I’ve been practicing Basic Skepticism on marauding Anti-Scientologists on the Internet. It’s pretty much unstoppable. Here’s how it works.

"Getting out of a 'cult' is not something that you recover from, it is something you are strengthened by." -- Alanzo
I’ve been practicing Basic Skepticism on marauding Anti-Scientologists on the Internet. It’s pretty much unstoppable. Here’s how it works.
Tony Ortega is one of the most valuable critics of Scientology ever. But is he so biased that, over time, you can start to live in a delusional world about Scientology? I think so.
The key characteristic of a pseudo-skeptic of Scientology is the furious and dedicated certainty of their position, and their squinting suspicion that anyone who would question them must be an OSA agent.
To hear Anti-Scientologists tell it, Elizabeth Moss was just a clueless & brainwashed Scientologist during her Emmy-winning performance portraying Offred in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. But is thinking with stereotypes about people in minority religions ever going to explain how Elizabeth Moss is such a great actress? Having been a member of Scientology for 16 years, […]
If you can’t believe in Atheistic Materialism, what can you believe in? Not much, if the withering skeptic Rupert Sheldrake has a crack at it. My God, if we can’t believe in Atheistic Materialism – IS THERE NOTHING SACRED??
Most Exes have heard about the thought-stopping cliches that kept them thinking inside a cult mindset. But do thought-stopping cliches only exist in cultic thinking? Could thought-stopping cliches be keeping you trapped in any mindset at all? Anti-Scientology has its own thought-stopping cliches. Here are the top 5.
How gullible can some Ex-Scientologists get? Jon Atack wrote a post on Tony Ortega’s blog, accusing everyone who was ever involved in Scientology of being gullible. I commented about Jon’s broad-brushed generality of anyone who ever called themselves a Scientologist. It gave me the chance to use the word “hootenanny” (twice), and I have been […]
Do you remember when you finally awoke to find yourself thinking with the Scientology mindset? You were horrified to wake up and realize that your thought patterns and emotional habits followed the Scientology ideology. And do you remember all the work you needed to do to un-condition yourself from that? And do you remember all […]
Confirmation Bias: the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. Now read the title of this post again very carefully and ask yourself if it – itself – is not a form of confirmation bias. […]
Could this righteous fight that we’ve all engaged in regarding Scientology, for all these years, have only been because we felt guilty and needed to re-establish our own moral identity after finding out how abusive Scientology had been?
Anti-Scientology Reverend Jon Atack is missing something: Gullibility goes 2 ways. You can be too credulous in the direction of a positive interpretation of something, and in the direction of a negative interpretation, as well.
This one, from Udarnik at ESMB, caught my eye today. Udarnik wrote: “Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. – Robert A. Heinlein “I once had an argument with a Tea Partier about whether the Founders meant to establish Christianity in the US. When I used Jefferson’s quote about complete rejection […]
Basic skepticism is seeking out or asking for positive evidence in support of a claim, and then evaluating the soundness of that evidence. It is not giving out evidence that counterclaims are false, or giving out evidence that all similar claims “do it too”. It is simply looking for or asking for positive evidence in […]
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 person understand Scientology, and Scientology-like experiences, in brand new ways. For me, a key point came early in “The Believing […]
Alanzo is an Ex-Scientologist who sees the same tribalism he escaped in Scientology rising up in Anti-Scientology.
Out of all the lessons he learned by escaping Scientology, he learned one lesson harder than any other: Never let your tribe do your thinking for you.
Alanzo writes from the battlefield of the war between Scientology & Anti-Scientology.