Leah Remini Opens up to PEOPLE About Leaving Scientology: 'It's Like a Rebirth'

PATRICK GOMEZ AND JOHNNY DODD
People
November 3, 2015

When Leah Remini made the momentous decision to leave the Church of Scientology in 2013, she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. 

The former King of Queens actress, 45, had been introduced to the religion by her mother at the age of 8, and had been a member for 35 years. As a teen, she even spent a year living – and doing manual labor, including cleaning hotel rooms – at the church’s Sea Org headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, which is reserved for Scientology’s most dedicated members. 

"I've been given a second chance at life and so has my family," Remini says. "It's like a rebirth." 

For much more from Remini, including what she says about Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Nicole Kidman, and more, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

Cracks in her devotion to the church formed in 2006 after Remini attended the wedding of fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise and Katie Homles. Remini says she was punished after questioning what she considered eyebrow-raising behaviors by church officials and the absence of her friend Shelly Miscavige, the wife of church leader David Miscavige, at the festivities. 

(Remini filed a missing persons report for Shelley in 2013. The Los Angeles Police Department called her claim "unfounded" and a statement from the Church at the time characterized the inquisition into Shelley’s whereabouts as “ill-advised, ludicrous self-promotion.") 

Remini also began educating herself about the criticisms faced by the church (all of which are refuted by church officials) and made the difficult decision to leave despite the fear she could lose any relationship with her family, including her mom, Vicki Marshall, and her husband, Angelo Pagan. 

But that didn't happen. Her family followed her lead and left with her. 

"They simply put family ahead of the Church, which is oftentimes not the case with Scientology families," Remini says. "I am lucky and blessed." 

Remini chronicles her experience with the religion – and her disillusionment with Cruise, the Church’s most famous member – in her new book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. 

"It wasn’t an easy thing to do," she says of telling her story in the book. "It's about me being flawed." 

The Church of Scientology denies nearly all of Remini's claims, saying in a statement, "It comes as no surprise that someone as self-absorbed as Leah Remini with an insatiable craving for attention would exploit her former faith as a publicity stunt. " 

Remini isn't much bothered. "I understand what they’re doing and why they're doing it," she says of the denunciations by her former church. "It's what they do. I was just hoping they’d be a little more imaginative."

http://www.people.com/article/leah-remini-people-interview-scientology

Religious Landscape Study

Pew Research

The RLS surveys more than 35,000 Americans from all 50 states about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices, and social and political views.

http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

If you think your own logic came from someone else, you might not believe it

Cathleen O'Grady
arstechnica
November 2, 2015 

Walking in Sydney on Flickr

Many people are already familiar with the concept of confirmation bias, which is the tendency for people to seek out arguments that support their existing opinions. It turns out that we’re not only addicted to seeking information that confirms our biases, we’re also willing to tolerate really weak arguments to support our opinions. So weak, in fact, that if we’re tricked into thinking our own arguments come from a stranger, we’re likely to reject them.

A recent paper in the journal Cognitive Science explored this “selective laziness of reasoning,” finding that people really are quite sloppy with their own arguments. The laziness is selective, though—when we’re assessing the arguments of other people, we’re actually inclined to be pretty tough, especially when we disagree with their conclusions.

Lies, tricks, and deceit

Previous research has found that people produce weak arguments for their own beliefs; other studies have indicated that people are quite rigorous at assessing other people's arguments. But no previous study managed to show both happening at the same time. It's important to do this because circumstances can vary widely across different studies, making it difficult to be sure that people are definitely applying different standards.

To test their hypothesis of selective laziness, the authors of the Cognitive Science paper created a situation in which 237 workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk were tricked into thinking that their own arguments came from other people. They were presented with a series of logical problems and prompted for their answers as well as an explanation for their reasoning.

Once they were finished, the participants moved on to the second phase of the experiment. They were told that for each of the problems, they would be reminded of their own answer and shown the answer and argument of another participant. If they thought the other participant’s arguments were good, they would be allowed to change their own answer.

For most of the problems, this setup contained no substantial trickery, except that the answers the researchers provided weren’t actually from another participant. If the participants answered correctly, they were shown the most frequent incorrect answer with an argument that could plausibly support it. If they answered incorrectly, they were shown the correct answer with a supporting argument.

The authors changed this setup for a single question in the set where the participants' original answers were altered slightly and presented as their initial responses. The particpants' real answers, and the reasoning they'd given for them, were then presented as if they were from a different participant.

Obviously, quite a number of people noticed this change. So the experiment was followed by a question about whether the participants noticed their own answers being fed back to them. Slightly more than half of the participants said they noticed, but only 32 percent correctly identified the questions where it had happened.

The analysis focused on the people who hadn’t detected the switch. These people were generally quite unconvinced by their own arguments, rejecting them over half of the time.

