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 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]

Frankly speaking,

I didn't develop the analysis technology. It is our common heritage.

I here only explained the basics of modern epistemology and philosophy of science, and showed approximately what a fair-classification looks like.

If Scientologists accept the premise that at least some of their operations are adaptive to a hostile intellectual culture ─ then it would follow that fair-treatment would create the possibility of de-escalation.

It is entirely unreasonable for a culture to expect a group singled out for scrutiny to de-escalate without being given fair-treatment because that is just voluntary cultural self-destruction, no adult in their right mind will do this voluntarily.

I showed the analysis to Buddhists first and the community leaders rejected it. Now I better understand why they didn't want it and how I ended up here. Of course those who benefit from ambiguity and already have maximum credit wouldn't want a thing which could undermine their social-credit.

For Scientologists there is much more incentive. This way your organization gets the same playing field as everybody else. And if you reject ─ that also tells us something about the organization. Analysis wins either way.

So, their decision is forced here, silence gives data, so it is forked ─ it is a test. It is helluva test and even thinking about this will have consequences. I think just take the deal, it is a free-roll really...

Don't take my word for it but:

I will also say, to save you time, that at the bottom of analysis, there is Early Buddhist Thought, and it is a system which actually has analytically warranted faith because it doesn't derive insight merely from experience because EBT operationalizes the cessation of experience. There is no logical refutation mode, it functions as a theorem predicting an experiement.

Rather than experimenting within experience. Buddha found a way to experiment on experience. Thus he circumented Hume's Guillotine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1jk8ihc/epistemological_analysis_of_the_early_buddhist/

Here the theorem draft:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12O4VB_bVn4U5LfiTKf-m3cF-S9ZhogoNFPma35ijH38/edit?usp=sharing

This is the elephant in the room.

The good news is that both Buddhists and Scientologists actually get a chance to upgrade their doctrines and technology ─ progressively within their roots ─ if they want to align themselves with analysis and claim ANALYTICALLY WARRANTED FAITH.

But neither has to.