For some reason, Marty Rathbun, the head of the new generation of Scientologists who are in the process of awakening to the depravity of Scientology, decided to do a radio interview with a person who was very well educated on the subject.
The interview goes horribly wrong for Marty almost immediately when it is apparent that Marty had not done his homework on who it was that was going to be interviewing him.
But here’s the problem: Instead of telling the truth in answer to the interviewer’s questions, Marty lied. And he lied in a way that everyone knows that Scientologists lie about Scientology. He lied about the core beliefs of the cosmology of Scientology, and the information that Scientologists pay up to $250,000 to learn in the Church.
*Why* Marty lies is a very important thing for Scientologists to inspect. It shows an unthinking, knee-jerk “handling” that Hubbard taught Scientologists to apply which has never worked in the era of the Internet. In fact, this habit of lying about Scientology is one of the most destructive things that Scientologists do to themselves, and if they would just stop doing it, they could truly move on up a little higher.
Listen to the interview. Marty is on almost immediately in the beginning of the show, and for the next 20 minutes.
February 22, 2012 7am – TalkRadio 630 K-HOW
Why does Marty lie?
When the interviewer asks Marty if he believes in the Xenu story, Marty says that he doesn’t “believe anything”. This is the beginning of Marty’s failure, and it is due to his inability to think of a new and creative way to handle this situation. Marty applies Scientology rotely here, and to very bad results. It is this rote, kneejerk handling which made Marty lie. And by inspecting the underlying reasons for this kneejerk, stimulous response dramatization of Scientology, it is possible to reform the way that Scientologists deal with this part of life, and to reform Scientology itself.
Belief vs. Knowledge
Hubbard taught Scientologists that they do not “believe”, they KNOW. And he positioned belief as something much lower than knowledge. By misdefining knowledge, Hubbard screwed up a Scientologist’s ability to think clearly about beliefs vs. knowledge, and about their own lives as Scientologists.
Hubbard taught Scientologists to have a disdain for beliefs, while holding knowledge in high esteem. This uninspected disdain for belief from L Ron Hubbard has given Scientologists a crashing misunderstood on beliefs and what they actually are. It has led Scientologists to a brick wall in inspecting Scientology and its ideas, and causes a critical collapse in their ability to think clearly about their own religion and how it operates in their lives.
A good way to demonstrate the difference between knowledge and belief is to ask yourself this question:
Will the sun rise tomorrow?
Some people think that they KNOW the sun will rise tomorrow. But this is a belief, not knowledge. It is a belief based on all other mornings throughout history back into the dawn of time, but it is still a belief.
Few people know if the sun will rise tomorrow. Most believe it will. And most people base their whole lives upon this belief. If something so basic as whether the sun will rise tomorrow is a belief, then are beliefs really all that embarrassing?
So what is wrong with having this belief and basing your life upon it? Is it really less esteemed than knowledge? If you look at the number of things in your life that are similar to the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, you will see that your life is FILLED with beliefs, and that there is nothing wrong with them. You will also see that if you did not have beliefs, and did not operate on them every day, you would be a massive failure in life.
This misunderstanding of the differences between what is a belief and what is knowledge, is the reason Marty lied. If all scientologists would learn this difference, they would learn to accept that much of what they know as Scientologists are actually beliefs. And then they would understand that beliefs aren’t so bad, and that it is not embarassing to have a belief.
And then they may even stop lying to the world about Scientology.
An important task for a Scientologist is to fully understand what a belief is, and to look at what they have learned in Scientology and see which of those things are “beliefs”, and which are “knowledge”.
Here is a good place for a Scientologist to start: Epistemology
Good luck.