People were also reasonably good at detecting whether their original argument had been good or bad. When they had initially chosen the incorrect answer and then were presented with their own argument for that answer, they ended up rejecting it two-thirds of the time. On the other hand, if they originally had the correct answer, they ended up keeping it nearly two-thirds of the time.

Overall, people chose to change their answers in line with better arguments. In the initial test, only 41 percent of people had chosen the correct answer on the manipulated question. In the second phase, when they were given the opportunity to be persuaded by an argument and make the switch, 62 percent got it right—a big jump upward.

More chance for self-scrutiny

As telling as these results might be, there were still limitations in the experiment. Most importantly, people weren't really given the opportunity to scrutinize and rethink their own arguments at any point. That makes it difficult to be certain that they wouldn’t be critical of their own reasoning if they were given another chance to think things through.

It’s also possible that pure and simple practice was playing a role: in the second round, participants had already seen and thought about the questions, so maybe their performance improved just because they were getting more time for consideration.

To handle some of these issues, the researchers conducted a second, similar experiment with one difference: a new group of 174 participants were first asked to answer the question, but they weren't asked to provide their reasoning. In a second round, they were invited to re-think their answers, change them if they preferred, and then give a reason for their final answer. Finally, they were presented with answers from "other participants."

This setup allowed the researchers to check whether people’s answers improved in the second round, helping to isolate the effect of practice. It turned out that for the most part, the participants didn’t change their answers—only 23 people did; 141 didn’t. This outcome was true whether or not the initial answers were correct, suggesting that it wasn’t the extra practice at the problems that was causing the scores to improve.

This time, 46 percent of participants reported noticing the deception, so the analysis focused on the 54 percent who hadn’t spotted it. These participants rejected their own answers 58 percent of the time, and again, they were more likely to change to the correct answer. As a result, the number of people getting the answer right jumped up from 43 percent to 64 percent.

Simple logic problems aren’t the real world

The results show that people are more likely to be critical of their own arguments when they think they are coming from someone else, the authors write. They also show that people “can discriminate strong from weak arguments when they think they are someone else’s.” So we’re not bad at reasoning, just indulging ourselves.

It’s encouraging that people were inclined to adopt the correct answers when they were persuaded by strong reasoning. That said, an experiment dealing with logic problems can’t necessarily be generalized to bigger, messier beliefs and arguments like vaccines or climate change. When individuals’ beliefs are more tied up with political and cultural identities, there are likely to be other influences on people’s decision to question and change their beliefs.

Cognitive Science, 2015. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12303

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/if-you-think-your-own-logic-came-from-someone-else-you-might-not-believe-it/

GLENN SCHWARTZ: THE FALL AND SALVATION OF THE WHITE HENDRIX

Jeff Stevenson 
TeamRock

With James Gang and Pacific Gas & Electric, Glenn Schwartz was set to be one of the great guitar heroes of the 70s – but then he was lost to a horrific religious cult. This is his story

Glenn Schwartz stands before 80,000 people and he knows what’s coming next. It’s Saturday December 28, 1968, and the first day of the Miami Pop Festival is in full swing. The ads promise three days of “Beautiful Music”, and for the next 72 hours the Gulfstream Park Racetrack in Hallandale, Florida will host the likes of Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, Canned Heat and Fleetwood Mac, as well as Glenn’s own band, Pacific Gas & Electric.

The glorious weather makes for the perfect environment for this music, and PG&E’s blistering blues rock chimes with the mood of the festival, Schwartz’s Riviera semi-hollow guitar reflects the sun and flashes like a bolt of lightning, and as he finishes his final solo, the crowd roar their adoration. It happens wherever and whenever they play. The place always goes crazy, screaming and cheering.

Glenn eyes the crowd. It’s as if the whole world, a true sea of humanity, is before him. From his vantage point, he sees what many of them are doing, can smell what many of them are smoking, and knows what he and his fellow bandmates and the other artists at the festival have available to them. The world and all of its pleasures have truly been laid at his feet.

But something is troubling him. It’s been troubling him for a while. Now that he’s in a successful, in-demand band, he’s seen up-close the perils of everything this lifestyle has to offer. He’s friendly with Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, and he knows the vices they struggle with. He grasps the microphone, and 80,000 people quieten down to hear what their new blues-rock messiah has to say.

“You know, my life seemed all right to me for a while, until I was no longer in control,” he says. “Then I was afraid. There was a revolution… and it took place inside me.”

He looks intently at the mob before him. Someone whistles. His bandmates nervously glance at one another. Glenn has done this before, grabbed the microphone and taken the performance off script, off the deep end, off the cliff. They’re in freefall now, and have no idea what he’ll do or say next.

With his guitar strapped in front of him, Glenn Schwartz points one hand to the sky and the other at the mass of people before him.

“The revolution that took place in me, it happened when I was saved through Jesus Christ,” he shouts into the microphone. “I accepted Jesus through a real need. I want you to know I’ve kicked drugs! No more drugs, man! And I’ll tell you something else. Christ is my saviour now. Yeah, Jesus has saved me. He can save you, too! Turn to Jesus, man – He’s the only way to heaven. Ask Him into your heart!”

