Scientology

Robyn E. Blumner’s editorial “Scientology’s Tale of Disgrace,” (FI, April/May 2021) reminded me of my one and only encounter with Scientology. In 1992, I spent a summer doing mathematical research with colleagues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. While walking downtown one day, my wife, Sharon, and I saw a Scientology storefront mission. Out of curiosity, we walked in. The Scientologist there invited us to take a free written personality test, which we did. After a few minutes of tabulation, he announced the results: Sharon had passed the test and was invited to join, but much to my surprise, my personality test revealed that I might not be a suitable member. I had answered the questions honestly. Over the next two years, Sharon received increasingly more urgent mail invitations to join their cult, until finally they concluded that her case was as hopeless as mine.

I don’t know of any other Scientology rejects besides me. I thought they were as eager for potential members as a caller I once had from a Fred Astaire Dance studio, who told me I would win a free dance lesson if I could answer the following question: “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” I responded, “Lincoln?” She said, “That’s close enough. Congratulations, you are the winner of a free dance lesson.” I’ve known many easy graders in my life, but none as lenient as she was. I did not go to the lesson, but Sharon reminds me periodically that the free dance lesson probably would have been helpful.

Herb Silverman
Charleston, South Carolina

Robyn E. Blumner’s column on the evils of Scientology was spot-on. Many people are unaware of the fact that this pseudo-religious cult got its jump start as the pseudoscience called “Dianetics,” a creation of the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. I have a copy of the December 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the leading sci-fi magazine of its day, which featured these remarks from its editor, the renowned John W. Campbell, while discussing the items that were to appear in the February 1950 issue:

But the item that excites me most at the moment is an article on the most important subject conceivable. This is not a hoax article. It is an article on the science of the mind, of human thought. It is not an article on psychology—that is not a science. It’s not General Semantics. It is a totally new science, called Dianetics, and it does precisely what a science of thought should do. Its power is almost unbelievable; it proves the mind not only can but does rule the body completely; following the sharply defined basic laws dianetics sets forth, physical ills such as ulcers, asthma and arthritis can be cured, as can all other psychosomatic ills. The articles are in preparation. It is, quite simply, impossible to exaggerate the importance of a true science of human thought.

So the “science” of Dianetics, which was to revolutionize the human race and forms the foundation of Scientology, was introduced not in a reputable magazine such as Scientific American but in a popular science-fiction magazine! Very appropriate!

Although Campbell does not mention it, the “articles” in preparation were no doubt coming from L. Ron Hubbard, who had a short story in the December 1949 issue and who, as Campbell noted, “would have a new, remarkably powerful novel coming up, starting in February.” Campbell was very gullible, as he proved in this editorial, and over twenty years later, when as editor of Analog, the successor to Astounding, he swooned over the “Dean Drive,” which was a device based on centripetal force that its inventor claimed was a new source of energy that could propel ships to the stars. Campbell waxed enthusiastic over the Dean Drive despite the fact that Mr. Dean demanded a million dollars and the Nobel Prize in Physics up front before releasing any details about his great discovery, which of course he never got. The Dean Drive has not been heard from since. Unfortunately, Dianetics and Scientology have.

Dennis Middlebrooks
Brooklyn, New York

No Science in Supreme Court

In the April/May 2021 op-ed by Nicholas Little (“No Place for Science in the Supreme Court’s Christian America”), I find the expression: “And that view is scary as hell.” In that I do not believe in any of the afterlife mythologies, hell is not scary. If he had said scary as a Cat 5 hurricane or a California wildfire, it would resonate.

It’s especially interesting because two pages before, Biden is scoffed at for using soul and god. Now he might say he was just using a common expression, but aren’t those frequent targets of Free Inquiry? As the general counsel of the Center for Inquiry, a profession that is normally careful with words, he may need a remedial class in secular understanding.

Fred Pope
Thornton, Colorado

Possible Futures

Your “trio of long views” under the heading of “Possible Futures” were among the more captivating articles I’ve read in Free Inquiry. But from those readings, I was reminded of something that has long puzzled me. Why do some folks hope to upload copies of their functioning brains into computers in the anticipation of immortality—or at least of increased longevity?

