Hear, Hear to Jim’s remarks here.

Thank you for your reply as a never in its great to get insight from those in the know. Additional to your comments I’ll ad Hubbard also had two very strong and big weapons which were a unbelievable work rate that few match and he knew how to present, he was excellent at embellishing what he was presenting in a convincing manner.

I sometimes wonder if he in fact believed all he was teaching and was in fact of the belief he was doing good but then I think of the multiple stories such as implant stations, supposed cancer treatments, diabetic, eye sight problems benefiting as claimed from dianetics and I think Na this guy was just a very strange, very deceptive con man who was somewhat intelligent and excelled in conviction.

xenos,

i was trained and audited as a class 4 auditor. The good I got was a degree of understanding the mechanics of the human mind so I could sometimes break down the complex mental issues created by myself and others; thus seeing a way to ease the issue , if not have it cease to be the focus of one’s attention. About a third of the people I audited got little or nothing from my auditing, and about10% got spectacular (life changing positive) results. Myself included.

I always felt that the ‘aims’ of hubbard were to stroke his ego. Why else would orgs have a reptilian bust of hubbard in the lobby. I felt hubbard had few smarts, but was sharp and shifty in controlling people (getting his way). He plagairized anything from anybody who had something workable and of use to hubbard. He did pull together a summary of semi-workable processes to address human behavior and I appreciate that. His ego demanded that he had solved the ‘human mind’ for once and forever. Thus, KSW.

Hubbard ended up making his personal army to enforce his status, and thus took the whole construct down the toilet. My opinion is that the better-aspect of hubbard left in the late 60’s and left the lesser-aspect to finish the job. Justin Craig exemplifies the latter hubbard, as does miscavige.

For me the ONLY good to come out of scientology was the training and auditing and miscavige has pretty much eliminated that.

Re: “That’s why you’ll never find scientists holding weekly group therapy sessions insisting that gravity exists..”

That conjures up quite an image, James Rosso!

I probably wouldn’t last ten seconds in Scientology.

Changing the subject’s a standard tactic that’s taught at Toastmasters. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Toastmasters International, it’s a group that teaches the techniques of public speaking, which in practice means teaching dull and boring people to be even more tedious, dull, and boring. How do I know this? Well, my participation in Toastmasters was strongly recommended by the Chairman and the Treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota during my brief involvement with them. To make a long story short (too late), I was called upon to speak for two minutes on a subject that I knew nothing about. The usual technique for dealing with this situation was to either change the subject or make up something to say. This to me was the height of rudeness, Instead I stood up and said this:

And then I sat down. The Chairman and the Treasurer of the LP-MN continued to pester me about attending Toastmasters until I found and ran off copies of a short story, in STARLOG magazine of all places, that mocked the organization. I never heard a word from either of them on the subject after that.

I agree completely and I have talked with Dave ( or Capt Miscaviage at least 7 or 8 times).

Eh, i sort of agree and sort of disagree.

He’s the most responsible for the downfall of Scientology in the sense that he was in charge while it was (is) happening and had the power to do something about it.

But LRH is the most responsible for the downfall of Scientology in the sense that he wrote the rules and guidelines on how to run the church, and David Miscavige – who is almost exactly what a scientologist should be and adheres to the guidelines almost to the letter – is running the church pretty much exactly how LRH said to do it. The evil and incompetence is baked in folks, it’s no accident.

Exactly. Anecdotes are the start of investigating whether there’s any truth to a claim, not proof that it’s true. The easiest person to fool is yourself. Science is built around eliminating bias and deception; and that’s why it has so much credibility in our culture.

LRH knew that Scientology was built around self-deception, which is why he made damn sure to keep scientific testing the hell away from it.

Take the ‘success story’ every Scientologist is required to write after finishing a course: this is to try to lock in the self-deception, now that you’re done whatever you were being indoctrinated about. But real, useful, beneficial training doesn’t require reinforcement to make you believe it’s true. That’s why you’ll never find scientists holding weekly group therapy sessions insisting that gravity exists and is 9.8meters per second squared. That’s how it works with things that are true.

Gday my friend. You say that you are a trained auditor and you also say that their is some good from Scientology – would you say that the main good in Scientoliegy is found in auditing and is beneficial in as it achieves its aims ?