| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
29 Jan 2005 05:58:10 PM |
| Object: |
Professor Touretzky's interview |
Below is the transcript of my interview on WKCR FM 89.9 on the subject
of Scientology. Thanks to an anonymous critic for recording the show,
and to Rob Clark for transcribing it. The actual interview lasted
about 40 minutes. The reporter, Jesse Chanin, did a fine job of
editing it down to the 20 minutes available for the show. Kudos to
her, and to WKCR for having the guts to take on Scientology.
-- Dave Touretzky: "Howard Stern on line 1."
================================================================
WKCR Interview with Professor Dave Touretzky
Monday, January 24, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Q Good evening, and welcome to Late City Edition. You are
listening to WKCR FM, 89.9 New York. My name is Jesse Chanin, and I
will be your host for the next half hour. It is currently 9:00 p.m.
Tonight's show is about Scientology, the religion, or as some claim,
cult. It's perhaps most famous for its vocal celebrity adherents, who
include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Kirstie Alley. The Church
recently opened a branch in Harlem on 3rd Ave and 122nd Street, and
currently offers free daily seminars for anyone interested. The space
is filled with soft chairs, what appear to be self-help brochures,
plenty of leafy plants, and a good-sized eight-pointed cross hung from
the ceiling. All books and pamphlets on display had listed as author
L. Ron Hubbard, the man who developed and founded Scientology in the
1950s. Representatives from the Church declined to comment for this
show.
Instead, we will hear from Dave Touretzky, a professor of computer
science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and a vocal
opponent to Scientology. He is, from the Scientologists' point of
view, a controversial figure, accused by them of transgressions
ranging from plans to build illegal bombs to racism.
So, how did you come to be interested or involved with Scientology?
A Back in 1995, I was interested in Internet free speech issues,
and I heard over a Usenet newsgroup -- it's sort of like a bulletin
board on the Internet -- that Scientology was censoring messages that
were posted to a discussion group dedicated to Scientology. So, I
went over there to take a look. I didn't know anything about
Scientology. My interest was in censorship.
But when I started reading this Scientology discussion group, it was
-- it's called alt.religion.scientology, or ARS for short. Just as I
got there, a guy posted a court document called the Fishman
Declaration, and he said you'd better get this document quickly, you'd
better download this quickly, because the Scientologists are going to
cancel my posting in a few hours. And that just didn't seem right to
me, that other people could cancel this guy's posting, and stop the
public at large from reading it.
Q How did they have the power to do that on an Internet newsgroup?
A Well, the way these newsgroups work, people are able to cancel
their own postings, and if you know what you're doing, you can forge a
cancellation message from the true author.
So I saw this legal document that this guy had posted. It was a
court document from the courts in Los Angeles, and I thought well,
that's not right, that these people are going to cancel this guy's
posting. I wonder what they would do if someone turned this posting
into a website. So I decided to do the experiment, and I downloaded
this 35 page legal document, turned into a website on my website at
Carnegie Mellon, and I posted my first ever message to this newsgroup,
saying the Fishman Declaration is available at the following URL, and
I gave the URL, and I went home and went to sleep.
And all Hell broke loose. The Scientologists phoned, faxed, and
FedExed the University, saying that they were going to sue not only
Carnegie Mellon, but me personally, if this stuff didn't come down
right quick. And that got me really interested. Well, you know, what
was in here that they were so upset about? And it turned out that in
this Fishman Declaration, there was a document called OT III, which
Scientology regarded as not only copyrighted, but a spiritual trade
secret.
It's the story of Xenu, the evil space alien, who supposedly
massacred millions of other space aliens many years ago, and their
tortured, disembodied souls infest all of us today. Now, you're not
supposed to know about that stuff until you've been in Scientology for
a number of years, and paid them several hundred thousand dollars in
course fees. And yet here this thing was floating out on the
Internet, and they were desperate to suppress it.
Q So is this how the story about Xenu first got revealed?
A It's actually not the first time that Xenu -- Xenu's story was
told. It's been told several times, but before the Internet, you
know, things would come out in a newspaper article and then, people
would forget about it, you know, or it'd come out in the book, and
Scientology would sue the publisher of the book, or they'd buy up all
the copies, so it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that people
really had a way of mass communication that wouldn't go away.
