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Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
Hi All!

Like Marvel Parsons, I wanted to say upfront that my interest in Scientology is avocational - I have no personal history with Scientology, other than earning some dirty looks from Scienos for warning off passerby at street displays in NY and San Fan. :D

I am a scientist, and am generally mildly to openly hostile to mysticism, belief without evidence and argumentum ad auctoritatem. But also like MP, I don't plan to be confrontational about it on these boards. I am here to learn and observe.

I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Dalton's complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further.

Then in the summer of 1991, I was traveling through Prague on a break from being an exchange student in the USSR , and desperate for something to read in English. I passed a news stand on Wencelas Square that had a copy of the Time expose. That was fascinating. Soon after I wound up back in the US in grad school in 1992, experimenting with Gopher, Netscape and other early browsers, and stumbled across the CMU archives.

I was hooked. I read Armstrong and Atak, and whatever else I could get my hands on. Over the subsequent years my interest has waxed and waned, but never went away.

Now I have a couple of sprogs of my own. I consider the most important mental tool in the modern human’s kit to be a fully functioning bullshit meter. And the schools are doing a woefully inadequate job of helping kids build those, so it seems to be one of the primary responsibilities of parents, and probably always has been. A major piece of my construction project is getting my kids to look hard at the stories of otherwise intelligent people who got sucked into L. Ron’s web of crap.

The other part of my parenting mission is looking at my own traditions. I grew up in a Baptist Church in West Virginia, and while we didn’t speak in tongues or handle snakes, there were plenty of sister churches around who did. If you want to see something as scary as an Sea Org indoctrination, go visit a snake handling church in some holler. From those beginnings comes my fascination with another pile of horse shit – Young Earth Creationism.

I don’t know why I have such fascination with horse shit. Perhaps it’s because when I was young, my dad and I would sit around his old Zenith shortwave radio at the height of the Cold War and listen to Radio Moscow and Voice of America, to compare different versions of propaganda. That’s what drove me to see the USSR for myself, and I’ve been hip deep in horse shit as a hobby ever since. And believe me, I know horse shit, as part of my activities in the USSR I was a member of the Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol) construction brigades. Hell, in grad school, I got sucked in to the debates on postmodernism, too. (See the Sokal Hoax for the type of thing I’m talking about).

Part of the training efforts with my kids is looking at the lingering effects of mind control (such as avoiding scented products long after blowing Scientology). This is partially to warn them off of believing in self-proclaimed messiahs and gurus, and partially as an exercise in getting them to look at their own un-examined assumptions, some of which will even come from my teaching. (I’m not perfect, or perfectly rational, much as I aspire to be. If the teacher is any good, his best students should surpass him.) I drill into them to always ask others and themselves the questions: what evidence do you have for your current beliefs, and what would it take for you to reject those beliefs? If you can’t answer those questions clearly and a priori, your life will be a series of installments in moving the goalposts, cherry picking, and other logical fallacies.

The parenting moment I am most proud of is that when a science lab partner wanted to throw out data that did not conform to his expectations, my daughter called him a “cherry-picking cheater”.

So some of the reason I’m here is to look for the posts form the people who were there at the beginning, some is to look at the evolving stories of those who are just getting out, and some derives from my own questions about the crossroads Scientology is in right now.

In reading about the state of the Catholic Clergy and the Reformation, I am struck by the admitted or behavioral unbelief of the clergy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. I am somewhat of the opinion that Christianity had run its course by then and would have begun to die off had not Martin Luther breathed life back into the faith by causing a schism. Similarly, some friends and I are debating whether Marty Rathbun’s movement could parallel Martin Luther’s.

One postulate is that a religion is a cult that has survived its birthing pains. That may be so, but most cults don’t make it to religious status, they merely die out. My own bias is that there is far too much malice hidden in the tech for Scientology to survive, but I would LOVE to hear the perspectives of the members of this board on the Reformation issue.

Thanks for having me here.
 
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La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Hi All!

Like Marvel Parsons, I wanted to say upfront that my interest in Scientology is avocational - I have no personal history with Scientology, other than earning some dirty looks from Scienos for warning off passerby at street displays in NY and San Fan. :D

I am a scientist, and am generally midly to openly hostile to mysticism, belief without evidence and argumentum ad auctoritatem. But also like MP, I don't plan to be confrontational about it on these baords. I am here to learn and observe.

I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Daltons complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further.

Then in the summer of 1991, I was traveling through Prague on a break from being an exchange student in the USSR , and desperate for something to read in English. I passed a news stand on Wencelas Square that had a copy of the Time expose. That was fascinating. Soon after I wound up back in the US in grad school in 1992, experimenting with Gopher, Netscape and other early browsers, and stumbled across the CMU archives.

