Knowledge? - alt.religion.scientology

Message from discussion Knowledge?

Peter McDermott

More options Aug 29 1997, 3:00 am

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology

From: n...@petermc.demon.co.uk (Peter McDermott)

Date: 1997/08/29

Subject: Re: Knowledge?

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In article <34059359.3874...@news.concentric.net>,

dr...@yourown.risk.com (bc) wrote:
>I hereby apologize to Bernie, and everyone else on this thread, for
>the flame. I will (really!) attempt to refrain from continuing the
>flamewars. My problem with Bernie, as I stated above, is his
>insistence that accounts of negative experiences are basically not
>valid. I think ALL experiences, positive and negative, are valid.
>All interpretations thereof will occur between the ears of the
>interpreter, and nowhere else. My *PERSONAL* opinion of those who
>have positive experience with the cult, is just that--my personal
>opinion. I've always tried to keep that clear in my posts--that
>everyone is *ABSOLUTELY* entitled to their own opinion--but that
>means that I am entitled to mine, too, Bernie.

I appreciate that that's how you respond to Bernie's posts, but
I don't think that's his intention - or at least, it isn't how
I read him.

While he does have a tendency to challenge other people's
experiences by claiming his own are different, ultimately
he's making the same argument as Judith, ie, that knowledge
and the experience of *any* single individual are very
different things. If one of the goals of people posting
here is to try to reach some sort of secure knowledge (which
will only ever be provisional) then you really do have to
take both into account.

What seems to make Bernie so furious is that there is a
real resistance to people posting experiences that *aren't*
as negative as yours - even when the person posting is no
longer under the sway of the cult. And there's a tendency
to completely dismiss one side, without making any attempt
to evaluate the data critically, while any claim that is
critical of the cult will be embraced, no matter how
ludicrous.

A final point: while people *are* entitled to present their
experience and have that respected, by offering it up here,
they *should* expect that it be subjected to critical
scrutiny. This isn't a closed support group for ex-cultists,
but a forum for discussing Scientology, and as such, any
information should be evaluated carefully, regardless of the
source.

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