Q Uh-huh. So that sort of bred an enmity between you and the Church.
A Well, it certainly got me interested in who these people were --
Q Yeah.
A -- and what motivated them, and the more I learned, I became both
fascinated and horrified. They're a dangerous, abusive cult. They
need to be exposed, and the Internet is doing that.
Q So, you wouldn't consider them a religion. I noticed that a lot
of the things on their websites are asserting that they are a bona
fide religion.
A I don't think that they are a legitimate religion, for this
reason: legitimate religions go beyond one person. Any legitimate
religion has a literature. It has scholars who write -- who extend
the literature of the belief system. And Scientology does not. In
Scientology, it's not permitted for people to write their -- to
publish their original Scientology ideas. L. Ron Hubbard is the only
person whose writings are permitted. And so, that means that there
can be no original thought. There can be no creativity. There can be
no free expression within Scientology. And that, to me, is clear
evidence that this is a cult and not a legitimate religion.
Q What would you cite as other examples of how Scientology differs
from mainstream religions?
A Well, another example is that Scientology is basically a bait and
switch game. So, when you come in, they first present themselves as
kind of a self-help group. They're -- they give out these free
personality tests. In fact, you can -- if you go to the website for
the Church of Scientology of Harlem, there's a link right on there to
get a free personality test. And then introductory courses, where
they try and hook you into joining Scientology, are sort of these
innocuous Personal Efficiency Course, Success through Communications
Course. They just seem sort of, you know, better yourself, improve
your skills, kinds of things. And then, when you get a little further
into Scientology, they start with Dianetics, when you learn that
everything bad that ever happened to you is encoded in your mind, and
you need therapy for that stuff.
So now, they become more of a kind of a quasi-psychotherapy group.
And then when you get further into Scientology, when you get up to
these higher levels, you discover that you're infested by the spirits
of murdered space aliens. These are the people that were murdered by
Xenu, and all these murdered space aliens, they need therapy too, and
you have to pay for it.
Q So, you see it as -- basically as a scheme to make money for L.
Ron Hubbard, or his heirs right now, since he's passed away.
A Well, money is certainly a big part of it. These courses, they
start out cheap, but they get very, very expensive. And you don't get
to meet Xenu until you've paid a couple hundred thousand dollars in
fees to these folks. And it doesn't get any cheaper. Once you meet
Xenu, the higher level courses are more expensive still. So,
moneymaking is definitely a big part of what Scientology is about.
Q And what would you cite as some of the other motives, that you
see behind what the Church has been doing?
A Well, they would like to live in a world where Scientology
dominates the world. They would like this -- their stated goal is to
Clear the Planet. What that means -- in Scientology, there's this
notion of going Clear, and that's the end goal in the Dianetics book.
Hubbard wrote this self-help book, Dianetics, in 1950, and that was
the precursor to Scientology. And in Dianetics, when you've done all
these mental exercises that Hubbard lays out, and you've rid yourself
of all your painful memories, you go Clear, and supposedly, you have
marvelous powers when you're clear. Perfect memory, free from
disease, and so on.
And they want a Clear planet. They want everybody to be a
Scientologist. They want to run things. I guess you can say world
domination is their goal. They're not doing too well at it. Things
are looking pretty grim for them on that front, but that's certainly
what their ultimate goal is.
Q How do you explain how popular the religion has been in at least
some sense, in that -- I mean, it is expanding. There are more
churches being built, and why? What drives people to this?
A Well, I think it's a lie on their part to say that they're
expanding. For many years, they claimed to have eight million
members, although they also claimed to be the fastest growing religion
on the planet, so how can the numbers stay at eight million for 10
years? But insiders, people who have worked in Scientology -- in
fact, one guy who used to manage the address list, said that there's
fewer -- far fewer than 100,000 members worldwide, and half of those
are in the U.S. And if you ask them, you know, who counts as a
member, and people have asked Heber Jentzsch, who is the President of
the Church of Scientology, that question. If you press him on it,
what he'll say is that anybody who has ever bought a book, or ever
taken a single course or done anything, counts as a member.
