1. The Art of Handling Thetans

Comment #44891 by djmagaro on May 25, 2007 at 1:56 pm

My First Attempt Disappeared into the Ether. Apologize if my long-winded story appears twice:

I had a similar experience as well eight years ago or so. One bright spring Saturday, while walking up Connecticut Avenue in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, DC, I saw a middle-aged man standing in front of a mansion calling out, "Free personality test! Get'cher personality test here! Free PER-sonality test." His delivery like like that of a sideshow barker - and oh, what a sideshow* it was!

*Sideshow is here defined as "A colossal waste of time."

I had an 8-hour drive ahead of me that day and intended to get some lunch before I left, so I asked him how long the test would take. Like any good barker, he lied and told me "Thirty minutes! It's real fast!" So in I went.

Now I knew going in that this was a Scientology scam. The mansion, after all, had a big brass placard reading "L. Ron Hubbard Foundation" and in college I had read the "secret" scriptures of Scientology that various hackers had been kind enough to make available on the Internet. [I used them in part as basis for my own sacred scriptures for the Esoteric Order of the Golden Pizzle.]

The barker escorted me in, whereupon I was handed off to a blue-eyed, blond crew-cut young man named "Brad." I was taken downstairs to a sort of waiting room disguised as a well-appointed den or study. "Brad" pawned me off on a guy who could've been his clone, named "Todd." After waiting for about 15 minutes for no apparent reason (I should have this as foreshadowing and left), "Todd" gave me the "Oxford Personality Test." Of course, the test is in no way affiliated with Oxford University, but putting the name "Oxford" in there just adds a certain gravitas that "Hubbard's Bogus Personality Test" somehow lacks.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, I finished the test and handed it in. I was told to have a seat while my results were processed. I had already conceded their opening by going and taking their test, and not noticing how they were going to run their middlegame, I sat there blithely waiting for my results to come in. Minutes turns to tens of minutes, turns to halves of hours, which, as is their wont, turn to hours. I sat there with nothing to do. Inquiries into my test results were rebuffed as my proctor "Todd" was now nowhere to be found. I hadn't noticed him leave and he hadn't seen fit to let me know he was departing. A great show was made of locating "Todd" and everyone acted genuinely confused as to why he could have left, but no one picked up a phone to page him or went off in search of him.

"If you're getting bored," it was suggested, "You can read some of the literature we have here." Of course! The "literature"! Dostoevsky is wasn't. Heck, it wasn't even on par with Hubbard's own 30's pulp fare. But it was something to occupy the mind.

[In retrospect, it seems apparent that I was suffering from Iraq Syndrome. Having gotten myself mired in a hopeless situation, I felt that I had to stay the course for fear of my expedition being a "waste."]

During all of this waiting, various woops, whistles, and sirens sounded at regular intervals. Voices on the PA system announced, "All Level 1 Clears report to Purification Room #6." "Stage Sixes report to the Serenity Room." Etc. At each announcement, herds of people, some who looked as young as 12 and other who were bent and silver travelled up and down the various mesh-metal stairwells that were visible from the waiting room. There were also two or three closed doors with back-lit signs above them forbidding entry to the unwashed, unclean, and otherwise uninitiated.

Ah, I thought as I observed these things in their turn, their game becoming clear (no pun indented) to me. First, get your mark to take a 500-question personality test. The investment of time and thought will make it more likely for them to wait for the results, as will the comfy, plush chairs. Keep pawning the mark off on to different people so that the mark never quite knows who to talk to, who's in charge, or how to find out what's going on. Next, make sure you have plenty of propaganda lying about on the richly-stained end tables and desks. Finally, create an atmosphere mystery, of esoterism, of Secrets-Man-Was-Not-Meant-To-Know [for free] with cryptic messages, mysterious movements of masses of people, strange whistles, forbidding signs.

With the opening and closing doors, multiple stairwells going up several floors and down several levels below the street, I felt like I was in one of those Lovecraft story where the inside of the old mansion somehow has more rooms than the view of from the outside would seem to permit. I have expected to hear the sound of drums and pipes, of inhuman guttural voices rising from one of the forbidden rooms, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULHU R'LYEH WGAH'NAGL FHTAGN!"

Were they raising great Cthulhu from his watery slumbers? Would Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos come shambling through one of those doors, his formless, shapeless visage driving me to mind-jibbering madness as I confront That Which Lies Beyond Space and Time?

Sadly, the answer to all those question was no. I was doomed to boredom for the foreseeable future.

Hours had passed. I was starving. I was dreading my drive back to Pittsburgh. I got up and made for the door, and wouldn't you know it? My name was just then called! What an amazing coincidence! What serendipity! What, ah, you get the idea.

So now we were in the end game. I was face to face with an Auditor - a black woman in her forties. She reviewed the test with me. She pointed out my psychological strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, I was patient. (Did the test tell you that, or was it the hours I spent waiting?) I was also open-minded. I could cope with complexity. I was smart. I was lots of flattering things. Unfortunately, there was a problem. (You don't say!) Unfortunately, despite all of my psychological strengths, despite my patience, calmness, and smarts, the test indicated that when under pressure, I experience stress. And that when placed into high-pressure, stressful situations, I experience anxiety. Gods, no!

