The Importance of Self-Criticism

It is often said by proponents of alternative therapies and the like that Science is arrogant in thinking it has all the answers, but this is a false argument; science does not claim to have all the answers. Its method is set out in such a way that those working in evidence based science must continually attempt to disprove its firmly held beliefs; it is commonly said that scientific theories can never be proved, merely disproved; and as each theory is disproved we move towards a better understanding of the universe. That is to say that when evidence arises that points out flaws in the current theory, a new theory is required that will account for both the old and the new evidence. This new theory, in time, may well be disproved, and a further theory required.

Ben Goldacre, the author of the Bad Science column, often mentions the top 3 requested research papers from the BMJ's archives to highlight the fact that scientific endeavour is based in a healthy environment of self-criticism. This may be of special interest to those who spam alt.religion.scientology with anti-psych posts!

The top scoring paper was a case-control study which showed that patients had a higher risk of heart attack if they were taking the painkillers rofecoxib (Vioxx), diclofenac, or ibuprofen. Vioxx of course was at the heart of a major scandal. At number 2 was a large meta-analysis of drug company data, which showed no evidence that SSRI antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, but did find weak evidence for an increased risk of deliberate self harm, which is worth keeping an eye on. And in third place was a systematic review which showed an association between suicide attempts and the use of SSRI’s, and highlighted – very critically - some of the inadequacies around the reporting of suicides in clinical trials.

What is perhaps more important than the content of these studies is that the papers are not the result of Scientologists or any other axe-grinding, anti-science group researching the effects of medication. These papers are a result of people working in the rational, logical world of evidence based science. They are seeking out truth by the creation and analysis of data.

The problem that both Scientology and the anti-psych; anti-big Pharma movement has is that it tends to hold up disproofs as evidence of a systemic failure of science, as though the method itself was in some way flawed. Scientology, in its recruitment, warns staff to watch out for people who seem to require evidence for the claims Scientology makes about itself. Anyone who has done any serious research into Narconon or any of the other technologies developed and promotoed by the Church will know that the kind of rigorous, double-blind tested, evidence-based research that is necessary to determine the efficacy of their programmes either does not exist or is woefully misinterpreted for the sake of a sale. Furthermore staff working on such unproven therapies or techniques show no interest in researching or improving them. This is because it is not good Scientology to question the tech. There is no room in Scientology for it to criticise itself, despite the early writings of Hubbard on the subject. Keeping Scientology Working is used to ensure that no-one is able to put the tech to the test.

This is the fundemental hole in the anti-psych spam. It generally involves people working in the field of psychiatry publishing research into their own field. Few of the people quoted by the spammers are making a case against the field of psychiatry as a whole, and it is well worth investigating the background of those who do.

Much of the rest of the anti-psych spam is made up of psychiatrists being disciplined for improper behaviour. Again, all that these posts show is that self-monitoring of psychiatrists is ongoing, and that it gets results; the system works! Posters may want to see the transgressions of the minority of psychiatrists that are struck off or otherwise disciplined as a sign that there is something rotten at the core of psychiatry, but do be aware that you cannot hold that argument without also maintaining the argument that Scientologists who break into government offices, or defraud people, or otherwise harm or rob people also demonstrate something rotten at the core of Scientology.

Whereas one may, and often do, get scientists complaining about the way that research funding is awarded, or that there are flaws in the way pharmaceutical products are developed or marketed, one will not find any Scientologist criticising Scientology. Called on to say something, anything, that is wrong with Scientology might lead to the glib "there aren't enough Scientologists", but little more; not even how slow the Church was to pick up on all that bad tech it's been selling its members for years, right up to the day that the revised texts and courses were made available. That total lack of self-criticism (and intolerance to criticism) is not a sign that Scientology is somehow right and true; it is a symptom of its own failings.

Every Dog Has Its Day

The 30 Second Skinny The way in which auditing is carried out mirrors closely processes that lead to false memory syndrome. The Church of Scientology gently discourages validation of memories recovered via auditing, believing that the auditing process itself is enough validation. The e-meter becomes so tied up with the idea of determining truth, that it forms the foundation for Scientology's belief in past lives.

The Way to Cease and Desist

The Way To Happiness Foundation, an organisation that claims to be independent of the Church of Scientology but solely exists to distribute copies of L Ron Hubbard's 1981 common sense guide to happy living seems to be going through one cycle of behaviour rather a lot recently. As has been the case with other organisations claiming independence of Scientology, such as Narconon, the Foundation has been sniffing around after state endorsements, but whereas other organisations have been blinding police chiefs with glossy brochures and ill-founded claims of efficacy until such a time as the signature dries, the Foundation have been cutting out the middle man.