Suppose I could do this without harming my organic self. Could I assume that upon activation of my copy that the original self would experience two separate existences? I don’t think so. Reaching out to that most subversive of all literatures, science fiction (whose many iconoclasts I am convinced put me on the road to being weaned from theism while barely a teenager), I can recall an episode of Star Trek involving a transporter malfunction. For the unfamiliar, it’s the transporter’s job to disassemble people and objects in one location and assemble them in another. In this instance, the transporter assembled Commander Riker without disassembling his original. Neither of the Rikers was aware of the other.

My point is that if my organic self or one of the Rikers were to die, our experience would be that of any other sentient being—our awareness would simply cease. The existence of our copies would avail us of nothing. And so uploading is of no value to the original, unless the original were a supreme egotist who could not bear to deprive the world of itself. Conceivably, survivors of the deceased might benefit, but ultimately only copies of the deceased survivors would benefit from the survival of other copies.

So, what’s the point? I’d be happy to hear alternative views.

Christopher Paul
Bayport, New York

Re: “How to Build a Conscious Robot,” Henry Grynnsten states, “There have been very intelligent people, but in all of human history there has never been anyone with superhuman intelligence—anyone that is to other humans as a human is to a chimpanzee.”

To which I respond, “There have been very fast birds, but in all of bird history there has never been any bird with super bird speed—any bird that is to other birds as a bird is to a fly.”

His argument for the impossibility of super human intelligence is lame to the point of April Foolery!

Richard J. Uschold
Port Orange, Florida

Henry Grynnsten speculates about creating a mechanical human in the April/May 2021 issue of FI. But in the process, he loses sight of the fundamental differences between machines and living organisms. A machine does not have to grow and develop gradually from a tiny embryo, as an animal or plant does. Machines are assembled full-size from their various components. Machines have not been evolved to attach to their adult caregivers during their infancies, as mammals and birds have. Neither are machines primed by evolution to identify with their close associates and accept their values and morality, as intelligent social species such as humans are. Machines do not have to slowly learn their group’s culture, with its already-known facts, theories, and skills, by the tedious human process of memorization, hands-on experience, and practice as their brains grow and develop. Machines can have all that downloaded into their memory banks and system software. So if conscious machines are to have the same rights that humans in modern societies have to choose their own goals in life, what will they choose? For once, in his section on “Drive,” Grynnsten sees the implications of the differences between people and robots: “Humans are driven by biological needs, for example, the need to reproduce. One reason humans strive to achieve anything is to find a mate. Humans want to do things, and that will is caused by its body and its biological forces.”

But because a robot has no biological drives and does not need to (and is not able to) mate, it would possibly be without any will to achieve.

So what use would a mechanical human be to itself or to the rest of us? Better for the builders to download goals that serve their own needs into the robot and not to pretend that it has any human rights.

Homer Edward Price
Sylva, North Carolina

I just read Tom Flynn and Henry Grynnsten’s articles in Free Inquiry, “Possible Futures” and “How to Build a Conscious Robot,” respectively. Although imaginatively thought-out essays, they fail to consider that personhood will never be bestowed upon even the most intelligent and anatomically correct robot, because no sensible jurist would consider personhood classification to any entity that cannot itself naturally or with another robot of a perceived opposite sex, procreate. Where does the argument diminish or stop? At the calculator on your desk?

A dog would more readily get consideration for that classification. A computer will only formulate responses or best judgements on programmed data available or through enabling data retrieval via a program installed. Thus, unless the programmer has a corrupt agenda to weaponized robotic impulse, the ability to any self-determination response would be incapacitated.

Francis Edward Fisher
Chalmers, Indiana

Henry Grynnsten responds:

I must remind Uschold that of an estimated 109 billion humans who have ever lived, nobody has reached superhuman intelligence. No superintelligent aliens have been detected. All speculation about superintelligent humans and aliens and robots is based on an assumption about something that has never been seen and that we don’t know exists. I have discussed why it is impossible in much more detail in another (as yet unpublished) article.

To Price, I say it would be difficult to build a conscious machine, but if it is possible, it would have to learn human culture in the same way that humans do. It isn’t possible to just download everything; that would for example mean some programmer exactly describing in Python or C++ what “love” is. That would be impossible, even without considering the mental make-up of the common programmer. And without even just that one concept, the entire human experience and culture and goals become gobbledygook. The robot just wouldn’t be able to understand anything.