Within two years, Glenn Schwartz had vanished from the spotlight, his head scrambled by fame, drugs or perhaps something deeper-rooted, to a religious commune in rural Ohio. He would spend the next decade there as a member of a Christian cult, the Church Of The Risen Christ, spreading the gospel of its leader, the Reverend Larry Hill, as part of the All Saved Freak Band.

I first came across the All Saved Freak Band in 1976, when I saw an advertisement for their first album, My Poor Generation. The album had been released three years earlier, and it was billed to Glenn Schwartz And The All Saved Freak Band. I wondered how Schwartz – a guitar god-in-waiting who had been dubbed “the White Hendrix” – had ended up in this group whose album cover featured a bearded preacher wearing an Amish hat and pointing menacingly into the distance.

I ordered the LP, and it was pretty good. There was some intense blues rock on two songs Glenn wrote, Daughter Of Zion and Great Victory, but the rest of the music and lyrics were so unconventional that I wanted to hear the two other albums mentioned in the enclosed note – Brainwashedand the oddly titled For Christians, Elves And Lovers.

Over subsequent years, I began to hear and read rumours of the dark history of the All Saved Freak Band, the Church Of The Risen Christ, and especially Larry Hill. There were horrific allegations about what went on at their base, a farm on Fortney Road in Windsor, Ohio. They may have preached peace, love and rock’n’roll for Jesus, but for Glenn Schwartz, the All Saved Freak Band turned into a form of hell on earth.

“On the day you hear Reverend Larry Hill has died, remember to wear thick-soled shoes because hell will be stoked up extra hot,” one reporter told me. “He’s a psychopath. Larry Hill is the Devil incarnate.”

PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC, WITH GLENN SCHWARTZ (REAR LEFT)

Glenn Schwartz was born on March 20, 1940 and raised in Euclid, Ohio. A musical prodigy, he started taking guitar lessons at the age of 11. By 14, he had won an international guitar-playing prize. He married young, at 21, to a woman named Marlene. They had two sons: the first, also called Glenn, was born in 1961; the second, Bob, followed two years later.

“Growing up, he was a great dad,” says Bob Schwartz today. “He was real friendly and kind of goofy. He’d do pratfalls to make everyone laugh. He acted like a big kid himself.”

Glenn spent most of his time picking up gigs with local bands, and he toured to earn money to send home to his wife and sons. But he wasn’t a domestic type, and he and Marlene would eventually divorce, remarry and divorce again (the second, and final split, came in 1972).

Schwartz passed through several local groups, including Frank Samson And The Wailers, The Pilgrims and Mr Stress Blues Band. But his break came in 1966, when Cleveland drummer Jim Fox was searching for a guitarist for his new band, The James Gang.

“Glenn came to listen to us play,” recalls Fox. “At one point, he came up on stage and started playing Jeff’s Boogie with us. He was phenomenal.”

The James Gang quickly became the city’s most promising band. Glenn played a natural-finish Epiphone Riviera hollow-body guitar that he had decorated himself. Among other things, it had a painted-on peace sign and flowers, together with the words “Help Me”.

Butch Armstrong was a 13-year-old budding guitarist when he first saw Glenn play with The James Gang in Cleveland. “The first time me and my friends saw Glenn, we all thought he looked like Jesus,” says Armstrong. “We didn’t know his name, so we just called him Jesus. He had hair down to his shoulders and wore sandals. There was a sound going around back then, something Clapton and the Stones were introducing to music, and we just couldn’t figure out how they did it. We could not get the licks right. Then we saw Glenn Schwartz and he knew how to do it, and he created that sound right in front of us! He used his fingers with the whammy bar and that was it. He became God to us in that moment. Everywhere he played, we’d go. Wherever Jesus went, we followed.”

Ramona Shay was a friend of Glenn’s. She recalls him enjoying the camaraderie of life in a band, and his enthusiasm for music. “On stage, Glenn would step out in front of the band and sometimes even move into the audience and play,” she says. “He played like he had been playing for centuries – never missed a lick, a beat or a note. He was spontaneous, with an honest simplicity and a tender straightforwardness. You looked into his eyes and never doubted that you could trust him with your life, your money or your wife. He was polite and respectful to all people.”

Glenn participated in everything that life in an up-and-coming band had to offer, including the sex and drugs. But like many young people at the time, he also began to explore different spiritual paths – Hare Krishna and Transcendental Meditation. He gave up eating meat for a while, though his spiritual questing never put a stop to the more carnal activities on offer to the band.

To the outside world, Glenn had it all. He was the hotshot guitarist in a band tipped for national success – he’d even been nicknamed “the white Hendrix” in local circles. Yet despite the attention and acclaim, there was a growing emptiness in his life, a nagging spiritual void that he couldn’t fill. It didn’t help that he was on the verge of exhaustion due to the constant touring, gruelling live shows and excessive drug use.

