Death of the Ideal Scientologist, Konrad Aigner

Alongside a well-placed ad from the Cult of Scientology encouraging viewers to “Get the facts” is an article by John Brown entitled The Ideal Scientologist: Konrad Aigner. This must-read story summarizes the life and death in Scientology of Konrad Aigner.

Aigner joined the cult in 1976, after leaving his family’s German farm to take up employment as a bus driver in Munich. Aigner became a committed Scientologist, devoting himself to crossing Scientology’s disingenuously-named Bridge to Total Freedom, which Brown described as “a very expensive process, currently believed to cost US$360,000″ that leads not to Total Freedom “but to Total Disillusionment, as several OT8s have stated in no uncertain terms.”

In order to be able to devote more funds to traversing the Bridge, Aigner returned to the family farm in 1995 and began working as an independent bus driver. Aigner’s family reported changes in Konrad. Normally cheerful and easy-going, Konrad was said to have become tense, nervous and preoccupied. In 1996, Aigner tried to leave Scientology but ended up sticking around. In 1997, Konrad told his mother that he wanted out, claiming that “he had learned something so terrible that it would kill her to hear about it”. That August, after three months in a coma, Aigner was dead.

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.

Evolved Rationalist reviews Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

The Evolved Rationalist, in an act of self-sacrifice, has subjected herself and her brain cells (a few thousand of which are probably dead now) to watching Ben Stein et al.’s crocumentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. She reviews the intellectual and moral travesty here.

PS: ER has the best blog tagline I’ve ever seen: We have the fossils. We win.

Scientology Front Group Narconon Investigated by Australia’s TodayTonight

Australian current affairs program TodayTonight has released an investigative report on Scientology Front Group Narconon, the cult’s quack drug/alcohol rehabilitation program. Their report includes interviews with a former Narconon administrator, ex-Narconon client, and the founder of the Melbourne branch of Narconon. Excluding the statements from the local Narconon founder, the views expressed in the report were that Narconon is unsubstantiated quackery, an expensive scam, dangerous, destructive to clients and their families, deceitful, bizarre, and a covert attempt to prey on vulnerable populations for money and to attempt to recruit them into Scientology. The former Narconon administrator also stated that the cult’s likely response to having Narconon investigated would be to conduct an indepth investigation on the reporters in order to hopefully dig up embarrassing information on the investigated in order to potentially use against them.

For more on Scientology, click here.

Crash this poll! (UPDATED)

A poll is being hosted on a Pro-ID Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed MySpace page. The poll, which is found down the page on the left, asks if you think that Intelligent Design should be taught in American public schools. When PZ Myers linked the poll, the totals showed a 3:1 ratio favouring the teaching of ID. My how a 40,000 hit/day blog along with other smaller blogs can change this!  It has been a mere 7 hours since PZ’s post and there are now 20 times as many votes for “No” than “Yes”! But we can do better than that!

Crash this poll!

UPDATE (12:49 PM EST, 26/04/2008):

Current vote talley:

Yes: 816 votes, 0.26%

No: 308482 votes, 98.82%

Not Sure: 167 votes, 0.05%

What is it [ID]?: 2701 votes, 0.87%

What’s interesting is that the Yes/No ratio is *still* less staggering in this poll than in the international scientific community!

Have you been expelled from pro-Expelled media (e.g., blogs)?

I was recently prevented from expressing dissent on a pro-Expelled blog. I know that I am not the first person to have been expelled for disagreeing with IDists, and will surely not the be last. PZ Myers of Pharyngula has been banned from commenting on a number of pro-ID blogs (e.g., Uncommon Dissent) and was prevented from attending a public pre-screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (even though he went through all the right channels to gain admission and was also, y’know, IN THE MOVIE!). Larry Moran of Sandwalk has also been banned by pro-ID blogs like UD. Moreover, Blake Stacey recently chronicled a long list of evolutionists who have been fired, demoted, harassed, threatened, assaulted, and in one case killed for defending evolution and/or publicly dismissing Creationism or Christianity.

Given all of the discussion that is taking place around the Net right now over Expelled, evolution and Intelligent Design Creationism, the purpose of this post is to see who else has been expelled from commenting on pro-Expelled or pro-ID media, such as blogs. A post specifying such censorship (including links to blogs and the blogs of the expelled) will be produced.