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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3163 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 18, 2023

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This weekend, I became obsessed with the question of whether Scientology chief David Miscavige (who grew up in Scientology and took over upon Hubbard’s death in 1987) actually believes in the mythos. If I have time, I’ll write a moderate effort-post, but I’m curious since I know there are other scientology nerds here (it is one of the oldest ‘very online’ hobbyist topics, after all), what do you think?

I sometimes wonder if the Pope actually believes in the mythos. Not at the level of "yes, God exists and wants us to be good, but everything else about the doctrine is waves hands", but at the level of creed: "of course God is triunite, of course Jesus was true man and true God in one person, of course the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son, of course it's the blood and body of Jesus that we use for the Eucharist" etc.

Yeah.

I don't really know enough about Catholicism to say, but I assume that that advancement of clergy to higher positions doesn't directly select for who seemingly believes the hardest in the doctrine. I mean, those who genuinely lose faith are probably going to self-select out, but someone who doesn't really have a deeply-held belief in the truth of the Bible could still be a loyal cleric simply because they see the church and its' teaching as an overall net good in the world that should be maintained. Or because they personally gain from it.

And that element of belief also seems like the easiest part to fake?

I mean, assume that you commit to the cloth out of a true belief in the divinity of Jesus, the supremacy of the Pope et al., but after many years you simply do not observe the evidence that would support the churches' teaching about God (I do not make a comment on whether he exists or not, here), and see the churches' failures up close. Do you continue to present yourself as a believer on the basis of simple inertia, do you double down on your faith, or do you decide to simply 'game the system' and see how far you can get?

The whole thing about martyrs is that they demonstrated their ultimate belief by maintaining it in the face of the most serious oppression and sanctions which tends to make it quite obvious that they were acting on a true belief that held serious meaning to them. We don't see many martyrs for Christianity these days.

So returning to the topic, I also would guess that Scientology does NOT select for 'true believers' in terms of who gets leadership positions, and the whole thing seems even more prone to abuse than most other mainstream religions, so I would absolutely bet in favor of Miscavige being a fairly convincing charlatan, if you were to stick him in a high-resolution brain scanning device and probe the nature of his actual vs. stated beliefs.

you commit to the cloth out of a true belief in the divinity of the Pope et al

If you did that I'd be exceedingly concerned because we don't believe the Pope is divine 😁 Might I suggest you go next door where they're offering free personality tests and clearing sessions?

Think I mixed that up with Papal infallibility.

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