I think Ladybird makes a good point. People do edit quotes to support their point.

Even critics do.

For instance, the quote from Hubbard about "The way to control people is to lie to them."

I have seen Marty use this quote in its entirety, and I have to say, when you read the whole thing it's more like he's say how people are controlled, not necessarily that people should be controlled, or that he's advocating lying. But when critics use these 10 words to prove that Hubbard was a liar, no one accuses them of concealing the truth.

In a scientific discussion a scientist is allowed to make any quotations she likes. However, there is a downside: 1. If quotation is taken out of context, prepare to get badly burned by the opponent; 2. If quotation is not out of context but incomplete, prepare to give a good explanation of what happened to the missing part. The same is true about any information that was withheld from the reader -- be ready to explain why the omission occurred. I, for example, knew what I would say to an opponent accusing me of “hiding” the data showing that Fisher was an evolutionist.
The above presentation applies to concrete arguments, not to abstract ones. An example of a concrete argument would be the one with Karin saying that Hubbard did not commit any physical abuses but Miscavige did, and providing a portion of the Mayo affidavit to support her accusation. That would give the OP an excellent opportunity to prove her wrong by posting the complete affidavit. However, nothing of this sort had happened. The OP’s approach is too abstract to be termed as an argument, it is nothing more than a statement of the fact that Karen quoted part of the Mayo affidavit in one of her posts.

The OP's approach was not abstract. It was not intended to be an argument. It was (and was intended to be) a question to Karen. A concrete question, not an abstract question. The question was: Why did you edit David Mayo's affadavit to conceal his statement that LRH had ordered the kidnapping and detention of David Mayo? Appended were some more general (but not abstract) questions concerning the value or otherwise of concealing the truth about LRH.

You have now responded about 5 or 6 times to my posting, LRH, each time with a different line of objection. This indicates either that my posting was very objectionable (so objectionable that you could find lots of ways of objecting to it), or else that you are determined to object to it and are scrabbling around to find an effective way to do so. I suspect the latter, and I'm not noticing that you are being very successful in your attempt to find a viable line of objection.



If critics are aware of the full content of the passage and nevertheless edit it down in order to give a misleading impression of that content for polemical purposes then surely they are concealing the truth?

You seem to be arguing that in fact they would not be concealing the truth if they did this (because noone does/would accuse them of concealing the truth) and that therefore someone who does something similar (in relevant respects) is also not concealing the truth.

I would say that if you describe what critics are doing correctly they obviously are concealing the truth, and someone who does something similar in relevant respects would therefore also be concealing the truth.

And thanks for writing your opinion, I'mglib.



Who isn't damaged in this paradigm? The Űbermenschen? But if the Indies cure the damage done by other Scientology victimizers as they claim, why do they and their collaborators persist with Rathbun's "Expose DM ruthlessly" program? To "Stay in Control? To get Scientology's victims on board with their underground railroad/reconversion program?





I can't see it. Who are you talking about? And how did you arrive at that interpretation or conclusion about the "exes"? It's not right, and it seems immoderate to me.


Someone who feels harmed by something or someone, and yet accepts and supports the perpetrators of that harm or that kind of harm, could be disabled in a way similar to the victim in a Stockholm Syndrome relationship. IANAMHP.

But if SME's position in this paradigm is to be seen as an attempt to reconcile "a big contradiction" in the alchemical sense, it failed. As magical or mystical as it may appear, it isn't possible to reconcile the irreconcilable. And I think it would do a disservice to SME to not point that out.

Hi SME,

Your words above are one of the most eloquent and touching posts that I have ever read at Clambake. Thank you for opening your heart to us.

It has crossed my mind that Miscavige should sneak out and start getting talk therapy. Growing up in Scientology and working from a young age for Hubbard would leave a great deal to sort out. There are some great psychotherapists out there. I suspect that some pretty disturbing things happened to him. He should pretend to go on shopping trips to Wal-Mart and instead sit down with a non-Scientologist therapist he can trust so that he can truly express his feelings and experiences, many of which involved Hubbard.