In November 1967, Glenn made the decision to leave The James Gang – and Ohio. He would head to California in the hope that a change of scenery would help him clear his head and calm his spiritually confused heart. The band’s local following was stunned.

“I was a big James Gang fan because of Glenn Schwartz,” says Butch Armstrong. “I was bummed out when he left the group. I didn’t think anyone could take his place.”

A friend drove Glenn out West, dropping him on a corner with just a suitcase and a guitar. At one of his first pick-up gigs in California, Duane Allman saw him and asked him to join the Allman Brothers. Glenn turned him down. Instead, he opted to throw in his lot with Pacific Gas & Electric, an eclectic multi-racial blues/soul/jazz/rock band, after meeting their singer Charlie Allen.

PG&E bassist and co-founder Brent Block recalls the first time he heard Glenn play. “We were all blown away by his talent,” says Block. “I had a very hard time keeping up with him. He was nearly a decade older than the rest of us, and had way more experience than we did. He was also an acrobat of sorts. He thought nothing of jumping off stacks of amplifiers and rolling around on stage. One night at the Cheetah Club, I saw him roll off the stage, fall maybe twenty feet, and he never missed a note.”

https://www.teamrock.com/features/2015-10-30/glenn-schwartz-the-fall-and-salvation-of-the-white-hendrix

Social psychology textbooks ignore all modern criticisms of Milgram's "obedience experiments"

Research Digest
October 13, 2015

Some classic psychology experiments, known and discussed far beyond the discipline, have become modern-day myths. Accounts of what happened are frequently simplified and distorted to better convey a powerful revelation about human nature. A perfect example: Stanley Milgram's so-called "obedience experiments", conducted in the 1960s, in which the majority of participants, acting as a "teacher" in a learning task, followed experimenter instructions and gave what they thought was a fatal electric shock to another participant, the "learner", as a punishment for wrong answers.

The usual, disturbing interpretation is that Milgram showed how readily most people will harm others if they are told to do so by authority. Understandably, this has led to a continued fascination with the research, reflected both in popular culture – just this month a new film, The Experimenter, about Stanley Milgram, was aired at the New York Film Festival – and in the academic literature.

Indeed, though Milgram's obedience studies were published decades ago, the rate at which they are cited actually increased between 2007 and 2012. Importantly, part of the reason for this is that several scholars raised new criticisms of the research based on their analysis of the transcripts and audio from the original experiments, or on new simulations or partial replications of the experiments. These contemporary criticisms add to past critiques, profoundly undermining the credibility of the original research and the way it is usually interpreted. That Milgram's studies had a mighty cultural and scholarly impact is not in dispute; the meaning of what he found most certainly is.

However, this is not the picture that any psychology student will discover if they turn to their social psychology textbook, at least not if it's an American text. In a new analysis to be published in Theory and Psychology, Richard Griggs and George Whitehead summarised recent criticisms of the obedience studies and then they turned to the 10 leading and most recently updated social psychology textbooks (in the US, with publication dates from 2012 to 2015) to see which, if any, of the criticisms are featured. The modern criticisms include: When a participant hesitated in applying electric shocks, the actor playing the role of experimenter was meant to stick to a script of four escalating verbal "prods". In fact, he frequently improvised, inventing his own terms and means of persuasion. Gina Perry (author of Behind The Shock Machine) has said the experiment was more akin to an investigation of "bullying and coercion" than obedience.
A partial replication of the studies found that no participants actually gave in to the fourth and final prod, the only one that actually constituted a command. Analysis of Milgram's transcripts similarly suggested that the experimenter prompts that were most like a command were rarely obeyed. A modern analogue of Milgram's paradigm found that order-like prompts were ineffective compared with appeals to science, supporting the idea that people are not blindly obedient to authority but believe they are contributing to a worthy cause. Milgram failed to fully debrief his participants immediately after they'd participated.
In an unpublished version of his paradigm, Milgram recruited pairs of people who knew each other to play the role of teacher and learner. In this case, disobedience rose to 85 per cent.
Many participants were sceptical about the reality of the supposed set-up. Restricting analysis to only those who truly believed the situation was real, disobedience rose to around 66 per cent.
How many of these criticisms feature in modern American social psychology textbooks? None. In a complementary investigation published recently in Teaching of Psychology, Griggs and Whitehead also looked to see if the textbooks gave better coverage to traditional criticisms of the Milgram studies. Only two of the textbooks mentioned long-standing criticisms about the lack of realism in the obedience studies, and only two mentioned methodological criticisms, such as that the participants may have been behaving in a way to support the purpose of the studies. Coverage of ethical concerns was better, though usually with a pro-Milgram bias.


For comparison, Griggs and Whitehead looked at Milgram coverage in general introductory psychology textbooks in the US, and here the findings were more promising. This leads Griggs and Whitehead to ponder whether social psychologist authors of social psychology textbooks are motivated to paint an untarnished version of one of their field's classic studies. Another possibility is that textbook authors believe providing caveats and criticisms of classic studies will spoil and confuse a compelling story. Certainly space is not the issue: coverage of Milgram in terms of textbook pages has increased over time.


