BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief

Subject: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:35 AM

Commercialism, football, war, Xianity, Muslimism, or witch-hunting, it begins to appear that when the numbers of people buying a belief system reach a critical threshold, madness ensues.   Maybe that's the only way a belief CAN get wide acceptance, I dunno.

An example, from Xian extremism, but it could be any group:

Welcome to Doomsday

By Bill Moyers

1.

There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.

In the just-concluded election cycle, as Mark Silk writes in Religion in the News,
the assiduous cultivation of religious constituencies by the Bush apparat, and the undisguised intrusion of evangelical leaders and some conservative Catholic hierarchs into the presidential campaign, demonstrated that the old rule of maintaining a decent respect for the nonpartisanship of religion can now be broken with impunity.

The result is what the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile, quoted in Silk's newsletter, calls "political religion"—religion as an instrument of political combat. On gay marriage and abortion— the most conspicuous of the "non-negotiable" items in a widely distributed Catholic voter's guide—no one should be surprised what this political religion portends. The agenda has been foreshadowed for years, ever since Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other right-wing Protestants set out to turn white evangelicals into a solid Republican voting bloc and reached out to make allies of their former antagonists, conservative Catholics.

What has been less apparent is the impact of the new political religion on environmental policy. Evangelical Christians have been divided. Some were indifferent. The majority of conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, have long hooked their view to the account in the first book of the Bible:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God's gift to Adam and Eve of "dominion" over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation. But as Blaine Harden reported recently in The Washington Post, some evangelicals are beginning to "go for the green." Last October the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," affirming that "God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part." The declaration acknowledged that for the sake of clean air, clean water, and adequate resources, the government "has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

But even for green activists in evangelical circles, Harden wrote, "there are landmines."

Welcome to the Rapture!

Click here for the balance of the story...

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: freda underhill
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:45 AM

what amazes me is in the small opportunity of empowerment that happens at each election, large numbers of people can be so easily persuaded to vote against their own self interest.

people in the western world have democracy, take pride in our individuality, yet when presented with fear-based ideologies, behave like sheep.

Baaah humbug.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:59 AM

Baa baa baa democracy Freda , lots of those same sheep put their X for the Barbie Party too. You can fool most of the people most of the time, just look at GWB.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:49 AM

Fundamentalist Protestants and fundamentalist Catholics make strange and scary bedfellows, but bedfellows they are. I'm hoping they have a lover's quarrel and do each other in - remember John Wayne Bobblitt andd his loving wife Lorena?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 06:05 AM

The mass hysteria (pardon the pun) surrounding the pope's death is the perfect example.

And the greatest irony is it is the narcissists voting against their own self-interests.

Go figure.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:23 AM

It's obvious to us in the UK that the proliferation of right wing radio and TV channels in the US is massively driving this lemming stampede towards ignorance and bigotry, but are there a balancing number of stations taking the attitude of this article? If not, why not? Shouldn't those who understand that the future of us all is in hoc to these lunatics start putting up the money to put weight on the other end of the see-saw?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:43 AM

I prefer to find amusement in the private hysteria of Scientology, myself.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:53 AM

That's because you are so full of that old time religion Susan.

Clearly, these hysterical mass funerals we are seeing--Diana, the pope, and god only knows who next--are so removed from reality, one can only draw one conclusion: the media driven cult of celebrity is clearly out of hand amongst the world's old guard: the British and Vatican royals.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:58 AM

Well, I have Faith that this nightmarish cycle will return to more moderate behaviors and attitudes... Yes it would seem that the loonies have the micorphone these days. But in a way that is good because for folks who might have forgotten they are now getting barrages daily the loonies view of the world...

Throw in the fact that what these ideologues have tried to do hasn't helped mankind one bit I think it is safe to say that their microphoone days are numbered, unless they somehow declare martial law...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:02 AM

"shaking us from our neutrality."

as if.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: kendall
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:16 AM

"No amount of belief can create a fact."

"The loonies have the microphone." That's a good one, and so true.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:26 AM

But the problem is that extreme, delusional religious beliefs and believers are being exploited by politicians with nefarious political agendas, to trump both facts and truth.

The current Republican leadership are the definition of demagoguery, pure and simple.

Question is when, if ever, will the American demagogue worshipping electorate throw the bums out?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:37 AM

I have a fridge magnet with the legend 'Beware of the power of stupid people in large groups'.

