Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: "chuckbeatty77 @aol.com"
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 12:28:13 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sat, Jan 9 2010 3:28 pm
Subject: Re: old interview revisited Melton ignores internet impact

On Jan 9, 8:18 am, Hartley Patterson
wrote:

> rh...@rxenu-directory.net wrote:

> > Astrid wrote:
> > >http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2009/200910/20091030.html#grunts

> > > This is the old Oct. 2009 CBC interview of Rathbun and Melton.3rd
> > > audio link down on the page.
> > It's beyond my understanding why Melton was picked for commentary rather
> > than Stephen Kent.

> Academia fairly successfully painted Stephen Kent an extremist and isolated
> him. He doesn't get invited to their conferences! They all reccomend each
> other, give each other favourable reviews, etc.

> Not that Kent did anything to prevent this - he waded in, feuded with
> people and has fixed opinions about Scientology that some critics don't
> agree with. In effect he "turned native" and became a critic.

> --
> FREEDOM is a trademark owned by
> Religious Technology Centerhttp://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/stolgy_0.htm

Kent is invited to the cult conferences. He just doesn't attend the American Religion conferences.

Sad that we actually don't have MORE scholars.

But really, ARS experts are simply NOT doing all their homework.

A month ago I went to the Pittsburgh library system, and looked up all the various dictionaries on New Religions, and even as far back as 2002 the Xenu and body thetans story has leaked into the Scientology definition.

I think Gordon's main failing is NOT learning MORE about Scientology, and he's not the only one at fault, I think Professor Kent likewise (he's probably the best informed expert on Scientology) but even Kent is not to where Whitehead or Wallis were on SCientology.

We have NO total scholar expert on Scientology, that is the truth.

A scholar would have to really at least go through the OECs, Tech Vols, R & D Vols, all the available training course packs and checksheets for the Bridge all the way through Class 8, which are ALL available online, including the SHSBC.

There is NO scholar with that kind of grip on even the impact of ALL THAT LRH material on a fully trained Scientologist's mind.

No, the experts on Scientology is a shared role, spread amongst the divergent observers and participants in this subject mainly.

Scholars haven't done their homework frankly, not at all like expert theologians who study the hell out of the original texts of Christianity for instance.

Kent might be the furthest, but my complaint is the cross discipline training needed.

Whitehead in her book at least compared Hubbard to Freud and Jung.

I think Gordon is never going to be an expert on Scientology, he's just an informed scholar about American religions and new world religions.

I've had some impact, I believe, on his thinking.

If you want to impact Melton and the other scholars, start emailing them.

Otherwise you won't hear them joke privately about "body thetans", you won't hear them compare upper ranks Scientology to "banana republic dictatorships".

YOu won't ever hear their private feelings. You won't hear them let their hair down and tell you that NO cult has ever completely disbanded and disintegrated, exception the JImmy Jones cult that disintegrated due to the mass murder tragedy.

Scientology is NOT going to disintegrate. Marty's a phrase showing that even.

I urge anonymous people to email Gordon, send Gordon links to the hardhitting videos that anonymous put out, like the latest one that refutes David Miscavige's hype at the 2006 event.

anonymous protesting was acknowledged to me privately by one of the most repeatedly criticized "apologist" scholars as HUGE and unprecedented. The scholar simply might not say that publicly.

There've been protests against the Moonies, Melton told me, but no sustained protests like anonymous is doing.

The anonymous protesting is unique in being clever, quirky, etc.

The sophisticated videos are importantly new and unique, and proof of the internet's impact.

Melton would say that unfortunately the material anonymous puts out will NOT be viewed by the majority of the movement faithful, and we all know that anyways. The Scientologist's rules, Hubbard's SP rules preclude Scientologists looking on the "SP" internet sites where they will see the anti Scientology material.

Agreed Kent would be more informative were he to have been interviewed.

Melton's views about the long range stumbling along future of Scientology, and Melton's not very hopeful views that any criticism will do much to stop Scientology's progress, I think would be better refuted with MORE on the ground evidence of the Flag Land Base drop in income, if that is occuring.

The Class 5 orgs have always been in this constant dire straits condition, up and down, decade after decade, and the management of Scientology fiddles and fails and flails and does nothing really to improve or really collapse the system.