In both San Francisco and Texas, they have printed pamphlets promoting Hubbard's writings alongside letters of approval from mayors Newsom and Leppert. In the former instance the mayor's inclusion in the pamphlet caim to light when a box of 12 copies were sent to the mayor's office. Lance Miller, Scientologist and president of the Foundation, has claimed that the copies were a, in retropsect ill-thought-out, attempt to get the mayor to agree on his inclusion.

"Cities, churches and businesses around the country," he explains, "received similar customized copies of the booklets, and San Francisco just happened to be on the mailing list currently being used". Except the booklets printed weren't some automated "push a button and retire" product. They feature artwork specific to both San Francisco and the mayor so this statement from Miller is a little misleading. Further, his claims that it was a sales pitch is somewhat weakened by the fact that in Texas, pamphlets featureing Leppert were in actual distribution.

Incidentally, the Foundation website avoids all mention of Scientology, even in the FAQ section on Hubbard. It's one of the ongoing problems with Scientology-connected groups. They have the notion that if they divorce themselves from the Church itself, it will somehow absolve them of any problems that religious associations might bring (the separation of church and state often means that religious organisations are unable to get involved with state matters to the degree that they would wish). How far that is true is a matter for debate, but few can believe that an organisation furthering the teachings of Hubbard in any form cannot in some way be seen as a promotion of Scientology. The reason these organisations exist is so that people will read through the material and think to themselves "oh, this is interesting, I'll have to check out more from this Hubbard guy". That's why so much of the freely available material of Hubbard is of the "can't argue with that" flavour. That's why Scientologists like to lay out the "core beliefs" of Scientology to the naive and uninitiated - a world without crime and insanity? Sounds good to me. Just so long as it isn't based on a belief system riding on the back of deliberately engineered false memory syndrome and a mythology involving aliens.

What the Foundation does say about Hubbard, and forgive me my stray from the topic, is that he believed the upshot of the move away from religion (which, as we all know, happened in the 70s) was that the State failed in taking up the mantle of passing on a moral code to its country's citizens. He claims his Way to Happiness is a common sense moral code that could be used to replace what we've lost in turning our back on religion.

Only we don't get our moral code from religion; religion is just the means by which some of us confirm it (and it's great for supporting one's bigotry too!). Ironically, his seeking out of a moral code based on common sense is, in fact, exactly what did happen in the 70s, leading to what I assume he perceives as a moral decline (homosexuality, inter-racial marriages, etc.). People actually started looking at the meat of their morality, rather than thinking it was enough that it was all layed down in scripture. Morality based on scripture is, to coin a phrase, a house built on sand.

I know there are plenty of religious folk out there who distressingly believe that if someone lives without God there is nothing to stop them becoming homicidal maniacs, but it clearly isn't the case; I know plenty of atheists who have never killed anyone. This is in part because atheism tends to make people value life more, not less. If this is all we get, then we're best off making the most of it. If this is all everyone gets, then who am I to make someone else's life shorter or even just more difficult? Compare that to the offer of a life of misery in exchange for Brownie points in Heaven and I fail to see the contest.

What is disturbing about such claims that godlessness leads to mania is that it suggests the only thing stopping the religious folk making those claims from becoming homicidal maniacs is religion. Try not to be around the day they lose their faith! We have a moral compass; one that we are in part born with and in part learn. All scripture does is confirm the elements of that moral compass we wish to pursue, assuage our guilt when we transgress, and police our thoughts with the threat of supernatural intervention. What really irritates me in particular about Christians who routinely spout such nonsense is that it bears no relation to who Jesus was and what he did. Christ took the moral code of his day, tore it up and started again. That's why Tacitus described Christianity as a degraded sect. That and the lady deacons. So much of what remains of Jesus' teachings are about examining and re-examining our moral codes, not by living our lives out based on scripture alone. All the contemporary quoting of Leviticus and worse in the furthering of hatred and oppression must have Jesus turning in his grave.