Q That was Dave Touretzky, a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University, talking about what he perceives to be the dangers of
Scientology. I am Jesse Chanin, and you're listening to late City
Edition here on WKCR. The second half of the interview will be
broadcast shortly, but first, I want to remind our listeners that
reports like the one you are currently hearing are only possible
through your financial support. The number here is (212) 851-2699, and
we're looking for listener donations.
[Long fund raising segment snipped.]
Q All right. It is now 9:20 or so p.m., and we are going to return
to our topic of the day, Scientology. I interviewed Dave Touretzky, a
professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University about his
opinions on the group yesterday.
He explained what separates the doctrine of Scientology from Eastern
religions, with which it shares many of its ideas.
A Scientology does share a belief in past lives with other
religions, that's true. But Scientology takes a very different view
of the human nature than these other religions do. So Scientology
practices what I call mechanistic dualism. They believe that the
spirit is separate from the body, and that the spirit is eternal, but
they also believe that the spirit, or the mind -- it's the same thing
to them -- is kind of a machine, in that it can be controlled by
rather simplistic procedures. And so, Scientology auditing, which is
their brand of therapy, is all about controlling the spirit.
So, Hubbard writes all this gobbledygook about energy and intention
beams, and he's got this whole science fiction quasi-physics about how
the mind works, and how energy flows and memories are encoded, and so
on. And they have this sort of rigid dogma about the spirit and the
mind, that the mind is a machine, and they have the procedures, and
you follow their procedures, and you can, therefore, clean up your
mind, get rid of all your bad memories, and become a super-being, and
eventually, rid yourself of the need to be reincarnated over and over.
They even have a machine to assist with this. The machine's called
an E-meter, which is short for electropsychometer. It's basically a
lie detector. It measures skin resistance. So what you do when
you're being audited, that is, when you're undergoing Scientology
therapy with this E-meter, you sit and you hold these two electrodes
in your hand. They look like soup cans. In fact, they actually used
to use soup cans. So you hold these things in your hand, and they're
connected by wires to this meter, and the auditor, that is, the
Scientology counselor, will run you through some procedure. He might
tell you to think of things on a certain list of items, or he might
ask you questions and listen to your responses. And while you're
doing this, he's looking at movements of this needle, and what
Scientology believes is that thoughts have mass that can be measured
by electrical resistance changes in the body, and so the people who
are trained to use this meter, they actually watch the needle for
different kinds of movements. Staring at this thing, trying to
interpret what these needle movements mean, and in this way, guide you
through their therapeutic procedure, which is supposed to rid you of
your traumatic memories.
So, it's a very mechanistic view of the mind and the soul, not the
kind of thing that you'd get in, say, Buddhism or Hinduism.
Q Yeah, and incidentally, New Yorkers might have seen these
E-meters in the subways, because Scientologists administer what they
call stress tests, and they have been in Times Square and Grand
Central Station, where they offer free readings on the E-meters to
passerby.
A The FDA actually raided Scientology and seized a bunch of these
E-meters in 1963, because Scientology was making illegal medical
claims, claiming that with the E-meter, they could cure disease. And
several lawsuits resulted from this seizure action, and the end result
of the lawsuit was that Scientology was required by the court to put a
warning plaque on every E-meter. And I can read you what that plaque
says. "By itself, this meter does nothing. It is solely for the guide
of Ministers of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counselling.
The Electrometer is not medically or scientifically capable of
improving the health or bodily function of anyone and is for religious
use by students and Ministers of the Church of Scientology only."
Q As we mentioned before, the Church that we're focusing on today
recently opened in Harlem, in East Harlem, in May, which does not
seem, upon first glance, to be ideal in a scheme to get money out of
people. So, why do you believe that the Church would choose to open a
branch in East Harlem?
A Scientology has several goals in targeting minorities. And they
are doing that. They're not just moving into Harlem, but they're also
targeting minority groups in other parts of the country. One reason
to go after minorities is that minorities are less wired. They're
less likely to be on the Internet, and therefore, they're easier to
recruit into Scientology.
Another reason is that Scientology's own internal memo, which got
published on the Internet last year, says that minorities are good to
recruit, because African-Americans are more likely to join staff than
white Scientologists. So, if you don't have money, you can still be
useful to the Church if you join staff. Now, staff members receive
very little pay. They work long hours. They're exploited and abused,
but they need staff people in order to send out advertising, in order
to give these stress tests, in order to be out on the street giving
out their personality tests. So they're always looking for new staff,
and the fact that African-Americans are more likely to join staff --
at least Scientology believes that's true -- makes Harlem a fertile
recruiting ground.
