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Mark 'Marty' Rathbun: Standard Scientology

anonomog

Gold Meritorious Patron
XB,

Hate to bother you so early, but I think we'll be needing your translation skills again: :coolwink:

http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/effect-and-cause/

attachment.php

I tried. Eyes glazed.Passed out a few times.Remembered I had the toilet to unblock and it really offered a preferable altenative to continuing...I didn't get to the second paragraph.
Life is too short.
 

CommunicatorIC

@IndieScieNews on Twitter
While I don't think it merits a full cross-post or new thread, Marty has a new post up with some references to Scientology.

Effect and Cause
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/effect-and-cause/

Excerpts:
If this sounds intuitively similar to the ideas you may have experienced in studying Buddhism or the words of Lao Tzu, others have too. Many have written about that correlation. The most easy to follow and enjoyable to read for me has been Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics. Any mind yet somewhat intact after years of adhering to scientology sci-fi mythology as cold, hard reality, still has the potential for seeing through the self-limiting constructs it has been persuaded to abide. The greatest difficultly with that is getting the person to give ‘the highest purpose in the universe is the creation of an effect’ a rest for a moment. That is followed by the next greatest difficulty which is getting the person to spend a little time learning of the evolution of thought on planet earth. The Tao of Physics, again, is a great – relatively easy to follow – place to start on that score. There is not a single generic phenomenon (unpatentable) that Hubbard attempted to monopolize by complicating and masquerading with his inimitable, sci-fi fanasty universe view that is not explained in simple, scientifically-supported terms by Capra.
One last word of advice. Should absorbing intellect not crippled by compliance to two-value logic prove impossible for the binary thinking scientologist, a primer may be in order. The End of Suffering by Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak gives a wonderful introduction to four-valued logic, the real thing Hubbard pretended to introduce – but never seriously applied in scientology – under the heading of ‘infinity logic’.
 
While I don't think it merits a full cross-post or new thread, Marty has a new post up with some references to Scientology.

Effect and Cause
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/effect-and-cause/

Excerpts:

I think it somewhat depends on the viewpoint you read it in.

To a once-in, he is essentially saying that the Tao of Physics book (which I am reading by the way, and actually is quite interesting) can bring order to a lot of questions that Hubbard's works might have stirred up (to those who tried to seriously apply it). In reading some of the book so far, it is essentially about pointing out how higher level physics and Eastern philosophies essentially agree. E.g. Hubbard never delivered in Scn. what he sold as "religion and science meeting" but instead offered his own sci-fi to lock people into the cult - but there are other works (he references) that have. He offered those who can't get past the mind-numbing ideas from Hubbard-speak another book to ease into the Tao of Physics.

To a never-in, "but interested" - he essentially offered some works that marry science and philosophy that could be of interest.

In any case, he essentially attacked, challenged, or deconstructed some deeply held Hubbard-speak axioms/beliefs/imaginings/plagarisms (choose your own noun), again. (E.g. "the highest purpose in this universe is the creation of an effect".)
 

lotus

stubborn rebel sheep!
I would have preferred if you had asked me first prior to posting a pic of me. lol.

Never mind. What has been done has been done. :biggrin:

Oh I am sorry Sally!
Anyway, OSA had it for long! :confused2:

You can write a KR if you wish! :biggrin:
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
He does seem to be using a style which is a bit more about the style than being clear (no pun intended). Actually, with some of it I see it rolling out and it's like watching two acrobats or a gymnast: how is this sentence going to end in one piece....how is coherence going to be saved from disaster considering the ongoing leaps and twists of academic eloquence? I must admit I am a bit impressed how he brings it off generally without too much damage. I prefer clarity though, even if I am not always clear myself.


LOL. Cool analogy.

His writing style all too often adds a drudgery factor, requiring the reader do too much work for too little revelation. It appears to be an amateurish mistake in which he apparently feels uncertain about his academic credentials and seeks to remedy the lack of altitude by adding a lot of gratuitous rhetorical flourish.

In a way, Marty's pregnant prose reminds me of Hubbard's "Sea Org #1 Line" policy ("All letters addressed to me shall be received by me.") but, instead: "All adjectives known to me shall be used by me."
 

Free Being Me

Crusader

I am experiencing dizziness of unprecedented order of magnitude :nervous:


dizzy1_zps001ac77f.png



It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay

Because I was afraid to speak
When I was just a lad
My father gave me nose a tweak
And told me I was bad

But then one day I learned a word
That saved me achin' nose
The biggest word I ever heard
And this is how it goes, oh

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay

He traveled all around the world
And everywhere he went
He'd use his word and all would say
There goes a clever gent

When Dukes and Maharajahs
Pass the time of day with me
I say me special word
And then they ask me out to tea

Oh, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay

No, you can say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus
But that's going a bit too far, don't you think?

