Have only read parts of the infamous dianetics book, Are any of LRH’s theories proposed in the book accepted by the scientific community?
I’ll take “words that don’t belong in the same sentence” for $200, Alex.
…I haven’t read it, but the goal of Dianetics is to get you to sign up for Scientology courses and pay money to the Scientology organization. It’s not a scientific text.
Some of their claims and observations about social motives and social reform might coincide with the accepted mainstream, but probably not to any very useful extent.
Most of their claims aren’t even falsifiable, so there’s nothing there for the scientific community to even properly evaluate.
Xemu cries when you say that.
To hear the answer of that question you have to pay more money and take more training.
You want I should change the title to “dianetics or facts”?
I was not aware that there are any theories in Dianetics. Claims, yes. Ideas (mostly of the half-baked variety), certainly. It’s conceivable that there may even be a hypothesis or two in there. But theories? No.
But doesn’t Dianetics predate Scientology?
i was asked to be in a little informercial that happened to be for this. I had to pretend to be reading the dianetics book and look like I was having an epiphany.
I asked one of the proselytisers about stuff coming from a science point of view and she showed me the page in the book that tells the account of hubbard separating the soul from a human body. He managed to take it it out of the patient and it floated several inches or something above the patients head. It turns out that it has NO mass and NO wavelength and NO charge and no other characteristics for us to observe it with and none of the characteristics any other waves or particles have to interact with any instruments we use. Talk about being snubbed when it came to the nobel prize in physics. it sounded so beautiful in its invisible visibility! It had to be true. I mean I read it in a book. And she read it in a book. “If it cant interact with anything how can it interact with the brain and how can it be observed by hubbard?” seemed like such stupid questions to the rational mind so naturally I gave them all my money and have been waiting 4 years and counting to hear more on how he did it.
Then she took out the E-meter that can read my mind! It knew when I was thinking about things I didn’t like.
“are you happy in your life?”
“yes I am”
<needle barely moves>
“do you get on with all your friends?”
“yes I do”
<needle barely moves>
“how is your love life?”
“oh its fine. its fine”
<needle shoots to the maximum level nearly flys off the gauge>
It could tell it hit a nerve! Hubbard built a device where the energy in your emotional signals interacts with receivers in the device. He explains it as follows.
“For the meter to be read, the tiny flow of electrical energy through the preclear (person) has to remain steady. When this tiny flow is changed the needle of the E-Meter moves. This will happen if the preclear pulls in or releases mental mass. This mental mass (condensed energy), acts as an additional resistance or lack of resistance to the flow of electrical energy from the E-Meter.”
If you wanna find out me just post your credit card numbers up here and other assorted details and I’ll tell you more scientific theories. But no proofs or citations. Thats just being selfish.
He used his space telescope?
no reason to be a word-nazi. I was using “theory” in the colloquial sense. Don’t pretend you didn’t understand that.
I wouldn’t take it personally. He was just pointing out that Dianetics (and the rest of Elron’s work) didn’t even take the form of a scientific thesis, let alone have the substance of a scientific thesis.
Yes, Dianetics preceded Scientology by a couple of years, and was posited as a metaphysical work, whatever that means. Of course it had no supporters in the scientific community, so Hubbard decided to dub it a religion.
Keep in mind that Hubbard wrote science fiction books, and one of them was Dianetics.
Dianetics was not meant to be a sci-fi book. It was published as a Self-help book.
Now my question was if anything in the book is actually valid, is it at least falsifiable? or is it complete nonsense?
It was written by a writer whose only experience was science fiction writing, not psychology, history, anthropology, or astro-biology. Yet he made wild claims in all of those fields that are worshiped by today’s believers and used as the basis for classes and income from them.
Complete nonsense, just like his other books, but while science fiction can be excused or even elevated for fantasy nonsense because of its entertainment value, Dianetics cannot.
To sum up: Hubbard wrote science fiction, and one of his books was Dianetics. But I’m repeating myself.
I am not questioning the level of nonsense in Dianetics, but I love how we scoff at how far removed it is from real science and then cite Wikipedia to support this stance.
mmm
Are you are referring to the very well debunked idea that wikipedia is not accurate? Numerous studies have been done to show it is as accurate or more accurate than any other source out there. You could Google those studies very easily, unless of course you are worried that Google isn’t accurate.
[Switching Channel]
A volcano blowing its top appears on the screen…
- Mystery Science 3000 - Attack of the giant leeches.
[/back to thread]
What? Oh, yeah the facts, for more pointed criticism one should look at the dictionary in cases like this.
No, not Websters, but the Skeptics Dictionary: