This is the audio version of Chris Shelton's weekly Critical Question and Answer show on his YouTube channel. In this show, Chris answers questions posed by viewers in the comments section of his Q&A videos or sent by email to AskChrisShelton@gmail.com. Questions cover a wide range of topics but tend to focus on Scientology and critical thinking, as well as Chris' personal experiences with and in the Church of Scientology.
https://mncriticalthinking.com/posts/
Critical Q&A #133
The weekly show where I answer viewer questions. This week, the questions I answer are:
(1) Do you have anything to say about the possible guilt that follows, if somebody has worked as a cult recruiter for a long time, and then at some point, understands that has only been causing harm to other people?
(2) How does the Sea Org define “worker oriented” and why is that considered a bad thing?
(3) I’ve been reading Up the Bridge on Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker website. He wrote about 1988 version of OT VIII where a Scientologist learned that LRH was the re-incarnation of Buddha, that Jesus Christ was not the figure most Christians made him out to be, that the Book of Revelations had it wrong, the Anti-Christ is the good guy, and that he, LRH, was the Anti-Christ. Tony Ortega presents a good case that this was the original OT VIII before it was pulled by Miscavige. It sounds more plausible for this to be LRH’s Big Reveal than the “you are you” that was presented on Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. So my question is: considering that Jonestown was only 10 years old and the 1980s were the heyday of televangelism, is it possible that David Miscavige or someone else high up in Scientology decided that if the original OT VIII material leaked then the Church of Scientology could suffer a catastrophic backlash and that it would be safer to pull the original OT VIII and replace it with a more mundane “you are you” OT VIII?
(4) Is Dianetics (not OT levels, I refer only to Hubbard’s 1950 book) any crazier than Freud or Reich? Wouldn’t critical thinking invalidate the writings of the founders of psychiatry too?
(5) I really enjoyed hearing you talk about Battlefield Earth. Have you read any of Hubbard’s other sci-fi works? Have you read Mission Earth? Did you enjoy it as a Scientologist?
(6) Chris, I’m confused. Are Stacy Brooks and Mark Rathbun in or out of the ‘church’?
(7) Are any of LRH’s family members/descendants Scientologists? If Scientology is so wonderful how do they explain the fact that none of his descendants believe in his church?
(8) If you were to sift though everything Hubbard ever said and wrote about Dianetics and Scientology and took all that is ‘true’ and ‘good’, in other words anything that is of real value and can be useful, how much material would still be there? Dare I suggest a relatively thin book?