Green Oasis

Here’s an interesting interview with Jason Beghe about leaving Scientology. Sounds very familiar.

I’m having a moment.… of coming out of Scientology. There are moments where you just feel a loss. And it’s not a loss of “I miss Scientology” by any stretch. It’s a loss— It’s a regret of having invested so much in something that is empty.…

There’s a book that [L. Ron Hubbard] wrote that’s called [A] History of Man. And he talks about a lot of these traps that can catch a Thetan,… The best Theta traps are ones that the Thetans runs on autopilot. Like if I’m trying to enslave somebody, the last thing I want to do is to have to worry about… keeping the key [and] the lock. The best traps, you get a guy to just keep himself in jail. And that’s what Scientology does. You just keep yourself in jail.… It’s a perfect Theta trap because you believe it, and you’re investing your time and your money. So you can’t be a fool: that’s too much to confront.

…

The more I got in, the stupider I got. As I get out, that’s my perception. I mean—Christ!—you don’t even ask questions.… What I gather as I wake up—you know, it’s a funny thing—in Scientology, you feel as though you’re waking up to the truth or reality or what really is. But what you’re doing is waking up to the reality of Scientology.

…

[Scientologists] are good people. These are some of the best people you can meet. These are people [who] really want to help.

…

I’ve never been closer [to my family than] now that I’m out [of Scientology].

…

There was a moment where I could have woken up there [upon hearing about Xenu]. But you choose not to. And that’s part of the reason Scientology’s expensive.… If you’re paying a lot of money for it, it makes it more valuable.

…

You’re driving the car. It’s just that you don’t realize that the car, as a Scientologist,… it’s got a pre-rigged route.… And so you feel like this is this easy life. I’ve just got to sit here and the car basically drives itself. All I got to do is show up at the church, and I’ll be happy.

…

Jason Beghe the Scientologist is willing to lose David[, his best friend], is willing to sacrifice certainly the quality of my relationship with Mom and Dad, and brothers and sisters, and God knows who else that I could have made friends with that weren’t Scientologists,…

…

For somebody who’s in [Scientology], as far gone as I say you are as you go up [in the levels of Scientology], the difference between waking and being asleep up is the difference between being waking up and asleep. And it’s like sometimes when you’re asleep you can still hear the shit that’s going around because you’re only half asleep, you’re not that fucking brainwashed. So I’m here to tell you, this is what I say: wake up!

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.—Jane Wagner

Worker A: Do anything interesting this weekend?

Worker B: Not much. I saw The Golden Compass. It looked really good. It’s kind of along the same lines as The Chronicles of Narnia.

Worker A: Sounds interesting.

Worker B: Yeah. I have a Mormon friend who wouldn’t go see it with me. Said it was anti-religious. I mean I’m not much for organized religion, but I didn’t see anything to worry about.

[*sigh* I haven't seen the movie, but it sounds like it has about the same message as Happy Feet.]

I just watched The People vs. Larry Flynt. I don’t have a lengthy review. I just wanted to express my happiness that I can watch and enjoy a film like this.

A couple years ago I would never have watched this movie, at least not while anyone was looking. If I had watched it, I would have been fixated on its sexual content and felt overcome with guilt for having given in to my carnal appetites. I would have agreed that Larry Flynt worked for Satan to entrap the souls of mankind. Now, I can watch it and find goodness in the life of Larry Flynt. I have removed the barriers between me and the beauty inside other people. Ironically, I’m a better follower of Jesus now that I don’t believe in him. I’m willing to lovingly embrace those who are judged the sinners of society. For that, I am grateful.

Something about his voice made me tune in. It was a cross between a kindergarten teacher reading storybooks and the voice-over guy who does almost all of the movie trailer narrations. The effect was simultaneously overly dramatic and condescendingly disingenuous. He sounded conscious of his own profundity. His tone grated on my nerves, but it made me listen to his General Conference talk about personal testimony, the only talk that I payed much attention to all weekend.

“If you want to know that you know that you know, a price must be paid.… I know what I know, and my witness is true.”

What does that even mean? What price do I have to pay if I want to know that I know that I know that I know? Can I get by with less if I just want to know that I know?

All joking aside, I can only make sense of what Douglas Callister said if what he means is that he is really, really, really confident that what he believes is true. That isn’t what he said, however. He said that his witness is true in some absolute, unmistakable way. “You can trust in me,” he seemed to say.

In fairness, he also taught that the only witness which counts in the end is our own, but his tone seemed to imply that we could rely on his beliefs until we knew for ourselves, no need to doubt.

I think most people will agree that we human beings are limited. We can’t know everything. Our knowing is confined to some subset of everything.

I would go further to say that we can’t know anything with absolute certainty. We rely on the trustworthiness of our own minds. To know anything absolutely, our minds must be in perfect working order with all the facts available to it. Here, we run into a bootstrapping problem: how can we know that our minds are in perfect working order? It is nonsensical to think that we can use our minds to judge their own fitness. If a mind is unfit, then it could erroneously judge itself fit because of its unfitness.

It is tempting to wonder whether God could intervene here making it possible for us to know something with absolute certainty. I can’t imagine what form that intervention would take. We would still be forced to wonder how we could be sure that our impression that God gave us perfect knowledge is true? How do we know that we know? Answering that by “prayer and fasting” we can know that we know seems ignorant of the problem at hand.

I can’t see any way to escape this trap. The honest must admit to themselves that they will never know something with absolute certainty. There must always be doubt, if we are honest. We may be very confident in our beliefs, but that doesn’t make them true. In other words we can say that we believe that we know, but anyone who says that they know that they know isn’t being honest with themselves (or the church).