I'm confused and curious. You base your truths in empirical science and are an atheist. To me, that suggests you are a naturalist (you don't believe in the supernatural).
But you also talk of thetans and a fundamental principle of Scientology is:
Fundamental to Scientology is a view of Man as a spiritual being. In Scientology, the spiritual being is called the
thetan. The term is taken from the Greek letter
theta for “thought” or “life” or “
the spirit.” It is used to avoid confusion with previous concepts of the soul.
The thetan is immortal and has lived—and will continue to live—through countless lifetimes. One is a thetan who has a mind and who occupies a body. The thetan animates the body and uses the mind.
The full body of knowledge that comprises the Scientology religion is contained in more than forty million spoken and written words on the subject—all by L. Ron Hubbard, the source and founder of Scientology.
www.scientology.org
I assume you will admit that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a thetan or its immortality. How do you personally square that? Or do you? (I ask this question of religious people who claim to be rational empiricists all the time, so I hope you don't think I'm picking on you for the Scientology angle).
Also, I'm unaware, but has Scientology conducted any empirical studies regarding auditing and its effectiveness? That would be fascinating, especially if you ran a similar trial evaluating Catholic confessions or other similar practices.
(too long? Don’t read...)
Cogent questions. 👍 I can see you’ve thought carefully about this. If Scientology is empirical, scientific, how can it be a religion?
I’m no spokesperson for the Church of Scientology but I’ll give you my answers to your questions.
1. Empirical evidence for the existence of a thetan?
In
Scientology The Fundamentals of Thought, Hubbard writes, “The THETAN (spirit) is described in Scientology as having no mass, no wavelength, no energy and no time or location in space, except by consideration or postulate.
The spirit, then, is not a
thing. It is the
creator of things.”
With such a definition, it seems impossible to empirically perceive a thetan. And so it evidently is, at least in the physical universe.
So we can see things one creates but that doesn’t prove one isn’t the body.
One indirect demonstration is that therapeutic processes work when used with this definition as opposed to assuming the person is the body. That’s empirically true for the individual who experiences this but it can’t be demonstrated to you necessarily as an external observer.
More specifically, processes that “exteriorize” the person/thetan/spirit are the clearest way to demonstrate this to the individual. Being exterior from but still in control of the body is a far more comfortable state of being and is a routine, inevitable result of processing although it takes place at different times for different individuals, for various reasons.
2. Evidence for immortality
This also ties to one’s own experience in processing. One of the most useful benefits is increased ability to recall the past. It generally doesn’t take long to recover pre-natal and past-life experiences. How does one know for sure these are not imaginary experiences? To be sure, some of them are vague, lacking in detail, or astonishingly unbelievable. Most convincing for me early on was the tremendous relief occasioned by processing certain events, especially ones involving extreme emotional or physical trauma that had been occluded, both present lifetime and past.
Does that prove I’ll live another lifetime after this one? Time will tell but suffice it to say I am comfortable in making that assumption. One thing for sure, making that assumption has given me relief all by itself and freed me to do things I otherwise probably wouldn’t have, such as taking care of my aging mother. That’s a blessing.
3. I’m a naturalist?
I don’t think of it that way but I see myself as myself, living my life as I did before I became a Scientologist, but with far more knowledge of life and access to more and greater abilities I can use here on planet earth. Scientology provides a wealth of life tools. A number of posters here have raised money issues. I fully understand that money makes the world go round and it is important in life but it turns out it’s also one of the easier problems to solve.
4. Empirical studies on the effectiveness of Scientology auditing
Like you I am not aware of any, although I think some people may have tried in the late 40s and early 50s. If I’m not mistaken his two books preceding Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health were mainly intended for a scientific audience.
My guess is one of the problems with such research back then was the great dependence for results on auditing skill. I believe Hubbard spent much of the 1950s attempting to train other auditors to do what he was able to do himself.
I think another problem was that his research was continually advancing right into the 80s. For example, from the book I previously quoted:
“Probably the greatest discovery of Scientology, and its most forceful contribution to the knowledge of Mankind, has been the isolation, description and handling of the human spirit. Accomplished in July 1952 in Phoenix, Arizona, I established along scientific lines (rather than mere belief) that: That thing which is the person, the personality, is separable from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or mental derangement.”
Today such empirical studies could be performed I suppose, but auditing is such a precision skill and the training of auditing discipline is likewise a precision process, that there is no strong desire to leave that to the whims of university professors, which would be the reason to conduct such studies in my mind. It’s a responsibility factor. When you know how to help someone, you feel a great responsibility it is done right.
If you made it this far, I hope I answered your questions. 😛