Were I as quick-witted as Ray, I would have said something like, "You mean that when under stress, I experience stress?"

Unfortunately, I was not, and am not, as quick-witted as Ray, so I said something like, "Really?" She started to ask me biographical question, questions about my childhood, my relationships, and had the topic not turned to religion, I would have thought that I was being psychoanalyzed.

"Do you have a religion?" She asked.

"Not really. I consider myself a Daoist though."

"What's that?"

"A Chinese philsophy..."

As many of you may know, the Scientologists claim most of the major religious founders as their own, as "Operating Thetans" who didn't have full knowledge of Lord Xeno, the frozen Thetans, the space-faring 747's, the hydrogen bombs and volcanoes - or who didn't reveal the full knowledge of the Scientological Space Opera to their followers. They call dibs on Krshna, Shakyamuni Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Ghandi, and many others. (I think the only one they don't claim is J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and that's out of jealousy no doubt. His mind-control cult is much more entertaining.) Had I affirmed fealty to one of the major world faiths, my Auditor could have picked whatever script was appropriate and continued with the session.

But no, I was a Daoist. I studied martial arts to train my body and meditative techniques to train my mind. I knew full well that stressful situations tend to induce stress, and in fact, through meditation had learned how to control the physiological phenomena that keep one from thinking clearly in high-stress situations.

"But!" she said, "But you don't really know how to do that." The implication being that only by taking (an expensive series of) Scientological courses could I learn to do the things I already knew how to do.

"But I can do, and do do those things."

"That's fine. But you only have part of the picture. Do you know about L. Ron Hubbard?" At which point she spoke of him in almost identical terms as Fundamentalist Christians talk about their personal relationship with Jesus.

"Wasn't Hubbard a science fiction writer?"

"That's how he started, but then he wrote this book!" Out came a fresh copy of Dianetics, all primed for the selling.

"Look," I said politely. "I really have to go. I'm late as it is, and I really don't want or need your book."

"You can leave at any time," she said, which was strange because it implied that there might be an occasion where I could not leave at any time.

"Great!" I said, standing up, "It's been nice talking to you."

"But someone has to escort you out!"

"Can't you?"

"Well, yes," she acquiesced.

And so, after being escorted back outside, I went on my way. I went to a whole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant next to a gay porn store on Connecticut Ave., had me some sesame tofu, and started back to Pittsburgh.

When I look back on my utterly wasted afternoon eight years ago, I like to think that I learned something, like "Only a fool argues with a fool," or I imagine that by tying up an Auditor for a good thirty minutes I nobly took a bullet for some other person perhaps more weak-minded than myself, or that by by engaging the Auditor, someone else in the waiting room went ahead and left.

But no. It's just wishful thinking to imagine some purpose, lesson, or meaning in wasting a beautiful blue Saturday afternoon. My time would have been better spent playing chess against the black guys who hustle the boards in the shadow of the Dupont Circle fountain. I would've lost my money, but at least I'd have learned a few new moves.

2. Christian sports workers degree ridiculed

Comment #44690 by djmagaro on May 25, 2007 at 7:28 am

The old order Mennonites and Amish in Pennsylvania don't need university degrees (or even a high school education) to organize their softball teams, and they seem to do pretty well. Heck, they used to destroy our Boy Scout troop whenever we'd play'em. They thought it was hilarious to watch us English (as they called us) go three-up, three-down every inning.

3. Atheists: Get off of our country!

Comment #44658 by djmagaro on May 25, 2007 at 6:40 am

Notice Ms. Shannon's list of acceptable religions are all Christian denominations. Must must wonder if her "etc." includes Jews and Muslims, let alone the pantheistic Hindus, animistic shamanists, or nontheistic Buddhists.

I think konquerez's comments (Comment #44643) offer some insight into the Fundementalist mindset. I grew up Catholic in the largely Protestant rural Pennsylvania, and I tell you what - we Catholics weren't even counted as Christians by many Protestants.

My Fundamentalist friends (this is before the Culture Wars, mind you) constantly tried to convert me because, even though I too "accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Lord and Savior," I somehow wasn't doing it the right way.

Similarly, one girl I went to high school with - a Lutheran - didn't even know that Catholics were Christians until the topic came up (by way of discussing JFK) in an Advanced Placement Government course our senior year! This girl was 18 (!!!) before she learned this, and she was practically incredulous! You could almost see the mental gears grinding to a halt as the new knowledge came into direct conflict with what she'd been previously taught - or more accurately, NOT TAUGHT.

"What did you think we were?" we asked.

"I don't know. Not Christians," she said.

"We were the first Christians!" [I know, I know, this is Catholic propaganda, but wait till you see her response.]

"What? I thought we [Lutherans] were!"

