|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other authors named Keith:
|
|
|
|
Author's popularity: -3
Vote:  
|
If you like or dislike this author in general or one or more of their quotes in particular, please give us your feedback by clicking on the icon to vote for, or the icon to vote against them.
|
|
Popularity: 0
Vote: | As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Calvinism started as an intense cult. Heck, Calvin had a dozen and a half people publicly executed, something the scientology leadership would drool over, but 300 years later the Methodists are as mellow as you could ask for. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Colonizing space will become something an individual or a small group can do, provided we maintain the desire to do so. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Disaster memes like Limits to Growth capture the imagination and spread well. But only a small fraction of the population actively responds to threats as remote and indirect as those of the LTG meme. At that time, joining the Zero Population Growth organization and having a vasectomy were some of the few possible responses. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Had the cost to get into space been proportional to the Pilgrims or the Mormon migration, we would have been there on our own, but it was about 10,000 times too expensive. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Humans evolved in tribes and our reward circuits are still set up to reward behaviors that aided reproductive success in tribes. Cults tap into this reward mechanism, but so does every other rewarding activity from local sports clubs to the Nobel Prize. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I suspect that when people actually move off the planet they will do it with the awesome powers of nanotechnology. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | If a group stays around long enough, it tends to lose its cult aspects. Religious cults tend toward mainstream religions. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | If the universe doesn't harbor any others inside ourlight cone, then we are looking at an unknown future instead of a deadly one. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | If you want to understand how cults use the same brain reward pathway that drugs activate, go here to look at my paper on the subject. I am working on a new one that ties memes and evolutionary psychology into the origin of war. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Inducing people to spend effort in spreading a meme, as well as successfully spreading itself in competition with innumerable other memes, is the definition of a successful meme. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Law enforcement agencies know they will be targeted personally if they take steps against the cult's abuses and corruption. Not only by private investigators stealing their trash and stalking their children, but if they take action against the cult, scientology will turn a scary part of the government against them by suing them in the courts. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Memes lose their intense hold on people with the passage of time, especially when the promise of the meme is at great variance with reality. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Nanotechnology will give us vast wealth in terms of control over the environment. It also might completely destroy us at either a physical level or just from giving us so much synthetic enjoyment we never bother going into space. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | Other people hold me up as a martyr. I'm not a martyr; I just kick ass. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Starving scientology of new members is perhaps the best we can do. To do that, inform yourself, inform your friends. If you really want to help, picket them. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The distasteful worldview implied by the Limits to Growth meme raised my anxiety level much like good hellfire sermon affects conventionally religious people. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The few lawyers who used to go up against scientology will no longer do so because scientology is just too good at using lots of money to pervert the courts. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The logic runs this way, if planets with life... are common, then it looks really dire for us, because we don't see any evidence of a tamed universe. Everywhere we look there are massive wastes of energy and matter. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | When I was about 8 years old, my mother read Robert A. Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky to me. I was enthralled and eventually read every published Heinlein and many other SF authors I could find. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | You can say that some groups are cults. LaRouche's bunch, Moonies, scientology, Heaven's Gate, etc. There are published scales to measure how much some group is a cult. |
|
Biography
|
Howard Keith Henson is famous in the science and science fiction communities as a writer on life extension and cryonics, memetics and, most recently, as an activist against the Church of Scientology. Henson is a founding member of the L5 Society and a life member of the National Space Society.
Henson versus Scientology
Henson has become one of the most bizarre focal points of the ongoing struggle between the Church of Scientology and its critics, often referred to as Scientology vs. the Internet. Henson is a critic of Scientology whose actions resulted in his being convicted under an obscure California law regarding the act of "interfering with a religion." Henson is currently residing in Canada, seeking refugee status based on his belief that his life would be threatened by Scientology if he returned to the United States to serve his sentence. The Church, on the other hand, has repeatedly declared that Henson is a criminal, a terrorist, and a fugitive from justice.
Henson entered the Scientology battle when it was at its most heated, in the mid-1990s. In 1996, the most secret of Scientology's "secret writings" (see Scientology beliefs and practices) were released onto the Internet, and Scientology embarked on a massive worldwide campaign to keep them from being spread to the four corners of the earth. Henson examined these writings, entitled New Era Dianetics (known as NOTS in Scientology, and to the organization's critics), and from his examination of these "secret" documents, he claimed that Scientology was committing medical fraud.
The NOTS documents, he said, contained detailed instructions for the treatment of physical ailments and illnesses through the use of Scientology practices. However, a Supreme Court decision in 1971 had declared that Scientology's writings were meant for "purely spiritual" purposes, and all Scientology books published since then have included disclaimers stating that Scientology's E-meter device "does nothing" and does not cure any physical ailments. The NOTS procedures, Henson claimed, were a violation of this decision. To prove his claim, Henson posted two pages from the NOTS documents onto the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.
The Church of Scientology immediately threatened to sue Henson, but he did not back down from his claims. Immediately afterwards, Henson was served with a lawsuit by the Church's legal arm, the Religious Technology Center (RTC). Henson defended himself in order to avoid the massive legal costs incurred in a Scientology lawsuit (see Scientology and the Legal System). After a lengthy court battle involving massive amounts of paperwork, Henson was found guilty of copyright infringement. He was ordered to pay $75,000 in fines, an amount trumpeted by the Church as the largest copyright damages award ever levied against an individual. (Critics of Scientology estimate that the organization spent a total of about $2 million in litigation against Henson.)
Henson declared bankruptcy in response to the judgement, though the Church dogged him through every step of the filing process. Henson began protesting Scientology regularly, standing outside of Scientology's film studio ("Gold Base," see Church of Scientology) with a picket sign. The organization sought assistance from the authorities, and finally Henson was arrested and brought on trial for criminal charges.
The jury verdict of the trial resulted in Henson being convicted of one of the three charges: "interfering with a religion." This charge carried a prison term of six months.
Henson, who had been pursued relentlessly by the Church since the original lawsuit over three years previous, stated his belief that if he went to prison, his life would be placed in jeopardy. Rather than serve his sentence, Henson chose to emigrate to Canada and apply for political asylum.
Henson's supporters on alt.religion.scientology made repeated charges that his trial was biased, unfair and a mockery of justice. Henson was prohibited by the trial judge from arguing that copying documents for the purpose of criticism is fair use.
Shortly after his arrival in Canada, Henson was arrested by Canadian authorities in an unusual fashion: at a public shopping mall, a squadron of armed officers surrounded him and arrested him at gunpoint. Henson was unarmed when this occurred, and he is not known to have ever carried a firearm. The police later admitted that they had received "a tip" from the Toronto branch of Scientology that a "dangerous fugitive" was wanted in the United States. Following this incident, Henson was taken to maximum security prison near Toronto, where he was held for 12 days before being released.
Henson is currently residing in Canada, where his application for asylum is still under review.
...(more on Wikipedia)
|
|
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Keith Henson".
|
|
|