Gnosis

First a brief outline of the beliefs of gnosis.

1) The world is fundamentally flawed, corrupt and evil
2) The natural world was created by a demiurge, a lesser deity, not the supreme God
3) In SOME people is a divine spark trapped in the body and it is it's goal to escape and return to the source, the divine Godhead
4) It is the recognition of the higher self, and only an elite few will realize this and and liberate themselves from the entrapment of the physical world.

Gnosticism includes, as I see it, an element of agnosticism, in that it recognizes the existence of a supreme God who is unknown and unknowable. (Agnosticism is defined as accepting the possibility of spirituality with the inability to know it, generally meaning that whether god exists or not is unknowable and one shouldn't presume to be capable of such, but may or may not take it on faith that such is the case)

Gnostic traditions have come to envelope other religious beliefs, such as Christianity (see apocrypha of John, or the Gospel of Thomas for instance) or Judaism (Apocalypse of Adam for instance). These teachings are often contradictory to the bible, and therefore will be ignored and the focus will be on gnosticism without Christian or other influences.

The first problem is that only some people have the divine spark. Gnostic teaching makes clear not every living thing has this. It is thus exclusionary and not complete (violation of rule 3)
Salvation is dependent on "secret" knowledge, not knowledge that is freely available to everyone. Further, viewing the physical world as fundamentally flawed, scientific inquiry would be dismissed as unrepresentative of reality and unable to prove or disprove anything about the world. This further violates rules 3 and 4.

Further, Gnostic cosmology like Christianity and Judaism puts the earth at the center of existence, when science has long since proven it is not at the center of anything. This means their teachings are not externally consistent (do not match reality) and therefore violate rule 1 as well.

Considering Gnosticism has been all but wiped out, and it's teachings are mostly lost it's difficult to impossible to expand on this analysis. Too much has been lost, but I believe the above arguments are enough.

Final Verdict: False Religion

Scientology

For this there is only going to be one part, because, quite frankly, these people are so completely out of their minds I can't stand to spend any more time then that thinking about it. Whenever doing research into this CULT, I couldn't help but feel these people are a threat both physically and mentally to anyone near them.

Here's the official web page of the Scientology "religion":
http://www.scientology.org/

Here's the website of their biggest detractor:
http://www.xenu.net/
(note: scientology believes the "bad guy" of their religion to be Xenu, an extraterrestrial overlord)

Here's a summary of their beliefs: Summary
Another detractor: Scientology's Lies

basically these people believe that Xenu, an evil extraterrestrial, was trying to solve a problem of overpopulation and sent lots of people to earth in a spaceship that looked like a plane, stacked them in volcanoes and blew them to smithereens with a nuclear bomb. Then he gathered the spirits of these people that were now floating around, made them watch movies that brain washed them into believing they were "one" and causing them to bind. These spirits called "body thetans" then attached to people (thetans) and cause all their problems. People must go through a process called auditing to remove these body thetans and become "clear". They then can progress to the levels of "operating thetan" at which point they supposedly get magical powers. When they don't it is explained that they didn't get all the thetans off, as some were sleeping. They must then get rid of THESE to reach the next level.
Oh yeah, to get to each level you must pay for, sometimes VERY expensive, courses and training (we're talking 5 digits and upward). If you don't pay you don't advance.

Real religions don't require you to pay to be "saved." They generally just ask for donations, which if you believe you would most likely be happy to give.

It is in fact only dangerous cults which tend to hide the "next level" of information from adherents (you only learn after you advance) and force them to pay. It also gets many people to enter into a form of indentured servitude to provide church services.

Oh, did I mention that their greatest enemies are.... Psychiatrists? yup. Psychiatrists are apparently out to destroy man kind and aid Xenu....mhmm

This all smacks of bad sci-fi writing. Oh yeah and it's founder, L. Ron Hubbard was, wouldn't you know it, a writer of sci-fi...who once said "If you really want to make money, start a religion."

I don't think I need to even make any more arguments about this. The religion speaks for itself.
Final Verdict: False Religion.

On Writing

I was reading an article on horror done by a college English professor, which includes a lot of references to the reaction of his students. Among the things it brought to mind were my own reactions to English Lit classes.
specifically: "Ugh"

Lucky for me I started reading at a very early age, so even the dread of literary analysis couldn't entirely sap me of my love for the written word. It was a close thing though. Let's face it, I seriously doubt anyone involved in producing early writing or type setting or anything else involved in the art ever expected to have a roomful of people carefully analyzing some of the dullest phrases for their "deeper meanings." I can remember a three page short taking as many weeks because so much time was spent on "understanding" the "deeper meanings" within the work. In the mean time we all completely forgot what the book was about. A three page story and every one of us managed to forget who the main character was.

Well despite this horror, I've started to write anyway. I just hope noone is ever subjected to a search for meaning in any of my stories in some English class. I remember one teacher making it quite clear that despite my best efforts at producing a story with ABSOLUTELY no meaning beyond what is said in the words, it had that meaning anyway and we had best discover it. Ugh.

I suppose it's likely it did have some sort of meaning. This stuff usually does, but that doesn't mean you were meant to spend weeks over-analyzing it. If it comes to you, great, you've gotten more out of it then you expected. If not, well I hope you enjoyed the show.

(p.s. the title is a reference to a book of the same title by Stephen King. You should read it.)

