Ethics and Apostasy

Following on from the spiritualism post and, for that matter, the atheist bus post, I've been pondering the nature of apostasy; the ethics that surrounds the acceptance or otherwise of someone's intention to leave their religion. Many religions stigmatise such a move, and from their "we're right, everyone else is wrong" perspective that's understandable, if not always appropriate. An individual who waves the banner for their particular faith or creed, demanding universal respect will not necessarily hold back in criticising those who, for reasons however valid, realise that the religion is no longer something that they can feign or sustain a belief in.
It's a curious discrepancy; it's not just that people demand a freedom of religion for themselves, they will happily allied themselves with members of other religions in their fight against what they perceive as secular encroachment. But the idea of converting from one religion to another remains an act whose severity shows the loose foundations on which such alliances are built. Unless of course it's someone converting in.

Here, as I see it, is the problem. You're dealing with salvation. Whichever religion you pursue, you own a dream ticket, be it to heaven, a higher vibration, valhalla or whatever. Your friends and family have the same ticket, and the importance of the ticket goes above and beyond any earthly concerns. If someone turns their back on their religon then, to the faithful, they are not only insulting their godhead or prophet, but are selling themselves down the proverbial, condemning themselves to damnation of one flavour or another. So it's understandable from the perspective of the faithful, for such a departure to be heavily criticised; criticised more than pretty much any sin going. Thus we get religious shunning, and in less progressive regimes, execution.

What we have here are two conflicting pressures - the faithful generally recognise that other religions exist, and have a right to exist. Some may even acknowledge that atheism and secularism does too. But they also "know" that their religion is right; that the other paths have a right to exist, but are nevertheless wrong. So when someone of their flock decides that Jehovah, or Allah, is not for them, then that decision tends to lead to a fair amount of conflict. The question we must ask ourselves is, where do we draw the line - when do we view someone's decision as valid. It's an awkward question, because it can't be imposed without placing a judgement on someone else's values, thinking and beliefs. We can't even draw the line, even in the sand, without falling foul of the conflict we're attempting to avoid.

Sadly, though, these things aren't even thought through. The faithful will go with their gut instincts, their moral compass (ho ho) and act accordingly. It seems to me, from the security of my atheism, that the best someone can do is to let go but to keep the lines of communication open. Maybe the decision-making hasn't been done in earnest; perhaps it's just that there are a few border-line acceptable sins (homosexuality, shellfish, usury...) that the person wants to have a crack at. Maybe, though, the decision has been long thought about through agonised and sleepless nights. Maybe, and here is the sign of greatest courage, maybe they are right, and it is you who are wrong. To cast out one's apostates, to ignore them, runs the risk of missing the truth when it finally comes around.

Adapt and Survive

One of the things I enjoy about criticism of the Church of Scientology is that it forms a microcosm of most religions, as though Hubbard had engineered it as a model of religion so he could observe how it behaved in the world at large. He didn't; he just foolishly thought it would allow him to get rich through the application of little effort.

Much of the criticism of Hubbard's writing, that which doesn't hinge on its logical inconsistencies and occupation of bad or invented science, has focused on its bigotry - its position on homosexuals (should be cured or killed), on native South Africans (can't do anything with them, primitive, utterly materialistic), on Chinese ("the trouble with China is there are too many Chinese there"), and so on. Apologists say "well, he was a white middle-class guy in the 1950s, what do you expect?" To which one must reply "I expect him not to inflict his opinions on future generations by starting up a fraudulent organisation pedalling this bigotry as though it were inescapable gospel truth."

Last year David Miscavige oversaw the re-editing of many basic texts, against Scientology rules, and resold them all to Scientologists worldwide in an aggressive series of celebratory events. If you're curious about these new editions, you can get them for pennies on ebay. You might even be able to save on postage and packing by contacting local libraries, many of whom will have been sent unsolicited copies they'll be keen to get rid of.

This is the second time the tech has been changed since Hubbard's death, and crystalises the paradox of the sacred text. How can Truth cease being True over time? How can you change your sacred texts and still be the same religion? How can the new Truth be trusted if the old Truth has been swept away. Scientology adopts the George Orwell approach. The new Truth is actually the original Truth, kept from us by nasty nasty squirrels, which is not a trick they can go on pulling forever (twice is already pushing it) and when the continued financial success of the corporation relies not on the increasingly impossible task of new recruits, but of reselling the same stuff over and over to members who feel unable to leave.

But here is the dilemma, and it is a dilemma that is faced by many more orthodox religions. People pursue their own moral compasses - they have an ability to assess, based often on a few core principals and internal debate based on those principals, the rightness and wrongness of things. Often that compass will develop within religion and within a legal system. The law and religion will not necessarily see eye to eye all the time, but more to the point, that person's moral compass will not always marry up to what their religion tells them. These people then run the risk of disenfranchisement from that religion. If the dissonance is strong enough then the religion will cease to function well at all. If, for instance, a religion stipulates in its scripture that women are subservient to men, then in time, as sexual equality becomes the norm, people will consider this aspect of religion (often taken, rightly or wrongly, to be representative of the religion as a whole) and choose to leave, or at the very least to humour it without conviction. If this continues, over the course of a couple of generations the religion will flounder and fail - and attendance will drop. If the religion refuses to change its ways, it will not survive; it will return to the cult status it no doubt started as.

How that change takes place is problematic if the rules are laid down in scripture. Abrahamic religions are lucky (just about) in having a multi-translated ancient text to work from - open as it is to reinterpretation, translation errors and more. Hubbard's intentions, however, were to avoid schism. He mistakenly believed that the best way of avoiding schism was to ensure that everyone was clear on what was meant by everything he wrote. He wasn't especially good at this - his policies were frequently amended, something that has officially stopped since he died. Hubbard's words are carved in stone (well, etched in titanium, really) so can't be changed as readily. As a result, critics, perhaps a little unfairly, highlight Hubbard's bigotry, but also highlight the Church's attempts at changing its ways. The real root of this two-pronged attack is that CoS makes the claim that it is the purveyor of truth ("I only deal in facts" as Hubbard so memorably sang), but doesn't make very convincing arguments, especially when it starts changing its story about what that truth really is. The attack only seems unfair because it has been spawned by the cognitive dissonance at the heart of Scientology; the doublethink on which the cult thrives. As noted in the Purview, a CoS PR officer recently stated that touch assists are there as a means to heal on a spiritual and emotional level. For years touch assists have been marketed as a means of speeding recovery on a physical level; as it becomes clearer and clearer that no evidence for this will be forthcoming, the claims are being shifted to where evidence cannot exist - the spiritual plane (see Evolution of CAM). Soon those will be the only claims ever made about it, irrespective of what is written in the books right-thinking Scientologists ought to have pulped when they got their new, un-squirreled editions hot off the presses

As a footnote, it should be pointed out that Hubbard, for all his attempts, got his schism in the end. The unmovable position he made, first on Dianetics, and later on Scientology, created the Freezone, offering many people who like the belief system but not the Church, a way to the kind of freedom they'd initially imagined.

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?

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.