A while ago someone noted there was a blog post on the Stand League site claiming scientology is based on critical thinking. As they noted: Pure comedy gold!!!
I looked it up and it’s still there. Here is just some of the bs they peddle:
“Critical thinking is the process of analyzing information to determine the amount of truth in any statement, assumption, opinion, conclusion, thought or situation. It is the skill at the core of L. Ron Hubbard’s discoveries and the effectiveness, usefulness and success of Scientology.”
“Once a Scientologist begins to gain critical thinking skills, they start asking questions—questioning those things that “everybody knows.” Is that politician/journalist/neighbor/ loved one telling the truth? If not, what are they really up to?”
Oh boy. I think whoever wrote this was being serious. Scientology isn’t known for poking fun at itself. It reads like a parody.
To think critically requires you to question and challenge what is considered normal or accepted as true. This is absolutely verboten in scientology. You cannot question anything. If someone even claims not to understand what Hubbard said — a milder form of questioning/challenging — the remedy is to find their misunderstood word. Actually questioning anything in scientology results in being pulled in to Ethics to write up overts and withholds or endure a sec check. Probably lower conditions. If this doesn’t cure you then some False Data Stripping or “Truth” Rundown is still in the arsenal. Still questioning? A PTS declare. Non-enturbulation Order and ultimately an SP Declare.
Critical thinking is, as Hubbard described in his infamous policy letter, Keeping Scientology Working to be stamped out ruthlessly. Note that it is politician/journalist/neighbor/loved one — no mention of cult leader/Founder/guru, people who should be first on that list.
It’s one of the traits of a sociopath that they will claim virtues that they are diametrically opposed to and violate every day. It’s the Goebell’s big lie trick. Normal people do not think that someone will just lie because they would be embarrassed/ashamed to do so and fear being caught.
And this whole pitch about what great critical thinkers they are follows their opening “victim” statement:
“At this point it’s safe to say that nothing and no one in recent history has received a more intense, relentless and sustained public smear campaign than the Church of Scientology, the religion itself and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. If you compare the list of real, actual problems in the world today, anyone can quickly see that the campaign against Scientology is so far out of proportion that even the average person begins to get the sense that something is not quite right.”
Another sociopathic trait — always claiming to be the victim.
And once again, their “logic” lacks any critical thinking. Even applying their OWN “technology” — they are the cause of their negative PR. What did they do to pull it in? How about 70 years of abusing people, breaking up families, covering up crimes, harassing and framing critics… the list goes on.
Here’s a bit more on actual critical thinking which would never be allowed in Scientology.
“There must be discussion to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it.
Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand.
In the case of any person whose judgement is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, published in 1859
“the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
John Stuart Mill makes a persuasive case for hearing the best arguments for and against ideas before being able to properly form an opinion.
He also makes it clear that we need to hear about a subject from people of all types of opinions and backgrounds and from all different kinds of approaches to the subject.
I have heard of a professor who has classes on certain texts and he brings in people from different backgrounds to examine the topic from a historical perspective or a political perspective or another perspective in a different semester. Each year he tries to get one of several experts on different subjects to give their perspective.
People who have different philosophies and education on different topics give their own perspective on the subject to add more to the understanding of the professor and the class.
It’s somewhat against human nature to look for the evidence against what we believe or the best evidence for arguments against our beliefs. But it’s a foundation of good critical thinking.
I have seen efforts to explain phenomena in human behavior and sometimes information from a different subject is essential to finding a highly plausible explanation.
In psychology we have the difference between the Northern states and Southern states in the US in aggression and the hypothesis that the culture of the people who settled these areas and the honor culture of the people who settled the South is a highly plausible explanation and supported by empirical evidence from psychology research.
We also have the fact that since a peak in crime in America in the early nineties we had a huge decrease (by about half by some estimates). Research involving the harm leaded gas caused and the removal of lead from gas is recognized by many researchers and experts as extremely likely to be a major factor, if not the biggest factor, in causing the huge decrease in crime we have seen since the early nineties.
Without that information from another field we might never understand the huge reduction in American crime.
There are many other examples of information from a different perspective or subject being essential for understanding something important in a subject.
