Help get ex-Scientologist Tory Christman on CNN!

In her video response to Scientology PR rep Tommy Davis’ claims on Thursday’s edition of American Morning on CNN (click here for video of both), Tory Christman suggested that CNN bring her or another knowledgeable critic onto the show to present their side. This is important because it is pretty clear that Tommy Davis gave untruthful responses to most if not all of the questions he was asked.

To contact CNN and request that Christman be invited onto American Morning, click here to leave them a quick note.

Also, don’t forget that the next big international day of protest against the criminal and unethical practices of the Cult of Scientology is TOMORROW, Saturday May 10, at CoS locations everywhere!

For more on Scientology, click here.

Tory Christman refutes Tommy Davis’ claims on CNN

Tommy Davis, PR rep of the Cult of Scientology, appeared on CNN’s American Morning today with John Roberts. In this interview he is questioned on disconnection, the cult’s beliefs, space aliens, and Anonymous. Here is the video:

This, by the way, is the same Tommy Davis that tenaciously harassed and appeared to coordinate the persistent spying on of BBC journalist John Sweeney and his team during the filming the BBC Panorama special Scientology and Me:

 

It did not take long for ex-Scientologist and dedicated critic Tory Christman to go public with her refutation along with a request to for her or another knowledgeable critic such as Mark Bunker to be invited onto CNN to respond on national TV to Davis’ claims.

If you want to see Tory appear on American Morning to offer the insights that 30 years of experience in the cult, having been declared a Suppressive Person for leaving and then protesting the cult, and having been disconnected by all of her Scientologist friends and divorced by her Scientologist husband, write CNN a quick note to let them know here!

And don’t forget that the next international day of protest against the criminal and unethical practices of the Cult of Scientology is TOMORROW, Saturday May 10, at CoS locations everywhere!

For more on Scientology, click here.

I keep preaching Fair Game because I have nothing else to complain about?

I’ve been having an email discussion with the person who runs http://scientologymyths.wordpress.com, a pro-Scientology site by a Scientologist (”Louanne”) that pays shallow and transparent lip-service to neutrality. The things she are saying are just ridiculous. After writing off numerous cases against Scientology - e.g., the case against Scientology in Belgium, Bob Minton, Gregg Hagglund, the nature of OSA - basically just saying that all of these cases are false, that their perpetrators have zero evidence and are just doing it for money (even if they’re already rich and there are far better and safer ways to get paid) or attention (even though any attention they get runs the risk of drawing Black PR from Scientology along with further brutal abuse), she says the following:

“You keep on preaching “Fair Game” because you have nothing else to complain about.”

What?! Fair Game is OFFICIAL “CHURCH” OF SCIENTOLOGY POLICY written by Hubbard and STILL IN PRACTICE TODAY which states that anyone deemed to be an enemy of the “Church” can be LIED TO, TRICKED, SUED OR *DESTROYED*!

Since when is official “Church” policy that all active dissenters can be destroyed a trivial matter that one only brings up repeatedly because they supposedly have “nothing else to complain about”. It seems to me that a neutral info source on Scientology would at least concede this.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing that Louanne joined Scientology for - to demonize and support the destruction of anyone who stands against the practices of her cult. Or maybe she was brainwashed since childhood by Scientologist parents.

For more on Scientology, click here and/or go to Xenu.Net (i.e., both of which, Louanne would probably call hate-links).

And of course, if you feel like complaining but have run out of ideas, do not forget about Operation: FairGameStop on Saturday!

THE NEXT WORLD SCIENTOLOGY PROTEST: THIS SATURDAY

THE NEXT INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST AGAINST THE CULT OF SCIENTOLOGY

OPERATION: FAIRGAMESTOP

SATURDAY, MAY 10

“CHURCH” OF SCIENTOLOGY LOCATIONS EVERYWHERE

BE THERE! SPREAD THE WORD!

FOR MORE INFORMATION (E.G., LOCATIONS): WWW.ENTURBULATION.ORG

Another weekend, another set of mini-raids on the Cult of Scientology!

Just doing a regular check-up on YouTube to see if any new videos have been filed under “Scientology” - which, of course, they have. It’s the end of another weekend, which means an onslaught of videos from weekend CoS mini-raids from around the world. Here are clips from a few:

Cult of Scientology Conspired to Destroy Skeptic Organization CSICOP

In the late 1970s, the Cult of Scientology conspired to discredit and silence the Committee for Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal, CSICOP, an organization headed by world-renowned Humanist leader Paul Kurtz, who also heads the Center For Inquiry. The 1977 order from the top level of the “Church” of Scientology outlining the plan, entitled Program: Humanist Humiliation, was released by the Washington court that convicted nine US Scientology leaders - including Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of cult founder L. Ron Hubbard - of being active in a conspiracy to steal confidential government documents (i.e., Operation: Snow White).