I was hooked. I read Armstrong and Atak, and whatever else I could get my hands on. Over the subsequent years my interest has waxed and waned, but never went away.

Now I have a couple of sprogs of my own. I consider the most important mental tool in the modern human’s kit to be a fully functioning bullshit meter. And the schools are doing a woefully inadequate job of helping kids build those, so it seems to be one of the primary responsibilities of parents, and probably always has been. A major piece of my construction project is getting my kids to look hard at the stories of otherwise intelligent people who got sucking into L. Ron’s web of crap.

The other part of my parenting mission is looking at my own traditions. I grew up in a Baptist Church in West Virginia, and while we didn’t speak in tongues or handle snakes, there were plenty of sister churches around who did. If you want to see something as scary as an Sea Org indoctrination, go visit a snake handling church in some holler. From those beginnings comes my fascination with another pile of horse shit – Young Earth Creationism.

I don’t know why I have such fascination with horse shit. Perhaps it’s because when I was young, my dad and I would sit around his old Zenith shortwave radio at the height of the Cold War and listen to Radio Moscow and Voice of America, to compare different versions of propaganda. That’s what drove me to see the USSR for myself, and I’ve been hip deep in horse shit as a hobby ever since. And believe me, I know horse shit, as part of my activities in the USSR I was a member of the Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol) construction brigades. Hell, in grad school, I got sucked in to the debates on postmodernism, too. (See the Sokal Hoax for the type of thing I’m talking about).

Part of the training efforts with my kids is looking at the lingering effects of mind control (such as avoiding scented products long after blowing Scientology). This is partially to warn them off of believing in self-proclaimed messiahs and gurus, and partially as an exercise in getting them to look at their own un-examined assumptions, some of which will even come from my teaching. (I’m not perfect, or perfectly rational, much as I aspire to be. If the teacher is any good, his best students should surpass him.) I drill into them to always ask others and themselves the questions: what evidence do you have for your current beliefs, and what would it take for you to reject those beliefs? If you can’t answer those questions clearly and a priori, your life will be a series of installments in moving the goalposts, cherry picking, and other logical fallacies.

The parenting moment I am most proud of is that when a science lab partner wanted to throw out data that did not conform to his expectations, my daughter called him a “cherry-picking cheater”.

So some of the reason I’m here is to look for the posts form the people who were there at the beginning, some is to look at the evolving stories of those who are just getting out, and some derives from my own questions about the crossroads Scientology is in right now.
In reading about the state of the Catholic Clergy and the Reformation, I am struck by the admitted or behavioral unbelief of the clergy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. I am somewhat of the opinion that Christianity had run its course by then and would have begun to die off had not Martin Luther breathed life back into the faith by causing a schism. Similarly, some friends and I are debating whether Marty Rathbun’s movement could parallel Martin Luther’s.

One postulate is that a religion is a cult that has survived its birthing pains. That may be so, but most cults don’t make it to religious status, they merely die out. My own bias is that there is far too much malice hidden in the tech for Scientology to survive, but I would LOVE to hear the perspectives of the members of this board on the Reformation issue.

Thanks for having me here.

Nice introduction!

Like you I used to compare Voice of America and Russian, Chinese and South African propaganda radios (ici radio Peking! this is the voice of America, etc). It also led me to live a while in Bulgaria, I had to experience it even if it was after communism expired!

But despite being fully aware of the validity of scientology claims being no better than claims of how many tractors had been churned out in the Ukraine, I chose to become a member myself.

Any road up, as we Brits say, WELCOME mate!
 

This is NOT OK !!!!

Gold Meritorious Patron
Welcome Udarnik!

I was born in Charleston and lived in Fayette County until I was 12.

My school bus driver was the minister in a local snake church - near Gauley Bridge. In the fall, on Friday afternoons, he lead his congregation on snake hunts under the bleachers to make things safe for us kids!
 
you are quite welcome to be here...

probably more welcome than i, being as i am someone who has on several occaisions stated auditing and auditor training are good things

but i haven't been "active" inside CoS for nearly 40 years, and in fact i'm a crazy old hippie

but also a scientist in my own right and my own life long examination of the (lower level) materials has favorable results

however...

Co$ Suxx
 

Gadfly

Crusader
you are quite welcome to be here...

probably more welcome than i, being as i am someone who has on several occaisions stated auditing and auditor training are good things

but i haven't been "active" inside CoS for nearly 40 years, and in fact i'm a crazy old hippie

but also a scientist in my own right and my own life long examination of the (lower level) materials has favorable results

however...

