say that is the way to Total Freedom and people lap it up.

You will find the goal of freedom in any group think.

Here is an interesting item on that topic. (I read the book many years ago.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
 
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