 Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host Alex Zekaris, and as you may recall, a couple of episodes back, I had an interview with Ohio State comparative religions professor Dr. Hugh Urban. And what I found particularly interesting in that interview is the rather strange way, in my opinion, that many academics deal with cults like Scientology, or as they sometimes like to refer to them, new religions like Scientology. And as I explained in that episode, and as we'll talk about today, I found that particularly strange in the case of Scientology, because as we explored in that interview, we have direct provable links between Scientology and occult practices number one, but also with CIA dabbling with extended consciousness with programs like MK Ultra, MK Often, and even Stargate, which we've talked about a lot on this show. So after the interview, one of the things I wanted to do was unpack both parts of that with someone who's actually experienced the reality of Scientology. And that led me to today's guest, Chris Shelton, someone who at a very young age was indoctrinated into Scientology through his parents. You know, sometimes I think we forget how long Scientology's been around, you know, it's kind of multi-generational. So imagine, as a very young kid, you know, instead of going to Sunday school, you're going to Scientology. It's not like somebody, you know, corralled you in off the streets of LA and took you into some hokey experiment, like we always see. This is your parents going there and saying, hey, maybe this is the way to go. So Chris has gone on to create a very successful YouTube channel and a podcast called Sensibly Speaking, where you regularly interviews experts on cults, mind control, and other related topics that are important to people who found themselves in this rather unfortunate situation. So Chris, welcome. Thank you very much for joining me. Welcome to Skeptico. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So as I was pulling together that intro, I had in the back of my mind that, you know, there might be some places where you don't exactly agree with me and that's totally fine. You do kind of come from this critical thinker, the code word for atheistic kind of thing. Yeah, critical thinker. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of have a little thing about that. Well, I just say that because I've dealt with so many blockheaded, closed minded atheists who kind of weave this flag of critical thinking. Oh, gee, like everyone else is uncritical and you're critical. I mean, doesn't everyone claim to be a critical thinker? I think they do. I think there's people in Scientology, you know, they'll give you a real scientific explanation for what they did. But I don't want to get too kind of far afield here because I do want to serve that first purpose of you were nice enough to look at the Hugh Urban interview and you share it. Like I said, I could only get through about half of it, Alex, because it got pretty hard and I understand that. But I want to get to the big picture stuff of your bio and just back to, you know, what do you think when you hear an academic like that talking about these new religions like Scientology? Yeah, exactly. They specifically refer to them. There was this coined term new religious movement or NRMs. And this is something that has been circulating in academic circles or the academic world for at least a decade now. And this, I can't remember the name of the person whose brain child that was, but the problem with describing high control authoritarian groups, what people call cults or destructive cults specifically, and I have gone into great detail about that in my channel, is that it ignores the abusive aspect of these groups and the academics tend to shy away from in all the literature that I can find. And I've read pretty extensively of it. In fact, I even did an entire video series breaking down a book called Scientology, which was written entirely by academics who all come at it from the viewpoint of Scientology being a new religious movement that deserves religious freedom and recognition and analysis from at a professional level, but who then proceed to merely regurgitate Scientology's promotional materials in their academic studies and papers. And this is what I've taken them to task for because if you're going to objectively look at a new religious movement, call it a new religious movement, then you better be able to back that up with some evidence. Because we're talking studies now we're talking actual papers that are written by academics for academics in the world of academia. These are not popular works these are not printed for the public at large. So these are people who live in the world of having to publish or perish. Well, hold on because you kind of touch on a couple of different things that we need to pull apart. You know, one is the abuse, you know, and you're going to, we need to talk about that. Can I back you up just a minute and have you talk about your bio just so that people understand, you know, like I said, I mean you're kind of raised into this Scientology thing. Of course, sorry I just launched right into that but yes I am a former Scientologist and years professionally like I worked for the organization for 25 of those years. I was raised in Scientology before that that was I count my Scientology time from the point that I was 15. But I was actually raised with it my parents got involved when I was four years old. So I don't have a living memory outside of Scientology. See, I mean, you know, I remember a couple of things from before I was four years old but for the most part, you know, Scientology is always been there. The concepts have always been there the terminology of which there is a great deal has always been there I was raised with these ideas so and it was really not a whole lot different my experience from I think being raised in any kind of what I would say is a strongly religious family. It's not Scientology is not a casual thing my parents worked for the organization they were deeply involved with it up until the late 80s they got out in the 90s. I was then all in. So then I was the Scientologist in the family and they were kind of they had kind of both got now, but they drifted away and I stayed in and by this point I was in my 20s. I worked for the organization in Santa Barbara and then I moved down to Los Angeles and I joined what's called the sea organ see organization. When I was 25 years old in 1995, and I moved down to Los