Co$ Suxx

Birdie, you just enjoy having a persecution complex! Just like the hippies, you enjoy being "different". You enjoy NOT "fitting in". Whatever the common and usual view is, whatever the status quo might be; you look elsewhere!

The same with me! :thumbsup:

You are MOST welcome here. :biggrin:
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
Birdie, you just enjoy having a persecution complex! Just like the hippies, you enjoy being "different". You enjoy NOT "fitting in". Whatever the common and usual view is, whatever the status quo might be; you look elsewhere!

I'm somewhat of a contrarian, too. But as a marketing professor once said to me: Beware of outside-the-box thinking. 90% of what's outside the box, is outside because it's junk. :biggrin:
 
Hi All!

Like Marvel Parsons, I wanted to say upfront that my interest in Scientology is avocational - I have no personal history with Scientology, other than earning some dirty looks from Scienos for warning off passerby at street displays in NY and San Fan. :D

I am a scientist, and am generally mildly to openly hostile to mysticism, belief without evidence and argumentum ad auctoritatem. But also like MP, I don't plan to be confrontational about it on these boards. I am here to learn and observe.

I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Dalton's complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further.

Then in the summer of 1991, I was traveling through Prague on a break from being an exchange student in the USSR , and desperate for something to read in English. I passed a news stand on Wencelas Square that had a copy of the Time expose. That was fascinating. Soon after I wound up back in the US in grad school in 1992, experimenting with Gopher, Netscape and other early browsers, and stumbled across the CMU archives.

I was hooked. I read Armstrong and Atak, and whatever else I could get my hands on. Over the subsequent years my interest has waxed and waned, but never went away.

Now I have a couple of sprogs of my own. I consider the most important mental tool in the modern human’s kit to be a fully functioning bullshit meter. And the schools are doing a woefully inadequate job of helping kids build those, so it seems to be one of the primary responsibilities of parents, and probably always has been. A major piece of my construction project is getting my kids to look hard at the stories of otherwise intelligent people who got sucked into L. Ron’s web of crap.

The other part of my parenting mission is looking at my own traditions. I grew up in a Baptist Church in West Virginia, and while we didn’t speak in tongues or handle snakes, there were plenty of sister churches around who did. If you want to see something as scary as an Sea Org indoctrination, go visit a snake handling church in some holler. From those beginnings comes my fascination with another pile of horse shit – Young Earth Creationism.

I don’t know why I have such fascination with horse shit. Perhaps it’s because when I was young, my dad and I would sit around his old Zenith shortwave radio at the height of the Cold War and listen to Radio Moscow and Voice of America, to compare different versions of propaganda. That’s what drove me to see the USSR for myself, and I’ve been hip deep in horse shit as a hobby ever since. And believe me, I know horse shit, as part of my activities in the USSR I was a member of the Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol) construction brigades. Hell, in grad school, I got sucked in to the debates on postmodernism, too. (See the Sokal Hoax for the type of thing I’m talking about).

Part of the training efforts with my kids is looking at the lingering effects of mind control (such as avoiding scented products long after blowing Scientology). This is partially to warn them off of believing in self-proclaimed messiahs and gurus, and partially as an exercise in getting them to look at their own un-examined assumptions, some of which will even come from my teaching. (I’m not perfect, or perfectly rational, much as I aspire to be. If the teacher is any good, his best students should surpass him.) I drill into them to always ask others and themselves the questions: what evidence do you have for your current beliefs, and what would it take for you to reject those beliefs? If you can’t answer those questions clearly and a priori, your life will be a series of installments in moving the goalposts, cherry picking, and other logical fallacies.

The parenting moment I am most proud of is that when a science lab partner wanted to throw out data that did not conform to his expectations, my daughter called him a “cherry-picking cheater”.

So some of the reason I’m here is to look for the posts form the people who were there at the beginning, some is to look at the evolving stories of those who are just getting out, and some derives from my own questions about the crossroads Scientology is in right now.

In reading about the state of the Catholic Clergy and the Reformation, I am struck by the admitted or behavioral unbelief of the clergy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. I am somewhat of the opinion that Christianity had run its course by then and would have begun to die off had not Martin Luther breathed life back into the faith by causing a schism. Similarly, some friends and I are debating whether Marty Rathbun’s movement could parallel Martin Luther’s.

One postulate is that a religion is a cult that has survived its birthing pains. That may be so, but most cults don’t make it to religious status, they merely die out. My own bias is that there is far too much malice hidden in the tech for Scientology to survive, but I would LOVE to hear the perspectives of the members of this board on the Reformation issue.

Thanks for having me here.