These new revelations about textbook coverage of Milgram add to previous analyses by Richard Griggs, showing that other classic studies in social psychology are also given biased treatment in introductory texts, including Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and Asch's conformity experiments. Griggs has also found that the classic case of Phineas Gage is also covered poorly in textbooks, and that the latest revelations about the classic case of Little Albert are too recent to feature in textbooks.


Griggs and Whitehead call on social psychology textbook authors to remedy their tendentious coverage. "To continue to ignore the flaws and shortcoming of Milgram’s obedience study will not only shortchange our students of an accurate account of this classic study and invaluable practice in critical thinking," they write, "but also continue the ‘giving away’ of biased information, and both of these outcomes would reflect poorly on our discipline."


_________________________________ ResearchBlogging.org

Griggs, R., & Whitehead, G. (2015). Coverage of Milgram's Obedience Experiments in Social Psychology Textbooks: Where Have All the Criticisms Gone? Teaching of Psychology, 42 (4), 315-322 DOI: 10.1177/0098628315603065

Richard A. Griggs, & George I. Whitehead III (2015). Coverage of recent criticisms of Milgram’s obedience experiments in introductory social psychology textbooks Theory and Psychology


Image: a still from The Experimenter movie

--further reading-- The six forms of resistance shown by participants in Milgram's notorious "obedience studies" Milgram's obedience studies - not about obedience after all? Psychologist magazine special issue on Milgram.
Foundations of sand? The lure of academic myths and their place in classic psychology

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/10/contemporary-social-psychology.html?m=1

Tom Cruise’s nightmare Scientology wedding: Leah Remini opens up about her “reprogramming” after the Cruise-Holmes nuptials

ANNA SILMAN
Salon
November 2, 2015

 

Leah Remini 

In a revealing interview with “20/20,” “King of Queens” star Leah Remini opened up about her break with Scientology in 2013, explaining that part of her decision to leave the church grew out of her discomfort with the attention that the organization lavished on its star member Tom Cruise, who she felt was embarrassing the Church with his frequent public antics.

“I was saying that I didn’t think he was becoming of Scientologists, jumping on couches, and attacking Matt Lauer, to attacking Brooke Shields,” she explained. “What the hell is this guy doing? We need to rein it in. We need to stop all this. And he just needs to be an actor.”

Remini details a story of church officials inviting her Tom Cruise’s home one night to teach him salsa dancing. When she got there, Cruise and his new girlfriend Katie Holmes were making out, and Remini joked that they ought to “get a fricking room.” Church officials then filed a “knowledge report” (basically an official complaint) about Remini, which the actress was forced to deal with in auditing sessions.

As she explains, she was “immediately dealt with” after the “incident,” with the Church implying that “the only reason you’re saying these things is because you have your own transgressions.”

“You immediately become guilty,” she added. “Being critical of Tom Ccuise is being critical of Scientology itself. You are a person who is anti the aims and goals of scientology, you are evil.”

Remini says that she became increasingly dismayed by attention heaped on Cruise. Her discomfort reached its peak during Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ wedding, in which the Church repeatedly tried to separate her from her close friend Jennifer Lopez.

“They were trying to extract me,” says Remini. “I could only assume because they wanted to make Jennifer a Scientologist, maybe I was barring that road for them.”

Remini also expressed concern that Church leader David Miscavige was there without his wife Shelly (who has all but disappeared from the public eye since 2007), which led Remini to file a wide-ranging knowledge report about various wedding guests. She did so, the report explains, because she was still hoping to save Scientology from those who were bringing it down: In her view, Tom Cruise and Scientology head honcho David Miscavige.

A Scientology spokesperson, unsurprisingly, dismissed all Remini’s 20/20 claims as “ridiculous and stupid.”

Remini explained that Katie Holmes and a number of other guests also filed “knowledge reports” about her behavior at the wedding, which lead Remini to be sent to the Scientology headquarters at Clearwater to undergo “reprogramming” for “three or four months, from nine in the morning until ten at night.” In a statement to “20/20,” Holmes apologized, saying “I regret having upset Leah in the past and wish her only the best in the future.”

Fighting off tears, Remini expressed her gratitude towards Holmes.

“It makes me emotional because at that time that Katie and this particular crew were writing reports it caused me a lot of time and pain and my family being reprogrammed,” she explains. “At the time I was fighting with her for lack of a better word within the Church and now I know really what she was going through. At the time I was thinking of myself and my family and what we were going through and although painful I had no idea she was going through probably a lot more.”

“Seeing her and Suri out there in the world and her being able to be with her daughter and live her life, I’m touched by it,” continues Remini, who says she left the Church in part to free her own 11-year-old daughter from it’s clutches. “I’m touched by it because I now know she did what she did, leaving in the way she did because she had to protect her daughter which in a way connects us.”