I don't know what the solution is, or whether there is one, but can only hope that sanity will win out before we reach the point of no return.

Maybe we have always been this way. In the past 100 years the media has made it possible for these events to be seen worldwide at the time they happen and to allow us all to join in the hysteria that affects those in direct contact, because we can see it on screen. It's also been made easier for those with an agenda to reach a larger audience. The message doesn't get watered down in the telling and retelling that used to be the way in which news was passed on.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:44 AM

The people who flock to the scene are the ones that really frighten me. These are narcissistic people with an unhealthy, extreme need to be part of these ghoulish mass funeral rituals that are broadcast on TV.

Surely no one is naive enough to think as many as 1-2 million people would have shown up in Rome if the whole debacle hadn't been televised?

The fact that people are obsessed with participating in these televised celebrity events is more than just a wee bit spooky, and not if a fun, Halloween sort of way.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:48 AM

But on a smaller scale people used to flock to attend executions a couple of hundred years back. At one time battles were watched from a safe distance, both in America and Europe.

There have always been a lot of people who wish to participate in safety in ghoulish events. It's just that these days they have more opportunity with ease of travel and media coverage.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:54 AM

Good point jacqui c. But I still wonder what the need is to flock to royalty like this? The two biggest funerals in history were Diana and John Paul II.

And now that I think of it, we saw the same sick attraction to the death of JFK Jr & his wife and sister-in-law. Not much mention in the international press, much less the American press, but the same ghoulish rituals are currently being acted out in Monaco.

There is a lot of royal celebrity worshipping in the world, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the royal celebrity being from the nation of the worshipper either, thanks to the miracle of modern TV.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:37 AM

I think that it is the miracle of modern TV that has emphasised the 'importance' of these figures.

The media has always tended to give a lot of publicity to high profile figures and they don't come any higher than royalty and the Popes.

The general public have, for the main part, been conditioned by the media to accept that these people are different and that even the smallest of happenings is noteworthy. We are also led to believe that they are 'part of the family' and so a death in the family is a major event, in which 'we' must be involved.

Just look at the success of magazines like Hello and you can see how hungry the public in general is for news of celebrities. Footballers and their wives are held up as icons. Minor royals are reported on as if their affairs are of paramount importance to the life of the nation. And the public encourages this by buying the papers and watching the events on the tube.

The new religion seems to be the cult of celebrity. These are real peolple to be worshipped, they can be seen and sometimes touched and so have a reality that an invisible, unknowable god cannot compete with. This is the modern day version of the bread and circuses of Roman times IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:39 AM

We all whistle past graveyards.

It wasn't the "religious" who arrived at the notion that religion is, itself, a man-made device, invented to give comfort at facing the daunting unknown beyond death.

No, it was someone(s) who deemed themselves above such delusions. Someone who accepted a priori that religion had(s) no basis in objective reality. Someone who accepted the false equation that empirical = "real".

Ironically, it is within the very statement of that thesis that the proposer unwittingly shows his transparent fear of that same unkown. The ones who are so insistant upon the notion that religions are so "invented" arrive at that conclusion through analysis of their own fear of the unknown and conclude, whether falsely or un, that everyone must have that same fear -- and thus, others choose to deal with it in a way they see as irrational, while they remain steadfast in the resolve that the unknown is also the unknowable and is probably also, therefore, not a reality either.

But the rub come in this:

Most of those that believe in this "religion as a false construct", like Moyers, are just as adamantly "evangelical" in their zeal to pound down the opposition.

Just as there are those whose evangelical zeal arises from their own insecurity in their own beliefs -- causing the evangelical to take great comfort in the number of people they can convince of a like world-view, those who believe in the "religion-as-construct" have just as great a security problem. They MUST convince as many as they can of the objective non-reality of religious "truth" in order to feel secure in their own belief.

...and misery loves company.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:49 AM

I for one am not buying your (circular) arguments, John Hardly.

First off, I would disagree that to be secularist, agnostic, or atheist, is simply a reactionary stance to religion. I'm really not concerned with where I go when I die. I'm pretty into the whole living in the here and now thing. I know I won't live forever. This adoration of the royal/celebrity dead seems to me to be a need for people to believe they WILL live forever somewhere else, though.

