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Scientologists on the Loose in the DoD

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
I've read a fair amount on Scientology. For a never-in I consider myself more informed than your average bear on this subject.

But every time I dig a little deeper (and one of the things I love about this board is that it makes me dig deeper and deeper), I get blindsided by some shit that is so crazy I can't believe it's really true.

Let me reproduce something I wrote on another thread just now:

You know, it takes a lot of chutzpah to come to an EX Scientology board and promote the "research" of a practicing scientologist who used other scientologists as test subjects into paranormal research. :hysterical: :hysterical: :hysterical:

As noted by Martin Gardner:

Puthoff began his career as a dedicated Scientologist. He had been de¬clared a “clear”—a person free of malicious “engrams” recorded on his brain while he was an embryo.

Oh, a Natural Clear, eh?

And this guy:

The Targ and Puthoff experiments were part of the government funded research at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from the beginning of the 1970's until 1992, when the project was transferred to the Science Applications International Corporation (Wiseman, 1998). The tests Parker refers to where conducted during the first decade with alleged high scoring subjects like Pat Price and Hella Hamid. Some of them had been recruited from the Scientology Church, due to the fact that Puthoff at the time were a member of the sect (Alcock, 1998).

My bold.

All right, I know there are some old-timers on these boards, and others who have had extensive conversations with old timers.

Did anyone know Puthoff personally? What was he like? Why did he leave $CN? And most importantly,

DID ANYONE ON THESE BOARDS PARTICIPATE IN THOSE EXPERIMENTS?

Dirt, people, I want dirt! :hysterical:
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
By the way, the book referenced as a source in the second website is this one:

Alcock, J., (1988). A Comprehensive Review of Major Empirical Studies in Parapsychology Involving Random Event Generators or Remote Viewing. In Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques. Washington: National Academy Press.

Does anyone have it, or has anyone read it?
 
I've read a fair amount on Scientology. For a never-in I consider myself more informed than your average bear on this subject.

But every time I dig a little deeper (and one of the things I love about this board is that it makes me dig deeper and deeper), I get blindsided by some shit that is so crazy I can't believe it's really true.

Let me reproduce something I wrote on another thread just now:



All right, I know there are some old-timers on these boards, and others who have had extensive conversations with old timers.

Did anyone know Puthoff personally? What was he like? Why did he leave $CN? And most importantly,

DID ANYONE ON THESE BOARDS PARTICIPATE IN THOSE EXPERIMENTS?

Dirt, people, I want dirt! :hysterical:

Who wants dirt when you can get pure horseshit in abundance anytime? :)
 

TG1

Angelic Poster
Loved the Creation Museum blog write-up. Hilarious. I'd have been guffawing and wetting my pants all the way through it.

:hysterical:
 

Teanntás

Silver Meritorious Patron
I've read a fair amount on Scientology. For a never-in I consider myself more informed than your average bear on this subject.

But every time I dig a little deeper (and one of the things I love about this board is that it makes me dig deeper and deeper), I get blindsided by some shit that is so crazy I can't believe it's really true.

Let me reproduce something I wrote on another thread just now:



All right, I know there are some old-timers on these boards, and others who have had extensive conversations with old timers.

Did anyone know Puthoff personally? What was he like? Why did he leave $CN? And most importantly,

DID ANYONE ON THESE BOARDS PARTICIPATE IN THOSE EXPERIMENTS?

Dirt, people, I want dirt! :hysterical:

"You know, it takes a lot of chutzpah to come to an EX Scientology board and promote the "research" of a practicing scientologist who used other scientologists as test subjects into paranormal research. "

You make this sound very sinister with the use of 'test subjects' and apparently you dismiss the 'research'. BTW, who is the 'practicing scientologist' being referred to? Puthoff severed all ties with Scientology in the late 70's

There are loads of video material on Puthoff online including this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HeZxQYEQRw

http://vimeo.com/16506587
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
"You know, it takes a lot of chutzpah to come to an EX Scientology board and promote the "research" of a practicing scientologist who used other scientologists as test subjects into paranormal research. "

You make this sound very sinister with the use of 'test subjects' and apparently you dismiss the 'research'. BTW, who is the 'practicing scientologist' being referred to? Puthoff severed all ties with Scientology in the late 70's

There are loads of video material on Puthoff online including this

From ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn

Scientologists are programmed to be extremely susceptible to hypnosis, so it doesn't get much easier than working a crowd of Scientologists, but it even works on non-Scientologists.

