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James R. Lewis

Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 15

Hey everyone, we are back after a short break from this series, breaking down this book, Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and featuring academic essays and articles written by religious scholars, sociologists and the like, mostly in praise of or apologizing for Scientology as a religous practice. Since I don’t happen to think that Scientology is a legitimate religious practice and have been an outspoken critic against it for the last three years, I can’t claim to be unbiased but as I’ve been showing in this series, neither are these folks.Read More »Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 15

Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 13

Hello and welcome back for another round in my take down of the academic apologists who can’t seem to say enough good things about the Church of Scientology and its right to exist as a tax-free religion. I’m referring of course to the collection of essays in this book, Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and containing an array of apologetics essays by sociologists, psychologists and religious scholars. Except for just a couple of exceptions so far, this book has pretty much been an academic promotional piece for Scientology and unfortunately, this chapter is literally one of the worst of these. Let’s just get right into it.Read More »Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 13

Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 12

Hey everyone. This is the next installment in my deconstruction of the book Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis. We’ve gone through the introduction and eleven chapters so far and except for the bit of bright light we saw last week, so far it’s been a real slug-fest trying to just wade through the verbiage as well as counter most of the frankly asinine statements these academics have made about Scientology in their quest to make it seem like a legitimate religious movement on the same order as Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. I’ve shown time and again how their data is off, their thinking is flawed and their conclusions are almost imbecilic. So where are we at now?Read More »Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 12

Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 11

Hey everyone, we are picking back up on our reading and deconstruction of this book, Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and featuring essays from a number of different academics and religious scholars on the subject of Scientology. We’ve covered the first 10 chapters and so far it’s been a slugfest of Scientology apologetics to one degree or another, with these scholars almost one-for-one refusing to take a critical view of the subject and many of them simply repeating the content of Scientology’s own promotional materials or Hubbard’s words verbatim and calling it religious scholarship. But this week, we finally have something new.Read More »Deconstructing Scientology: Chapter 11