I suspect that fully immersing myself in just about any subject, and surround myself entirely by people who advocate it, would significantly alter my beliefs, regardless of the validity of X.
It seems that your experience was learning about anti-Scientology facts while surrounded by people who advocated anti-Scientology.
So it’s completely unsurprising that you remained anti-Scientology.
Had you been learning about Scientology from friends of yours who were Scientologists, you might have had a much harder time maintaining your viewpoint.
Similarly, learning about christianity through the skeptics annotated bible is very different from learning about christianity through a christian youth group.
I actually first started reading alt.religion.scientology because I was interested in the substance of Scientology (SPOILER: there isn’t any) from being a big William S. Burroughs fan. The lunacy is pretty shallow below the surface, which is why the Church was so desperately keen to keep the more esoteric portions from the public eye as long as possible.
But, um, yeah. Point.
OTOH, all the Scientologists I knew personally before that emitted weirdness signals. Thinking back, they behaved like they were trying to live life by a manual rather than by understanding. Memetic cold ahoy!
Alexflint said:
It seems that your experience was learning about anti-Scientology facts while surrounded by people who advocated anti-Scientology.
So it’s completely unsurprising that you remained anti-Scientology.
Had you been learning about Scientology from friends of yours who were Scientologists, you might have had a much harder time maintaining your viewpoint.
Similarly, learning about christianity through the skeptics annotated bible is very different from learning about christianity through a christian youth group.
I actually first started reading alt.religion.scientology because I was interested in the substance of Scientology (SPOILER: there isn’t any) from being a big William S. Burroughs fan. The lunacy is pretty shallow below the surface, which is why the Church was so desperately keen to keep the more esoteric portions from the public eye as long as possible.
But, um, yeah. Point.
OTOH, all the Scientologists I knew personally before that emitted weirdness signals. Thinking back, they behaved like they were trying to live life by a manual rather than by understanding. Memetic cold ahoy!