Angeles and I worked for the sea organization for 17 years, finally got out in 2000 the end of 2012. And it was a year later, after getting full exposure to the internet uncensored, which in the world of Scientology and see or the internet is censored in the same way it's censored in China, it's filtered. You can you simply cannot access certain information. And so I there was a ton of information about Scientology that I never had access to. I was left in 2012. When I left the sea organization, I was still a believer in Scientology within a year of being exposed to all of the truth about Scientology and Elron Hubbard. I was out, and I was so out that I started speaking out publicly against it, because I was so outraged about what I had learned that the church labeled me an enemy. I am now declared a suppressive person by the Church of Scientology, which means I'm not to be talked to or connected to or or in any way corresponded with by Scientologists. They completely shut me out of their life. I lost friends. I lost people I've known for over 20 years overnight, because the church said I'm an enemy. You can't talk to me more and they all comply. Let me just interject there because one of the things that you said, that's a cult. So at the beginning, right, so it's just like kind of crazy. Like we're talking about Dr. Urban, who seems like a super nice guy and is an interesting guy and has a lot of interesting pursuits in terms of comparative religions that are important and our scholarly, but for him to kind of miss. It's a fricking cult. And unless we can talk about it as a cult, then we can't get to the basics to get to some of the kind of fundamental understandings of what that means, how it fits in. But the other thing I think that we miss out on is the opportunity to just slow down and have a little bit of respect for the victims. And I want to talk about that a little bit. I don't know if that's even a word that maybe you don't like or don't associate with, which I would totally respect. But the thing that I get that kind of annoys me is that I feel like, man, you don't have to fricking apologize, which is sometimes what I hear, like people go, oh, and you know, I stayed in. It's like, Frank, you were, you were four years old. That's all you knew your parents and, you know, it's like, and then people, because I know people will say, well, you're kind of partially responsible, Chris, because you stayed in. I'm sure you feel enough responsible as it is. If we don't understand it as a cult, if we can't identify it as a cult, then I don't think we can really respect fully what that was for you, what your experience was. And I'm kind of on a soapbox there, but tell me what your thoughts are on that. Well, I agree with you. Victim is not a word that I eschew. I definitely was victimized by Scientology. Anybody who gets involved in Scientology eventually will be. That's the nature of what it does. That's why we call it a destructive cult. There's very specific characteristics connected with that. I use that term very advisedly. But I understand that it's a loaded word. There was a lot of, you know, contention about the use of that word. I'm not, I don't shy away from it. I think you're right. I think we have to talk about these groups in proper terminology and destructive cult is a perfectly acceptable term to use when you have a very exact definition for it, which we do. This is not work I invented. I built my work on the work of people who came before me like Yanya Lalich, Steve Hassan, Robert J. Lifton, of course, going all the way back to the 50s and 60s. They're, you know, Margaret Singer. There are a lot of people in this line, right? I stand on the shoulder of giants in many ways with the things that I've talked about, including even former Scientologists who've come out and spent years studying this and figuring out what happened to them, men like John Atack, who's written books of, you know, academic quality about this work and who is in who are routinely ignored by the academics that we're talking about. They will not give any credibility or credence to our stories because they just assume that all of us have an axe to grind. We are in, we cannot be impartial or objective and therefore nothing we say matters. And if that's not the very definition of prejudicial academia, I don't know what is. Now, Chris, let me give you Dr. Urban's spin on that. And then I want you to, because I really want you to respond. This is like one of the primary things I think we can accomplish in doing this is that. So you talk to those folks and I threw up a slide on the screen. Yeah, I see this. I love Jeff Kreipel. He's great. He's been on the show multiple times. He's got a lot of interesting things to say about a lot of these topics. But there is a certain kind of myoptic mindset when we get into these cults and they don't seem to be able to break out of it. And so what Dr. Urban says in, I don't know if you got to this part of the interview, but he said, look, you know, there was too much in the public discourse. There was too much just dialogue from people who were survivors kind of victims kind of thing. And we had to balance that out, you know, so we had to seek balance. And to me, I get that on one hand, but I always think of the kind of false equivalency thing, which I've dealt with on so many topics on this show, you know, where all the evidence really is on one side. So let's go out and find somebody on the other side who can prop it up and make it look like there's some kind of genuine discussion here. That must feel frustrating to you when academia does that in this case, because there really isn't any balance here, is there? No, there isn't. And that is why it's frustrating for me. That's what compelled me to make a whole series of videos, taking on every single one of these essays, one at a time showing where they get it wrong, talking exactly about what they missed, and taking them to task for it. You know, if you're going to publish an academic paper about Scientology, you better have something to say. And if what you have to say is simply regurgitated Scientology promotional materials, and I am intimately familiar with Scientology's promotional materials, I wrote them. So I understand how Scientology presents itself to the world, and I understand the curtain or veil behind which Scientology operates, and what they do when people aren't around, you know, when it's just Scientologists, when it's just how do they talk? What do they say? What do they think? I