letter to a scientologist - no.1
i belong to a public apologetics e-group that includes Scientologists as readers/commenters. back in 1999 i started some long dialogs with them. for me, finding these old emails is like finding old archaeological texts. they are somewhat piecemeal, but i think they were and still are valuable. the specifics for any cult change, but the general appeal can be molded around any group.
a little glossary first
JC - Jesus Christ
LRH - L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder
CoS - Church of Scientology
Dear...
Certainly experience is valid to a degree, but I expect people on this apologetics list will be defending their faith with more ammo than experience. Experience for the Christian is the icing on the cake, strengthening the argument for Christ, but not a leg the argument rests on. Perhaps the thief on the cross didn't go on an apologetic analysis before asking Jesus to save him while hanging next to Jesus. He had an experience with Jesus that enabled the faith to believe in Jesus. The other guy hanging up there, however, had a different subjective experience and rejected the salvation of Jesus. Subjectively, neither you nor I can know which person made the right choice. Fortunately, you and I have time to analyze the data.
Can we agree that some experiential choices that superseded objective choices can and have occurred with devastating results: Heaven's Gate, and David Koresh, People's Temple and Jim Jones. There was abundant data that the leaders were wrong, objectively, but followers turned off their baloney detectors. They chose to believe the new "facts" that the leaders fed them. Not all false prophets slide all the way down this slippery slope to mass suicide, some angle towards mass poverty and minority prosperity, some prefer concentrated power. Unfortunately, followers often ignore the appeals to reason of friends and family. This forum is an appeal to reason. Therefore, I will appeal to reason by appearing to appeal to experience. You claim "If I experience spiritual change which expands my awareness to things greater than myself, how is that shallow?" Because this criteria does not allow you to evaluate any other belief system without releasing CoS and embracing the new faith. This turns out to be an impossible task. Some belief systems, including CoS, insist that a true understanding and experience takes many years. If you started religious experimentation at 16, and allowed 5 years for each religion, and you lived to 72, you could try 11 religions (unless one of them turned out to be a suicide cult). And what if in those 56 years more LRH's appear with "new" understandings. You can't keep up nor try them all out, perhaps not even afford them all.
You have 2 options then, rule out some beliefs a priori- but that involves objective reasoning, or appeal to authority, those who have gone before you. It seems you have chosen this 2nd option. LRH did some sampling, not enough years for each, AFAIK, if CoS was one of his samplings, and developed his own belief system based on some "new" insight, new "facts." It seems to me that you have decided to trust LRH, if not put faith in him, then faith in his analysis, analysis that would result in cries of "foul" if applied to CoS now. If your decision is based on an appeal to authority and an appeal to satisfactory results, correct me if I'm wrong here, then I want to introduce you to Jesus. His sayings and authoritative writings about him would hardly intimidate a disciple of LRH. They could probably fit in one of LRH's volumes. You are invited to compare the authority of JC to LRH. Compare the subjective experiences of Christians to Scientologists. Compare the unity of the message and scriptures and frequency of revision. Ask the source of truth to reveal himself to you. All the data is public for the Bible so the advantage is to the investigator of Christianity over the investigator of CoS.
a little glossary first
JC - Jesus Christ
LRH - L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder
CoS - Church of Scientology
Dear...
Certainly experience is valid to a degree, but I expect people on this apologetics list will be defending their faith with more ammo than experience. Experience for the Christian is the icing on the cake, strengthening the argument for Christ, but not a leg the argument rests on. Perhaps the thief on the cross didn't go on an apologetic analysis before asking Jesus to save him while hanging next to Jesus. He had an experience with Jesus that enabled the faith to believe in Jesus. The other guy hanging up there, however, had a different subjective experience and rejected the salvation of Jesus. Subjectively, neither you nor I can know which person made the right choice. Fortunately, you and I have time to analyze the data.
Can we agree that some experiential choices that superseded objective choices can and have occurred with devastating results: Heaven's Gate, and David Koresh, People's Temple and Jim Jones. There was abundant data that the leaders were wrong, objectively, but followers turned off their baloney detectors. They chose to believe the new "facts" that the leaders fed them. Not all false prophets slide all the way down this slippery slope to mass suicide, some angle towards mass poverty and minority prosperity, some prefer concentrated power. Unfortunately, followers often ignore the appeals to reason of friends and family. This forum is an appeal to reason. Therefore, I will appeal to reason by appearing to appeal to experience. You claim "If I experience spiritual change which expands my awareness to things greater than myself, how is that shallow?" Because this criteria does not allow you to evaluate any other belief system without releasing CoS and embracing the new faith. This turns out to be an impossible task. Some belief systems, including CoS, insist that a true understanding and experience takes many years. If you started religious experimentation at 16, and allowed 5 years for each religion, and you lived to 72, you could try 11 religions (unless one of them turned out to be a suicide cult). And what if in those 56 years more LRH's appear with "new" understandings. You can't keep up nor try them all out, perhaps not even afford them all.
You have 2 options then, rule out some beliefs a priori- but that involves objective reasoning, or appeal to authority, those who have gone before you. It seems you have chosen this 2nd option. LRH did some sampling, not enough years for each, AFAIK, if CoS was one of his samplings, and developed his own belief system based on some "new" insight, new "facts." It seems to me that you have decided to trust LRH, if not put faith in him, then faith in his analysis, analysis that would result in cries of "foul" if applied to CoS now. If your decision is based on an appeal to authority and an appeal to satisfactory results, correct me if I'm wrong here, then I want to introduce you to Jesus. His sayings and authoritative writings about him would hardly intimidate a disciple of LRH. They could probably fit in one of LRH's volumes. You are invited to compare the authority of JC to LRH. Compare the subjective experiences of Christians to Scientologists. Compare the unity of the message and scriptures and frequency of revision. Ask the source of truth to reveal himself to you. All the data is public for the Bible so the advantage is to the investigator of Christianity over the investigator of CoS.
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