Scientology

Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, charging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment. Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level Scientologist (OT VIII) and member of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), which means that he follows Hubbard “management technology” in how he runs his businesses and donates a portion of revenues to the Church of Scientology. UPDATE (December 25, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more. ...

Last night Einzige, frequent commenter Schtacky, and I went to see “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant” in Tempe, put on by the Stray Cat Theatre. By lucky coincidence, local Scientology expert and critic Jeff Jacobsen was also attending (see his recent article), and we sat with him in the front row for what proved to be a very enjoyable performance. On the way to work this morning, I heard Robrt Pela of Phoenix’s New Times reading his review on the local NPR station, and his review describes our experience quite well: About three minutes into Stray Cat Theatre’s newest production, I found myself thinking: This can’t be really happening. When you go to see it — and you must, if you do nothing else this holiday season, go see this astonishing stage production — you will almost certainly experience the same sense of delighted confusion. … I rarely stopped laughing during this barely-hour-long show, and my single complaint about A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant is that it ended too soon.The play was a special treat for those of us who already know something about Scientology and the life of L. Ron Hubbard. The production tells the story of L. Ron Hubbard’s life (“writer, explorer, nuclear physicist …”) and how he came to develop Dianetics and Scientology, in the form of a children’s holiday pageant. Cheesy props and frequent costume changes are used to portray rapid changes of location, from Hawaii to New York to China. Much of what is presented is accurate–Hubbard’s birthplace, some of his claims about his life, and especially the content of Dianetics and Scientology. A few liberties are taken in the story of his life, though fewer than Hubbard himself and contemporary Scientologists take in describing his achievements. While there are countless amusing and disturbing events of Hubbard’s actual life that could have been used for comic relief but were omitted, we were surprised at how much they managed to pack into a short show. If you want the longer version, you can read Russell Miller’s biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, online, complete with supporting documentation including paperwork from his FBI files. The show continues tonight and tomorrow–if you have the opportunity to see it, take it, and you’ll be very glad you went.

Jeff Jacobsen has written a detailed article about the Anonymous protests against Scientology, which brings the reader up-to-date on Internet-supported counter-Scientology protesting since the article we wrote for Skeptic in 1995, “Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech and Copyright Infringement on the Information Superhighway." The new article is called “We Are Legion: Anonymous and the War on Scientology." Check it out. Historical Comments Reed (2008-12-19): I've read the first chapter. Jacobsen provides much detail on the CoS's missteps of which I've heard only bits and pieces over the years. Excellent stuff.What made it especially engaging was having read and studied Shirky's book beforehand. Anonymous' protest serves as a fascinating example of undirected collective action of which Shirky basically said "it's coming."IIRC, Shirky's book hit the shelves about the same time the Anonymous thing got big. ...

Tempe’s Stray Cat Theatre is performing “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” December 5-20. The East Valley Tribune has described the show, and more details may be found at the Stray Cat Theatre’s website. UPDATE (December 19, 2008): A few of us went to see the show last night, which I’ve described in a separate post. Historical Comments Schtacky (2008-12-04): Jim,Are you and Kat going to attend? If so, let me know and perhaps we will join you.Joe ...

The latest ApostAZ podcast is out: Episode 007 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Monthly Meetup Epilogue. Debate Tactics and Rhetoric. Sweden Rules Against Prayer as Truth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/. Prayer and Aggression. Obama and Faith Based Initiatives. Pickett Church? http://www.atheistrev.com/ Aggression study: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract. Greydon Square’s Album ‘The Compton Effect’Funny analogy from Shannon: “Prayer is a homeless dude on your couch." Charity Navigator is another site similar to CharityWatch. Shannon incorrectly states that McCain is a creationist. He’s not. And the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, not Tennessee. Picketing churches on the basis of its beliefs and doctrines is a terrible idea that should be left to Fred Phelps and similar kooks. The picketing of the Church of Scientology has generally been based on its behavior, not its doctrines–to the extent the focus is on opposing criminal behavior, that’s reasonable.

Network World has a good summary of the story of the firing of Melanie Kroll’s firing by 1-800-Flowers. Kroll was fired after her husband Chuck sent a death threat to P.Z. Myers using her corporate email account, saying that if he didn’t quit his job by the first of the month, he would “get [his] brains beat in.” Chuck Kroll, presumably a conservative Catholic, issued this threat because Myers blogged in support of University of Central Florida student Webster Cook, who took a consecrated host from a Catholic church in Orlando, Florida. Cook was accused of a hate crime equivalent to kidnapping by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. After receiving threats, Cook returned the magic cracker. Cult members believe the wafer has been literally transformed into the body of Jesus, while also retaining the properties of a cracker. This is not to be confused with Scientology, which believes that we are infested with the bodies of murdered space aliens, though both views seem to be on a par with respect to their reasonableness and quality of supporting evidence. UPDATE (July 16, 2008): Melanie Kroll has been active in the comments at Greg Laden’s blog, where she claims she was not connected to her company VPN when the email was sent. This is patently false, since otherwise her computer would not have been able to send the email through the company mail server from an RFC 1918 private IP address, which it did. It seems that she, like her husband, is incapable of taking responsibility for her own errors. She also writes this, by way of explanation for husband’s behavior: My husband went on to the drudge report site that he reads and clicked on a link and came across that man pz’s notice and responded as he always does when he is upset. Was his text extreme yes it was, would he follow through, never.So he always sends email to the authors of people who write things that make him upset, threatening to beat their brains in if they don’t quit their jobs by the end of the month? That sounds like a very serious personal problem.

For some reason, I decided to Google the name of a channeler I debated on radio back in 1987, to see if she was still in the business. While I didn’t come across any online references to her channeling, I did find her giving positive testimonials for a Sedona teacher of online newage courses that would be a lot funnier if they weren’t serious. The course “Dowsing to Help the Animals” covers the following topics: ...

The latest e-Skeptic from the Skeptics Society features an article by former Phoenix New Times investigative reporter (and now editor of the Village Voice), Tony Ortega, titled “The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again)." Ortega already published the best explanation to date in Phoenix New Times shortly after the two events took place. He doesn’t mention the “new Phoenix Lights” that appeared this year, which turned out to be flares tied to helium balloons, nor last year’s reappearances of the “Phoenix Lights,” which corresponded with Air Force training with flares, nor former Arizona Governor Fife Symington’s claim that he saw the original lights and thinks it was an extraterrestrial spacecraft, which shows that he’s an idiot. Tony Ortega is also known for his hard-hitting investigative reporting on the Church of Scientology, and his work has been referenced at this blog regarding both subjects, along with the case of the killer who ran for state legislature in 2006. UPDATE (July 20, 2009): Tim Printy has more detail on the explanation of the Phoenix Lights than I’ve seen elsewhere. ...

We’re back from a week of vacation in Seattle–this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights–the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies–a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology “free stress test” center, and building housing the Discovery Institute. And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven’t seen in a while (or hadn’t met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food. We didn’t get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those. Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I’m sure we’ll return. ...

A couple weeks ago, YouTube removed Mark Bunker’s xenutv1 account on the grounds that his previous account, xenutv, had contained copyright infringements and thus violated YouTube’s terms of service–even though his xenutv1 account did not. This caused a video interview of actor Jason Beghe, who recently left Scientology, to be temporarily unavailable. YouTube has also removed an account that the Church of Scientology was using to attack its Anonymous critics, anonymousfacts, for terms of service violations because it personally identified some individuals and referred to them as “terrorists." But now that Scientology is paying for an account (and for ads on YouTube), it’s being allowed to stay. (Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)