Second, no one holds a candle to the religious fundamentalists in terms of zealotry. Nobody. And certainly not Bill Moyers, one of the most soft-spoken intellectuals around.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:52 AM

But why the inordinately high level of religious superstitious belief in the United States as compared to Europe?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:54 AM

"...to be secularist, agnostic, or atheist, is simply a reactionary stance to religion."

That's not what I said.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:55 AM

"And certainly not Bill Moyers, one of the most soft-spoken intellectuals around. "

That's just an observation of style, not zeal.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:57 AM

... the inordinately high level of religious superstitious belief in the United States as compared to Europe...

The number of Roman Catholics (and pagans) in Europe is on the decline?

Isn't Lourdes still in Europe?

Might there be just a touch of US-bashing mixed in with the religion-bashing, here?   ;~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:59 AM

No, I disagree. It isn't just about style, it's also about the substance of the man.

Could you be confusing personal passion for one's interests with religious and political zealotry perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:03 AM

I find the worship of Paris Hilton much more frightening.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:05 AM

Why? Because the worship of religion is comforting to you Jerry?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:34 AM

Jerry makes an interesting point -- the two have many ingredients in common, but the worship of Paris Hilton has no comfort in it and no enduring guidelines to pass on. The merit of Christianity or Islam is in whatever degree of wisdom it imparts. That's true of any belief system--to the degree it provides some kind of wisdom-in-use, it has worth. By providing a model of the universe, no matter how unwieldy that model might seem to outsiders, a religion provides some template as a ward against the painful confusions of life. IF the template provides guidance in decisions which actually helps, all the more power to it.

Mass immersion in events provides a similar sort of comfort, but it is not the comfort of wisdom or even of warding off confusion with arbitrary belief -- it is the comfort of hiding out in large numbers, which frees you of responsibility. Your responsibility in a crowd changes from "seeing, analyzing, deciding and communicating" to merely "reacting as the crowd reacts". A much easier role.

WHat mystifies me is those who take a body of data (such as Christianity) or the Koran, meant to sustain life and life's purposes, and use it to dramatize psychotic bigotry and hatefulness, which are things which poison life and suppress it.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:45 AM

Amos, why do you insist on italicizing your opinion?

The religion that is popular culture is no different than organized religion IMO. We can learn just as much spiritually from the worship of the wealthy and the beautiful at the top of the social hierarchy as we can the worship of the wealthy and the powerful at the top of the social hierarchy.

The pope and Paris Hilton both represent the same thing to those who worship celebrity, power, media rituals, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:52 AM

Guest:

I failed to close an italic bracket in error. Wherefore "inisist"?????
[it was an /a instead of an /i] -mudelf

Your concatenation of the similar but different instances of mass belief does you know credit. The differences between them are important even though they share more in common than any religionist would want to admit.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:00 PM

Lordy, lordy...concatenation? Amos, you have an affectation disorder.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:18 PM

You are snide and a caviling monger of trivialized dissent, Guest. Go to. My disorders, at least, are signed, while yours are a whirlwind of pusillanimous invisibility.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:22 PM

A serious affectation disorder.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:28 PM

"The merit of Christianity or Islam is in whatever degree of wisdom it imparts."

Or in the possibility that they may be or reflect truth.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:42 PM

When it comes to religion, and especially to dogma, wisdom is in the eye of the beholder.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Peace
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 05:31 PM

"When it comes to religion, and especially to dogma, wisdom is in the eye of the beholder."

Right. So wot you on about?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:40 PM

John:

I find that an absolutely untestable proposition. USefulness in application can at least be seen.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:55 PM

There are a lot of people around, our GUEST included, who seem to be deathly afraid of people who are "religious"--and there are others who play on those fears--the dogma of the secularists is often even more rigid, unbending, and unreal than that of the religious folk that they criticize----

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:16 PM

So MTed--can ya even name any famous secularists?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 09:45 AM

You don't have to be famous to spin in ever decreasing circles, GUEST--

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 10:31 AM

Since I was a kid the most cowardly and ignorant phrase I have heard repeated by people has been "its God's will".

Now NBC will be introducing their new "reality"/fantasy series 'Revelation' The end of days. Pandering to Red State redneck "religious" values as well as the teenage horror audience is most likely the programing strategy.

On the other hand, when a population is conditioned to expect a hellish turn of events involving massive death in the name of God's will, the ruling class maintains a buffer zone of "We are innocent - It's God's will!".