I think Scientology is still going mainly because Hubbard wrote SO MUCH crap, that it is such a long runway, and his material is so full of hype and hope, that the hopeful suckers drawn into Scientology, get enough hope and "help" that they are happy enough to tolerate the lackluster gains, they buy the Hubbard hype, they contribute to the hype, blend in, form their lives within the Scientology community, and survive as a group, sufficiently, that the attrition rate of the whole mess is so drawn out, and NOT dramatic enough when people do disappear suddenly, and the Hubbard rules preclude broadcasting the anti Scientology details and flaws, in the course of losing the members who quit, that overall, they keep going.

It's suckers duped by overwhelming hype, who hope for the best, get a few crumbs of help, are happy, and they hold the fort until they can't stand it anymore, and most quit over time, and the rules keep everyone silent about the faults in the joint, not until people get out, get their heads on straight again, and by then, the statute of limitations has passed.

I thought Gordon DID point out that the legal front was a significant way to effect change in the movement, he implied that.

Too bad we can't get some recently beaten staff to come out and bring charges.

I think protests at the Int Base asking for recently beaten staff to come out and help prosecute Miscavige and any other of the Miscavige- ites who are doing beatings still, THAT is what I read into Gordon's implied comment on the legal angle of why this beatings story wouldn't necessarily lead to any reform.

I personally think that exposing the beatings, will cause the reform, at least for a while.

But the upper closed circle of top staff at the Int Base, to me, THAT is still the place where the potential to really blow open the cult abuse stuff, protestors with signs encouraging Int Base staff to blow and file criminal charges, THAT is still a wide open possibility.

Chuck

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: "chuckbeatty77 @aol.com"
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 13:39:52 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sat, Jan 9 2010 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: old interview revisited Melton ignores internet impact

> I don't see anything comparable in Kent's scholarship, although he is
> certainly clearly opposed to Scientology and other cults.

My complaint is NO scholar has been sufficiently knowledgable with Scientology's full load of Hubbard's writings/lectures, and particularly the Class 8 materials, the Class 8 tapes pretty much seal in concrete exactly Hubbard's REAL views about the impact of "body thetans" on us.

Kent has not simply done the full whole hog study of Scientology.

Melton has privately agreed that only Wallis and Whitehead had done what are called "monograph" books on Scientology.

Kent I don't think will do a monograph on Scientology.

We don't have a scholar capable of doing the Scientology monograph.

I'd agree with Skip, that it's unreal and unfruitful to even pursue that course, but to me, if Scientology DOES continue to morph and creep along, which I think it will, it is just right now, in history that word of mouth is dreadful against Scientology.

Who knows in two generations, what will happen, what new generation of dupes comes along.

Rather than bury the important expose details that the people who lived with Hubbard have in their heads, I still wish at least the raw info stories about Hubbard to get into the public domain.

I do think that the MORE raw firsthand info gotten public, will make the future re-writing of Hubbard's actual history a further impossibility. In otherwords more raw stories of Hubbard into the public domain, so the church can't rewrite history two generations from now.

I think longer range.

We simply don't have a current Wallis or Whitehead taking on Scientology. Or even a more capable scholar than the two of them, to take on Scientology.

I'm planning to do some papers for the Cult journal, for no pay, for free, just for the history books, when I retire in about 10 years.

I still would like to see some young new Phd candidate take on Scientology as a career beginning dissertation, like Wallis did, and become the future Scientology expert.

Marty's phase is typical of all splinter phases of a religion. In Scientology's case, the parishioners are more heavily penalized for joining the splinter groups, because the problem is Hubbard's SP rules. Joining and supporting splinter groups is suppressive, and Hubbard laid that down in concrete.

It is Hubbard's accumulated rules that keep the members tripped up and stuck in the official movement longer than they ought to be stuck in it.

I think some papers on the degree that those rules keep the members stuck, would be fruitful. That's what I'll likely write about, if no one else does, in about 10 years.

See you then.

Best, Chuck

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: "chuckbeatty77 @aol.com"
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:47:33 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sun, Jan 10 2010 3:47 pm
Subject: Re: old interview revisited Melton ignores internet impact

On Jan 10, 12:44 pm, "Android Cat" wrote:

> "Hartley Patterson" wrote in message

> news:MPG.25b41abdb6eb03329896e4@news.thundernews.com...

