Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists

We’re adding a new feature on the BASS website: weekly meeting minutes! If you missed the meeting on January 16, or have never attended, this will give you an idea of what we talked about.

By the way, I’d like to remind all BASS members that this website is yours. If you like to share stories or links, or if you just want a soapbox, you could be a contributor. You are not required to be serious and verbose like I am. Just contact us (or e-mail Roy or Deja) if you’re interested.

First, some announcements:

Some BASS members want to start clubs of their own! Look out for these:
Leilani Allmon wants to start the Infidel’s Club.
Michael Okerblom wants to start the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
Daniel Ben-Zvi wants to start the ESA, basically the white club (irony!).

On February 18, we will be hosting a talk by Dan Barker.
Some time in March, we will have a debate between Matt Slick and John Shook. Details will be forthcoming.

Meeting discussion:

Today’s first topic was Scientology. I’m sure that you’ve all heard a lot about them, but when you get a big skeptical group together, you will hear a lot of new juicy tidbits.

If you haven’t ever heard of Scientology, they are basically a cult started by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and his book Dianetics. They charge their members a lot of money so they can rise in the ranks and learn more crazy secrets (which I’m sure you can find online). And they dislike psychologists for some reason. Read more at Operation Clambake.

Here are a few things that came up. You may want to verify them with outside sources to make sure they’re true.

• Someone said they had once gotten e-metered on Bruin Walk. The table was manned by 20-year-olds who were trying to sell copies of Dianetics. An E-meter is a pseudoscientific device used by Scientologists to diagnose people’s problems (your problem is that you haven’t paid enough money to Scientology).
• Someone mentioned that Dianetics did get one thing right: patients can sometimes overhear their doctors while unconscious.
• Sea Org is a central organization of Scientology. There are reports that they’ve forced women to have abortions, and that their general purpose is to make everyone dependent on the Church of Scientology.
• Someone had the conspiracy theory that John Travolta’s son died because Scientology doesn’t allow epilepsy medication, and that they’ve been covering it up.
• The Fair Game Law of Scientology authorizes them to take any actions necessary against suppressors of Scientology. They eventually realized that this was bad for PR, so they announced that Fair Game is no longer followed, but that no actual policy changes have been made.
• Supposedly, they have lots of books by L. Ron Hubbard inscribed on golden plates buried in an underground base in Nevada.

The second topic was so-called “a-evangelizing”. We cited the FFRF plaque that was put up at a few state capitals over the holiday season, the UK atheist bus ad campaign, and the D.C. bus ad campaign. Is this good or bad? And how does our “Ask an atheist” table on Bruinwalk compare? Someone said that it’s good if we’re just providing information to people who want it. However, several members seemed to think that certain celebrity atheists (ie Richard Dawkins) take it too far. Unfortunately, I think our discussion was cut a bit short; however, you are all invited to continue it here!