There is no doubt that this is not God's will but rather religio-political propoganda.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 10:37 AM

Maybe, Amos, but my point all along is that "empirical" is not the same as "true" or "real". It's useful to note that what cannot be proven empirically should hold guarded sway. But equally useful to note that it is not practical to limit what we believe to what is experimentally demonstrable.

We want to discount religion on the basis of its lack of empirical proof -- while, at the same time failing to acknowledge that the evidence of "reality" underpinning it may still be valid.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 10:55 AM

Well, John, I said it was untestable - - if you assert the nature of God is one of those (and they are multiple) described in a Christian document such as one ofthe testaments, while someone else asserts the nature of God is that described in the Koran, and yet another asserts yet another nature, we have a mess which asserts itself as the truth in three contradictory ways, depending on the model. The mess is not resoluble by analysis because it calls on phenomena that are not known on an evidentiary basis, cannot be measured or experienced on a predictable footing. Why should such un-rational stuff be entered in tot he commons when it is not needed to resolve the issues?? That is the critical point. Data that is not needed for a given solution is extraneous.

Additionally it is perverse to take religion, which is a private interface between one's deepest spiritual self and the universe, and try to diminish it by making it objective. I am sorry -- the whole effort to instantiate religion as a social truth is just wrong-headed and non-productive. Over the centuries it has again and again proven itself as a source of misery, crime, slaughter, and vainglory.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 11:08 AM

...as well as a source for public charity, excellence, productivity, and welfare.

That their basis cannot be proven does not diminish their usefulness. You assume that the same level of cultural morality and caring would continue minus religions. I do not accept that assumption. You accept (without evidence -- it's never happened) that "it is not needed to resolve the issues". I disagree.

I think, and have said many times, that democracy is not threatened by religion because it is highly impobable that those issues that are utterly idiosyncratic to a specific religion will ever pass muster with the general voting populace.

On the other hand, the religious are a good moral compass and influence to keep democracy from meeting expression only in the pragmatic. And the religions do not have to, themselves, be in total agreement with each other to have their moral influence benefit the community.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: mandoleer
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 04:03 PM

A lot of past famous secularists have probably had to conceal the fact that they were otherwise they would haven't lasted long enough to become famous. I don't particularly care what religion any person is so long as they don't try to convert me, or make me live by their god's rules without those rules being reasonable and subject to review. Not review by the priests in charge, that is. Not a good idea. Nor is having priests in charge. People have always abdicated their responsibilities - someone took on the physical defence of the community and became a king, someone else took on the religious defence of the community and became a priest. And both of them took over the people's powers of thought, in the main. (Later, doctors and psychiatrists came in as well.) And then came the leaders of fashion, so that people didn't have to think about what to wear, or what to dance, and so on. OK - not easy to find another system. Especially when people can't even meet in a place like this without flaming each other! But we CAN still let the buggers know that we are here, and that we CAN think, and we CAN vote them out. The fashion leaders have lost - once everyone followed the same trends. Now they don't. Next for the priests and politicians (my apologies for swearing).

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 04:32 PM

In fact most famous people achieved their famous results secularly, regardless of whether they were religous in private, going all the way back to Galileo and beyond, not to mention the fame undying of Archimedes, Aristotle, Plato, Euripides, Pythagoras, Galen, Cicero, and others in their legacy too numerous to count here. More recently, I offer Camus, Descartes, Flaubert, Whitman, Joyce...the list is so innumerable that the question rapidly is revealed as a stupid one.


A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Once Famous
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 04:39 PM

Hey[bleep - for antisocial behavior] Jerry, Paris Hilton has got a nice ass!

And all you dogma dopers, catma is jealous.



This thread is just a bunch of blah, blah, blah from many of the posturing SOO-DOH intellectuals.

yeah, yeah. we notice you.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 04:44 PM

And other things rapidly revealed as stupid on a little reflection include... oh, never mind.


A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 04:56 PM

(Descartes got in a wee bit of trouble for even pretending to look at a secular answer, Amos. The CHURCH didn't quite appreciate doubt, even as a formality to bolster their position.)

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 05:07 PM

Go back to sleep, Martin. It's ok, just the adults talking.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 05:11 PM

And some religion doesn't accept the same kind of notion of a separation between secular and religious. Some religious revel in science.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief^
From: Once Famous
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 06:01 PM

Adult whiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnners, guest.