So when the cat has got your tongue
There's no need for dismay
Just summon up this word
And then you've got a lot to say

But better use it carefully
Or it could change your life
For example, yes, one night I said it to me girl
And now me girl's my wife, oh, and a lovely thing she's too

She's, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious


:laugh::giggle::hysterical:

Marty forgot a word in his tortured essay... lol. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter


Pretty nasty, tacky and bitchy. Dunno if it qualifies as fair game. But the comments are attacks, anyway.

I notice that, while they talk about nattering, some of them are doing just that. I posted a relatively mild question for starters, but if there're replies, I'll dive more deeply in.

This reminds me of the more tiresome political arguments where people focus on Repblicans or Democrats or Liberals instead of on particular issues.
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
It's been many years since I've read The Tao of Physics, and I can scarcely recollect any of what it says. I do retain the impression that I wasn't impressed. Its supposed correspondences between Chinese philosophy and quantum mechanics depended largely on misconceptions about one or the other (or both).

The truth is that quantum mechanics is radically alien to human intuition. One can carefully learn its mathematical rules, as one learns an abstract game, but the feeling of confident familiarity that one can eventually get about less alien subjects just never really comes with quantum mechanics. The best one can do is to identify some aspects of QM that are — in certain ways — somewhat like certain more familiar things. One ends up comparing different aspects of QM to very different things, however; it's the blind men and the elephant.

Chinese philosophy is not alien to humanity, but simply foreign to most westerners. It is another set of ideas that is not alien to the human mind. So Chinese philosophy may offer some partial analogies to some aspects of quantum mechanics, and some of these may be novel to westerners. If westerners learn some Chinese philosophy, they may broaden their palette of partial analogies for quantum mechanical phenomena. That may be worth doing, but it would be a delusion to imagine that one was thereby attaining a true understanding of quantum mechanics — or of Chinese philosophy.

Maybe reading Capra would be good for recovering Scientologists, because even if his claims to unify science and religion are illusory, I'm sure he did a lot better than Hubbard. Capra is at least making some effort to do justice to two really substantial subjects, whereas Hubbard just made everything up out of his own pulp-writer's noggin, and said it was science and religion. A recovering Scientologist might well be able to recognize this difference, and so recognize that, far from being the only person ever to make a serious effort at creating a science of the spirit, L. Ron Hubbard made much less of an effort at this than others have.

A recovering Scientologist might well find it all too easy to transfer their former faith in Hubbard to Capra, however. I would caution against this. I may be misremembering the book here, but from my recollection I think that reading Capra should probably create a feeling that one must be missing something, because the author keeps implying that he's giving this great revelation, but for the life of you, you can't quite make sense of it. A few things kind of ring bells, but there are a lot of mysterious gaps where the words just don't seem to have anything clear behind them. If you feel this way, I'd say you're simply right. Emperor Fritjof may not be as full Monty as Emperor Ron was, but he's not really wearing all that much. Read his book, admire his few bangles if you like them, and move on.

If you're a recovering Scientologist like Rathbun, however, you may be all too used to blaming yourself for the patches of text that seem incomprehensible, and assuming that the Great Man really does have it all explained, the way he says he does. You may be highly practiced in the spiritual art of pretending to understand nonsense, maybe even to the point where you unconsciously assume that pretended understanding of nonsense is enlightenment. You feel the old, familiar cognitive dissonance, and it feels like grace. I think that Rathbun may be in this sort of state. After all, he has the added difficulty of being not just a recovering Scientologist, but a recovering Scientology authority. It must be even harder for him than for most people to admit that there is anything that he does not understand.
 

Elronius of Marcabia

Silver Meritorious Patron
Dianetics is the Manipulation of the Endocrine System to release Seratonin
and create euphoric states which are then ascribed to "Dianetics" and the process
of indoctrination has begun.
 
In its most basic form the process is first to get a person to relive a a moment of
pain or discomfort or loss, since the mind/body does not recognise this entirely as a past threat the
endocrine system releases adrenalin in preparation to deal with possible threat.
 
After the threat is seen to pass and the persons system is running like a motor on funny car
fuel the endocrine system "releases" Seratonin which neutralises the effect of adrenalin and
gives a calming and even sometimes euphoric effect.
 
Through indoctrination into dianetic paradigm of reactive/analytic minds
and the direct association implied you can now see how lifelong adherents to the process swear by it, "because it works"
and their personal experience of feeling so much better after a session is the proof it works.

maybe bullshit maybe truth ?
if there is no reactive mind there are no clears
and no OT's:coolwink:

that just leaves Seratonin junkies:omg:

former student of Scientology now vacationing on Markab
be back in a billion years or so :hysterical:
 
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