Remini’s tell-all memoir “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology” comes out on Tuesday.

 http://flip.it/DNqH8

Swami death: Accused moves HC seeking CBI probe

On Manorama Online
November 2, 2015

Priyan

Kochi: Priyan, who is facing allegations of murdering former Sivagiri Mutt chief Swamy Saswathikananda, has moved the Kerala High Court seeking a CBI probe into the case.

In his petition, Priyan requested the court to stop the Crime Branch's investigation into the case that the state government ordered the other day. The court is likely to consider the petition on Tuesday.

Sree Narayana Dharma Vedi leader Biju Ramesh said Saswathikananda Swami was murdered by a hired goon named Priyan at the behest of Vellappally Natesan.

Priyan had already denied the allegations. He moved the High Court saying the state police' probe into the case was not satisfactory.

Swami, head of the Ezhava spiritual centre Sivagiri mutt, was drowned in Periyar river in July, 2002 while he was taking bath near Advaitashramam at Aluva near Kochi.

http://english.manoramaonline.com/news/just-in/saswthikananda-death-accused-moves-hc-seeking-cbi-probe.html

Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult

Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult
By Jeff C. Stevenson"A fascinating and disturbing look into the world of vicious cults and the psychological damage they inflict." -Jonathan Kellerman

Fortney Road is a disturbing account of calculated mental, physical, and sexual abuse in an evangelical Christian cult. Drawing on seven years of research including interviews with seventeen survivors, it tells the story of the rise and fall of the Church of the Risen Christ, its sadistic leader the Reverend Larry Hill, and its outreach tool The All Saved Freak Band, one of the earliest religious rock groups borne out of the Jesus Movement. Unfolding against the backdrop of the 1960s and early '70s, Fortney Road is also the story of one brilliant musician who fell victim to a charismatic, cruel zealot. While other cult leaders such as David Koresh and Jim Jones have become infamous, Larry Hill and his followers on Fortney Road have flown largely under the radar-until now. Illustrated with over 50 photographs and images.

Available from Cults101 Bookstore

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FORTNEY ROAD

"A riveting portrait of the rise and fall of the Church of the Risen Christ ... A sad, sordid story of sex, mind control, and rock 'n' roll." -Arthur Goldwag, author of Cults, Conspiracies & Secret Societies 

"An amazing story that needs to be told!" -Mark Allan Powell, Trinity Lutheran Seminary

"A timely warning about charismatic leaders that take advantage of well-intended followers under the guise of religious devotion." -John Styll, co-founder of CCM Magazine 

"With alarming detail and gripping first-person accounts, Stevenson's well-researched book educates readers about the dilemmas and the dangers of blind faith." Janja Lalich, author of Take Back Your Life and Bounded Choice

"An incredible book that is hard to put down. Absolutely fascinating!" -Don Cusic, author of Saved By Song

"A fascinating yet disturbing account of religious zeal gone haywire ... so weird it almost seems like fiction."-Dave Hollandsworth, founder One Way Jesus Music site

"Masterfully documented ... captures the zeitgeist of that era." -Mark N. Jones, musician and artist

"Reveals how fundamentalist religion can become a tool to manipulate and abuse people." -Brian Quincy Newcomb, veteran music critic

"The incredible story of the Church of the Risen Christ community ... the survivors are finally able to tell their story." David Di Sabatino, documentary filmmaker of Fallen Angel and Frisbee 

"A fascinating story of one church's descent into depravity and the music it created." -Bob Gersztyn, author of Jesus Rocks The World.

"Masterful ... an eye-opening, cautionary tale that informs and forewarns." -Jim Siegelman, co-author with Flo Conway of Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change

"An in-depth look at the horrific history of one of the dark, hidden corners of the Jesus People movement." -Larry Eskridge, author of God's Forever Family

"A haunting masterpiece ... Fortney Road is not just a book. It's a warning."-Bo Lane, author of Why Pastors Quit

"This is a great book!" Bob Kilpatrick, musician, author of The Art of Being You

"Stevenson has masterfully documented Glenn Schwartz' troubled journey and captured the zeitgeist of that era." -Mark N. Jones, musician and artist

Review 

Enhanced with more than fifty photographs and images, Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult is an inherently fascinating and fully informed read from beginning to end. A heretofore untold story of religious fanaticism in the United States, Fortney Road is strongly recommended for both community and academic library collections. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, Fortney Road is also available for personal reading lists in a Kindle edition. --The Midwest Book Review

An unexpectedly entertaining, phenomenally well-researched and thoughtfully organized account of religion gone horribly awry. In it, journalist Jeff C. Stevenson exposes much more than the odd happenings that took place on a fringe religious group's isolated farm. By lifting the veil on tactics and techniques that even mainstream religions use to unduly influence their followers, Stevenson exposes the essential truth that underlies cult-leader Larry Hill's chilling statement: "Our group was no more a cult than the Baptist church is." --M. Dolon Hickmon, Patheos.com

