Critical Thinking on Cults & AntiCults
Alanzo
This is the level of thought that is acceptable by those who believe in the AntiCult Movement’s ideology about minority religions. This is not critical thinking – it’s the sociological equivalent of an AntiVaxer rant.
Is Chris Shelton The Critical Thinker at Large the Stuart Smalley of Celebrity Anti-Scientology?
An ideologue is so certain of the ideology he has adopted, and the rightness of how he sees the world, that he can sneer at people, knowing how superior he is. It is a lazy way to go through life, intellectually, but if you surround yourself with people who also never question their assumptions, either, it’s easier to live that way. One of the best examples is Tony Ortega.
As an Ex-Scientologist for 22yrs, I’ve identified the top 5 things that, over time, become the most toxic and corrosive things about being an Ex of any cult.
Max Scheler said that an apostate was ‘engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past’. Can you be an anti-apostate Apostate?
A point in your evolution as an Ex is exactly like the point when you woke up from the untrue things in Scientology: It’s when you wake up from all the untrue things in Anti-Scientology.
The more power that you assign to subversive techniques such as “mind control” the easier it is for Ex-members to explain their membership and participation in minority religious groups after they’ve re-entered the mainstream.
You’ll often hear people make the argument that something done by one group is not morally equivalent to the same thing done by their enemy.
To dismiss that part of your life, to wall it off as “delusional” or “crazy”, is to remain in a dissociative state – to continue living a fractured life.
A Post-Ex has integrated the arguments, and “truths”, he made as a Scientologist with the arguments, and “truths”, he made as an Ex/Anti-Scientologist. He has seen the disconnects and the contradictions there, and repaired them. He no longer walks around with an opposite self inside him, with which he is at war.
The human mind has certain biases which routinely, and falsely, color the perceptions of people. The most important for a former cult member is called the “hindsight bias”.
Sociologists who study the issues surrounding minority religions have identified 3 types of stories that form a socially-constructed narrative of a leave-taker’s experience inside their former group.
When you look at the cosmology of Scientology from the viewpoint of social science – its rituals such as auditing, training, dissemination, and its clearly religious teachings on the thetan, the mind, and even Xenu – it is inescapable that Scientology is a religion.
Leah Remini knows Scientology doesn’t teach pedophilia. She knows Ortega used that quote out of context for AntiCult emotional manipulation. Leah knows it is lie.
Why would Hubbard want to make the subject of classical logic “utterly forbidding” to Scientologists? By getting them to reject “Earth logic” and getting them to use the Data Series for critical thinking skills instead.
Michael Shermer has written two books, “The Believing Brain” and “Why People Believe Weird Things”, which have been life-changing reads for me. There are several key points made in these books which can help a … Read more
Now, I know you’re excited. I don’t want you to fly into a frustrated rage at me or anything. Or come at me like Brett Ratner. But No. Your anti-Scientology climax won’t be happening.
Consider this: Just as Scientology is not as good as a Scientologist tells you it is, Scientology is also not as bad as an Anti-Scientologist tells you it is.
There is a dedicated group of people who follow me around on the Internet and get people to ask stupid questions, and make weird accusation against me. It’s an opportunity for me to set them straight.
Your assumptions can be quite insidious. You must study the actual subjects that Hubbard “spun” for you – from sources completely independent from L Ron Hubbard – so as to challenge your own assumptions, separate out Hubbard’s installed ones, and inspect them for their weaknesses.