If Marty was trying to lead anyone, he is looking less and less like he really wants to do that now. He seems to be rethinking his own beliefs at an accelerating rate, and putting far too much questioning of his own scientology beliefs into the mix to leave a solid base of belief on which to base leadership.
There are others who have tried to form groups. There is 'Ron's Org' which I assume would love to have become larger than the COS....but they haven't. Then there is the new start up group being organized by compulsive organisers and various types of cult wannabes, called "Milestone 2" or something.....
I agree with what you said, "...My own bias is that there is far too much malice hidden in the tech for Scientology to survive..." The inconsistency in the dogma, and the dictatorial element (as an inherent part of the dogma), along with the malice, compounds the problem of trying to make it survive. The malice however, is IMO, more important than any other factor having a negative effect on survival of scientology groups. The COS, until the internet, had enough power to overcome that negative effect just by being able to shut people up. It has often been said here that those who really want to keep practising scientology without the malice have to rename it because once the malice is gone it is no longer scientology. Some might insist that they can call it scientology and keep practising it without changing the name. That may be true, but they are unlikely to ever form a large group like that, because once the malice is dropped, the individuals tend to start dropping other parts of it. It survives as a large group as the "Chrurch of Scientology" because it is held together with the malice.
 
If Marty was trying to lead anyone, he is looking less and less like he really wants to do that now. He seems to be rethinking his own beliefs at an accelerating rate, and putting far too much questioning of his own scientology beliefs into the mix to leave a solid base of belief on which to base leadership.
Marty is starting to realize that leading a bunch of looney tunes makes you nothing more than a leader of looney tunes, there is absolutely no upside to it.
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
Huh. I realized I've been here a year. Thanks to everyone for the friendship and stimulating discussions. I've not been posting much because of a new job, but I am still reading.
 

Knows

Gold Meritorious Patron
Just when you thought you heard it all about the con, scam, criminal, smoke and mirrors of Scientology claims of L Ron Hubbard:

"I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Dalton's complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further."

L Ron Hubbard - what a con man...lying from the get-go of his Dianetics Best Seller (over million books bought by Scientologist's and sent back to the book stores to be re-sold again) Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Illness :omg: And...this is where it all began!

What I can't understand is the people that helped Hubbard pull off scams like this. What were they thinking? I joined a religion and I am going to help the founder lie about his books being best sellers so that I can have spiritual freedom? I don't get it.
 
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Gib

Crusader
Marty is starting to realize that leading a bunch of looney tunes makes you nothing more than a leader of looney tunes, there is absolutely no upside to it.

yo Chuck,

I need my lawn cut, where are you too?

And Gadfly,

come out where ever you are.

And Trouble has not been getting in trouble lately. :bigcry:
 
"I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Dalton's complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further."

L Ron Hubbard - what a con man...lying from the get-go of his Dianetics Best Seller (over million books bought by Scientologist's and sent back to the book stores to be re-sold again) Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Illness :omg: And...this is where it all began!

Sorry, dates wrong. It all began in 1950, and this was in 1988! I don't believe he or the org were using those tactics as early a 1950 or even 1960, but I may be wrong. Scientology was always crap, but I think it only started turning evil around or after 1960.

Mike
 

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
Just when you thought you heard it all about the con, scam, criminal, smoke and mirrors of Scientology claims of L Ron Hubbard:"I first became aware of Scientology in 1988 or so when a friend at college who used to work as a manager at a B. Dalton's complained bitterly about receiving boxes of Dianetics from the warehouse that already had the B. Dalton’s price stickers on – indicating that people had bought the books just to boost sales figures, then recycled them to the publisher. His rant about brainwashed loonies amused me, but this was pre-Internet, and my research went no further."L Ron Hubbard - what a con man...lying from the get-go of his Dianetics Best Seller (over million books bought by Scientologist's and sent back to the book stores to be re-sold again) Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Illness :omg: And...this is where it all began! What I can't understand is the people that helped Hubbard pull off scams like this. What were they thinking? I joined a religion and I am going to help the founder lie about his books being best sellers so that I can have spiritual freedom? I don't get it.
As far as I know, people who joined the cult knowing that Hubbard was selling lies didn’t do this to advance their spiritual freedom, they just wanted to fill their pockets with tons of money. One of the crooks was Campbell who helped Hubbard to establish Dianetics Foundation. For a while Campbell was making plenty of money, but when Hubbard switched to “OT Research” Campbell thought that the Founder was losing his mind and decided to cope out. Unfortunately, not everyone knew from the start that Scientology is a gigantic lie, so they spent decades in the cult. The others more fortunate had a brief encounter with Scientology before they realized that this shit doesn’t work; I fall into this category.
 
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