Without that you might have an incorrect conclusion. Now an important point to me is that you need a good basic grounding in a subject itself to form an educated opinion on the subject in general and specific ideas in particular.
I am not at all a fan of the “All you need to know is…” style of claims, regardless of the topic. That is anti critical thinking and anti looking at all the relevant information regarding a claim.
The opposite of this in some ways is something I have written about in the past that is worth mentioning to me.
I call it The Sixty Minutes approach. I saw an episode of the American news television show years ago and it introduced a way to evaluate something that’s worth using.
A woman was an assistant coach at a college basketball team and the head coach retired. She was not offered the head coaching position. A man who was far less qualified got the job.
The attorney for the woman coach put up a big piece of paper and put the names of her client on one side and the name of the man who got the job on the other side and below each person she listed all the major qualifications they had. The man had two years experience as an assistant coach.
The woman had decades of experience and winning numerous awards and the team she coached winning a tremendous number of games and the players she coached winning various awards and on and on and on.
At the end the male coach had his two years as an assistant and the woman coach had the entire side filled with both individual and team accomplishments that she could be given the credit for.
The jury found that the team did discriminate against her, because no other explanation was offered and no one believed that the woman was less qualified than the man.
I realized that this is useful for weighing the evidence for and against claims.
There are many situations in which you can use this.
I would have done far better in my life regarding Scientology and a million other things if I had adopted this mindset and applied these principles with personal discipline religiously to my life.
I frankly have found it’s especially useful for beliefs or an outlook that is strongly or deeply held. For most people this automatically includes religion, politics and similarly passionate or traditionally close minded beliefs.
Lots of incidents of hearing one thing from just one side and having beliefs that are not accurate can occur but if you look at the information from different sides in their best form you can often see that there is strong evidence that is credible for a different perspective or you might have an opinion that’s not what Democrats or Republicans or most media say on a political issue, for example, if you have looked at information from a variety of sources.
$camatology critical thinking: critical about everything not $camatology.
How about a post about Brian Kent? What did you know and when did you know it? Why didn’t you inform the ChildUSA board about the accusations against Brian Kent?
It seems you’re not paying attention other than to what YouTubers say. I found out when the rest of the board did after the complaint was leaked to Rabbit by one of the people who are alleging I knew and did nothing. In fact, they knew about it and did nothing.
So what your saying Mike is that the person who made the allegations against Brian Kent that is a very good friend of yours never told you about it?
Yes exactly. If she could speak on her own behalf (which she cannot do without further compromising her complaint) she would confirm this. Those who claim otherwise are assuming things they don’t actually know. In fact they know they are spreading lies — and knew before they started…
“Critical thinking skills”. The ability to analyze data. The ability to spot outpoints and pluspoints. Finding actual Real Whys which open the door to actual effective handlings of problems. Determining what ARE the actual problems so that time, money and effort are not expended on fixing “problems” which aren’t actually the problem. .The ability to easily distinguish fact from opinion. The abiility to know what an ideal scene for any activity is; the ability to observe what the actual scene is, compare the two, and improve the activity… these are critical thinking skills Scientology wants you to have.
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No matter WHAT the Cult says to the contrary, critical thinking skills are the last skills they want their dump sheep to have!
If scientology embraced logic, it wouldn’t be a religion.
I prefer the good old days of ‘Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In’ with matters like truth and Scientology.
“I just told you the story told about critical thinking in the Cof$ for 5 minutes. ”
“You lost me at the bakery,” was the reply with a dumb look.
“But there wasn’t a bakery!”
Another dumb look, “tell me again.”
You don’t have to think, you have to do.
Don’t think. Do!
Hubbard was correct on some parts of that ksw…. namely 7, 8, 9, and 10.
no one is stopping mr. McCotch (cotch is a slang for puke), on 7, 8, 9, and 10.
just sayin’. which is another case in point on the lack of “critical thinking”. even thinking to question scn is like a “high crime”.
Smear campaigns are the Whois websites that Scientology sets up to post their acceptable truth about ex Scientologists who have managed to escape. What Scientology has been subjected to is a relentless onslaught of people it tried to destroy who managed to escape their clutches and are warning others. The reaction of Scientology to the truths told about it is what is out of proportion.