> > skipSPAMpr...@yahoo.not wrote:

> >> Chuck, the public DOES NOT GIVE A DAMN about scholarly studies. The
> >> public (at least in America) cares about WHAT SEEMS POPULAR.
> >> $cientology is now 99% unpopular except among those STUPID enough to
> >> think it has some value of any kind.

> > I don't think anyone's disputing that Skip.
> > Mostly when a split between 'experts' and 'public' occurs it's the experts
> > that are right, they've just not taken the trouble to explain why they are
> > right. In this case the reverse is true, some experts lost their way,
> > introverted and came to believe that their methodology was more important
> > than reality. What ex-members were saying about cults became anomalous
> data
> that could be ignored.

> They didn't "lose their way", they purposely organized a tight circle to
> discredit any discussion of cult thought control, suppress opposing
> viewpoints, stamp their circle's spin as the mainstream and tap the groups
> they were protecting for funds and support.

> --
> Ron of that ilk.

That strategy isn't their breadwinning activity anymore. Today James R. Lewis, got banned by Scientology, they hate his "Scientology" anthology just out in 2009. Too much Xenu and body thetans in it. Anyone can email Lewis and find out themselves.

Bromley's chapter in that "Scientology" 2009 anthology talks pretty neutrally and simply about Xenu and body thetans, and because of that, and because of the Xenu chapter, and because of other critical comments about Scientology, a number of the new religions scholars are NOT on the Scientology's good list anymore.

Scientology is NOT happy at all with them due to this 2009 "Scientology" anthology.

And some of the most prominent "apologist" scholars make private jokes about this rejection Scientology has shed on them.

One scholar who people here would most agree is the MOST pro Scientology, actually makes the MOST critical and intelligent and sometimes hilarious private comments about Scientology. I wish he'd go public with his comments. He's made some hilarious comments.

They joke about Scientology being displeased with them as scholars, and that Scientology has manadated that the scholars' quota of "body thetans" to be dealt with, upping their "body thetans" count from 1.7 million body thetans to 2.5 million body thetans, as punishment, that must be removed from one particular scholar, for what they wrote in the anthology and for what they've said in public, which was ever so slightly critical of Scientology.

No, privately you'd be surprised what these supposedly "in the pocket of the cult" "paid for by the cult mouthpiece" apologist scholars believe, and what they think of Scientology.

Anyone can email Jim Lewis, David Bromley, Gordon Melton, and I encourage people do so.

My impression is they get NO money from Scientology at this stage in history.

I read in a link on Melton, that Melton DID have to sign a number of releases back in the early 1990s, saying Melton would NOT discuss the Xenu and Body Thetans stuff, so Melton's been gagged legally. He's had to parrot the esoteric "Xenu" and "body thetans" stuff and call it Scientology's "holiest of holy knowledge."

It was a Faustian bargain, and hopefully before he dies, he will write on this.

But the others, they talk Xenu, I went to the library, found another scholar's entry as of 2002 that correctly talks about Xenu and Body Thetans. Another in 2007 2008, and now 2009. They finally have completely broached the secrecy barrier and describe in not very perfect yet, but simple, terms what the "upper levels" are about.

Bromley's 2009 entry in the "Scientology" book is good, and the 2002 entry I read in the library was pretty good.

The 2009 book "Scientology" edited by Lewis has put a bunch of them on Scientology's "bad" scholar list.

They are sticking their necks out a tiny bit, and rather than just trounce on these scholars, I again urge anyone to email them.

Lewis and Bromley and Melton answer their emails. Others do as well.

One scholars who wrote about Xenu and body thetans in his 2007 book, he is still in good graces and good touch with his continental area church PR rep, so also Scientology OSA doesn't always know and completely blacklist all scholars. Scientology's inconsistent even in their disapproval tactics against the scholars.

In Gordon's favor, he knows he has not written nor researched Scientology, nor is capable of doing a book like Harriet Whitehead's book on Scientology.