Xenu or not Xenu

One of the first curiosities a critical thinker will encounter when researching Scientology is the cloud of confusion that surrounds what is one of its most central beliefs, the infamous Incident II in which, 75 million years ago, evil galactic emperor Xenu incarcerated billions of people in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs. According to information given over in Operating Thetan 3 he then incarcerated the resultant "body thetans" in holographic cinemas in order to confuse them as to their time, place and true nature. Many of the symbols of world religions formed part of the holographic show, and it is around these symbols that all other world religions are based. This belief that other religions are implants flies in the face of the other oftentold lie, that Scientology is compatible with all other religions. It offers up an explanation of other world religions, certainly, but it is not compatible with them, no more than psychological theories on the origins of religion are compatible with the religions they explain.

The body thetans or BTs then attached themselves to the nearest reasonably sentient life-forms, human beings, and it is the BTs discombobulated confusion that causes most of our day-to-day problems. Scientology's auditing procedures and OT courses offer a solution.

As religions go this is no different in any real sense to, say, Catholicism, where one is weighed down with one's own sin (and, I suppose, the sins of one's fathers) but can attone through the not dissimilar process of confession. That confession is free and auditing costs thousands need not concern us right now. What does concern us though, is this: the Xenu myth is at the core of what is being offered to members of the church whether they realise it or not. Incident II is not a creation myth in the traditional sense, but it operates in much the same way. It is the source of all our troubles. It is the thing we're trying to solve just as much as Christianity promises a solution to that first fall from grace. Where it becomes troublesome is when one considers that most Christians know Genesis. Heck, the Christian text starts at the beginning! The Scientology text effectively starts with a communication course. Scientology doesn't encounter its own serpent until it gets to the third level of Operating Thetan, before which much time and money has been spent.

Why is that?

Well one possibility is that if you pull someone in off the street after their complimentary stress test and tell them that the source of all their woe is a genocidal solution to overpopulation from 75 million years ago they will quite rightly be disinterested in the weighty paperback you're trying to sell them. Another possibility, one that Scientology ascribes to, is that learning about Xenu once you are clear but before you have completed OT1 & 2 will very likely kill you. This, despite the fact that the Xenu myth is by now well known. I dare say there have been several Scientologists who have attained clear in full knowledge of what secrets lie in the OT3 briefcase and yet have miraculously survived the ordeal. Here's how L Ron described the effects of the "research" that led to the creation of OT3:

The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development. One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 1 know someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

But this refers to running the procedures as written, not about sharing the information about Xenu, so it doesn't really account for why Scientologists of OT3 and above lie and lie again about what is a central belief of their religion.

Fortean Times, in their August 07 issue quotes Church spokeswoman Janet Kenyon Laveau: "there is nothing in the theology or philosophy of Scientology about belief in aliens." But if that were the case, then why would one of the Church's own websites list as its definition of Space Opera:

of or relating to time periods on the whole track millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred on the track.

The only explanation approaching legitimacy that this blogger has for the relentless lying about the space opera aspects of Scientology belief is in that very noun - "belief". The Beacon recently found itself in discussion with a Scientologist on the photo sharing site Flickr. During this discussion the Scientologist (M) stated that aliens are "not part of the religious practice of Scientology". M goes on to explain that Scientology does involve "the factual discovery by L. Ron Hubbard that almost any person, with very little effort, is able to access memories that stretch before this lifetime" and that people have recovered memories in which they encounter and belong to alien races1. So in the mind of the Scientologist the Xenu myth is not part of their "belief system" because they consider the "space opera stuff" to be cold hard fact2, just like their glossary states.

Suddenly Scientologists aren't lying about their belief in the myth, they are quibbling over the use of words. But get this - I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and I believe that gravity is a universal force that causes matter to drift towards other matter. I believe that I am sitting in front of a keyboard typing these words. I believe them, and they are facts. The vocal denial that (OT3+) Scientologists believe in Xenu can only be misleading, whether or not the speaker is making a semantic point or out-and-out lying. When Sweeney interviewed Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Ann Archer and Tommy Davis he asked them if they believed in the Xenu myth and each one of them denied it - celebrity Scientologists lying about their beliefs in a media interview. Tommy himself, in challenging Sweeney's persistence in asking about Xenu, provides insight into why the church is so keen to deny it: "it's like loony. It's weird.. makes you look weird." You're not wrong, Tommy.

Allegedly permission to use the interview footage in the documentary was pulled at the last minute due to Sweeney using the dread c-word, but could it just as easily be true that it would be damaging to the Church if such vocal supporters of the church could be exposed as demonstrable liars?

1 This is laid out in the book Have You Lived Before This Life, a collection of 42 testimonials involving past life memories, some of which are of the space opera flavour. No attempts are made to verify these memories within the book so it offers little in the way of proof that these memories are genuine.