Scn’ists have a terminal case of Dunning Kruger’s Mt. Stupid. In fact, this one disease, worsened by the inculcation provided in scn studies and processing is what makes Tom Cruise, the couch jumping, “we are the experts of the mind”, “gee Matt, you’re glib” , the Hollywood successful, but sadly life unsuccesful, unwedded fool that he is.
Wow- not much critical thinking from you- just two yes or no questions- did you know about Kent prior to rabbits live? That’s a yes!! Is keeping him on the board after knowing in line with not harboring abusers? That’s a no – Mike it’s time for you to leave all boards claiming to protect children- that is NOT what you do. Go be king OSA somewhere else.
Here are the answers to your two questions that you likely won’t like because they don’t fit the narrative you have been fed.
1. No, I did not know. On what basis do you conclude I had such knowledge? Because someone who doesn’t know said so? Because it “must be” the case? Based on what? The victim is a friend? I have subsequently learned from the victim that the people who DID know about this for a year or more are some of the people now falsely accusing me of knowing and doing nothing. Make sense out of that. And let’s not overlook the fact that disclosing this confidential complaint HURT the victim because it jeopardized the investigation and possible disciplinary action. Apparently nobody cares about that — just interested in getting clicks on their YouTube channels.
2. Kent resigned from the board without comment or notice when this came to our attention and we held an emergency meeting to address it. The statement about this is on the Child USA website.
Of course, Scientologists all think they’re expert critical thinkers because Scientology offers the “Data Evaluator’s Course.” I remember looking through the materials from this a few years ago and thinking “this is so basic that it’s embarrassing that they’ll charge $750 for it.” The song from “Sesame Street” with Muppets singing “which of these things is not like the others” ran through my head as I read Hubbard’s sacred wisdom.
The course material was thrown together when people had to use mechanical adding machines to total up columns of data, so even getting the average of 20 numbers took a fair amount of work. But even by the standards of the day, it is laughable that anyone who had taken this course would be able to consider themselves a master of critical thinking, of “scientific management” or anything else.
Hubbard, who claimed to be able to zoom up and down the “whole track” at will, apparently never saw the rise of big corporate computer systems that were already becoming common at the time, and he certainly didn’t anticipate personal computers with spreadsheets that would arise only 15-20 years after he created the DSEC. Kind of an embarrassing miss to fail to anticipate the most significant single technological development in the last 200 years.
Current data analysis tools are so far beyond Hubbard’s “critical thinking” wisdom that his stuff might as well be from the stone age, and AI will make the DSEC and related Hubbard “tech” even more obsolete than it already is.
If someone who graduated from the Hubbard College of Administration sought a job at Global Capitalism HQ, I’m not sure whether I’d interview them just to see in person how high an opinion they had of themselves due to a small amount of obsolete basics packaged as the Greatest Wisdom Ever or whether I’d fire the HR person who let them through the screening process.
Of course, the key to cults is to encourage “critical thinking” of everyone else, while getting you to overlook using “critical thinking” tools to the cult’s own doctrine, lest you discover that it’s all nonsense. That is a key avenue to keep people stuck in a key cult trap, which is particularly vicious in Scientology: “if it works, it’s Scientology but if it doesn’t work, it’s your fault.” The end result, especially if you’re on staff, is that you always feel like a failure and are in a panic to work harder to stop thinking “I have all this secret knowledge, and everybody else is making it work, but I’m the only one screwing up.”
Well Mr. P., I have to agree with your comments here, but one thing in the Data Series is what helped me bail out of the cult for good. If I recall correctly, the Data Series is where the only one of Hubbard’s maxims that matters is located. “Look, don’t listen”. If every cultie took this to heart as I did, the cult would fold like a cheap tent.
When I finally decided to “Look, don’t listen” I saw lots of things that woke me up.
1) I looked for ‘clears’ and ‘OTs’ and only saw success stories and certificates
2) I looked for societal influence and saw only… a big nothing burger
3) I looked for the most ethical people on the planet and saw G/OSA
4) I looked for past lives and I’m still looking, no one has come back
5) I looked for spiritual freedom and found only enslavement
6) I looked for honesty and found only the biggest con ever perpetrated on mankind
In short, I looked for results and found none. For any UTRs, lurkers, fence sitters, doubters or dilettantes out there reading this blog, take Hubbard’s advice, “Look, don’t listen”.
