I begin with a confession. I have been just a bit disingenuous with our local Scientologists. I have allowed them to believe I knew less about their organization and its history than I actually do. But I have been careful not to lie to them (except for having used a pseudonym), to be rude, or in any way to violate their dignity as autonomous human beings (regardless of whether or not they choose to exercise that autonomy).

Episode 1: First Encounter Some months ago, I saw a poster advertising a Dianetics workshop at a public venue. It was originally advertised at $10 per person or $15 per couple; the fee was dropped about a week before the event. I suspect they weren't getting a lot of interest.

I decided to drop by, just to see what was happening and how their sales pitch went. I knew of a couple of local critics already, but there were no plans to picket this event, and I wasn't planning on doing anything more than asking the sorts of questions one would hope any sensible person would ask when encountering Scientology for the first time. I was also interested to see how much of a turnout they got.

As I approached, I saw someone leaving with a few brochures, and heard some enthusiastic thank-yous from the handler seeing him off. The lady working the desk seemed pleased and perhaps a little surprised to see me walk in; I think they had already started to get pessimistic about the turnout.

I asked, "So, what all this about?" and was asked if I'd ever heard of Dianetics. I said I'd read the first "book" of DMSMH, and that I'd seen the TV commercials. They asked how I had heard of the workshop, and I said I just walked by and saw the sign. (I didn't say which sign, or when.)

Not surprisingly, I was asked to sign in with name, address, telephone number. I expressed a mild reluctance to do so, saying I get way too many calls from people wanting to clean my carpets as it is.

They laughed, and apologetically explained that when you book an event at City Hall, you have to get a list of attendees. (Odd. I've been to other events at City Hall, and never heard of this requirement.) I started writing the pseudonym I had chosen for the day, then thought better of it and said I'd rather not put my address or phone number. The lady said that after the presentation (which never materialized) if I still didn't want them to call me, I could cross my name off the list.

I then got into a conversation with a tall young man in a suit with no name tag, about some of the things that puzzled me about the portion of Dianetics I had read. In particular, I said, I found it to be at odds with some of the more recent discoveries in AI and cognitive science, as well as not making much sense from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology. It was pretty clear he didn't have a clue what I was talking about, but it didn't seem to faze him in the least. He led me over to the display table and showed me a tape (which he explained they weren't allowed to sell in City Hall, but of course he told me where I could go to get one later).

We remained in the vicinity of this table for the next hour or so, talking about various aspects of Dianetics and such. Not surprisingly, every objection I brought up invariably was met with "You need to read the rest of the book" or "That was covered in this lecture" and so forth. (I asked him, about the cover of Dianetics and other books, "Hey, what's up with the volcanoes? I mean, what does that have to do with anything?" He said he figured it was just a marketing gimmick. I left it at that, and didn't say anything about H-Bombs or Xenu.)

This was actually my first face-to-face encounter with earnest hard-core Scientologists (I had attended a seminar they sponsored on religious freedom a year or so earlier, but had only communicated directly with them through anonymous email), and I was a bit astonished.

I've argued with creationists, white supremacists, and various religious fanatics in person before, and it's always been pretty clear to me when my arguments have hit a nerve. They often tend to get a little nervous when certain points are raised, and though they can usually change the subject fairly skillfully and recover their composure, their anxiety shows through. (And in fairness, I should admit that I am no more invulnerable to a strong argument. I just don't run up against them that often these days... :-) But this Scientologist was another matter. He seemed to be utterly oblivious to anything I said, except for the ability to pick out the occasional key word in order to refer me to the book, chapter or tape that might have something to do with it. When I spoke of evolutionary biology, he showed no sign of understanding the argument I'd raised (or even hearing it, for that matter), but simply said I should read the part about the cell in Book 2.

I found myself reflecting on the irony of the situation. If ever there was an example of someone doing the "A=A=A" reactive mind thing, this was it. "Evolutionary biology" = "cell" = "read the book". No hint of any involvement of the analytical mind at any step in the process.

Turing test results: FLUNK!

One of the points I brought up was about that "Important Note to the Reader" which seems to be at the front of almost every Hubbard book, the bit about how important it is not to go past a misunderstood word.

