Letter to a scientologist 2
my perspective is that an investigator of a belief system should know the "dirty parts" or have
easy access to them. how else do you weed out crazy stuff a priori? i'm also appreciating the approach of "if it works, then perhaps the dirty stuff isn't that hard to swallow" and may even be true. alot of people experience this in non-religious situations. but this set up in abusive situations is standard. it's called partial reinforcement. the balance of positive reinforcement to negative tips over time to alot bad and little good. having my own abusive religious experience, i have a great appreciation for the baloney detector we all come with. and i encourage people to listen to their baloney detector if they don't have a theological or philosophical grid to evaluate religious claims. so my baloney detector would say to CoS, secret levels? incorrect history? big dollars? unverified claims? can never read all this stuff in my lifetime? it may work, but probably not by the mechanism they propose.
for example, windows runs on top of dos. so if dos is the ultimate truth then pursuing windows misses the point. windows looks like the truth but it's really dos.
there may be results with scientology but there are proposed alternative mechanisms to explain these. from my perspective lrh found windows, if anything, and not dos. how do you determine if someone's claims are ultimately true or not? aren't people who have benefited from electro-shock therapy considered by scientologists deceived? that's an a priori judgement. it worked for them. it's true for them. don't you claim a higher reality by considering their treatment a sham? how do you justify a partial utilitarian philosophy?
easy access to them. how else do you weed out crazy stuff a priori? i'm also appreciating the approach of "if it works, then perhaps the dirty stuff isn't that hard to swallow" and may even be true. alot of people experience this in non-religious situations. but this set up in abusive situations is standard. it's called partial reinforcement. the balance of positive reinforcement to negative tips over time to alot bad and little good. having my own abusive religious experience, i have a great appreciation for the baloney detector we all come with. and i encourage people to listen to their baloney detector if they don't have a theological or philosophical grid to evaluate religious claims. so my baloney detector would say to CoS, secret levels? incorrect history? big dollars? unverified claims? can never read all this stuff in my lifetime? it may work, but probably not by the mechanism they propose.
for example, windows runs on top of dos. so if dos is the ultimate truth then pursuing windows misses the point. windows looks like the truth but it's really dos.
there may be results with scientology but there are proposed alternative mechanisms to explain these. from my perspective lrh found windows, if anything, and not dos. how do you determine if someone's claims are ultimately true or not? aren't people who have benefited from electro-shock therapy considered by scientologists deceived? that's an a priori judgement. it worked for them. it's true for them. don't you claim a higher reality by considering their treatment a sham? how do you justify a partial utilitarian philosophy?
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