I was first inspired to set up this blog when Tom Cruise was making an ass of himself in public, raving about Scientology and his love for Katie Holmes and raging against psychiatry and all the other so-called pseudosciences. I had found it amazing that anyone in the public eye could label anything as pseudoscientific while serving as a mouthpiece for one of the most ridiculous pseudoscientific cults ever formed. I was—and am—further amazed that participation in such a cult would be celebrated so openly, and not practiced in embarrassed secrecy. I was also kind of disappointed that some people I admire—the most troublesome for me being jazz great Chick Corea—had fallen under Scientology’s spell. I wanted to learn more about this organization, and I wanted to try to see how so many people were roped into what I consider to be an obvious case of hucksterism perpetrated on a large scale.
Of course, I couldn’t criticize something blindly on superficial impressions, so I made an effort to slog through some of L. Ron Hubbard’s writing on Dianetics—which later spawned Scientology as a religious movement—and Scientology itself. I was prepared to see some impressive bait, and I was prepared to absolve these pour souls for having taken it. After all, what Scientology promises—freedom of the spirit and mind to exist unencumbered by the things that plague us mere mortals—is very attractive.
What I found, however, was garbage, pure and simple. Sadly, Scientology seems to be based on nothing more than the ridiculous ramblings of a megalomaniac and paranoiac who wanted to make some real money in the writing game. Dianetics, Hubbard’s first published book on the nature of the mind, which adumbrated Scientology, contains page after page of Hubbard’s claiming “scientific facts,” with no documentation or evidence of actual experimentation to back up his claims.
The crux of the argument of Dianetics is that all psychological, and ultimately physical, ills are caused by the presence of things called engrams, little unconscious bits of code that record your negative experiences and replay them, when the time is right, to ruin your life. Hubbard says that it is a “scientific fact” that they exist, and we are left to take his word for it. In fact, he says that our cells themselves are sentient, and that engrams are encoded into their protoplasm. These engrams can’t be seen, but he knows they’re there. It’s a scientific fact.
Perhaps I can’t fault Hubbard too much for not understanding the scientific method, which creates falsifiable hypotheses based on observations and then seeks to test those hypotheses. After all, he never completed his course of study in civil engineering at George Washington University. He was placed on academic probation after his first year, and he left the program altogether less than halfway through. Nonetheless, in Dianetics, Hubbard credits his “instructors in atomic and molecular phenomena, mathematics and the humanities at George Washington University and at Princeton.” While Hubbard did once attend the U.S. Navy's School of Military Government on the Princeton campus, the school was not a part of the university. Scientology's past claims that Hubbard had attended Princeton have been abandoned in recent years. At any rate, Hubbard clearly wants his readers to view him as a learned man. And, lest his readers forget, he tends to remind them from time to time. Hubbard frequently refers to his calculations using advanced mathematics, and of their exclusion from his published writing for the sake of his poor readers. Furthermore, Hubbard used to refer to himself as doctor after purchasing a bogus Ph.D. for $20 from a nonexistent university. When his ruse was publicly exposed, he went back to being plain old Mr. Hubbard.
Of course, I run the risk of an ad hominem argument if I tell you that Hubbard was not only a bad scientist but also a bad writer. Now, I am not evaluating the entertainment value of his early pulp fiction; I haven’t read any of it. What I am talking about is his fundamental lack of understanding of English grammar and mechanics. His writing is a smorgasbord of solecisms, punctuation gaffes, diction errors, invented words, and logical lapses that suggests a disordered mind at work rather than a visionary thinker.
Why bother criticizing Hubbard’s writing style when it is really his ideas on trial? Simply put, Hubbard purports Scientology to be a path to higher intelligence, clearer thought, and spiritual freedom. Yet this man, who made his living as a writer, never demonstrated clear thought as translated to the printed word. Hubbard spent his later life supposedly in “research” into the nature of man, and his great discoveries included the ridiculous genesis story of Xenu, the evil galactic ruler who seeded earth with disembodied souls after planting billions of them next to volcanoes and blowing them up with hydrogen bombs. (Religious truth or pulp science fiction? Who cares? You can learn all about it if you pay enough to become an Operating Thetan, Level III.) These great truths never resulted in an evolution of thought or logic as evinced in Hubbard’s writing. Though what he says changes over the years, how he says it stays exactly the same. There is no evolution in language, in grammar, in diction. If anything, his writing devolves into an Orwellian Newspeak, perverting common words to serve new purposes and inventing others when needed.
Why are so many celebrities falling for Scientology? For one thing, it is the only religion that comes to mind that segregates its churches based on celebrity status. The posh Celebrity Centres are Hubbard’s way of rewarding artists, who Hubbard says “are a cut above man.” While it is nice to think along with Hubbard that a society is only as great as its dreams, and that those dreams are dreamed by artists, it is much more plausible to believe that Scientology specifically caters to celebrities’ famous vanities and insecurities in order to have free worldwide publicity for its cult.