I disagree. There are people who are able to look past things and see the human being. Maybe it doesn't make sense, such as when, to use an extreme example, murderers are forgiven by the family members of the victim. I hesitate to use an extreme example, but I find posting on threads like this requires a lot of mental gymnastics that sometimes I don't want to do.

People forgive. Why? It's just something inside them, like Larry seems to have.



You call it concealing the truth. Others might call it picking quotes to support their argument and leaving out quotes that don't. I dunno, I personally try to avoid it.



I agree.

In the scenario you envisage the description "picking quotes to support their argument" would be correct.

The quotes would serve to support the argument because they would misrepresent the true content of the text from which they were taken. That true content would be concealed. So the description "concealing the truth" would also be correct.

People who are concealing the truth may choose to describe what they're doing as "picking quotes to support an argument". That doesn't affect the fact that what they're doing is concealing the truth, although it may serve to conceal their concealing.

Sure, but who can't? You imply that by doing something you interpret as looking past things and seeing human beings, the irreconcilable is reconciled. I do not believe that reconciling the irreconcilable is actually achieved by doing what you say. And I do not believe that the effort to try to do so, or the effects created by that effort, are helpful or wise.



Maybe study some more about what reconciling the irreconcilable would entail. The mental gymnastics, as you call this effort, cannot work, so not wanting to do what cannot work is doubtlessly desirable.



I'm glad you brought up the issue of forgiveness in this context. Clearly it is possible to forgive everyone, your personal victimizers too. That doesn't mean, however, you should thereafter support their victimizing behavior, or deny that they're still victimizing people if they are, because you've "forgiven" them.

Does Larry forgive Miscavige just as Larry forgives Rathbun? The Indies certainly don't forgive Miscavige. Or is what they say about him actually what they understand forgiveness is? Hubbard stated in scripture that forgiveness is actually censoriousness, so by their universal censoriousness toward Miscavige they're actually forgiving him?

I don't see one thing Miscavige does that makes him less forgiveable than Rathbun or Larry. Why the double standard?

Policemen, for example, can forgive criminals for their criminal behavior, and I think the best cops do have forgiveness in their hearts. This doesn't mean they don't do their job.

In the present situation, what is being sought is justice. "Forgiveness" at the expense of justice is cruelty, and implying that such a behavior is superior to the behavior of those who seek justice I find unacceptable.

How is it humanly possible to support Scientologists' victims, while at the same time supporting the Indies' "right" to continue to apply Hubbard's inherently abusive SP doctrine that victimizes the same victims? I believe forgiveness is another, different level of abstraction that is being improperly applied to this fact situation and unwisely is used against the Scientologists' victims.

___
Edits: grammar, formatting

Thanks again Matyr, as you keep solidifying that no matter where scientology is administered, salivating zealots are born.

Operatingwog:
All my objections are valid, that is why I presented several of them to prove you wrong. Now I am going to present another objection, this one is based on formal logic.
Consider two logical propositions: 1. Hubbard was physically abusive to his staff; 2. Miscavige is physically abusive to his staff. These propositions are logically disjoint, meaning that the first proposition does not follow from the second one, and vice versa. There is no logical relation whatsoever between these propositions, therefore they should not be used in the same chain of logical deductions and empirical proofs.
If you do not trust me on this matter, you should consult the book Principia Mathematica to *56 written by Whitehead and Russell.
I do not think that Karen read this book -- this is extremely difficult reading for a nonprofessional. But on the intuitive level she did everything right; it is almost as if she based her presentation on this book.
Also the book Philosophical Foundations by Carnap supports my point of view.
I wrote once that Darwin was a racist and presented two quotations from his books as proofs of my assertions. One of my opponents noted that I did not produce a compete quotation of the paragraphs in question. I asked him to present a complete material, which he did. However, the additional data neither confirmed nor denied my assertion, it was redundant and did nothing to elucidate his point of view. You made the same mistake by adding extraneous Hubbard data to Karen’s quotation. Her goal was to show that Miscavige is abusive to his staff, which she did. The data that you presented neither confirms nor denies her assertion; therefore, it is redundant and serves no purpose.
Unlike you, my opponent was able to greatly improve his argument -- he found a different quotation from Darwin’s book where he speaks favorably about non-Caucasian races. This data was highly relevant to the topic of discussion, and we had reached an impasse.
PS. You made too many mistakes in your presentations, my friend. Now I am faced with a daunting task of correcting them.

