Carl Barney vs. Objectivity

[Mark]

New on ARI Watch, a guest article by William Swig:

Carl Barney Versus Objectivity

To rather loosely paraphrase the author writing elsewhere:

Barney focuses on a few things he claims benefited him in the Scientology of the 1960s and 1970s, superficial things like “structured questions,” “mental blocks” and various “courses.”  That is not Scientology. Scientology is the specific ideas and practices put together. It’s a system. Barney doesn’t mention engrams or banks or clearing.  Auditing is nothing without these “concepts.”

Barney appeals to his unrevealed life to defend Scientology.  So what happens when we start revealing it?

[MisterSwig]

Thanks, Mark. I created an account here to respond if anyone has comments.

 

[Mark]

Excerpt from William’s article:

Quote

I seek the answer to one question: Did Scientology benefit Carl Barney? Skeptical of his claim, I want to find authentic documentation of that period in his life. But I will not make public personal details that I believe to be unnecessary in arguing my case. ...

I started the investigation by casually typing names and words into search engines and following clues online. ... eventually I found something very interesting at the end of that tunnel: the file number for an old divorce case.

More serious now, I put the computer away and visited a county records building, where I reacquainted myself with microfiche film. From the contents of the file I learned many things about Barney’s hidden history within Scientology.

 

[MisterSwig]

Barney says that Scientology benefited many people back in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet Carl Barney Versus Objectivity shows that he greatly suffered at the hands of Scientologists and their practices. The apparent contradiction might be explained by Craig Biddle’s claim that Scientology is “a package deal of sorts” with “relatively good elements and some seriously bad elements.” If so, then like Rand with Aristotle’s philosophy, also a mixture, Objectivists might consider adopting L. Ron Hubbard’s better ideas along with Rand’s – not as part of Objectivist philosophy but as part of daily living. But, I would ask Barney or anyone else, just which ideas are they?