4. I Don't Believe in Atheists

Comment #44640 by djmagaro on May 25, 2007 at 6:07 am

I'm sure someone else has already made these points but:

(1) Hedges' ever-shifting and ever-expanding definition of capital-G God is NOT in accord with the doctrine of Judaism and Christianity which holds that Yahweh as revealed in the Bible alone is God. (Christians confuse the matter more by adding that Yahweh-Jesus-Ghost is God, a veritable 3 for 1 offer!) If Hedges' really believes the god he describes is God, then he is a heretic. If he doesn't, then he's being disingenuous at best.

(2) Hedges' other arguments seem to focus on the alleged connections between monotheism and various social advances in the past 2000 years (i.e. individuality, brotherhood of man, etc.). Even if these connections are true, it doesn't follow that the metaphysical assertions (existence of creator-God, immortality of the soul, reward/punishment afterlife, etc.) common to monotheistic religions are true.

(3) Finally, he indulges in a most blatant form of cherry picking when it comes to religion's accomplishments. God gets the credit of all the good done in his name, and - presumably - for the evil done, humanity gets all the blame.

5. Dobson, Armageddon, and Foreign Policy

Comment #42525 by djmagaro on May 18, 2007 at 10:35 am

The sad thing about these kooks is that their "End Times" theology (known as Darbyism, after John Nelson Darby) is not Biblically supported. Darby and his later adherents devised their elaborate hermeneutic by chopping passages not only out of their historical context, but out of their literal internal context. They they rearranged these passages arbitrarily in an attempt to construct a narrative of a literal, physically occurring End of the World.

Ironically, adherents of Darbyism or Dispensationalism as it's also called, claim that they have a common-sense, literal interpretation of the Bible and yet turn around and say that when Jesus said "Blessed are the weak," "Sell everything you have and follow me," "It will be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," that he didn't really mean it - at least, not for our current "dispensation."

Mainline Protestants (including Baptists!), Catholics, and Orthodox Christians all reject it as laughably misguided at best and heretical at worst.

Sadder still, the majority of the public, Christians and non-Christians alike, are under the mistaken impression that the Bible "says" that there will be a Rapture, 7-year Tribulation, etc. when it says no such thing. Journalists help perpetuate this when they interview people like Dobson or Tim LaHaye (co-author of the "Left Behind" books) and just accept at face value that the Bible "says" the things they claim it does.

I think the greatest way to combat such inanity/insanity is to encourage people - nominal/cultural Christians especially - to read the Bible as see for themselves what it really says. Not only will this discredit Dobson and his ilk of "Bible-believing" "literalists," but as more people read and see that it makes no sense.

I've met more than a few atheists who deconverted after reading the Bible.

For thoroughly entertaining debunking of the Darbyism in the "Left Behind" books see the Slacktivist (Fred Clark) at http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html. As a Baptist, Clark skewers the book on theological and aesthetic grounds.

6. An ecumenical contempt for religion

Comment #38464 by djmagaro on May 8, 2007 at 7:31 am

A link to a link of Hitchins debated the Rev. Al Sharpton: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=214088#214088

7. Scene Caused by Christian Group at NYC Stage Show

Comment #36537 by djmagaro on May 1, 2007 at 12:58 pm

The clip reminds me of the fact the people who live in a demon-haunted world a liable to lash out at the showdows lurking just beyond the circle of their understanding ... i.e. other people.

BTW - Mike Daisey, if you're reading this, the NYC-Paris Hilton piece is killer.

8. Gay hate church to picket VT gun rampage funerals

Comment #33457 by djmagaro on April 20, 2007 at 7:42 am

There's a fascinating (in a car-accident sort of way) biography of Fred Phelps on-line. Google "Addicted to Hate." This "God Hates Fags" campaign, which has mushroomed into a sort of "God Hates Everyone But Us" campaign is a relatively recent development in the disturbing, violent, and bizarre life of this family cult. Of particular interest are the two brothers who left the family cult and have managed to put their damaged lives back together.

9. Dinesh D'Souza says I don't exist: an atheist at Virginia Tech

Comment #33455 by djmagaro on April 20, 2007 at 7:17 am

Mr. D'Sousa is a notorious provocateur, a member of the parasitic chattering class that has grown exponentially since the invention of the Internet. As near as I can tell, he produces nothing of enduring value: he's not a scientist, inventor, artist, factory worker, shop-keeper, industrialist, entreprenuer, economist, teacher, professor, policeman, soldier, peacekeeper, peacemaker, social worker, counsellor, elected offical, and so on. He's a pundit, and like most pundits, he argues that his work has value because he's "advancing discussion" or that he's participating in the "war of ideas." Alas, his ideas are not his own and they are poorly presented at that. Were I a conversative or a Christian I would be upset not only by his most un-Christian callousness, but by his claiming to speak for conservatives and theists alike.

Furthermore, his throwing down the gauntlet to atheists smacks of the sort of cynical opportunism I've come expect from most professional pundits. He's taking advantage of the naturally high emotions surrounding this tragedy to increase his name recognition and advance his own career - a career that had been fading of late in the wake of withering criticism from his fellow conservatives who accuse him of opportunism and pseudo-intellectualism.