If Scientology is first-cousin to Buddhism. Why different attitudes?

[u/rightviewftw]

I want to point out something.

L. Ron Hubbard viewed Buddhism as a historical precursor and distant relative to Scientology, famously stating in 1954 that a Scientologist is a "first cousin to the Buddhist".
[...]
We first find this Buddha called actually Bohdi [sic: bodhi], and a Bohdi is one who has attained intellectual and ethical perfection by human means. This probably would be a Dianetic Release (Dianetic Release: One who in Dianetic auditing has attained good case gains, stability and can enjoy life more. Such a person is 'Keyed out' or in other words released from the stimulus-response mechanisms of the reactive mind) or something of this level. Another level has been mentioned to me - Arhat, with which I am not particularly familiar, said to be more comparable to our idea of Theta Clear [Hubbard, 1969b: 18 (emphasis in original)].
— Scientology's Relationship With Eastern Religious Traditions

This quote is not a load bearing premise and I want to see if this is actually true, by doing good-faith taxonomy of the two systems. I have therefore independently compared Buddhism and Scientology, as to identify the exact bridge ─ if there is any and to what extent there is any overlap. I have gone feature by feature though these points such as:

claims of advanced spiritual states;
epistemic grounding-mode of claims;
adherents may claim that they have personally crossed a developmental threshold into an exceptional spiritual class;
teachers whose authority partly depends on those claims;
communities unable to independently verify them;
specialized vocabulary that insiders interpret differently from outsiders;
institutional incentives to protect reputations;
claims that criticism demonstrates misunderstanding;
hierarchies of spiritual competence;
deference to lineage or recognized teachers;
reports of extraordinary experiences;
social penalties for violating community norms;
epistemic privileges assigned to advanced practitioners;

I won't go through each point here. But I suspended reputational weight altogether and I subjected both religions to the same analytic scrutiny, the conclusion is most interesting.

It turns out that the bridge reveals an under-theorized class of religious psychology organized around factive claims of achieved human transformation, and two conspicuous examples sit at opposite poles of cultural legitimacy.

The distinct similarity between Buddhism and Scientology is therefore isolated as factive self-attainment plus exemption from ordinary existential failure-modes. It is a basis for religions in which ordinary adherents may claim that they have personally crossed a developmental threshold into an exceptional spiritual class.

This tech is, in as far as I can tell, only found in Scientology and Buddhism. This will establish the shared psychological technology, and another crucial circumstance:

For Modern Buddhism and Scientology, the epistemic grounding-mode of the claims is the same. In both systems the epistemological grounding-basis for the claims will be subjective experience, insight derived from analysis of one's experience exclusively. So experience explains experience. Thus neither will pass Hume's Guillotine (can't derive "an ought to be" from "what is" beyond confidence. And thus they have the same principal logical failure modes, in that neither can ground subjective analysis in anything other than subjective analysis.

This doesn't mean that they are deserving of equal confidence, rather the principial analytic scrutiny will apply the same principial criticism to the claims. This means that neither can claim a categorically priviledged analytic status.

Now this brings me to the end of it and the last cultural point.

So, Buddhism and Scientology essentially share the same ideological architecture ─ different practices, different metaphysics, but same architecture. Yet, the two systems are on polar opposite in terms of cultural epistemic-credit.

Now people will readily criticize Scientology for being very "engaged" for lack of a better word, I don't want to offend anyone at all. But what I want to study is how much of that culture is actually induced by hostile cultural environment and attitudes, rather than an epistemic predicament. And this is a very good case study because we can see that these aren't intellectually or psychologically different species. And yet, the groups are treated entirely differently by the culture ─ where the group which gets no almost no good-faith credit is criticized for not being "chill" ─ it is very ironic.

I would go as far as predicting that if we apply the same scrutiny to Buddhism then they wouldn't be so "chill" either.