2 One of the grand ironies is that this "truth" stems from the use of the e-meter. Hubbard claimed that it was possible to discern real memories from false memories by interrogating them on the meter. When he and others were confronted with memories that were hugely improbable and quite probably disprovable (an endeavour Scientologists are discouraged from pursuing), instead of taking them as a disproof of the ability for auditing to verify memories, they assumed that these memories were proved and the auditing process remained valid.

Wog Blog Comments on Miscavige's Squirelling

Mark Bunker's Wog Blog has an excellent post on not only the recent massive alterations of Hubbard texts but a selection of videos detailing previous alterations and the fate that befell those Scientologists brave enough to question them. Is a schism fast approaching?

Some Magic Boxes - #3 Bioresonance Therapy

The 30 Second Skinny BRT is a treatment invented by Scientologist Franz Morell. It is based on the idea that all matter has a vibration, and that the BRT box is capable of recreating this vibration and as a result have the same effect on the human body as whatever generated the vibration. In other words, one could create the vibration of insulin, and it would have an insulin-like effect on the body. It is most commonly used today as a treatment for nicotine dependence, despite no clinical evidence or plausible theory behind it.

ARS-Watch

From amongst the defamation and the anti-psych spam of alt.religion.scientology appear the rumours regarding the revised Scientology books were true. Scientology critic Chuck Beatty received information from a contact in attendance at the 14th July, LA org event at which the new editions were launched.

The whole event was a video of the Clearwater event the big event, and the whole event was DM talking about the 18 new books, in sequence, book by book the changes, why the changes and details.
It started about 8:20pm and went till 11pm. Saturday, 14 July, 2007. LA org parking lot, covered in astroturf, normal vinyl curtain fence around the whole block cutting off outside views into the seating area. Only exit was the LA org driveway leading to LRH Way which had booths of all the PAC orgs setup, and all staff waiting to all hands sell the books to their org's public.
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Almost 3 hours of DM telling how the books were messed up and how they were messed up.
It was estimated that 2500 attended, so the sales was well over a million bucks, just the LA Orgs namely LAD, LAF, AOLA, ASHOD and ASHOF and CC Int, together, and all the other LA and valley orgs held their own events, at their own orgs.

This is the earth-shattering, history-making event, that virtually everything that Scientology has been teaching since its inception has been flawed, despite previous attempts to ensure that the texts available match the original words of Hubbard. A failure on the part of the Church twice running, then...

Only DMSMH and maybe one or two other books were typed by LRH. All other books were dictated onto diskettes or tape.
So that's how the screwups occurred, the sluggards who originally transcribed LRH's diskettes or tapes, messed up. And then the people splicing together the sections of the transcripts messed up in the splicing of the transcripts into books! Paragraphs were transposed, misplaced in wrong chapters, and just a whole slew of mis-splicing. LRH didn't notice it, he read the transcripts, and noted things in the margins of the transcripts, so then the splicers who spliced the transcripts into the books, messed it up.
LRH must have not ever read the final books, and noticed the splicing errors, etc. DM didn't explain LRH's goof of not proofreading the full final books by reading them, that is just obvious.

This dangerous complacency is at the heart of the organisation. It remains to this day impossible to fathom exactly what Hubbard truly believed. I suppose the believer will think Hubbard assumed the transcribers would be clears and not prone to error, and the non-believer that it didn't really matter what was in the final work, so long as the money kept coming in. Keeping Scientology Working, after all, need not have been a Quality Assurance measure. Instead it can be seen as an assurance, at least as far as the copyrighted scriptures are concerned, that ownership and use of such texts remain entirely within the Church's influence.

DM apparantly didn't say during the event that all the old books are to be destroyed. That is the case though. Public asking staff what to do with their old books are told to bring their old books to the D/ FBO MORE of their orgs, and the books will be destroyed.

Posters on ARS have quite rightly questioned how this fits into the Doctrine of Exchange, the notion that goods and services should indeed be exchanged for money or kind. The DoE is something of a doctrine of convenience for the church - they certainly don't mind forgoing paying the state for the services it provides, usually citing the work of the Volunteer Ministry as a means of evading these payments within its own dogma (as if benefiting the illiterate of India somehow will be seen as a payment in kind by the IRS). Even shakier is that the Church are now admitting that their products have always been flawed, perhaps in the all or nothing world of KSW actually worthless. Thus the Church ought to be indebted to its followers, some of whom have already payed more than once for the CoS product. Not so, it would seem, as members are asked to pay up for the unrevised texts, and to destroy (or go out ethics and sell on ebay) the corrupted work.

