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!

The protest in Los Angeles started at around 11am and originally was scheduled to end at 4pm. I got up at around 12pm and studied a bit and then when 2pm came around I decided I’d go to the protest, spend an hour or so there, take pictures, and then come back home. I ate something and then I spent 20 minutes making a sign:
Now, they were not my best work, but they sufficed. So after I made them I drove rather quickly to the Scientology HQ on Sunset Blvd in LA. It took me 25 minutes to get there. There was traffic on a Sunday. Seriously, California is going to hell (and the rest of the world too by the looks of it). Sean would be happy to know I was listening to Radiohead’s In Rainbows for the duration of the drive.

Being wary of Scientologists and about to enter into a crowd of people I did not know, I decided it would be appropriate to first drive around the protest area and survey the action before participating. So, I finally get there and what do I see?
No one.

Holy crap did I go on the wrong day? I was sure it was the right day. I suspected the protest might have marched down deeper into Hollywood to protest at one of the multiple Scientology buildings located there. I went ahead and called the party hawtline which is just some guys cell phone number posted on the protest organizing site as a number to call for information. A cute-sounding girl picked up (which is probably a biased assessment on my part since any girl associated with a protest against an evil and false cult would pretty much automatically sound cute to me). She told me the protest ended at three. Why? For security reasons. They didn’t want to protest until night for fear of any shenanigans occurring in the dark. Now, two things passed through my mind at that point, first, BUMMER, and second, IT DOESN’T GET DARK UNTIL FIVE…why couldn’t the protest have gone on until 4pm? Dejected, I drove back home. But first, I made a buzz around the blue Scientology HQ. It’s rather large and I saw a guy riding on a bike looking like a police officer, but I saw on his shirt the Scientology logo, so he turned out to be one of their guard stooges.

I got home and feeling a bit pissed I staged my own protest. I took my sign out, stood in frong of my house and protested:Ten minutes passed and no cars passed by nor did any pedestrians. So I went back inside. I probably weirded out some of the neighbors with such antics though.

So that was my Scientology protest amazing adventure.

Now, some links to pictures of the the AWESOME and EPIC protests around the world.

• Hilarious recounting of the London protest
• Flickr photo pool of the world’s protests
• Links to the Los Angeles protest pictures and video (scroll around for other locations)
• WikiNews article covering several locations
• The classic 1991 article in Time exposing Scientology