Want some cheese with all of that whine?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST,WYS
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 07:05 PM

I thought the Mormons had hidden some of their "truths" pretty well, but Scientology takes the cake in my book.

In a financial arrangement which is probably unique in theology, adherents of Hubbard's "faith" must pay increasingly large sums of money to attain upper levels in that "church" before they are allowed to learn the basic tenets of their religion. Former church members and court records indicate that "parishioners" pay about $100,000 to learn the story of Scientology's origins, which is contained in something called OT III -- its Book of Genesis, as it were. According to a church spokeswoman, only about 10 percent of Scientology's adherents have reached this level.

OT III reveals that Xenu (an evil galactic overlord) banished millions of space aliens to the planet Teegeack -- now Earth -- in an attempt to solve a cosmic overpopulation problem. Ole Xenu packed the surplus aliens into volcanoes and pulverized them with hydrogen bombs, but some 75 million years later their disembodied souls, called thetans by Scientologists, had managed to survive.

Invisible and incredibly resilient, some of the aliens took up residence inside unwitting human beings (which Hubbard called body thetans). Clustered inside each of us, these interstellar parasites are said to be the source of all human misery.

What is Scientology? Not even the vast majority of Scientologists can fully answer the question. In the Church of Scientology, there is no one book that comprehensively sets forth the religion's beliefs in the fashion of, say, the Bible or the Koran.

Rather, Scientology's theology is scattered among the voluminous writings and tape-recorded discourses of the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the religion in the early 1950s. Piece by piece, his teachings are revealed to church members through a progression of sometimes secret courses that take years to complete and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Out of a membership estimated by the church to be 6.5 million, only a tiny fraction have climbed to the upper reaches. In fact, according to a Scientology publication earlier this year, fewer than 900 members have completed the church's highest course, nicknamed "Truth Revealed."

While Hubbard's "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" typically is one of the first books read by church members, its relationship to Scientology is like that of a grade school to a university. What Scientologists learn in their courses is never publicly discussed by the church, which is trying to shake its cultish image and establish itself as a mainstream religion. For to the uninitiated, Hubbard's theology would resemble pure science fiction, complete with galactic battles, interplanetary civilizations and tyrants who roam the universe. Here, based on court records, church documents and Hubbard lectures that span the past four decades, is a rare look at portions of Scientology's theology and the cosmological musings of the man who wrote it.

Central to Scientology is a belief in an immortal soul, or "thetan," that passes from one body to the next through countless reincarnations spanning trillions of years. Collectively, thetans created the universe -- all the stars and planets, every plant and animal. To function within their creation, thetans built bodies for themselves of wildly varying appearances, the human form being just one.

But each thetan is vulnerable to painful experiences that can diminish its powers and create emotional and physical problems in the individual it inhabits. The goal of Scientology is to purge these experiences from the thetan, making it again omnipotent and returning spiritual and bodily health to its host. The painful experiences are called "engrams." Hubbard said some happen by accident -- from ancient planetary wars, for example -- while others are intentionally inflicted by other thetans who have gone bad and want power. In Scientology, these engrams are called "implants."

According to Hubbard, the bad thetans through the eons have electronically implanted other thetans with information intended to confuse them and make them forget the powers they inherently possess -- kind of a brainwashing procedure. While Hubbard was not always precise about the origins of the implants, he was very clear about the impact.

"Implants," Hubbard said, "result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradation, neurosis and insanity and are the principal cause of these in man." Hubbard identified numerous implants that he said have occurred through the ages and that are addressed during Scientology courses aimed at neutralizing their harmful effects. Hubbard maintained, for example, that the concept of a Christian heaven is the product of two implants dating back more than 43 trillion years. Heaven, he said, is a "false dream" and a "very painful lie" intended to direct thetans toward a non-existent goal and convince them they have only one life. In reality, Hubbard said, there is no heaven and there was no Christ. "The (implanted) symbol of a crucified Christ is very apt indeed," Hubbard said. "It's the symbol of a thetan betrayed."