From Tiger Lilly:

Stan Gerson came to an event when I was in back in the late '80's. He put on a great magic show. It was no different than other magic shows I had seen, but he did a nice job linking rings, pulling rabbits out of hats etc. Very entertaining. The staff was utterly blown away, attributing it to his OT abilities. At the time I just figured they'd never been to a magic show, and the thought came to me that it was what they wanted to believe so they made themselves believe it. I just thought it was cute they were so devoted.

. . . . . IF ONLY I had taken this one step further in my mind at that time. I had realized that the staff believed Stan Gerson's magic tricks were OT abilities because they wanted to believe it, but the thought didn't cross my mind that they believed all of the "tech" because they wanted to so badly. :duh: It wasn't "cute" at all. It was flat-out gullible.

Do I need to make my point any clearer?

Using practicing Scientologists, believers in a UFO cult, in this kind of research is not sinister.

It's stupid.
 

Teanntás

Silver Meritorious Patron
From ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn



From Tiger Lilly:



Do I need to make my point any clearer?

Using practicing Scientologists, believers in a UFO cult, in this kind of research is not sinister.

It's stupid.

What is stupid, IMO, is to make assumptions about somebody or their research because they were at one time in Scientology.

Ah, yes, CSI (Interesting initials BTW)

"Most psychic people have never heard of this organization. The original name was: Committee for Scientific Investigations for Claims of the Paranormal. (CSICOP) It’s since been shortened to CSI. It should be noted that they are not a scientific organization, nor do they normally do investigations. They have a popular magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer which is also not a scientific, peer reviewed journal.

What they do very, very well is pretend to be scientific. They are basically an atheist marketing organization dedicated to the systematic debunking of all psychic research through pseudo-science, talking points, ridicule and lobbying. In particular, they lobby real scientific organizations, using their list of well educated fellows to discourage any active interest in any parapsychological studies. (link here) They maintain the pretense of objectivity, but in reality, they are anything but. George Hansen writes:

In examining the scientific status of CSICOP, sociologists Pinch and Collins (1984) described the Committee as a “scientific-vigilante” organization (p. 539). Commenting on an article in SI, medical professor Louis Lasagna (1984) wrote: “One can almost smell the fiery autos-da-fe of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition” (p. 12). Engineering professor Leonard Lewin (1979) noted that in SI articles “the rhetoric and appeal to emotion seemed rather out of place” (p. 9). Rockwell, Rockwell, and Rockwell (1978b) called CSICOP members “irrational rationalists” (see also Kurtz, 1978b; Rockwell, Rockwell, & Rockwell, 1978a). Sociologist Hans Sebald (1984) described contributors to SI as “combative propagandists” (p. 122). Adams (1987) compared CSICOP with the Cyclops; Robert Anton Wilson (1986) labeled CSICOP the “New Inquisition,” and White (1979) called them “new disciples of scientism.” McConnell (1987) wrote: “I cannot escape the conviction that those who control CSICOP are primarily bent upon the vilification of parapsychology and parapsychologists” (p. 191). Clearly, CSICOP has its share of detractors."

http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/...cop-a-pseudo-scientific-skeptic-organization/

Richard Dawkins "Not interested in Evidence (Speaking with Rupert Sheldrake)

"The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.

Richard seemed uneasy and said, “I don’t want to discuss evidence”. “Why not?” I asked. “There isn’t time. It’s too complicated. And that’s not what this programme is about.” The camera stopped.

The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.

I said to Russell, “If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it’s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that’s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn’t interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise.”

Richard said, “It’s not a low grade debunking exercise; it’s a high grade debunking exercise.”

In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.

Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that “The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans”. Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote “the public understanding of science,” of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown?"

http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/Dawkins.html
 
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