Borg Dreams: Some Commentary

One of the main elements of the upcoming short story was a difficult thing to handle. Basically it seemed to create some potential future plot holes, creating an element that would be difficult to rectify. As one of my supporters said to me, "the great thing about fiction is you can make anything work." Some rules in the story had to be changed to keep the story, but it was an important enough element to make this worth while. To be honest I didn't think it needed to remain. The story just felt entirely wrong without it. I could hear my characters saying, "knock it off! Tell it straight or don't tell it!"
So there it is, and hopefully someone will enjoy it when it's done.

I've now outlined a new scene and extended another one, and the original outline is now in rough-draft form. The first draft of the story should be done this week.

Borg Dreams: Updates and Analysis

I've decided to catalogue a bit of what I'm doing here. Alot of people are interested in the process of writing and often ask authors how they do it and how they get their ideas. I thought it'd be interesting to keep some notes as I'm pretty much learning this stuff now. At the least it will be interesting for me to come back and look at it later, and see what I was thinking, be it good or bad.

The first story in the Borg Dreams series is under way, and is going to be a short story. The idea came from a mix of horror and "alternate reality" ideas inspired by Stephen King, numerous Twilight zone episodes and other horror and sci-fi as well as the already (partially) created Borg Dreams back story. It leaves much open and hints at alot of what's to come.

For now, the outline is finished but I'm doing some research and imagination into technologies and events of the world this takes place in. It does take place on Earth in a time not far off from our own, which makes for an easy starting point. Aside from sci-fi and horror, the series is also going to take alot from cyber-punk and various dystopian/utopian literature.

This being my first attempt at a major story, I'm not setting any deadlines, but I am setting aside two days a week when I'm not alowed to do anything but work on this, so I can be sure to be getting somewhere. Once I know my own writing habits better, I'll be able to give myself more of a schedule.

For the curious, there will be at least 3 types of interstellar travel. Warp, Hyper, and Wormhole (though they may have different names) and possibly an extra one between Hyper and Wormhole, a type of "trans-warp" or "super-warp" (still looking for a name) that relies on some ideas of string theory and M-theory. You can see my comments on warp and wormhole travel in earlier posts.

Christian Science Part 2

Christian Science strongly presents the view that through faith, one can cure any disease and even death. I'd like to see even one believer who has, through faith, avoided ever being sick or injured. Their belief is not in any way supported by evidence.
As shown earlier, prayer and faith have no appreciable effect on healing.

"The Journal of the American Medical Association (22 September 1989) reported on a study of more than 5.5 thousand Christian Scientists as compared to a lay group of almost 30 thousand. The death rate among Christian Scientists from cancer was double the national average, and 6 percent of them died from causes considered preventable by doctors. The non-Christian Scientists on the average lived four years longer if they were women and two longer if they were men"

Thus following Christian science, you are apparently more, not less, likely to die of a preventable disease.

Final verdict: False Religion

Reiteration of the Basic Rules

This whole religious argument thing has been going on for quite a while, so I thought I'd reiterate the criteria I use to make judgment. Aside from the already posted 3 rules, and the later 4th rule, There are really only two criteria, either one of which failing proves a false religion.
Internal consistency and external consistency.
A system is internally consistent if all of it's laws, rules, guidelines and beliefs do NOT contradict any others. Most religions fail this test.
A system is externally consistent if it agrees with reality. Most religions also fail this test. An example would be a religion that declares that the main staple of human food is the rock. Humans cannot digest rocks. That's a fact so if some religion made such a claim, it would be inconsistent with reality and thus false.

Now, granted my system means that if even one thing is off, the religion is declared false, but considering that the general claim is not that the religion is a "good idea" or that it is "pretty accurate" but rather that it is absolute incontestable truth. Therefore, it is my contention that even one thing wrong disproves the religion as a whole, even if some of it's beliefs are in fact true.

For example, while I have proven Christianity false, I have NOT disproved nor argued that God does not exist. This would require a much more complete and in-depth investigation then I'm willing to invest at the moment, therefore such a belief remains "possible but unproven". In fact let me create a ranking system while I'm at it:

Absolute Truth: verified and proven facts or ideas that cannot be false, and anything whose state is given by strict definition (saying a leaf is a leaf is true because it is, by definition, a leaf and thus cannot be false. It has nothing to do with beliefs, but simply terminology systematically applied to observable reality.)

Likely Truth: Ideas that one has heard from a trusted and reliable source as being truth, and for which the evidence is readily available but not yet reviewed or verified.

Probable: Anything that is likely to be true, but unverified.

Possible: Anything that is unlikely to be true but has not been disproved

Improbable: Anything that is highly unlikely to be true, or has been declared false by a trusted, reliable source, but for which there is lack of evidence disproving it or the evidence has not been reviewed.

False: Anything that is verifiable as not true. (All "False Religion" labels)

So the existence of God remains Possible and is under review for upgrade to Probable, or down grade to Improbable (anyone who wants to make an argument, feel free to post comment.

Our God is a Piece of Cheese

How can anyone follow a religion whose adherents are known for seeing their savior in just about everything from trees to lumps of chocolate.

I mean, let me get this straight, Jesus and Mary can't bring peace to the world, can't do much of anything to make people better, end war, end hunger, or even overcome other religious beliefs...
but they can spend all their time inducing images of themselves (or more properly resembling the romanesque versions of themselves which archaeologists and historians agree do not look anything like the real people, as their images are stolen from Roman Gods) in everything from toast to chocolate.
Not to mention they're praying to this thing when their religion strictly condemns worship of idols (images of gods or anything in heaven or on earth)
Yes bow down and worship your confectionary deity. I'm so tempted to go to that place, snatch the chocolate and bite it's head off. mmmmm chocolate deity!