understand all of that at a very intimate level. I was all in, and I was at its highest levels for over a decade. So if there's somebody they want to talk to who's actually going to be able to give them information about what Scientology really is about, it's people like me. And it's not just me, there's so many former members who have come out and shared their experiences, and have talked about how what Scientology presents to the world is very different from what actually goes on in Scientology. They don't go any further. And that's where they lose, and that's why their objectivity is called into question. That's why their motives are called into question, because they don't academically rigorously pursue this topic. If they did, their work would look a lot different. That's, that's kind of my point there. I want to pull that back though, right on that point and say that I wonder if the problem isn't deeper in a way. So I think what they're doing, yeah, what they're doing in comparative religion, it's not that it's they don't seem to be able to deal with this cult issue. And I guess I'd even poke you a little bit because like when you said, you know, I very advisedly use the term cult. To hell with that, I think we're way too careful about really trying to understand the cultish influences that are. There's another way to look at like some of the interviews you've done with some of the cult experts and I would actually pick some different cult experts even though we've interviewed some of the same people, because I think what cults are tapping into are some very basic human needs and human psychological weaknesses, strengths, you know, this need for community, this need for authority, this need for a core set of beliefs that provide a certainty to structuring life. I think those things pop up all over the place. And I think to pretend that we have some clear dividing line that we can very advisedly call this a cult and that not a cult. I think obscures it and that's what I hear so many times is the subtext of Hugh Urban, Jeff Kreipel, the rest of those guys is to say, Well, I mean, then we'd have to look at all religions as cults. And I'm like, Yes, that's what we should do. We should examine whether or not each and every religion is a cult or to what extent it's a cult. A little aside, you know, a lot of those stuff that I've done, especially early on was in near death experience, which many people know and are aware of, and it the near death experience stuff is very powerful for people from transformational kind of standpoint, you can maybe kind of see where this is going. So it starts playing some of those cult buttons, and some of these groups that get together and talk about near death experiences can start looking like or being infiltrated by cults. And I actually had a group that did that. And this is a group that had invited me to speak of a keynote speak, which speech, which I never did. And I got an email from a listener to skeptico, he said, Hey, I was at a meeting recently. And there's this woman up there and she's, she's in a cult, and she's kind of co opting the whole near death experience thing. And I'm worried about it. I went and interviewed one of the leaders of the very legitimate near death experience organization. And I said, What's up with this cult thing. And that was his claim, you know, Number one, he defended this. Well, it's a mildly dangerous call. Okay, a mildly dangerous call. But then number two, he was like, and this is I think links back, I know this is a long story, but I think it links back to the Q urban thing. He goes, Look, if we cut, if we cut these people off from full participation in our group, then what do we do about people who have a Christian experience as part of their near death experience or what do they do. What do we do with other religious people. So I think that a lot of times we feel hamstrung by this narrow to use your word again, very advisedly controlled definition of cults rather than more broadly looking at how these are very common psychological factors that we're all susceptible to. And in a way, I feel this is like right in your swing zone, isn't it Chris. Well, I get very much so this is all I've been looking at for the last seven years. The problem there of course is that these religious studies academics never go over to the psychology department and have a talk with them about it. That's not where they're that's not how they're coming at this. And I have been breaking down and deconstructing my experience of the 27 plus years over the last six or seven years by talking to all these people and breaking it down and looking at it from different angles you can look at all of these things from lots of levels there's lots of levels you can look at these from a psychological level. There's a whole world to explore of mechanisms and beliefs and systems and things that go on just here. Then there is the neurological level where you really drill down and do just what's going on in here. There's a sociological level sociologists have a field day with this stuff right as well they should it's fascinating study comparative religions is a fascinating from a sociological point of view. Why did this group do this when this group didn't you know this kind of thing right looking looking at that. I don't think it's really possible to dig into the kind of group from a sociological perspective without going over and having the psychology talk to. I think these two things are very very important to understanding the total experience of what goes on in these calls I think you have to look at them from both levels. What religious scholars are doing is a much shallower book. And I know that they're going to take exception to this but this is how I see it right they're looking at group characteristics they're looking at group beliefs that dogma. They're looking at ritual and practices they're fitting this thing called Scientology or any other group and they're they're checking boxes doesn't have rituals doesn't have religious dogma doesn't have beliefs how do those beliefs manifest. These are the things they're looking at they don't that what's not on that list of check boxes that they should be adding to and I think this is where they fall down is the abusive factor. You really shouldn't be ignoring that and looking at these groups but one for one for one. I have not found any religious scholar who will actually use the word abuse. And yet it is clearly what goes on in these high control groups way more than just