@ John P,,
Great to have you posting here again.
Tthe data on Data Evaluation IS basic.
I took this course and afterwards I did not (nor do I now) consider myself a “master” of data evalution.
I can only state that after I completed it my eyes were opened to things going on in my that before the course I never questioned or didn’t even observe at all.
Ideal Org Fundraising; IAS Donations, Library Donations…endless fundraising, no auditors being trained…all in direct opposition to what Hubbard policy states that Scientology orgs should do or not do.
To make a long story short, that course started me firmly on the road OUT of Scientology. And interestingly enough, I had to fight to do this course.
The ONLY reason they delivered it to me was because some registrar had, a few years prior, sold me the course. I had the money on account for it, and yes it cost $750.
I really wanted to do it; staff at my little org tried VERY hard to talk me out of it, but I insisted, telling them, you sold it to me, now please deliver it to me.
They didn’t have much of a choice, and they were surprised that I stuck to my guns about doing it Instead of allowing myself to be persuaded to transfer the money to some other course or material or whatever.
To my knowledge they’re not delivering it any more.
Point being, it may well be super basic common sense and observation, and certainly my eyes being opened, data analysis-wise after I completed the course doesn’t say much for my prior analytical abilies 🙂 but what I learned on It set me on the correct path that led out of the Church of Scientology 12 years ago. Irony!
“Critical thinking is the process of analyzing information…” STAND League’s attempt to redefine critical thinking is totally off-source. Hubs was very specific and clear to the point:
CRITICAL THOUGHT, 1 . a symptom of an overt act having been committed. (SH Spec 37, 6409C01) 2 . a critical pc=a withhold from the auditor. (HCOB 23 Aug 71)
“When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe – never permit an “open-minded” approach.” (Hubs in Keeping Scientology Working).
Thinking for yourself is something Scientology does NOT want you to engage in ever.
I ended up studying critical thinking as part of leaving Scientology and the sad fact is critical thinking is not allowed in Scientology.
Critical thinking is a subject and though no one knows everything about the subject I can tell you that some ideas and practices are essential fundamentals.
Among the very most basic are the idea that each claim must be examined on its own merits. The source of a claim is neither proof that a claim is incorrect or correct because we ALL can be right or wrong about anything. An expert can be wrong just as anyone else can.
In Scientology the appeal to authority fallacy is essential. As is the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is looking at the origin (genesis) of a claim to determine the truth. But a liar may tell the truth just as an authority may simply be wrong, no one is infallible.
In Scientology members are trained to accept claims by Hubbard as true blindly. They are also trained to reject claims that disagree with or criticize Hubbard and to denigrate the source with ad hominem attacks that are irrelevant non sequitur claims. Whether a person has alleged hidden evil purposes, for example, or not, they may have a valid claim.
This very basic idea in critical thinking is absent in Scientology.
“Once a Scientologist begins to gain critical thinking skills, they start asking questions—questioning those things that “everybody knows.”
I remember watching a new student on the Comm Course in the 70s question the materials that they were reading (as anyone should do). This was tricky for the course supervisor to handle. On the one hand, the newbie potential scientologist needed to be persuaded to buy into the Hubbard bullshit and on the other hand they couldn’t be pushed too hard or they would be out the door. Once the hook is set, a person can be abused freely with ‘ethics tech’ and hammered over and over with KSW and hounded endlessly to find their misunderstood word. The joys of spiritual freedom.
Fortunately, for the student I was watching, they hit the road never to come back. I wish I would have done the same thing at the time. I’m a slow learner and it took me many more years to find the exit and puke up the KSW Kool-Aid I had swilled.
Scientology and critical thinking not something that adds up what so ever. Scientology thinks for Scientology- Scientology does not have any critical thinking skills so how can Scientologists critically think?
They can’t because of how Scientology is what thinks for them. From what I have seen read and heard, people who leave Scientology can think for themselves and they think critically which helps them in the end.
Thinking with your own mind really means allowing yourself to look at things from different angles and then draw conclusions.
In scn, it means you can only “think freely” what they expect you to think.
Hubbard had a strong disdain for those who were “open-minded”, and he wrote about it several times.