I think the third reason they're targeting minorities today is
because they're -- they have a big emphasis on trying to infiltrate
civilized society through drug education and through tutoring groups.
So, they have a number of front groups who are supposedly separate
from Scientology, but that's not actually true. They're actually
controlled directly by Scientology. One of them is Narconon, which is
a drug education group. The name is confusingly similar to Narcotics
Anonymous, but Narconon is not Narcotics Anonymous.
The other thing they have is a bunch of different kind of tutoring
groups. One of them is called the Hollywood Education and Literacy
Project, or HELP, and there is a branch in Harlem called HELP Harlem.
And these tutoring groups are, again, Scientology front groups. They
use Scientology materials. They glorify L. Ron Hubbard, the founder
of Scientology, as being an authority figure on education, and the,
you know, the intent is to infiltrate civilized society, and try and
get L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology accepted as a desirable, good
thing.
Q So, lastly, I mean you've clearly become more involved in
fighting this cult than just their abuse of free speech. And I know
there have been some -- I mean, there are websites that the
Scientologists have made, libelous of your character and things like
that. I mean, how do you react to that?
A Well, you go to war, people are going to shoot at you. I knew
from the beginning that Scientology has a long history of attacking
its critics. They have a policy called Fair Game, that says that
anyone who's an enemy of Scientology can be sued, tricked, lied to, or
destroyed.
So they have a long history of going after people, and it's no
surprise to me that they're coming after me now. I'd be quite
surprised if they didn't. I've had a long stretch of legal threats
from them over various things on my website, and I've had various bits
of harassment from them, which I won't even dignify by recounting over
the radio.
But nothing that they've done has diminished my enthusiasm for
exposing these people. I think it's just tremendous fun to use the
Internet to shine a light on these scammers, and to get the word out
on what they're really doing.
Q All right. Well, David Touretzky, thank you for speaking with me.
Dave Touretzky is a professor of computer [INAUDIBLE] -- at
www.studytech.org. That's all for Late City Edition tonight. Thanks
for listening, and please stay tuned for Film Focus next. Also, if
you have any comments or questions about the programming, feel free to
contact news@wkcr.org.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
FRice Antiwar: http://www.skeptictank.org/antiwar.htm
FRice Tree Sit: http://www.skeptictank.org/treesit/treesit.htm
.
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| User: "The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile" |
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| Title: Re: Professor Touretzky's interview |
29 Jan 2005 09:33:35 PM |
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On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:58:10 GMT, (Fredric
L. Rice) wrote:
(Trimmed)
Q So is this how the story about Xenu first got revealed?
A It's actually not the first time that Xenu -- Xenu's story was
told. It's been told several times, but before the Internet, you
know, things would come out in a newspaper article and then, people
would forget about it, you know, or it'd come out in the book, and
Scientology would sue the publisher of the book, or they'd buy up all
the copies, so it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that people
really had a way of mass communication that wouldn't go away.
The book "Big Secrets" exposed Scientology Inc.'s "Operating
Thetan Three" scam, which includes Lord Xenu and Body Thetans.
---
http://lastliberal.org
Free random & sequential signature changer http://holysmoke.org/sig
"If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley
at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life." --
Edward Abbey
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| User: "wcb" |
|
| Title: Re: Professor Touretzky's interview |
30 Jan 2005 05:50:26 AM |
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|
The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile wrote:
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:58:10 GMT, (Fredric
L. Rice) wrote:
(Trimmed)
Q So is this how the story about Xenu first got revealed?
A It's actually not the first time that Xenu -- Xenu's story was
told. It's been told several times, but before the Internet, you
know, things would come out in a newspaper article and then, people
would forget about it, you know, or it'd come out in the book, and
Scientology would sue the publisher of the book, or they'd buy up all
the copies, so it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that people
really had a way of mass communication that wouldn't go away.
The book "Big Secrets" exposed Scientology Inc.'s "Operating
Thetan Three" scam, which includes Lord Xenu and Body Thetans.
The fun part was the Lerma suit the cult filed some years back.
