Celebrities & Scientology

[roxpopuli]

My background is in the humanities, but I just get annoyed when the fact that the sciences are a work in progress is used against it ("intelligent design" people, I'm looking at you! I can't wait to vote against Rick Santorum next year!). The fact that paradigms and concepts change in the sciences is not a sign of its "unreliability" but is instead a sign that it, unlike other fields, has better bullshit detectors.

This is exactly what always kills me about ignorant views of science--as if because it is always "incomplete" it is somehow inadequate. The idea that something is "only a theory", like the Theory of Evolution. Hey, I've got news for you--Gravity is "only a theory"...Relativity is "only a theory" (which was actually revised when Dirac discovered that gravity was not a constant, but a variable that decreased with time--science at work). A "theory" is a concept amenable to the scientific method--it can be tested, and has been tested thousands of times, with the same results--but can be falsified at any time with new data. By this very definition, Scientology can NOT be a science, as they refuse to test their claims and will not accept that their view can ever be proven false. Somehow this makes them right and the entire scientific community wrong. I will never understand some people.

Between these people and the intelligent design freaks (which is simply creationism in a cheap tuxedo), I fear for the future of the human intellect.

[Malle Babbe]

The fact that paradigms and concepts change in the sciences is not a sign of its "unreliability" but is instead a sign that it, unlike other fields, has better bullshit detectors.

You folks all know you are free to use my above quote in the course of conversation with the dense, right?

Between these people and the intelligent design freaks (which is simply creationism in a cheap tuxedo), I fear for the future of the human intellect.

Someone over at Slate. com pointed out that "Intelligent Design" is actually Creationism evolving into a more "palatable" form.

With people that thick-headed, sometimes I'm amazed that The Enlightenment ever happened.

[heyjude]

If there's anyone left who isn't convinced that Scientology is a cult - here's an interesting perspective:
link

[Deleted]

Okay, update on A Piece of Blue Sky. It's absolutely fascinating how corrupt this group is. They had an "Ethics Discipline" thingy, mostly used on board ship in the Sea Org. They'd punish people for certain transgressions. One involved being thrown into the chain locker-the dank, rat-infested area where the anchor chains are located. Sometimes even young children. (Eight years old, or three years old are mentioned). Then they'd "overboard" people, literally. You'd be tossed over board (again, small children were also subject to this), sometimes blindfolded and restrained.

People talk about Lisa McPherson, but others have died mysteriously under the clams. There was Susan Meister who was found shot in the head-they claimed she committed suicide (she was on board one of the ships in Sea Org). Then there was James Stewart, who had been under discipline because he had severe epilepsy and had a seizure in public, which made the clams look bad. Eventually, they found him dead-from what I gather, he had been punished by being made to crawl around on the roof and had a seizure and fell to his death.

[Gabbycatsmom]

limey said:

Which makes me wonder; if we now have pharmacists refusing to hand out birth control, are we going to have Clam pharmacists refusing to hand out psych meds, anti-seizure medication, etc.?

With the general clam population being so admint about non drug useage, I can't imagine one being a pharmacist. They are to clams what witches were to the puritans.where the puritan made witch claims to enemies and people they generaly disliked. the pharmicists and shrinks of the world would try to tell them they are batshit crazy and need a bit more than a vitaman to 'stabalize' them, but seriously I could see a clam passing a pharmicist and hissing at them,and them the pharmicist punching them in the face.

Wait a minute, isn't Kirsty Alley a clam?!? And, doesn't she or didn't she have a coke problem - or am I thinking of someone else?

[sueli]

Kirstie Alley claims that Narcanon helped her get off the drug.

[Deleted]

heyjude said:

If there's anyone left who isn't convinced that Scientology is a cult - here's an interesting perspective:
www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/

Oh my god, that's so sad! And poor Quentin Hubbard. You almost wish he and the author HAD had a relationship-if she could have gotten him out to.

Kirstie Alley, I think she had a coke problem, but I'm not sure. I'm surprised she's shilling for Jenny Craig-you'd think that the clams would frown on that and do their own weight loss program.

[Malle Babbe]

Kirsty Alley did have a coke addiction, she credits Co$ for "curing" her. Hasn't Kelly Preston claimed that she was "purged" of all her drug issues when she allegedly started coughing up all of the coke and "toxins" from her body during an audit? Clearly, (pun intended) she was having a fit and was foaming at the mouth, but what do I know, I'd be called an SP by these folks...

I read some of the site posted by heyjude, and it just blew my mind. The elaborate means Hubbard devised to control people and mess with their heads raises an interesting question; where did he learn how to pull this crap on people. Did he just have a predatory personality, an intuitive grasp on what people control buttons are, or something else?

[Deleted]

Sounds like he was a classic sociopath-charming, intelligent, and totally devoid of any sense of ethics except when it came to HIS needs.

[Deleted]

I wonder if Tom's cousin William Mapother is a Scientologist as well?

Well, considering he's actually finished high school, and (yes!) gotten a college degree, and (holy crap!) worked as a teacher in a public school, I would tend to believe that he left the cult in the dust. I mean, teachers are suppressives! They need to be thrown from one's life like flower petals from the basket of the Handmaidens of Hell. (huh?) I think Billy becoming a teacher was the ultimate "fuck you" in the face of the Clamatitis Superior.