you know Scientology sure but lots and lots of groups there are thousands of these groups out there. They're not even all religious. And I think that's one of the reasons also that these religious academic scholars kind of maybe don't want to go there because then they have to dive into. It's not about the religious aspect of this group it's about there's other characteristics other ways of looking at these groups and framing them that that the religion angle has nothing to do with it. They've decided in their collective wisdom this group of scholars and I don't know how big they are I don't know how much of academia this is. I only know that when you go to academia to talk about Scientology. These are the this is what's presented to you and Hugh urban is one of the few people who will even be a little critical about Scientology. I just want you guys give it a pass over and over and over again and when you talk about underlying problems to this I think that the biggest underlying problem is that many of these folks have come into this from from a point of view of feeling that they are on a mission to defend religious freedom. And now by presenting it, you know, sort of defense for these groups and calling them new religious movements when one there is nothing new about them. There's very little religious about them and they are not really movements. So all three of those words are basically lots. They're there. It's a misassignation to call them new religious movements. But that's where they decided to go and so in Apollo in in what I know what I refer to as apologetics because that's what it amounts to is academics. They begin to the abusive side of things because they have an agenda of some kind, whatever that agenda is for each individual person. I can't say I don't know them well enough, but I can say collectively that agenda seemed to be. They all get together and figure out how to give these groups a pass so that they don't suffer from persecution due to people's prejudices against new religious movements and while lovable. It is a miss. It's just a miss, you know, they decided to take this position. And it's and that's the hill they're going to die on. And unfortunately, I think in the long run that is the hill they're going to die in because their work will be wholly invalidated because it's just regurgitating the promotional materials of these groups. And it's not just Scientology that they have done this with they've done this with TM they have done this with the brethren 12 tribes I mean others, they would have done it with nexium if nexium had been a religious group. You know, I mean they're just they just ignore all the bad stuff. I spent three years on the RPF, the rehabilitation project force, probably the single most abusive aspect of Scientology. Explain to people why you say that it's a yeah it's a physical endurance program you'd go there if you screw up in the sea or it's only for the sea or it's a disciplinary prison like system. And the, the purpose of it is reeducation. And I use and reeducation in the same way that Mao was re educating people in concentration camps in China, following the Chinese uprising and Revolution. That kind of reeducation right in other words indoctrination. And when you stray from the path in the sea organ you start creating trouble you get disaffected or you've really screwed up on something. According to Scientology's assessment of how you screw up on something which is a little different from how normal people would think you end up in this program it is a full time sequestered activity you're separated from the rest of the sea or members if you're married. Sorry, you know you don't get to see your wife or husband or whatever for the entire period of time that you're on this program you cannot be spoke you cannot speak to anybody outside the program. Unless you're spoken to first right there that the RPF tends to be kind of relegated to the basement and nobody really wants to see them or talk to them they're bad. You know they're they're they're bad guys they screwed up right but they're they're taking this one chance to redeem themselves. In the course of the RPF not only is there all this psychological reeducation and pressure to get you to conform and comply with Scientology's directives that there is intense intense physical demands made on you because you're working most of the day. You spend five hours a day doing this rehabilitation stuff and the rest of the day you are running everywhere you go. If you're caught slacking walking not working as hard as you possibly can. You're made to drop and do 20 push ups or run around the block and do a lap or this is right out of the cults right out of the cults makers handbook you know that's right. Oh yeah. Deprive him of sleep the private proper nutrition and then run the heck out of you're right I mean why this is if you and I know this and it's widely known why are we skating skirting this issue when we get to academia. Well exactly they want to compare it to a monastic existence for. You know they make false comparatives is one of the huge logical fallacies that these academics commit is they they they try to find something that this compares to that is legitimate rather than just looking at the RPF because all papers have been written about the RPF by academics and they miss again and again. I want to pick up on that word. I want to pick up on that word legitimate because I think I'm really open to what you said and I hadn't thought about it quite that way in terms of kind of a lefty politics inclusiveness. You know kind of die on that hill you know that and I get that without judging whether or not that's there there's certainly a place for that you know in terms of excluding people it's not. We have a pretty sorry history of excluding groups so we all understand the inclusiveness being in a lot of ways a good thing but here you're talking about kind of the evil side of it. You know which is there but the other thing I think that the hill they're going on is these atheism humanists and I know that's kind of in your camp but it's like this. What always blows me away is this way that they process the consciousness aspect of it because that's been a big part of my thing and in the interview that I did you know I shared with. The audience this little quote which I think really revealing about Elron Hubbard and it's about Hubbard and Jack Parsons who became very very close close friends and are engaged in a series of occult rituals through the direction of