Hubbard said that one of the worst implants happens after a person dies. While Hubbard's story of this implant may seem outlandish to some, he advanced it as a factual account of reincarnation. "Of all the nasty, mean and vicious implants that have ever been invented, this one is it," he declared during a lecture in the 1950s. "And it's been going on for thousands of years." Hubbard said that when a person dies, his or her thetan goes to a "landing station" on Venus, where it is programmed with lies about its past life and its next life. The lies include a promise that it will be returned to Earth by being lovingly shunted into the body of a newborn baby.

Not so, said Hubbard, who described the thetan's re-entry this way: "What actually happens to you, you're simply capsuled and dumped in the gulf of lower California. Splash. The hell with ya. And you're on your own, man. If you can get out of that, and through that, and wander around through the cities and find some girl who looks like she is going to get married or have a baby or something like that, you're all set. And if you can find the maternity ward to a hospital or something, you're OK. "And you just eventually just pick up a baby."

But Hubbard offered his followers an easy way to outwit the implant: Scientologists should simply select a location other than Venus to go "when they kick the bucket."

Another notorious implant led Hubbard to construct an entire course for Scientologists who want to be rid of it. Shrouded in mystery and kept in locked cabinets at select church locations, the course is called Operating Thetan III, billed by the church as "the final secret of the catastrophe which laid waste to this sector of the galaxy." It is taught only to the most advanced church members, at fees ranging to $6,000. Hubbard told his followers that while unlocking the secret, he "became very ill, almost lost this body and somehow or another brought it off and obtained the material and was able to live through it."

Here's what he said he learned: Seventy-five million years ago a tyrant named Xenu (pronounced Zee-new) ruled the Galactic Confederation, an alliance of 76 planets, including Earth, then called Teegeeack. To control overpopulation and solidify his power, Xenu instructed his loyal officers to capture beings of all shapes and sizes from the various planets, freeze them in a compound of alcohol and glycol and fly them by the billions to Earth in planes resembling DC-8s. Some of the beings were captured after they were duped into showing up for a phony tax investigation. The beings were deposited or chained near 10 volcanoes scattered around the planet. After hydrogen bombs were dropped on them, their thetans were captured by Xenu's forces and implanted with sexual perversion, religion and other notions to obscure their memory of what Xenu had done. Soon after, a revolt erupted. Xenu was imprisoned in a wire cage within a mountain, where he remains today. But the damage was done. During the last 75 million years, these implanted thetans have affixed themselves by the thousands to people on Earth. Called "body thetans," they overwhelm the main thetan who resides within a person, causing confusion and internal conflict.

In the Operating Thetan III course, Scientologists are taught to scan their bodies for "pressure points," indicating the presence of these bad thetans. Using techniques prescribed by Hubbard, church members make telepathic contact with these thetans and remind them of Xenu's treachery. With that, Hubbard said, the thetans detach themselves.

Hubbard first unveiled his Scientology theories during a series of often breathless lectures he delivered in Wichita, Kan., Phoenix and Philadelphia in 1952.


I've heard people complain about the number of starving people the Pope's ring could have fed (a la Judas' complaint about the perfumed oil), but wow-- you could buy a lot of swampland for $100,000, and have a lot more to show for it than this species of "madness"!

Adherents include Tom Cruise, and:

"I have been a successful actor for more than twently years and Scientology has played a major role in that success. I would say that Scientology put me into the big time." -John Travolta

"In Scientology you can find answers for anything you could ever think to ask. These are not pushed off on you as, 'this is the answer, you have to believe in it.' In Scientology you discover for yourself what is true for you." -Jenna Elfman

"Scientology is the gateway to eternity. It is the path to happiness and total spiritual freedom. Until one has experienced the technology of Scientology it's unlikely that one will ever experience these wonderful discoveries. I know because it has worked for me. The more time and effort I invest, the more I receive. I highly recommend it." -Isaac Hayes

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 08:26 PM

Gee, Susan -- are you practicing for a "Mouth-Shoot-'Em-Off In Ignorance" contest? I don't know much about the subject anymore, as it has been many many years since I studied it. But from what I recall of it, folks inside were pretty happy with their results, and some of them had been through dramatic changes for the better. 'Course the same is true of your Church and many others.. beliefs are funny that way. Sometimes sugar pills work better than antibiotics, too! :D I guess mebbe you're trying to get a feel of what it's like to trash other folks' beliefs, huh? 'Cuz of how you feel you've had your own dumped on too long? Far as I am concerned the key to the whole thing is one of Hubbard's most often quoted lines, which made sense to me: If it isn't true for you, it isn't true!. Unlike many people he wasn't in too big of a hurry to force people to believe anything that didn't match up with their own view of existence. Decent of him, really.