The ultimate goal of the program: to “handle terminately” (i.e., to destroy) the publication of Zetetic, which is now known as The Skeptical Inquirer, and CSICOP “so that they never attack Scientology or Dianetics again”. The methods: Scientology’s Guardian’s Office (now called the Office of Special Affairs, which functions as the cult’s internal CIA/police service) would, through press relations and espionage, spread rumors that CSICOP was a front organization of the CIA put in place to discredit any and all psychic phenomena in order to keep this subject under CIA control, and to stop paranormal research outside of the CIA.

Responding to an ID-Sympathizing Blogger

On his blog Vere Loqui - which I like the title of, Martin Cothran wrote:

L. Ron Brown at “The Frame Problem” takes Ben Stein to task for making careless remarks about science on the Glenn Beck show. Of course Brown employs the usual array of hyperbolic terms favored by Darwinists in such cases to describe Stein’s remarks, in which he seems to blame “science” for historical atrocities. Were Stein’s remarks careless? Sure they were. Shame on him. Were they examples of “Ignorance, deceit, and stupidity”? I don’t think so.

I’ve been on plenty of television and radio interviews and I don’t know if there is single one I didn’t walk out of thinking, “I shouldn’t have said it that way.” But for every instance of hyperbole, there seems to be an equal and opposite incidence of hyperbole, and that is what we are getting from the Darwinists.

But let’s face it, Stein’s remarks were careless. Bad boy! An afternoon’s detention I say.

But let’s just remind the hyperreactive critics of Intelligent Design about their own record of stupid remarks made, not in the midst of a television interviews in which there is no editing option, statements made in carefully written statements in which they did have plenty of opportunity to make sure it said exactly what they wanted it to say?

Of this species of remark, my personal favorite is this one, by Richard Dawkins:

Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.If Stein’s remarks deserve afternoon detention, Dawkins gets a week’s suspension.

My Response:

Intellectual Volunteering Opportunities Available Here!

Hi all. When I started this blog my intent was to engage every debate that comes my way regarding my posts - with little regard for how inane the other side was being. I viewed it as a matter of being a good citizen and being responsible for my content. When the blog first started there were generally between 150-200 hits per day, and I had more time on my hands as I was at the early stages of recovering from a car accident. Now on most days the blog will get 800-1000 hits per day, sometimes substantially more. Moreover, as my healing is essentially complete and as I’m in the process of setting up a 1-year work term in South Korea, I have less time on my hands to deal with the increasingly common heaps of religious dogmatism that come The Frame Problem’s way.

As the site has grown over the months, readers like Stoobs, the Matts, thisbusymonster, and Mark, have done an amazing job of representing science and rationality. For their efforts, they each receive a slice of delicious cake:

Today, opportunities for on-site intellectual volunteerism continue to abound. Because of my increasing external priorities and my internal focus on the Cult of Scientology, I have limited time to devote to metaphorically bashing my head against a wall in “debates” with IDists who actually believe the BS being thrown against the world’s biggest fans by Ben Stein and his Expelled cronies and by organizations like the euphemistically named Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, and the Institute for Creation “Research” (i.e., research in which only that which can be interpreted as supportive of our views will be pursued and will be viewed as counting).

Delicious cake is on offer for any other brave and remarkably patient samaritans who are willing to take one for the team (Team Reason) by subjecting themselves to defending reason to the local ID/Creationists who have managed to fall for the religious right propaganda that there is an international conspiracy in which the scientific, education, judicial, media (even many in the more conservative media), and even liberal religious communities of the world have all banded together to bully the entirely inane legitimate and entirely unscientific dim-witted collapse-at-the-logic-of-a-four-year-old just-a-theory of Intelligent Design into intellectual oblivion. I will continue to take part, too, but I no longer have the time to fully engage all of these “debates” myself.

“Debate” is just waiting to be engaged in here.

_____________________________________

UPDATE:

Cake is being served. Please come forward for your cake.

The first person in line is Ubiquitous Che. Here’s his slice:

Ben Stein and Glenn Beck: Ignorance, Deceit and Stupidity, OH MY!

Nothing I say short of quoting them directly could prepare you for the profound levels of ignorance you are about to hear. Stein and Beck’s ignorance of and/or deliberate deceit with respect to science, evolution, atheism and morality are absolutely depressing.

They are an unfortunate pair of exemplars of the intellectual dysfunction that dogmatism - religious or otherwise - constitutes.

Anti-Defamation League Condemns Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

From the official ADL website:

New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

As the weeks go by the number of detractors of this crocumentary continues to escalate. The National Center for Science Education’s ExpelledExposed website presents this growing collection of negative reviews, including reviews from national science agencies (e.g., the National Academy of Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science), science and skeptic magazines (e.g., Reason Magazine), individual scientists (e.g., Richard Dawkins), major magazines (e.g., Time, Variety, Slate) and newspapers (e.g., the New York Times), major blogs (e.g., The Huffington Post), and even conservative sources like Fox News and religious organizations such as BeliefNet, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and Reasons to Believe - a Christian organization with which I found things to disagree with very quickly into their statement, but at least we can share some common ground when it comes to this piece of Creationist propaganda.

It seems, once again, that it is the fundamentalists versus the world. And as has always been the case, it is the fundamentalists versus reality. And as Stephen Colbert once pointed out: reality has a well-known liberal bias.