Alistair Crowley who's in England but has kind of chosen Jack Parsons to be the guy and Jack Parsons says oh I met this tremendous guy. Elron Hubbard and they're out in the desert of California and they're doing this whore of Babylon ritual in order to conceive and bring into this world the anti Christ so I don't care how someone processes that. You have to throw that into the mix you have to understand that to some level and in the only response because academia has locked itself into this very narrow understanding of consciousness extended consciousness the existence of any other forces outside of. Our materialistic world because they've written all that off they just turn the page on this and it's like but that's one thing I kind of pushed to her man it's like. Doesn't this deserve some at least exploration in terms of what this would mean, and in particular and that's another kind of thing that's in my bailiwick and that's the fact that you know we have some kind of provable links to. The cult conspiracy if you will into inside the United States government, the MK ultra program that a lot of people have heard about is directly connectable to the Jack Parsons thing. It's also directly connectable to something called project stargate and the men who stare at goats thing that a lot of people have heard about. People don't know is this whole stargate thing which was a CIA program and there's tens of thousands of documents reliefs that kind of show that these guys are way past this. Oh there can't be any extended consciousness they're playing with extended consciousness they're experimenting with it they're reporting back to Jimmy Carter and he's announcing and on the news that wow these guys are psychic and they can spy all over the world kind of thing they found this down playing. Well the guys who are the original founders researchers the go to guys in under the MK ultra program that is project stargate, two of them are very early. I guess members of Scientology so how put off is no swan is and then to not explore that I mean again so that's the other hill that I think academia is dying on that just this kind of complete blindness to even consider. What's going on in this extended realm and how that might be a reality number one for all these religions because that's the wind that the head fake wink thing is that well we don't really have to deal with that because it couldn't possibly be true. So you will talk about Christianity all day long because we don't believe that any of it could possibly be real. Same with Satanism will talk about it all day long because there's no way any of it could be true. I'm not a religious guy Chris, but I look at the evidence I just follow the evidence and clearly there's something going on in this extended consciousness realm that we need to consider as part of this discussion, or it all just becomes godly good. Well I'll tell you how I think about that as a skeptic and and I think about that in terms of if you want to talk about the legitimacy of extended consciousness psychic powers ESP telepathy a supernatural paranormal activities this sort of thing. I'm going to have to show me evidence and and so far it's been coming up pretty short across the boards, however, I agree with what you're saying because point is that if you're going to be a religious scholar and you're going to dive into this. You're talking to people you're talking about people who do believe this stuff and they believe it with all their heart I did I used to right when I was a Scientologist I believed in the OT phenomena. I believed in the power we operating fate and the upper level stuff right that you could rehabilitate yourself spiritually to a state where telekinesis was possible, you know clairvoyance this kind of things. I believed all that never experienced it once. But supposedly Hubbard had and other people had and Hubbard talked about it at length so it must be true there must be some validity to it. And even my own parents were OTs and sometimes they would like to play little mind games with me when I was a kid so I thought there was some legitimacy to all of this. And that's the important thing is that you have to you have to know that's not who you're talking that's one of the important things but the first important thing is. Is there a reality to it or not so I don't want to push this and make this dominate the conversation. But again, I'm talking about when I'm talking about Stargate and MK ultra. I mean there's 10s of thousands I just interviewed this guy you can see him up on the screen Lance Mongia who just did this movie Third Eye Spies. And as part of the movie, he went with Russell Targ, and they got 10s of thousands of previously classified CIA documents released that it's close it's case closed in terms of Stargate being real being effective so if you don't want to go there. Hold on a second now. Now hang on. Did it happen. Yes. Was it effective. Okay now that's a whole different question. I will absolutely agree with you that it happened. No, no, did they actually prove remote viewing. Oh, yeah. They've not only proved it as part of the Stargate program but there's been peer reviewed, many peer reviewed studies that have been done that shows its efficacy. So I don't want to get into the whole skeptical debate. I mean we can do that, but there's just no basis for this kind of did it ever happen James Randy kind of maybe there was a camera fake kind of thing. All that stuff has been just thoroughly debunked but put it to the point of Stargate 10s of thousands of released documents that show its efficacy over and over again and peer reviewed studies that show its efficacy. So there really shouldn't be any doubt at this point but we can't cover all that that evidence here and I don't know maybe it's not relevant then because we can't really go there. No, I'd have to see that I have yet to see a single piece of compelling evidence. You haven't you just haven't looked for it but that's okay dude do not say that to me. You don't know a thing about what I haven't haven't looked at. Do not make assumptions about what I haven't haven't looked at I spent my entire childhood studying is don't tell me what I know and don't know. I'm saying categorically I'm saying categorically if you don't understand that Stargate has been proven and that remote viewing has been proven. Again, I just show me just show me evidence that's all I'm saying send me some papers show me this peer reviewed stuff because So I'll show you the peer reviewed stuff