He referred me to read Whitehead. Here's a gem from Whitehead:

"In trying to extract from the personal style on view in Hubbard's pre- Dianetic background and his later public behavior some sense of what motivated the creation of Dianetics and Scientology,one must bear in mind that a process of discrediting inevitably overtakes all attempts to mass market religions or therapeutic solutions in our culture as well as all attempts to gain a following for scientific claims outside the established channels of credentialing and peer review. In an important sense, the actual personality of the religious entrepreneur or deviant scientist is irrelevant to the operation of this process. The activities themselves invite suspicion of quackery or megalomania (or both). It is little surprise then that when the press examines a figure such as Hubbard who, as it happens, was both selling hope and pressing questionable scientific claims, the interpretive problem (if any is perceived) typically revolves around which of two stereotypes is most fitting, the con man or the crank (see for example Martin Garder's 157:263-80)."

She wrote this in 1987, and since that time, the internet, the critics sites with raw material, and now the anonymous researched Hubbard inconsistencies on YouTube, this "...process of discrediting inevitably overtakes ....attempts to mass market religions or therapeutic solutions....." has pretty much lifted the shades on Scientology's operation.

The key word in that passage, is "inevitably" for an endeavor like Hubbard's to end up being discredited.

Her book is only 8 bucks on Amazon.

Hiding the fact that one is selling "body thetan" removal as spiritual therapy as the most important service in the universe for all of mankind's deepest mental ills, is bound to be exposed and fail.

That Melton had to sign releases not to talk Xenu and body thetans must have been an odd moment for him.

Chuck

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: "chuckbeatty77 @aol.com"
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:48:47 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sun, Jan 31 2010 12:48 pm
Subject: Has anyone written/researched why it is that former members like Marty are successful to the degree they are?

I look on Marty as a therapist who is acceptable to patients who look up to him, he speaks with great understanding to those who come to him.

He's like the ultimate "ARC Break Auditor", a church position that was created to actually deal with the completely dissaffected ex members who are "muddying up the field" around Scientology churches.

Things have SO deteriorated in Scientology official organizational structure, that the "ARC Break Audtior" "hat" is being worn, by ex members with particularly high altitude "auditor presence" like Marty.

David Mayo would be another representation of this unofficial "ARC Break Auditor" hat wearing by high altitude ex members going into the field and "patching up" the cases of other Scientologists dumped on (inevitably one would admit) by official Scientology.

LRH would view this and probably were LRH alive, he'd somehow build up the church "ARC Break Auditor" program, and get these "cases" who were botched and discarded by Scientology, fixed up by the movement's auditors.

But, the movement doesn't have the auditors to do the fixing up.

Well anyways, this was one of my lingering organizational observations of what Marty is doing, he's doing repair and "ARC Break" auditing, a job that used to be done by the church.

He's of course NOT church, but he's wearing that church hat, is my observation.

But his products, his patients, are not gonna be accepted back into the movement, because the Hubbard "SP" rules preclude that.

But, also, didn't the people who went to Mayo, didn't some of them get back on lines in official Scientology.

So, maybe, if Marty stays completely standard in his application of Hubbard's "tech", then any of Marty's clients can go back onlines, someday, if they do their A to E steps (steps they would have to do to become "un declared" SP and join regular church ranks again).

Another thing the church could do, at whatever distant future date, is declare an International Amnesty, and let all these people back into the ranks, but the movement would need new management before anyone's gonna go back to it, obviously.

Chuck Beatty
ex Sea Org, 1975-2003 Hubbard policy nerd

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: "chuckbeatty77 @aol.com"
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:57:47 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sun, Jan 31 2010 12:57 pm
Subject: Re: Has anyone written/researched why it is that former members like Marty are successful to the degree they are?

My point is, I'm speculating that SP "squirrel" Scientology auditors to some degree are wearing the church "ARC Break Auditor" hat, and this is probably true, since in the 1980s when Mayo was big, the church TRIED to push hard on the church's "ARC Break Auditor" program, to try to clean up the church's own admitted (privately admitted) pissed off parishioners who quit and were muddying up the public fields around the churches in the 1980s.

And thinking on this further, it means even more that Hubbard's best church efforts fail, and the ex member "squirrels" even keep on trying to fix up the Hubbard official church messes!

That's an odd switched role!

If the church can't do it, then quit, and let the squirrels give it a shot!

No, to me, Hubbard's crap don't work, is the bottom line, and no amount of squirrel Scientology patchup is gonna work in the long run either, but the squirrel independent Scientologists are more like normal citizens and won't ram the Hubbard SP rules down anyone's throat at least!

Chuck Beatty
ex Sea Org, 1975-2003
Hubbard policy nerd