Falsifiable Aspects of Scientology
Offline ...Do we have any Scientologists frequenting this board?
The funny thing about Scientology and Dianetics, in comparison to - say - judeo-Christianity, is that it's modern nature allows us to take a view of it in much high resolution. We know, for example, exactly who the authorship of stories that bind it together belongs to (L. Ron Hubbard), we know the overall history of the organization in great detail and we know that we're properly interpreting what we read when we read it (it was all originally written in English, so nothing can be really 'lost in translation' because, well, there isn't any translating to be done.
What I find so damn amusing is that 'Incident II' (the Xenu account) - which is absolutely central to the religion (without this incident, Dianetics loses all merit, since otherwise there wouldn't be Body Thetans all over the place clinging to us and causing us all manner of psychological maladies) - presents so much sci-fi that we can actually test and falsify.
Examples:
- The planet Venus is alleged to be another fully-fledged 'prison planet' of sorts, teeming with life and cities. Hubbard himself claimed to have went there and nearly been hit by a train.
- Most (all?) of Earth's major volcanoes had hyrdogen bombs detonated inside of them to kill-off the insurgents of the Confederacy.
- A planet named 'Coltice' orbits one of the stars in the Polaris tri-star system. Again, this is alleged to be teeming with life and civilization.
- There are alien complexes on mars.
- Aliens had an epic battle in the Himalayas, and some attempted to land a complex of some kind within the mountain range.
- There are alien complexes here, on Earth, somewhere in Africa and in the Pyrenees mountains.
- There are alien complexes on Earth's moon.
- The Marcab confederacy is all over the stars that comprise the Big Dipper, and represent one of the most advanced civilizations currently active in the known galaxy.
- An entire civilization of humans, in a modern-day culture with modern cities and technology, lived on Earth (or 'Teegeeack') 75 million years ago. They were presumably annihilated with everyone Xenu vaporized in the volcanoes when the bombs went off (...and, incidentally, this is actually something that encompasses what I think is one of the most striking symbolic descriptions I've ever read in sci-fi, "...A skyscraper, tall and arrow-straight, bent over to form a question mark to the very idea of humanity before crumbling into the screaming city below." Hubbard, if nothing else, you were a damn good wordsmith).
So? These are all readily examinable claims - what does the evidence say?
To Scientology's credit, at least it bothered being falsifiable in the first place...
You're gonna wake-up in a smoothie, Mutha' Ucker.
Well clearly any sort of life that comes anywhere close to life as we know it could not possibly live on Venus! And certainly cities couldn't exist there. Basically that stuff all sounds just plain nuts! How exactly did he claim to acquire this "knowledge?" Don't they also claim the universe is hundreds of trillions of years old?
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
Richard Dawkins
Kevin, your suppressive personality will not allow you to understand the truth. Only "real" scientologists care when they see someone get in a car accident. Only scientologists know that prescription drugs are evil. Tom Cruise is there for you and he does care, very, very much. CCHR will heal you Kevin, of all your misguided notions.
Sidenote: Has anyone read Dianetics? I was gonna check it out just to see what is was all about.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
I'm sure you're aquainted with old saying, "The road to Hell was paved with good intentions?"
I'd recommend borrowing a copy of Dianetics from your local library. It pretty much epitomizes the above statement.
My own opinion after reading it was that Hubbard was genuinely quite concerned for the well-being of the world, as most people were during the time he wrote Dianetics, because of the very real threat posed by nuclear weaponry and international tensions. He invented his entire mythos as a sort of modern allegory, with a rich and entertaining backstory that would really reel people in, in order to illustrate the dangers of totalitarianism and grotesque stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction.
There's so much extremely compelling and sound metaphor in his works that I can't help but sympathesize with him here.
Unfortunately, that's not where it ended. Hubbard clearly felt that he needed to take radical action, and this is also spelled out in Dianetics. Dianetics is all about surrending yourself to the whims of scientology and mistrusting any and all other forms of diagnosis or influence. Hubbard clearly felt that psycho-analysis and psychoactive drugs could be used to undermine what greater goals he initially had for the 'church', so attacked them and demanded that followers of his doctrine isolate themselves from such things. This, of course, snowballed - and soon whatever better intentions Hubbard had were overtaken by legal scandal, his own greed and the organization's thirst for power as it grew. The later mythos became more vague and ominous, simply being used as a vehicle to attack other religious groups and persons that Scientology had to compete with, and I'm certain that Hubbard became more concerned with securing himself a throne of power than advocating for the disarmament of nuclear weaponry.
Still...
I think I'm going to change my sig to something a tad more meaningful now.
You're gonna wake-up in a smoothie, Mutha' Ucker.
I think I will try to read it, it is a significant piece of literature because it is the founding book for a religion that began in my country and gain widespread popularity during my lifetime. I just hope I don't get sucked in...jk lol.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
Seriously - do approach it with a skeptical eye, and perhaps prepare yourself to read some professional literature on psychoactive medication and psychology when you're done. The book is quite good at appealing to your emotions and twisting your perspective, and I'd think it dangerously naive of anyone to approach Scientology thinking, "Bah. They'd never suck me in."
You're gonna wake-up in a smoothie, Mutha' Ucker.
(wisely?) Reading the the diary of a mad man .....