I'll show you the peer reviewed stuff and then it'll be then it'll send it to me. And then it'll be okay and then you'll and then you'll look at what you send me and I will look at it and then I will make my decisions based on what I read. But I have not yet seen any compelling evidence for remote viewing being a thing I have seen many many many failed experiments and attempts at it. So I'm open to looking at whatever you want to send me I'm just saying don't assume that you know what I know because I have studied this at length. I've done the deep dives and clearly I can't know what you know. No, of course not. You get what I'm saying and that, you know, it's like, I mean, just for just for fun since we're in the middle of this conversation we've kind of really handled the first part of it. You know, I'd go like near death experience I suppose you don't think that consciousness survives bodily death. I don't know if it does or not. So go read go read the handbook of near death experiences by Dr. Janice Holden and Bruce Grayson from the University of Virginia, and Jan Holden from North Texas 200 peer reviewed papers. I've interviewed all the leading experts in the world. Every expert tells you consciousness rise death, but that just doesn't penetrate to a certain group of people. It's really just like talking to a fundamentalist Christian. It's the same thing. It's, we'll talk till it's blue in the face and it's like, nope, nope, nope, show me the evidence. That's not enough. You haven't convinced me like that's the standard is like convincing an individual is the standard. Not that all the experts in the field have come to this conclusion based on data that they can publish in peer review papers. That's not enough kind of thing. Right. Well, peer reviewed science is the best system that we have, but it is not an infallible system. Correct. So we need to always, always be skeptical and critical of what we read and that's really my only approach. I'm not a dedicated non believer or unbeliever. However, let's be clear. I spent 27 years in a movement quote unquote, that was a destructive cult thinking I was saving the world. So you can understand why I might be more than a little skeptical of claims of a similar nature being made when in the big wide world I see no evidence that any of this stuff is real. So that's why I say, look, I'll look at anything you want to send me and I'm more than happy to contemplate it. And that my position is simply, I don't know, which I believe is a better position than, no, that's not true when it can't be true and there's no way I will ever believe that. That's not my position. Fair, fair enough, in two respects. One is that I do honor your experience because I think it's important and that's why I called you up and. It's important and you make a strong case for your experience and I also totally get that where you're coming from seems completely reasonable to me. I hear you saying, hey, I understand how easy it is to get roped into a set of narrow beliefs that take somebody down a path. Alex, I've seen it with other people, you seem like a very intelligent guy, well spoken guy. And I think that's the thing that gets people like, wait, how could that guy have, you know, that's the question everyone's mind. And I think you're kind of answering that by saying, look, I know how easy it is. So let me tell you, I got the defense shields up. They're not impenetrable, but I have them up at full force. And I do respect that. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. It's important to be skeptical in a world where Gwyneth Paltrow is making more money than you and I are ever going to see in our entire lives. Selling people complete and utter bullshit. That's the world we live in. So it is with, you know, good, it's a good thing to be skeptical in this world. I hear you point well taken. Let's talk about this topic from a practical standpoint. It's critical for people to know that there is a way out. Maybe you can start by sharing your journey out. I mean, you already have a little bit, but what else can, can people most profit from and in particular, you know, you're talking to an audience that they're not Scientologists for the most part. But maybe they know someone who could recognize some of these. They recognize some of the same features, symptoms. You get the idea. How do you get out? Totally. It's, you know, I just did a two hour podcast with a man who has been doing this for almost 50 years now. And it's an extensive topic getting people out of these groups, but I will summarize it by saying care, compassion, tolerance and understanding. They will never, ever swear at somebody and tag and knives them out of a belief system or destructive cult or any kind of situation really. If you want to change hearts and minds, you're going to have to do it by talking to people at their level, not yours. And that involves usually a lot more listening than it does talking. And getting to why it is that this person has gotten involved in this group in the first place, what they're getting out of it, what it does for them, what they think it does for them, maybe versus what it's really doing to them. They don't see what you see. They see what they see. And they can't see what you see. They can only see what they see. And when you've bought into a group like this, where you've, you've slowly, it's a slow series of agreements. It's not nobody's getting Z new on day one. Nobody's getting Z new on day two. Nobody's getting Z new on day 50. It's a very slow progress before you're getting into this really weird deep space opera stuff and the space alien and all that stuff. That's that's really upper level stuff that the street level Scientologist isn't going to hear anything about that unless they go specifically for certain books. In the library of Scientology that they can find that are there that are public publicly accessible books like history of man, you know where Hubbard goes all out on data traps and spiritual stuff and all this other nonsense. So you can get into that if you want to but your normal Scientology experience isn't going to include any of that. So if you go talk into a Scientologist and say Z new and space aliens and exorcisms and all this, they're going to look at you like you have no idea what you're talking about because as far as they're concerned, you don't. And trying to argue dogma is usually a losing battle. I can understand that take the other side of that. If you are talking to someone who maybe is recently