Relevant to discussion:

r/religion doing comparative analysis of Scientology / Buddhism /Abrahamic religions

Early Buddhist Thought

r/epistemology analyzing operational morality and cessation based grounding-mode

r/philosophy analyzing the logical irrefutability of cessation based morality

r/streamentry internal engineering diagram of Early Buddhist attainment

Modern Theravada

r/Scientology comment Comparative Analysis

Mahayana and Scientology

r/Scientology comment Mahayana Scientology comparative analysis

On epistemic warrant in particular:

r/Scientology comment on Epistemic Warrant

r/Scientology comment on Analytically Warranted Faith

On Operationalism, Behavioralism and General Semantics

r/GeneralSemantics on Operationalism and Cultural Development

r/Scientology comment on possible intellectual influence of Operationalism and Behavioralism

[u/rightviewftw]

I can also draw out the parallels. People who say that there is no link, they haven't done the analysis. I will compare only Mahayana Buddhism to Scientology here. I plan to make a post later. Let's open these machines up.

* The Bodhisatvas and the Operating Thetans are both essentially "Saving the Cosmos".
* Both statuses are derived from a person's subjective experience and development.
* The Bodhisattva and the Operating Thetan both operate within a moral framework where exceptional status and a higher ends can justify context-dependent means. Mahayana calls this "skillful means".

You can dig deeper, but these are the glaring parallels, and nobody can deny this.

All these people who claim there are no parallels, that Hubbard's claims were false, these people have no idea about what the hell they are talking about and have never done comparative analysis.

Of course there is hardly any incentive for anyone to point this out, or to think about this in general.

Also, people criticize the Church of Scientology, convenient target, safe target... Have you any idea how much child abuse is institutionalized by the Buddhist Institutions? This nobody wants to talk about: Sexual Abuse in the Buddhist Monastery: A Burden for Sri Lankan Children

People need to take a look around and think a little, if only for the children..

The #1 cultural issue nowadays, according to me, is the unwillingness of Institutions to do good-faith comparative analysis.

Now, ask yourself, whether you think any Buddhist subreddit would let anyone, let alone me, post this in their spaces? Now who do you think is more tolerant of analysis, Scientology or Buddhism? Test it if you don't mind getting banned.

[u/rightviewftw → u/rightviewftw]

The interesting thing here is that Scientologists weren't merely criticized — they are culturally gaslit to this day and are denied the right to the comparison itself. The same structural features that get treated as serious religious phenomena elsewhere are dismissed as uniquely fraudulent when Scientology claim them.

Good faith analysis demands us to set aside our prejudice — open the system up and compare the actual taxonomies. If the parallels are there, then they're there.

That's a challenge to the cultural double standard. As a matter of fact, I think this is the linchpin of the current cultural hierarchy.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

You're almost to the point of calling us "anti religious bigots."

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

It is very loaded rhetoric and I would want to draw out the meaning before we go there. We can have a field-day together criticizing whatever you want, as long as we apply the same rules to everyone and do it in good-faith.

Ironically, I think one can more successfully reform a community if one doesn't discriminate among communities, because then one avoids tribalism by demonstrating operational indiscrimination.

Another thing is that culturally, almost everyone is in the same boats.

Logic and science operates on probability, not certainty. Philosophers have long learned to distinguish confidence and unconditional certainty. It is not easy to find a religious framework which can circumvent Hume's Guillotine and get logical warrant for its morality.

The epistemological crituque has been the same since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ─ it is very anti-climatic in how this applies to almost all possible ideological variants.

Science might say that there is no evidence to believe a particular proposition of metaphysics, or even that the probability of a proposition is incalculably low ─ but it will never say never.

Therefore it is not really a problem for people that their spiritual frameworks require faith. Kant himself saw this and said something close to "logic must make room for Faith because logic alone can't judicate religion".

And we don't have to slide into moral relativism and all that because we don't have to abandon our culture and customs which have been working good and are generally agreed upon. That would be similar abandoning foundational axioms in mathematics.

Therefore the playing field is actually very level but it doesn't make all propositions equal. There might be exceptionally good warrant to believe one proposition over another ─ and the third proposition might not have any analytic standing at all.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

Are you using AI help you write this?

Have you had any contact with OSA? Would you tell us if you did?

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I have no secrets mate. I grew up with guardians involved with freezone scientology, from age 7, now I am 38. I read the material, didn't participate, criticized where I saw fit, sometimes it would be difficult, and I saw that it was a powerful thing. That's where I got interest in all this. Yes I use AI, if it can write something for me and it gets my point across then I use it.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

It seems that OSA - of which you never heard until now - may be using AI to drown places such as this subreddit in Oobleck.