Fortney Road is a journalistic enterprise spanning seven years and many states looking for the untold whole story of Larry Hill's Church of the Risen Christ, a Christian cult that was horrifically skewed, and for all its investigative foray, this book belongs on shelves nation-wide. --Caitlin Schesser, Jesusfreakhideout.com

About the Author 

Jeff C. Stevenson works as a freelance copywriter for various New York advertising agencies. He is also a writer, photographer, and film publicist and producer. His work has appeared in PRISM magazine, where his article "Bury Me Standing" was awarded the editor's choice, and he has contributed entertainment items to the New York Post's Page Six. He spent seven years researching and writing Fortney Road. Jeff lives in New York City.

The Tangled Cultural Roots of Dungeons & Dragons

JON MICHAUD
New Yorker
November 2, 2015

In 1984, the comic-strip artist Jack Chick, an evangelical Christian, published a tract called “Dark Dungeons.” In it, a young woman named Debbie is seduced into witchcraft through her participation in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The Mephistophelean figure in the strip is the Dungeon Master, a raven-haired woman named Ms. Frost, who says to Debbie, “Your cleric has been raised to the 8th level. I think it’s time that you learn how to really cast spells.” But then Debbie’s friend Marcie commits suicide after her character dies in the game, and the new witch is wracked with guilt and doubt. She is saved, ultimately, when Mike, a hunky Christian boy (“I’ve been praying and fasting for you”), takes her to see a pastor who has himself come “out of witchcraft.” Debbie meets the pastor and repents, accepting Jesus as her Savior: “I want You to be in charge of everything…not that lousy D. & D. manual.”

The strip appeared during the height of the Reagan-era backlash against the fantasy role-playing game, which had become enormously popular very quickly. Co-created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in 1974, D. & D. had gone from a heavily leveraged first printing of a thousand hand-assembled copies—stored, at first in a colleague’s basement—to a cultural sensation. By the early eighties, the game generated eight million dollars in annual sales, a figure that would rise to thirty million later in the decade. TSR, the company created by Gygax and Don Kaye, in 1973, became the preëminent purveyor of role-playing games in the world, signing a distribution deal with Random House and spinning off a Saturday morning cartoon on CBS. Yet from its earliest iteration, Dungeons & Dragons also drew suspicion. According to Michael Witwer’s new biography of Gygax, “Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons,” U.S. Army intelligence sent two agents to infiltrate Gygax’s war-gaming circle in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the nineteen-seventies, believing that the group’s tabletop reënactments with miniature figures might be training sessions for would-be anti-government insurgents. Finding Gygax and his cohort to be harmless, they asked to join. (More on this story in a moment.)

Other suspicions about D. & D. were not so easily dismissed. In 1979, the game was linked to the disappearance of a college student named James Dallas Egbert III. (“Fantasy cult angle probed in search for computer whiz,” read one headline.) Though he was eventually found unharmed, the episode was turned into “Mazes and Monsters,” a potboiler by Rona Jaffe that was adapted into a 1982 TV movie starring Tom Hanks. Patricia Pulling, whose D. & D.-obsessed son committed suicide, started an organization called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD). She later wrote a book called “The Devil’s Web: Who Is Stalking Your Children for Satan?” Dr. Thomas Radecki, a founding member of the National Coalition on TV Violence, said, “There is no doubt in my mind that the game Dungeons & Dragons is causing young men to kill themselves and others.” In her book “Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society,” Tipper Gore connected the game to satanism and the occult. All of this prompted a “60 Minutes” segment in which Gygax rejected these myriad accusations, calling them “nothing but a witch hunt.”

What was largely unknown or omitted from this brouhaha is that Gygax was an intermittently observant Jehovah’s Witness. This startling fact crops up about halfway through Witwer’s biography, when he notes that Gygax’s “controversial” game, along with his smoking and drinking, had led to a parting of the ways with the local congregation. Up until that point, the matter of Gygax’s faith had gone unmentioned in the biography, and it is barely discussed thereafter. (The book’s index does not have an entry for “Jehovah’s Witness” or “Gygax, Gary—religious beliefs.”) Given the furor that D. & D. caused, the absence of a deeper analysis of Gygax’s faith is a glaring omission. In a recent interview with Tobias Carroll, Witwer acknowledged that Gygax “was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. He would go door-to-door and he would give out pamphlets. He was pretty outspoken about it, as a matter of fact.” The reason for almost completely excluding it from the biography, Witwer says, is that “I couldn’t find it [as] a huge driving force in his life.…I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed with that, because I’m not clear that, especially with his gaming work and even his home life, how big a factor that was on a day-to-day basis. But I do know he was practicing.”