within the last few years been indoctrinated into specifically Scientology kind of elaborate on that. What is the approach what has probably sucked them in what is the kind of listening that you can effectively do. Yeah, of course, the, the, the things that the way Scientology reels people in that I sort of compare it to a fish line right is they hook you on a very, very personal level. When you first go into a Scientology organization you're usually brought in by a friend or family member that's that's the number one way that Scientologists are made. We talked that you mentioned at the beginning second gens like me second generation cult member I was raised in it. There are third fourth even fifth generation members at this point because Scientology has been around since 1953. So, it's been around for a while. And so family and so family of course are just raised with it like me, but even I had to have my epiphany moment, and that was when I was 15 and I went into a Scientology organization on my own at my dad's suggestion, and I did their personality test and that's generally how they want to get you in is they want to do that personality test. It's 200 questions that ends up with a graph of personality characteristics and that and the, the whole thrust of that is to get you to sit down with the test evaluator and start talking and tell them about yourself. And what they're looking for is the thing that they think is what they call their your ruin. What they're looking for the thing that you think is the number one problem in your life that you have to resolve right now because it's ruining your life, whether it's that you can't talk to your kids. You have problems at work use marriage problems family problems whatever it is there's about 2021 different buttons that they push that they that they can get at you at, and those were surveyed for one of the biggest problems people are aware of in their life that they want to do something about right, and they have courses that they've designed to deal with each of those problems so if you walk in there and you take this personality test and you start talking about how you know you and your kid are so estranged and you can't talk anymore and it seems like he's just rebelling every time you talk to him and, and it's just a mess and you don't know what to do, and you feel like you're losing them and and you want this relationship and it's just, it's just tearing you apart. Great, we got a course for that it's called the communications course and then we've got this other course about dealing with kids and, and if you take these two classes and they're only 50 bucks each. We will handle that ruin utterly and you will never have that problem again. And that's the hook. That's how they get you in is it's something very personal that you go, really, that you have something that can help me with that. It's very practical. It's extremely practical. And they market Scientology as a toolbox for you for life. Scientology has these tools that you can use. It's not about beliefs. It's not about space aliens. It's not about any of that stuff that crap you read on the internet. It's about tools for making your life a better thing. And who could possibly object to that. It's basically positive psychology cognitive psychology for folks who can't afford it. It kind of makes sense. I really, I kind of knew it but when you break it down, it makes a lot of sense. If I can go to a class and learn, you know, a bunch of positive psychology things cognitive psychology things that are liable to help improve my situation. It's very tempting. Exactly. And, and what's what's so objectionable about any of that. I mean, this is very worked out. Yes, they've been they've been doing this for like, what, 70, almost, you know, 70 years now. They've really worked out all the kinks in this line. Right. The thing Scientology can't deal with right now is all of us. All of us X members who are going, Hey, man, that looks and sounds great. But guess what that has nothing to do with what Scientology is really all about. And that's what we're trying to warn you about. Right. Is it's like, yeah, that sounds real good. And at the public level, some of the tools they give you actually do work. Because they have to because why would you sign up for more if it didn't, you know, so it's all common sense stuff. But it's but it's but it's all presented to you and framed in a way that you know who could possibly object to this what what, you know, anybody who's telling you bad things about Scientology clearly doesn't want you to get better. Well, you know, and we didn't get into this and we're going to we're going to wrap it up. But I would maintain that that Christianity does exactly the same thing. Anyone who's right, you get it. I mean, you sit in church and they're saying they'll say three things that you're like totally on board with which is that, you know, shouldn't you show compassion we're doing this drive to help our neighbors and shouldn't you know, you're like, yeah, and you know, shouldn't we forgive and you know, you're like, yeah, that really is more effective than life. And didn't Jesus die for your sins. And they're like, wait a minute, how did you slip. It's the same thing. And that's one of the things that I just think sometimes we're a little bit soft on on Christianity and in particular right now, it should be so starkly obvious with the whole pedo pulp thing. And still, people don't get it. And you know, they still go there and give their money morally, ethically, how can you give your money to an organization that that is provably that linked to this kind of systematic exploitation of children and all these sex crimes, how there's I don't know how one justifies that. Really. I mean, it's pretty easy, because they just look at that horrible behavior is something different or an aberration I should say maybe it's a it's a it's a it's a fringe extremist criminal element but that's only a little tiny part and the pope is dealing with that and the Catholic, you know, they're dealing with that. Right. Just, just listen to what they say they've called councils and they've done meetings and they've done that. Yeah, we did a committee and we, we, you know, and this guy here and, you know, and if you don't go too deep, which here's the thing about people. This is the thing that I've learned that has been the most difficult thing for me in dealing with people is that is it's no mystery we all know that this happens it's just difficult to accept is that