They sued Mr. Lerma for posting the scretes of Xenu to the internet.
The Washington Post reported on this and included the Xenu nonsense
and Stupidology sued te Washington Post. The judge tossed the suit out
rather rapidly.
What Stupidology was trying deperately to do was keep the Xenu tall
tale secret, claiming it was a trade secret, and failed. Big time.
Now anybody can safely, with any hinderence, mention Xenu and
R6 implants and other space opera nonsense without fear of a lawsuit from
Stupidology.
Naturally, since these tall tales are amazingly stupid, nobody
with a brain would join Scientology knowing up from about this.
Which is why Stupidology tried suing everybody when so mentioned,
when they noticed.
The last big, expensive suit was against Time for a now decade old article.
Since then, they haven't had much luck with these type lawsuits againts
papers since the Washington Post fiasco.
--
Cheerful Charlie
.
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| User: "The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile" |
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| Title: Re: Professor Touretzky's interview |
30 Jan 2005 03:29:12 PM |
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On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 23:50:26 -0600, wcb <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com>
wrote:
The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile wrote:
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:58:10 GMT, (Fredric
L. Rice) wrote:
(Trimmed)
Q So is this how the story about Xenu first got revealed?
A It's actually not the first time that Xenu -- Xenu's story was
told. It's been told several times, but before the Internet, you
know, things would come out in a newspaper article and then, people
would forget about it, you know, or it'd come out in the book, and
Scientology would sue the publisher of the book, or they'd buy up all
the copies, so it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that people
really had a way of mass communication that wouldn't go away.
The book "Big Secrets" exposed Scientology Inc.'s "Operating
Thetan Three" scam, which includes Lord Xenu and Body Thetans.
The fun part was the Lerma suit the cult filed some years back.
LOL! I'm not sure it was fun for Mr. Lerma. :-)
They sued Mr. Lerma for posting the scretes of Xenu to the internet.
The Washington Post reported on this and included the Xenu nonsense
and Stupidology sued te Washington Post. The judge tossed the suit out
rather rapidly.
Yeah, I barely recall the numbers involved: less than 20 words
quoted from a body of work three or four million words long, and
the crime syndicate claimed the quote violated the Fair Use
doctrin. Sheeeish. But as the crime syndicate'spolicy mandates,
the object of a law suit is not to win, but to harass the victim.
What Stupidology was trying deperately to do was keep the Xenu tall
tale secret, claiming it was a trade secret, and failed. Big time.
Now anybody can safely, with any hinderence, mention Xenu and
R6 implants and other space opera nonsense without fear of a lawsuit
from Stupidology.
Scientology Inc. *HATES* the internet for the same reason a rapist
hates the police. Xenu, Xenu, Xenu, Xenu.... sing it with me,
Xenu, Xenu, XENU!
When Xenu Barb and I were at the crime syndicate's headquarters at
Gilman Spring (near Hemet, California), we tried to teach the
parrot there to yell "XENU!" but we only had an hour, and the
parrot wasn't a terribly fast learner. :-)
Naturally, since these tall tales are amazingly stupid, nobody
with a brain would join Scientology knowing up from about this.
Which is why Stupidology tried suing everybody when so mentioned,
when they noticed.
Perhaps a tiny few would still purchase Scientology if they knew
beforehand what they were buying. Indeed, if Scientology Inc. told
their ictims up front what their money was going towards before
they bought Scientology, many of the human rights acitists who
object to Scientology and Scientology Inc. would not object quite
so much.
The last big, expensive suit was against Time for a now decade
old article. Since then, they haven't had much luck with these
type lawsuits againts papers since the Washington Post fiasco.
Perhaps such law suits have been less because Scientology Inc.'s
income has been less. Even though _Time_ magazine "won," it cost
them what--- five or six million dollars? I bet the crime
syndicate spent more than that on that bogus law suit alone.
And now the crime syndicate's "Super Power Building" sits in
Clearwater unfinished, rotting in the sun and rain, growing weaker
and falling apart in places because they haven't even been able to
buy enough windows to enclose it. Taking over a planet is not easy
when one's flow of money is cut off. :-)
--
Cheerful Charlie
---
http://lastliberal.org
Free random & sequential signature changer http://holysmoke.org/sig
"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of
scum on top." -- Edward Abbey
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