PseudoScientology

The Golden Age of Comic Books

The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought as lasting from the 1930s until late 1940s, during which comic books enjoyed a surge of popularity, the archetype of the superhero was created and defined, and many of the most famous superheroes debuted. The period saw the arrival of the comic book as a mainstream art form, and the defining of the medium’s artistic vocabulary and creative conventions by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors. Doubtless, L. Ron Hubbard was a reader of comic books during this time. This was also the period he began his own work of fiction, called Dianetics … which has been soundly rejected by recognized scientific and medical organizations to this day as Pseudoscience.

The fantastic claims of Hubbard have never achieved ANY general acceptance as a bona fide scientific theory … ZERO. The MEDLINE database ONLY records two independent scientific studies on Dianetics, both of these conducted in the 1950s by the New York University. Harvey Jay Fischer tested Dianetics therapy on the basis of three claims made by proponents and found that it did NOT effect any significant change in intellectual functioning, mathematical ability, or the degree of personality conflicts. Also, Jack Fox tested Hubbard’s thesis about the recall of engrams, with the assistance of the Dianetic Research Foundation, and could not substantiate it. Current practitioners of Dianetics typically believe that charges of pseudoscience are irrelevant, emphasizing that their own experience of the therapy’s “workability” is far more important to them than the imprimatur of official science. Hence, we present the next comic book metaphor. (more…)

Why the name “PseudoScientology?”

Simple … we believe, as does mainstream society, that Scientology is a “Pseudo” religion.

Pseudoreligion (or pseudotheology) is a generally pejorative term applied to a non-mainstream belief system or philosophy which is functionally similar to religious practices, typically having a founder, principal text, liturgy and faith-based beliefs.

Belief systems such as Theosophy, corporate Kabbalism and the Nation of Islam have all been referred to as pseudoreligions, as have humanism and various New Age religions, as well as political ideologies such as Nazism, Marxist Communism. Within the academic debate, ideologies that resemble religion are sometimes referred to as political religions.

While the more serious-minded participants in these groups may prefer to consider themselves part of a proper religion, or not part of a religion at all, the mainstream ascribes to them fringe status. Such groups as the Raëlian Church, Heaven’s Gate, or Scientology, when seen as dangerous, exploitive, secretive, or closed, have been classified as pseudoreligious cults. (more…)