Student of Trinity
Silver Meritorious Patron
Many ESMB members were kind enough to make a lot of very reasonable comments in this introduction thread. The discussion there led me to make a distinction which I hope is not offensive, between 'hard Scientology' and 'soft Scientology'. By 'hard Scientology' I mean any version that considers L. Ron Hubbard to be infallible, or practically so, and thus makes strong claims for paranormal powers and/or the literal truth of Hubbard's space opera scenarios. 'Soft Scientology' for me basically seems to cover a lot of the Freezone, and though it's not my cup of tea, I have no real beef with it. I do have a beef with hard Scientology, and a question I'd like to pursue in this forum concerns how much mileage it gets from sometimes pretending to be soft.
Without meaning to disparage the much looser and more eclectic religious views of Freezoners, my opinion at this point is that the doctrinaire Hubbardism of hard Scientology is actually quite unattractive and unimpressive as a religion, and that hard Scientology only gets traction as a religion because of its 'hard' claims for paranormal powers. I'm thinking that nobody actually joins Scientology for Hubbard's rambling and incoherent metaphysics, let alone for Xenu and body thetans; rather, I think people are willing to swallow those things, for the hope of gaining genius IQ, eidetic memory, permanently perfect health, telepathy and telekinesis, stable exteriorization with full perception, and so on.
But then if anyone takes the hard stuff really seriously, and asks for it to demonstrably happen as promised, hard Scientology puts on its soft face, and says, 'We're a religion, dealing only in spiritual propositions.'
Proponents of 'soft Scientology' don't make the hard claims, and can honestly say that (their) Scientology really is purely spiritual or therapeutic. I wonder, though, whether they are not still managing to have their cake and eat it, too, even if only unconsciously. Because of the strong claims made by hard Scientology, the name 'Scientology' carries some connotation of superhuman abilities, and perhaps soft Scientology gains some appeal from this, even when it doesn't actually make those claims. Kind of like taking the cocaine out of your product but keeping the name 'Coca-Cola'.
Be that as it may, the hard/soft shell game played by hard Scientology seems to me to be full blown doublethink, as well as clear cut bait-and-switch. While soft Scientologists may be perfectly right in claiming that their form of Scientology does not do this, that doesn't change the fact that a lot of Scientology is hard Scientology, and it does do this. It does it a lot, and I think it's very important in keeping hard Scientology alive.
Without meaning to disparage the much looser and more eclectic religious views of Freezoners, my opinion at this point is that the doctrinaire Hubbardism of hard Scientology is actually quite unattractive and unimpressive as a religion, and that hard Scientology only gets traction as a religion because of its 'hard' claims for paranormal powers. I'm thinking that nobody actually joins Scientology for Hubbard's rambling and incoherent metaphysics, let alone for Xenu and body thetans; rather, I think people are willing to swallow those things, for the hope of gaining genius IQ, eidetic memory, permanently perfect health, telepathy and telekinesis, stable exteriorization with full perception, and so on.
But then if anyone takes the hard stuff really seriously, and asks for it to demonstrably happen as promised, hard Scientology puts on its soft face, and says, 'We're a religion, dealing only in spiritual propositions.'
Proponents of 'soft Scientology' don't make the hard claims, and can honestly say that (their) Scientology really is purely spiritual or therapeutic. I wonder, though, whether they are not still managing to have their cake and eat it, too, even if only unconsciously. Because of the strong claims made by hard Scientology, the name 'Scientology' carries some connotation of superhuman abilities, and perhaps soft Scientology gains some appeal from this, even when it doesn't actually make those claims. Kind of like taking the cocaine out of your product but keeping the name 'Coca-Cola'.
Be that as it may, the hard/soft shell game played by hard Scientology seems to me to be full blown doublethink, as well as clear cut bait-and-switch. While soft Scientologists may be perfectly right in claiming that their form of Scientology does not do this, that doesn't change the fact that a lot of Scientology is hard Scientology, and it does do this. It does it a lot, and I think it's very important in keeping hard Scientology alive.