when somebody wants to believe something when they have a when they're when they're engaging and what's called motivated reasoning, where they have a an emotional investment of some kind in the topic at hand. They only need one semi legitimate reason, and they can they can write off all kinds of abuses they can they can just go No, it's all you know just one little incline of something it's called confirmation bias and we all do it. And that's, that's the answer to why people do that because because they want to because they want to believe. And if you want to get to the motivations of that. Then we talked about mortality and social pressures and all the other stuff that comes in. So Chris, tell folks about some of the other work you're doing critical you are the critical thinker at large. I try to tell folks what's coming up on your channel and in your podcast. Yeah, we're doing where I'm actually putting together a series on MLMs multi level marketing cons because those are totally related to destructive cults. And actually speaking of the occult stuff I'm in I'm in touch with somebody right now who was, or is a member was a member of the OTO the order of tempi orientus, which was Hubbard's, which was the church or sort of formal organization connected with Alistair Crowley and Hubbard and Parsons and all of that so I'm looking forward to exploring some of that in the near future on my channel as well. Nice. Well, it's great important work. I like that you definitely are open to the science and have a lot of good experts on your channel. So it's been a good discussion anything else we need to cover. Well, I guess not but thank you very much for having me on and you know I'm sorry if I got a little rough pushing back on you a little bit there I I just don't like assumptions and I'm trying really really hard this year to not assume things and I just you know no problem. No problem on the pushback at all. I mean I think you handled it extremely politely I can push buttons even when I don't know I'm pushing buttons, but I will follow up with you and make notes in the the afternotes of the show because again, it's pretty you know I don't know how you're going to step over the peer reviewed research and the release documents, maybe you will just have a little slight shift in your worldview, but my most people Well, let me tell you that let me say this. I would like nothing more than to believe that life doesn't stop when our bodies die. I say that who cares. I don't care what what you would like that has nothing to do with the issue it really doesn't. It comes down to a science issue. It's like, what is the nature of consciousness. Again, when does it end what's necessary and sufficient to cause consciousness. One of the things that like we can't really have this discussion, but it's like, that's the problem with underlying what Hugh Urban is talking about is they bought into this kind of ridiculous notion of materialism of consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain, which has been disproven. I mean, I have some of the, some of the world's leading physicists who will tell you consciousness is fundamental. We've proven it all over and over again. The CERN lab over there where they're crashing together atoms and producing a terabyte of data all come to the same conclusion. Consciousness is fundamental. All the best quantum physicists from 100 years ago came to the same conclusion. Yet, everyone is operating under this. Let's just do this thing where, you know, consciousness isn't real. We're just biological robots in a meaningless universe. And let's go down that path because it's comfortable. That has been completely falsified. And the reason I have to tip toe around that that is the world that you're living in because that is the skeptical, the skeptics quote unquote pseudo skeptics have kind of completely bought into that without a careful examination of it. So we can talk about remote viewing as being one tiny way to show that that's falsified, but it's falsified in all these other ways. And the consequences of it are, I think this kind of very narrow in some ways, atheistic materialistic kind of mindset. And again, I'm not a religious person. So I'm not coming at it from that angle. Right. I totally get it, man. And like I said, I'll look at anything you want to send me. You know, I have a pretty high standard. My bar is pretty high on my threshold of of acceptable evidence. So I'm very, very curious what you will send me and I will look at it. Can't do any more can't ask any more than that or best again has been Chris Shelton. Make sure you check him out on YouTube and check out his podcast. Thanks for the great stuff, Chris. I think it added a lot to rounding out this discussion with Q urban. So I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me on and give me the opportunity to talk. Thanks again to Chris Shelton for joining me stand skeptical since I really did invite him primarily to talk about Scientology. I'm not going to bash him too hard on the pseudo skeptic critical thinking thing which in my opinion is just, I don't know, you know, jump from one narrow belief system to another maybe. But I did want to let you know that I did follow up with Chris, send him some really radical studies like Jessica. That's his statistical analysis of side research Dean Raiden six Sigma result. What else just standard stuff and he was very unconvinced and I forget what his other word was but just anyways, that's how it goes but interesting about the Scientology stuff and the academic angle on it which is just really looks more and more bizarre I mean how can you not deal with people like Chris who've been in it for 20 years how can you not approach that offer some kind of explanation for the abuse, like he says the abuse that they've been through and yeah, I don't want to come down too hard on Dr urban because he's an environment obviously that kind of pulls for that but hey, so it goes. So I'd love to talk more with you about this show if you'd like to join me hop on over to the skeptico forum where me and other people will be talking about this show be sure to check out the skeptico.com website where you can download this and all these other previous shows just get the MP3 files and do what you will got a bunch of them up there. I have some interesting shows coming up a couple of interesting projects as well. I appreciate everyone out there who stays with me through some of these tough discussions until next time take care and bye for now.