There is no logical relation (except compatibility, if you want to be picky) between the two propositions you mention. But there is also no relation of relevance between this fact and my question to Karen.

You may recall that when I responded to one of your earlier 'valid' objections (#7386 I think it was, or perhaps #97264) I explained that even from a point of view focused narrowly on David Miscavige the information Karen apparently excised from David Mayo's affadavit was clearly relevant. (BTW, if you want to get into 'logic-speak' as you appear to be doing you shouldn't say your objections are valid: in logic-speak validity is a property of arguments, not objections. You also shouldn't talk about 'logical propositions' -- they're just propositions, the qualifier 'logical' is meaningless in this context. But it's probably best not to get into logic-speak in the first place as it differs significantly from ordinary English and will only lead to confusion in normal contexts.)



[I can see you've changed your post while I was writing mine. Carnap wasn't in there before. I am losing the will to live now, let alone the will to reply to the new version of your umpteenth objection. So I won't bother.]

P.S. DLRH.



I'm terribly sorry for all the errors in my presentations. But please don't feel the obligation to correct them all. The world needs your talents for others things.

You could start a new thread, "Was LRH a woman?" and present lots of very interesting and relevant arguments.

Or have you tried starting threads entitled, "Did Elvis come back as LRH?", "Did LRon play ping pong?", or "Is it always a mistake to wash whites and coloureds in the same load?".

You have so much to give the world. I'm sure the buddies you discuss evolution with are missing you. They are probably making lots of mistakes and need you to correct them. Please don't let yourself get bogged down in a dreary obsession with my many mistakes.

Operatingwog:
Objections and arguments are the same thing, I do not see how they could be discerned. To be more precise, the term “ logical deductions” is used in logic. When a logical proposition is present, this indicates that at the initial stage there is no empirical data. (logical propositions are not based on empirical data, there are in the class of their own) Later, when the empirical data starts coming in, you could change the term “logical proposition” to “proposition” if you wish, although this is seen by logicians as unnecessary complication.
You presented the missing part of the affidavit because you wanted to show that Miscavige was acting on Hubbard’s orders, if I understood you correctly. Well, if that was your purpose, then you achieved it. But Karen’s intent is to show that Miscavige is an abuser regardless of the fact that he was acting on Hubbard’s orders; she has a different goal of showing that DM committed abuses before and after Hubbard’s death. In order to achieve her goal she does not need to show that DM was taking orders to commit abuses from Hubbard -- this information is irrelevant to her presentation.
Carnap was in my post right from the start, you missed him. However, his presence or lack of it has very little impact on my presentation, I just added his book for your perusal.
I rather start a new thread under the title -- Did Hubbard Engage in Bestiality Towards Tomcats?

^^^

Dear Demented

When you start saying really stupid things like "objections and arguments are the same thing" you should stop for a moment and think Why am I saying this incredibly stupid thing? Why am I so determined to disagree with so-and-so that I will go to the extent of saying patent nonsense in order to avoid agreeing with him/her?

Let's do an exercise in elementary thinking together.

Question: Can you think of an argument which is not an objection?
(Hint: How about, say, the ontological argument for the existence of God.)

Question: Do you think that this maybe shows that not all arguments are objections?

Question: Can you think of an objection which is not an argument?
(Hint: How about, say, "No, I'm not going to that Chinese restaurant again", said as an objection to a proposal to go to the Chinese restaurant.)

Question: Do you think this maybe shows that not all objections are arguments?

Question: If not all arguments are objections and not all objections are arguments do you think that maybe it isn't true after all that objections and arguments are the same thing? Do you now see "how they could be discerned"?

Well done. You have now completed Elementary Thinking, Grade 1.

Now why not ask yourself why you are so determined to disagree with me.

Your new thread idea sounds very interesting. I think it will be a very suitable outlet for your energies. I look forward to reading it.

Ya know, that's actually pretty good. OW, I know you think DLRH is off his rocker, but he does make sense sometimes.