It is my sad conclusion that, whatever their motivation for initially looking into the organization, Scientology’s members have fallen for nothing more than a scam. And the happy news for the Scientology money machine comes from the paraphrased wisdom of P.T. Barnum, which suggests that a potential member is born every minute.
Of course, I couldn’t criticize something blindly on superficial impressions, so I made an effort to slog through some of L. Ron Hubbard’s writing on Dianetics—which later spawned Scientology as a religious movement—and Scientology itself. I was prepared to see some impressive bait, and I was prepared to absolve these pour souls for having taken it. After all, what Scientology promises—freedom of the spirit and mind to exist unencumbered by the things that plague us mere mortals—is very attractive.
What I found, however, was garbage, pure and simple. Sadly, Scientology seems to be based on nothing more than the ridiculous ramblings of a megalomaniac and paranoiac who wanted to make some real money in the writing game. Dianetics, Hubbard’s first published book on the nature of the mind, which adumbrated Scientology, contains page after page of Hubbard’s claiming “scientific facts,” with no documentation or evidence of actual experimentation to back up his claims.
The crux of the argument of Dianetics is that all psychological, and ultimately physical, ills are caused by the presence of things called engrams, little unconscious bits of code that record your negative experiences and replay them, when the time is right, to ruin your life. Hubbard says that it is a “scientific fact” that they exist, and we are left to take his word for it. In fact, he says that our cells themselves are sentient, and that engrams are encoded into their protoplasm. These engrams can’t be seen, but he knows they’re there. It’s a scientific fact.
Perhaps I can’t fault Hubbard too much for not understanding the scientific method, which creates falsifiable hypotheses based on observations and then seeks to test those hypotheses. After all, he never completed his course of study in civil engineering at George Washington University. He was placed on academic probation after his first year, and he left the program altogether less than halfway through. Nonetheless, in Dianetics, Hubbard credits his “instructors in atomic and molecular phenomena, mathematics and the humanities at George Washington University and at Princeton.” While Hubbard did once attend the U.S. Navy's School of Military Government on the Princeton campus, the school was not a part of the university. Scientology's past claims that Hubbard had attended Princeton have been abandoned in recent years. At any rate, Hubbard clearly wants his readers to view him as a learned man. And, lest his readers forget, he tends to remind them from time to time. Hubbard frequently refers to his calculations using advanced mathematics, and of their exclusion from his published writing for the sake of his poor readers. Furthermore, Hubbard used to refer to himself as doctor after purchasing a bogus Ph.D. for $20 from a nonexistent university. When his ruse was publicly exposed, he went back to being plain old Mr. Hubbard.
Of course, I run the risk of an ad hominem argument if I tell you that Hubbard was not only a bad scientist but also a bad writer. Now, I am not evaluating the entertainment value of his early pulp fiction; I haven’t read any of it. What I am talking about is his fundamental lack of understanding of English grammar and mechanics. His writing is a smorgasbord of solecisms, punctuation gaffes, diction errors, invented words, and logical lapses that suggests a disordered mind at work rather than a visionary thinker.
Why bother criticizing Hubbard’s writing style when it is really his ideas on trial? Simply put, Hubbard purports Scientology to be a path to higher intelligence, clearer thought, and spiritual freedom. Yet this man, who made his living as a writer, never demonstrated clear thought as translated to the printed word. Hubbard spent his later life supposedly in “research” into the nature of man, and his great discoveries included the ridiculous genesis story of Xenu, the evil galactic ruler who seeded earth with disembodied souls after planting billions of them next to volcanoes and blowing them up with hydrogen bombs. (Religious truth or pulp science fiction? Who cares? You can learn all about it if you pay enough to become an Operating Thetan, Level III.) These great truths never resulted in an evolution of thought or logic as evinced in Hubbard’s writing. Though what he says changes over the years, how he says it stays exactly the same. There is no evolution in language, in grammar, in diction. If anything, his writing devolves into an Orwellian Newspeak, perverting common words to serve new purposes and inventing others when needed.
Why are so many celebrities falling for Scientology? For one thing, it is the only religion that comes to mind that segregates its churches based on celebrity status. The posh Celebrity Centres are Hubbard’s way of rewarding artists, who Hubbard says “are a cut above man.” While it is nice to think along with Hubbard that a society is only as great as its dreams, and that those dreams are dreamed by artists, it is much more plausible to believe that Scientology specifically caters to celebrities’ famous vanities and insecurities in order to have free worldwide publicity for its cult.
It is my sad conclusion that, whatever their motivation for initially looking into the organization, Scientology’s members have fallen for nothing more than a scam. And the happy news for the Scientology money machine comes from the paraphrased wisdom of P.T. Barnum, which suggests that a potential member is born every minute.
3 comments:
Nice new layout and photo.
Thank you! It was time for a little something different.
Scientology, like all cults either finds you mad, turns you mad or leaves you mad.
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