Well, I pointed out the claim that "The ONLY reason a student fails to learn, etc. is because he or she has gone past a misunderstood word"

(paraphrased), and that the word "only" is obviously wrong here; I can think of at least three other reasons why one might fail to learn from a text, and I listed them.

Ordinarily, in formal logic, to disprove a universal quantifier, you only need to cite a counterexample, and it's game over for the universal quantifier. Well, here I cited three, and he didn't bat an eye or indeed show any sign of having understood the problem. He just told me to get on the internet (!) and look up Applied Scholastics and all my questions would be answered. (I did look them up, by the way, and it didn't help much. They mentioned two more reasons, but continued to ignore what I feel is the MOST important reason why one might fail to learn from an LRH book: the text itself might be wrong!) I then brought up some questions about the state of clear and in particular the reliability of Dianetics in getting one there. 100% reliable? How do you measure that, I asked. As expected, he repeated the 100% claim, subject to the caveat that it works WHEN DONE CORRECTLY. Ah, that's interesting, I said. Couldn't the same be said of ANY technique, though? I mean, if every failure is excluded from the sample as "well, they didn't do it right", then is there any way you could have a success rate of LESS than 100%?

At this point, my new friend was called away by another staffer and relieved by Andre, who qualified the 100% claim by pointing out that it's not QUITE 100%. People who don't want to be helped can't be helped, so if you include those, it's going to be less that 100%. But of those who are willing to be helped, he reasserted, absolutely every one will receive the promised gains if they do it right. (This still doesn't address the statistical objection I raised, but I decided to let it slide at this point.)

I spoke to Andre for the rest of the time I was there, about various things. He looked vaguely suspicious of me, I thought, but I could be wrong. He may just have been fishing for buttons to push; he talked about how Dianetics can help with communication, relations with women (he listed girlfriends, wives, women specifically, possibly trying to see if my body language revealed any buttons on any of those. I don't know if he noticed I was wearing my wedding band...) Since I'm pretty happy about my situation on all of those areas, he didn't get anything.

Andre genuinely seems to be a pretty decent and thoughtful guy, and he did seem to think about my remarks more than the other fellow I was speaking to. He gave me the impression that he was one of those people who got into Scientology to help people, and since most of what he does seems to be auditing people, I can see how he might genuinely believe that's what he's been doing. And to be fair, I grant that by itself, done conscientiously and with compassion, auditing sounds like a fine thing. It's just too thoroughly tainted with Hubbard's mean streak.

I happened to notice at one point there were about six people sitting in one of the rows of chairs set up there (they seemed to be hoping for about 35-40 people to show, judging by the chairs). A couple of them were handlers chatting them up, I'm pretty sure, but the non-staffers seemed to be expecting to see something on the TV screen at the front of the room, which remained a bright blue the entire time.

After a few minutes, they all got up and left. They may have shown a video promptly at 1:00, since I got there a little late, but I doubt it.

No tape was played while I was there, and I don't think they got more than 10 people to sign in. The lady at the desk (whose name tag I didn't see) didn't have to sort through much paper to find my pseudonym to cross it off. I noted that she simply put a line through it, leaving it quite legible. In all likelihood, they will have already tracked down that name to attach it to the face of which they have subsequently taken several photos. (Of that, I will report in a later message.)

They had booked the room from 13:00 until 17:00, and advertised the event accordingly. By around 14:30, however, they were wrapping it up.

On the one hand, it was kind of sad to see their disappointment. I mean, they were nice, well-intentioned people, and they were doing something they really believed in. But at the same time, I was relieved to see how few people they managed to recruit to share that disappointment with them.

There are enough clues in this message to figure out what city this took place in, and no doubt my local org will know exactly who I am as soon as OSA forwards this message to them. At least, they'll be able to attach a face to the alias Phobosopher King. I'm not exactly a recluse in this town, so it shouldn't be too hard for them to attach my real name to the face, if they really want to put in the effort. I'm not so worried about that; if I were, I wouldn't even have gone to their workshop. In fact, I sort of want them to "out" me; the thinner we stretch their investigative and harassment resources, the better. Soon enough I'll be posting under my own email address. Until then, I remain The Phobosopher King

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