An inanimate machine is a chunk of metal, plastic, and glass. But I maintain that if it has human consciousness, no matter what the other circumstances are, it will just have to have human rights.

Fisher claims robots will never be considered persons because they can’t procreate, but I don’t think procreation has anything to do with it. There are humans who are unable to reproduce for various reasons. But they all have human consciousness. If a desk calculator had human-level consciousness, then, yes, it would have to have human rights (although my opinion is that human consciousness is dependent on a body with sense organs, which I think makes this example nonsense). Dogs don’t have human rights; they don’t have human consciousness. If a dog did have it, for sure it would and should be given human rights. If you incapacitated any self-determination in a conscious robot, it would be like doing the same to a human, which would be torture and punished as a serious crime.

It’s high time to give up the self-contradicting have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too science-fiction notion of the conscious robot that can be treated like an inanimate object or slave.

We don’t know if free will exists, and I don’t see how that has any bearing on building a conscious robot.

I don’t know why we must see awareness, etc.; we just have to reproduce the brain until we get observable results (“it speaks!”).

Robots with human consciousness wouldn’t need to protest for human rights; the first one to achieve it would immediately be given it, because it would be so obvious that it was just like a human. It talks, it laughs, it becomes your friend, you work and play basketball together. And what do you do after? Lock it in a cage at night or tear apart its limbs while it asks why, why, why? Any researcher who did that would be classified as a psychopath.

The thoughts, values, and motives would be human ones, because the robots would have to be raised by humans like a human, to be of any use and not be mentally handicapped. Conscious beings need community.

How do you know that it’s impossible? We can only find out by trying. If we want to try. I’m not saying that we should; I’m just trying to straighten out the muddled thinking on this subject.

Religion and Violence

While all the shorter op-eds and longer essays in the April/May 2021 FI were insightful and valuable, two articles stood out for me with regard to America’s false acceptance of culture (religion) as the antidote to violence.

The first one was Christopher Doran’s powerful “The Christian Roots of Racism against African Americans.” Toward the end of his essay, he described to readers the Facebook picture where Trump stands beneath a photo of the Rio de Janeiro Jesus statue stating, “We will protect this.” On display was Trump’s clearly insidious cultural pandering.

The second was Tom Flynn’s “Welcome, President Biden—Um, Remember Us?” In it he relates to us the uncomfortable “Amazing Grace” rendition and wonders whether the “wretches” vs. (what I’ll call) the “non-wretches” have an ongoing civil war. I agree that here is clear, even if unwitting, lopsided cultural weaponization.

This brought to mind a book I recently read by Joseph Chilton Pearce titled, The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit. He writes about the often toxic motivations of organized religion and views culture as an artificial overlay on biological reality. When I look at our country, I observe that the diminishing and perceived loss of “White Christian Culture,” largely because of demographic changes in the U.S. population, seems to be akin to death in the minds of many Trump supporters.

Consequently, many will fight and use violence (January 6) to save it. We still have a long way to go.

Sal R. Pauciello
Irvington, New Jersey

Re: “The Christian Roots of Racism against Black Americans” (FI, April/May 2021). It has always astonished me that despite the fact that both the Old and New Testaments favor slavery, millions of Black people still cling to the religion of those who enslaved them.

Perhaps the most likely reason is that after their emancipation, Blacks were hated even more by the Whites who could no longer claim them as their property. Thus, it seems probable that Blacks thought it prudent, for self-protection, to imitate the faith of those who had the power to abuse them with impunity under the new name for slavery, “Jim Crow.”

And although I sympathize with those who feared the Whites’ sadistic rage, my admiration is for people such as W. E. B. Du Bois, A. Phillips Randolph, and Paul Robeson, all of whose legacies are rooted in social justice and a well-founded distrust of Christianity.

Here, for example, is my favorite quote about slavery and Christianity, which comes from Fredrick Douglass, the remarkable orator, abolitionist, and ex-slave: “The slave dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit—and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity.”

David Quintero
Monrovia, California