But hey, cults is cults, and there's no telling what them folk will do with their stuff since he kicked off, about, I think, 20 years ago or so. Who cares?

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST,WYS
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 08:49 PM

Oh Amos, of course I was AGREEING with you that madness can prevail in many belief systems, but if you want to tell us all about Scientology, go right ahead!

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 05 - 09:35 PM

Sheese -- wodda dose of passive aggression.

There is no question that the ranks of the Simonologists are just as prone to the madness of mass belief as the right-wing extemists in your own cult, or the Al Queda's, or any other. It just supports my half-baked notion that when the number of dialogues on a given belief system exceeds a certain threshold, the system takes on the characteristics of mass, undiscriminating, dramatizing subscription. Hell you could predict as much just looking at the bell-curve distribution of IQ in the world. Mass stupidity will latch on to anything, but systems of belief thattend toward the authoritarian or the arbitrary seem especially appetizing to it, IMHO.

There is a really fine examination of these principles in a book called The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, in which he examines the common traits of undiscriminating belief, whether in the Boy Scouts or the Moonies.

Scinentific method is of course supposed to be one remedy, but even it gets corrupted into cult-like parroting sometimes -- the "Galen syndrome" -- and hard engineering experience, where one has to use practical approaches to make things work or trouble shoot them -- is even better, being grounded in use. Good solid logic training, propositional logic (not abstract academic logic) also serves to sharpen the wits in discernment, in my experience.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST,Redwood
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 12:00 PM

If you can believe that there is a supreme being who created everything, knows everything, controls everything and intervenes when it suits; then surely you can believe anything.

OTOH,I believe you can get cheap flights to most cities and most states; if you look hard enough.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 01:38 PM

Sure. But ya gotta use an aereoplane, right? Ya want cwazy-wabbit, how about the sorry clowns who immerse themselves in Rapture books.? Wow!! I was pleased to hear that this story, at least, is false.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: DougR
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 02:13 PM

It is amazing to me that someone can post an OPINION piece on the Mudcat and it is immediately accepted as truth. It is widely accepted on this forum because Bill Moyer shares the same political philosophy that so many Mudcatters embrace.

Thnk now, if I, or anyone else, posted an OPINION article written by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hennity, or David Brooks on the Mudcat advancing the conservative philosophy, we would be hooted and hollared at as though we were as loonie as Bill Moyers is.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 04:31 PM

Well said, Doug.

That's why I found Moyer's sentence "shaking us from our neutrality." so very laughable. There is nothing "neutral" about Moyers.   But there is something decidedly dishonest in him having the audacity to characterize himself as "neutral".

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 05:35 PM

DougR:

It is is disingenuous and manipulative to dismiss Moyer's piece as mere opinion, because he also describes exactly what facts and conditions he bases his opinion on, while Limbaugh, to use your example, often has none, or fabricates them to suit his needs. In fact to make such a comparison is ridiculous, if not covertly destructive of decent discourse.

The rising up of the evangelical right is one of the most destructive elements to the fundamental well-being of the republic since the red-baiting of the 50's or the union-busting murders of the Thirties. It is oppressive to discourse, suppresses dissent, seeks to enforce religion on the commons of the nation, and inhibits the ordinary liberties of citizens. It is -- from the point of view of our mostly fundamental doctrines -- heretical and anti-social. ANy extremism is, whether from John Birch, Rockwell, the Klan, or the anarchists of hippiedom. Makes no diff -- the effect these groups have on the great middle of American life is usually dampened out by ordinary democratic and judiciary process. But that was before they bought a President and started shooting at judges.

I would be ashamed to have anything to do with it and I think Moyers is completely right to speak out against it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 07:33 PM

So how do you overthrow the tyranny of mass belief, if wrong? Education or armed uprising?
And who judges?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 08:14 PM

ALways education...open, Socratic, consulting the understanding, able to withstand any reasoning and find the thin thread of truthfulness or at least logic. The kind of education that makes free people, not sheep. Then, blarney and media-glop become readily rejected and the media learn to communicate as adults to adults, seeking to inform the understanding instead of electrify the circus.

As to who judges, I think Jefferson already answered that.

A