Continuing his vigorous advocacy for Scientology's solutions to mental health problems, Tom Cruise will deliver a series of four lectures on topics related to "The Modern Science of Mental Health" beginning next month. Co-sponsored by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the lectures will be held at Scientology's Celebrity Centre International in Los Angeles. All lectures will be free to the public. Due to limited seating at the Celebrity Centre, tickets will be available only to Scientology parishioners and selected members of the press, but the lectures will be simulcast on the web, and a live video feed will be available for broadcasters who wish to cover these highly informative presentations.
The first lecture, set for October 15, is titled "How Psychiatry Invented Schizophrenia, and What Scientologists Can Do About It".
The second lecture, tentatively scheduled for October 22, is on "Handling Sexual Dis-Orientation: Out of the Closet and Into the Auditing Room".
The topic of the third lecture, in early November, will be "Diagnosis and Treatment of So-Called Clinical Depression with the Hubbard Mark Super VII Quantum Electropsychometer".
The fourth lecture is "Neuroanatomical Changes Resulting from Chronic Methamphetamine Abuse: Can Narconon's Sauna and Niacin Treatment Program Help?"
(Maybe this is a prank, but it's so hard to tell with these people... The Celebrity Centre's online calendar hasn't been updated since July...)
Update: Yeah, prank. (Or IS IT?)
http://www.cchr.org/what/board/index.htm (I count at least six scientologists)
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c119.html (oh look, they're a front group! *gasp*)
No mere Mark VII Quantum Electropsychometer . . . no, the Hubbard Mark Super VII Quantum Electropsychometer. See also: Mark Super VII dissection.
http://billtmiller.com/circuitbending/
It must be.
This is just too wacky! I honestly thought this was an Onion story because it doesn't sound legitimate. What a crock!!!
Skepticism is a good thing.
Well, maybe it is, but I wouldn't expect that Scientologists wouldn't believe in "reparative therapy" for sexual orientation when they believe in it for everything else.
Given that the Scientologists' desired state of being "clear" translates as "returning the same results in our psychological tests as L. Ron Hubbard" and Hubbard wasn't gay (AFAIK), homosexuality would be seen as a barrier to being clear, and probably as something caused by thetans or engrams 57 thousand quadrillion years ago or something. From what I heard, Scientology discourages non-mainstream sexual orientations.
Like I said, reparative therapy seems to be the most recurring theme, if not the most central tenet and ritual of Scientology. This begs the question of whether certain a unnamed Scientologist would be able to consider himself "ex-gay" when the fundamental principle is apparently to be ex-emotional altogether.
Yeah. Gay is definitely bad for Scientologists. L. Ron Hubbard's son Quentin was gay and apparently an embarrasment to his father. He was found dead under supposedly suspicious circumstances, and many people claim that he was killed by the Church.
You have just destroyed one model XOJ-37 Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker. And you're gonna have to pay for it! So give up, you haven't got a chance.
Who says he wasn't aware of them? Scientology isn't that recent of a phenomenon.
Zappa WAS aware of Scientology. In fact, the Roto-Plooker line you quote is a direct parody; it's spoken by the character L. Ron Hoover of the First Church of Appliantology.
Prank, at least according to Defamer.
It's a prank. pressbox.co.uk lets you put up ANYTHING as a press release.
It might be a prank, but Scientologists actually do believe all that ridiculous flimflam. If only Scientology weren't so dangerous, it would be hilarious.
Who can tell if it's a prank or not anymore? The stuff that they do is so insane it makes this press release seem somewhat plausible. I wonder how many Scientologists will be disappointed when they can't get tickets.
This is exactly why we need to make affordable college education a priority in government policy. As more and more people are denied access to education, it creates a culture in which pseudoscience and bogus mysticism like Scientology thrives. It's dangerous to actual science, and needs to be marginalized. But when Tom Cruise touts it on Opera from the top of a couch, it looks almost mainstream, and attracts millions of new eyeballs.
Grim meathook future, indeed.
Tom Cruise is committing career suicide. What does Scientology say about that ?