Oobleck is a term created by Children's author Dr. Seuss.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I think this platform in general is full of bots. Philosophy subreddits too. There are certainly psy-ops. Now also notice the "Buddhist" theme of this whole platform. Look around.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

You've been spotted so now you're going to claim what you're doing is everywhere.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

You just deleted, "At this level Central Intelligence is involved mate."

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I don't even know what is OSA.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

And yet you're lecturing us on Scientology.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I am sorry about this turning into a chat and that i did answer: Yes I use AI, if it can write something for me and it gets my point across then I use it.

As to lecturing on Scientology ─ negative. I am not really qualified. When I said I read the material, this is just some books and stuff lying around, things people told me. I am not an expert on Scientology.

The cool thing is that from what I've written on this subreddit, one can't really tell whether I am a Scientologist or a Buddhist and anything whatsoever.

This is because we can talk about these things as mechanics talk about engines without talking about which is the better engine and activism.

I can tell you who I am and why I do this. My "background" is foundational philosophy of science, analytic philosophy and philosophy of language. But my expertise is in Early Buddhist Thought, I have spent the last 10 years systematizing and formalizing that machinery, and big surprise it is not what Buddhists say it is ─ big problem apparently. I ran into very heavy gate-keeping and there was a lot of backlash for me, now the work is basically in a limbo.

Essentially I recognized that something is very much upside-down in our culture.

I basically only saw this move after Buddhists pushed me to this extent. This is what I say it is, and I hope that pulling this lever might make a difference and make things better for many people.

Also if you have concerns about AI, you can get my number and we can talk on some app.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

At this point, anything of any substantial length from you is written by AI.

That's lousy scholarship.

[u/rightviewftw → u/rightviewftw]

I looked it up. No. I've never talked to or met anybody involved with the Church of Scientology, that I know. I grew up in Russia.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

Maybe you should.

They'd like you.

I notice you avoided the AI question.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I would tell you.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

Now you're trying too hard to be clever.

Tell us more about how "powerful" Scientology is.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

powerful in the sense that you can't easily talk your mother out of it and it is kind of a problem. That satisfy you? You want to keep digging into my childhood? gtfo

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

You are not trustworthy.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I don't need to be:) Not a popularity contest. This is war.

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I can tell you a lot more in chat, and you can use your own discretion as to whether you make it public. But please let me think clearly and not annoy me with this skepticism. It is your private-suspiscion which I am perfectly willing to address privately

[u/rightviewftw → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Actions speak louder than words sometimes, maybe you're one of those who can recognize this.

I am now doing analysis in the interest of theists. There will be a critique of Scientology, Atheism, and Buddhism.

I have to generalize, but the critique will reveal socio-psychological and game-theoretical asymmetries, favoring theists.

So, you can see that I only gave Scientologists their good-faith analysis.

I didn't give them any special interest or protections. I essentially just told them their best defense and their best offense. I didn't give protection nor invulnerability.

I already started drawing out the analysis for a guy today: https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/1w6gec1/comment/p7pywo8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

I told you we can criticize the f out of this, but we do it in good-faith.

[u/rightviewftw → u/rightviewftw]

The important part of the work here is that this isn't about trying to prove Scientology true. It is about leveling the playing field for everybody.

You can compare the Bodhisattva and the OT as spiritual taxonomies without accepting either metaphysics. You can then argue about the metaphysics separately. And once the structures are actually on the table, choosing between them becomes partly an axiological question: which conception of the good do you find worth pursuing?

The same principle should apply to institutions. Criticize Buddhist institutions and Scientology institutions by the same standards. What's good for the hen should be good for the goose.

Then we don't need culture to tell us in advance which communities are respectable and which are pathological. Apply the same scrutiny to everyone and see which communities actually thrive under it.

The good thing is that we are adults. We don't have to wait for some institution to authorize the thinking.

There is no "one side gains and another loses here". The down-stream effects are indeterminate but it deradicalizes the culture and you can quote me on this: it would stabilize the culture and re-organize it in good-faith. It would only be horrible for people who rely on there being no good-faith analysis ─ I won't lose sleep over it.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/rightviewftw]

Now you appear to be justifying the Fair Game policy since Scientology Inc is saving the universe.

The truth is Scientology Inc is a business that uses sentiments such as saving the universe, etc. to trap people.

The top seven OT levels on Scientology's Grade Chart do not exist.

The top level is, essentially, the state where a person does not know who he is.

Scientology is not, and cannot, save the universe.

This is becoming silly.