Donation sets of books for libraries were also sold. My contact only bought the books, and next day, Sunday, got 4 phone calls, over and over, to buy the tapes.

Entrance to this event was tighter, people had to register to get into event, give phone number. There were electronic entry stations, getting everyone's info before letting them in. (Getting those phone number for the next day's flogging for those that hadn't bought all that could be bought.)
All staff on sales, after event. Very hard sale afterwards. But considering these books are in effect almost the Scientology bible, this was an easy sell to these public at this event.
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This was an easy release sale, all public pretty much were resigned and knew they couldn't dodge not getting their new set of books! Bridge staff might get some libs this coming weekend.

The earth-shattering news, it would appear, is that Miscavige has realised it has become virtually impossible for Scientology to pull out of its decline, and so has tapped existing members, may of who have already spent a fortune on texts and courses, for further finance. The news that these texts were "squirreled" from the start poses more questions than it claims to answer. Church staff were quick to compile a list of positive quotes to back up the notion that their actions have been benefitial.

"In the past I would never read Dianetics because I thought it was too hard and would not confront it! After the event I could not wait to read all these 'new' books and so I began reading DMSMH. While reading it I am having lots of wins. I thought I knew quite a bit about the mind, instead I found out my knowledge was just approximate. It is wonderful how LRH studied and experimented everything down to the finer details. I noticed this book flows really well and the glossary is awesome. I thank LRH for the data he is giving me, RTC and COB for their relentless procurement of pure tech, just like LRH gave it. Thank you." F.A.

"Dianetics is so much more understood now than it was before! In the past I used to have a fear of this book and of reading it. It seemed so difficult. Not only was it easier to read this time, but it was easier to look at too! I had more cognitions than ever and it was another basic book like the rest, not a scary book that was hard to confront. My thanks go out to COB and the Sea Org, without whom we would not have these beautiful, readable, standard products. Thank you very much." R.M.

"There are so many things about this book that I finally get, whereas when I read this book before, I was practically in the clouds. Specifically, there is one paragraph in the beginning of the book I couldn't understand for the life of me. This time I just checked out a word or so in the back and that was it-complete understanding!"

Many of these smack of relief, of a confusion long-suffered and finally lifted, which again poses the question of how such a confusion in Scientologists has been tolerated for so long? Because there is no room in the organization to question the writings of L Ron Hubbard. Keeping Scientology Working has, in effect, ensured (and this just according to Miscavige's current belief) that Scientology remained hobbled by incorrect teachings for half a century.

The critic posting as Piltdown Man offers up a fantastic idea that the new-old versions of Hubbard's books are nothing more than the first drafts. It's a lengthy post but is a meaty enough supposition to cast a long shadow on the July releases.

So we start with Hubbard dictating one of those books, and a secretary then typing out a transcript of his dictation. Let's call that Revision 1. Authors who work that way (and Hubbard, while a crappy one, was a professional writer) normally treat such a transcript as a rough first draft, to which they then start making handwritten corrections, revisions and additions, or perhaps dictating such changes. Let's call the combination of the transcript with the handwritten edits Revision 2. Once things become too complicated to decipher, they might have a secretary make another typed version, Revision 3, start editing that one, etc. But at some stage, of course, a clean typescript for publication has to emerge. Let's call that the Final Revision.

...

So here's my hypothetical idea: what if what was printed at the time, and was reprinted until these 'new' versions emerged, was indeed Hubbard's Final Revision, as he edited and approved it himself, but that the typescript has been lost somewhere in the process of publication, as often happened? That all those what DM apparently calls "splices", according to Chuck Beatty's account of his speech, are in fact real, but they're Hubbard's *own* edits? Maybe, just maybe, DM or someone else noticed that what is in the printed versions does indeed differ from what they have in the vault where Hubbard's manuscripts are stored, but that's because all they've got is what I called Revision 2 above, not the Final Revision as Hubbard wanted it. Maybe he's managed to strip Hubbard's own final editorial revisions from the books, and is now presenting an intermediate draft version which Hubbard never intended to see published.

This is just a supposition of course, but it's one well worth exploring. Such an exploration cannot take place within the totalitarian structure of the Church; the emergence of the new releases themselves are testament to that.