Gygax was enough of a believer in the sect’s dogma to post a note in the International Federation of Wargaming Monthly informing its readers that he did not celebrate Christmas because the Bible commands “that the followers of Jesus refrain from having anything to do with pagan religious celebrations.” This from a man whose company would go on to publish books called “Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes” and “Deities and Demigods,” in which beings from numerous pagan religions were codified for inclusion in Dungeons & Dragons.


But Witwer, rather than look more deeply into this and other particularities of Gygax’s life and personality, opts to write about his subject as if he were the Walter Mittyish hero of a comic novel, referring to him throughout as “Gary,” dramatizing scenes and employing re-created dialogue “combined, and in some instances imagined to best support the known documentary record.” (The story about Army intelligence officers is credited, in the book’s notes, to Gygax’s son Ernie, who was present for those war-gaming sessions; one reviewer has labeled it “fanfiction.” “Many of the events described are controversial and told from personal perspectives that reflect the beliefs of the individuals involved,” Witwer writes in an author’s note.) The result is an episodic, shallow portrait that leaves the reader wanting much more. We get just a paragraph on Gygax’s unhappy stint in the Marines, for instance; the idea that boot camp might have had some bearing on Gygax’s lifelong effort to re-create combat conditions in tabletop games never seems to cross Witwer’s mind. Likewise, there are only passing mentions of Gygax’s years of work as an insurance underwriter. But one needs only to browse the Advanced D. & D. “Player’s Handbook” or the “Dungeon Master’s Guide” to see how similar the books’ numerous charts are to actuarial tables. Witwer does give a clear and readable account of all the corporate machinations—lawsuits, stock buyouts, firings—that went on between Gygax and his business partners at TSR, but those events have already been well documented elsewhere.


What is especially disappointing about this is that a study of Gygax’s life does actually yield potential insights into the game that he created, a game that has gone on to have a tremendous cultural influence that remains underappreciated. Consider, for instance, Paul La Farge’s much more illuminating 2006 essay on Dungeons & Dragons, from The Believer, which concludes with the author visiting Gygax at his home in Lake Geneva:

As we talked, though, it became clear that Gygax thinks strategically about more or less everything. He mentioned that his son Luke had served in the first Gulf War: “I told him when he was over there for Desert Shield, I said, ‘Well, here’s what’s going to happen. The [Coalition’s] left flank is gonna come around and pocket all those dummies!’ And that’s exactly what they did. I couldn’t believe it, you know? Boy, Saddam Hussein’s not a general.”
This brief scene suggests that for Gygax, war games offered not just a dreamy retreat from the real world, but a prism through which to examine it. It is a perspective that seems increasingly prescient as the line between the virtual and the actual continues to blur.

Gygax was an ur-nerd who not only changed the way games are played but who also endured a tumultuous business career that, in the right hands, could make as compelling a story as that of Steve Jobs. He was a high-school dropout who lost his father when he was still young, never had a driver’s license, married early, had six children, two wives, turned an obsession with military war-gaming into a worldwide phenomenon, started a successful company from which he was later pushed out only to return and then be bought out once again. Following a well-trodden path, he went to Hollywood, where he briefly prospered, snorting cocaine and hosting pool parties at King Vidor’s mansion, before failing, miserably, to get a motion picture made. His influence can be seen in everything from video games to “The Hunger Games.” Like Debbie in Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons,” Gygax, who died in 2008, made his way back to God at the end of his life, writing in January of that year, “All I am is another fellow human that has at last, after many wrong paths and failed attempts, found Jesus Christ.”

Witwer’s book aims to place Gygax “among the innovators who laid the foundations of today’s popular culture,” which is the right goal, though one that “Empire of the Imagination” has neither the depth nor subtlety to achieve. Dungeons & Dragons brought real human complexity and self-determination to gaming, while its use of role-playing avatars foreshadowed the identity shape-shifting we now see every day on the Web. Ultimately, the game tantalizes its players with what seems like a very American promise: that each of us can be the master of our own dungeon.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-tangled-cultural-roots-of-dungeons-dragons

Rajneeshpuram: 30 years since the collapse of an Oregon commune

KGW Staff
November 2, 2015

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

ANTELOPE, Ore. -- It seems inconceivable in 2015 that a spiritual leader from India could bring thousands of adherents to Oregon and take over a small Central Oregon town. But Sunday marked exactly 30 years since that man's arrest, which brought to a close one of the strangest sagas in the state's history.

In 1981, the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased the 64,000-acre Big Muddy ranch outside Antelope, Oregon. The price tag was $5.75 million, a whopping $15 million in 2015 dollars. A year later, followers voted (unanimously) to incorporate their ranch into the city of Rashneeshpuram. 

It featured all the civic amenities of any Oregon city -- police and fire crews, water and sewage systems, transit, an airport, retail and restaurants. 

The flamboyant Bhagwan was doted on by his followers, who indulged him his excesses that included more than 70 Rolls Royce luxury cars. Each day, as adherents would line a road along Rashneeshpuram, a smiling, waving Bhagwan would drive-by in a Rolls Royce. 

Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer would sue and try to disallow the incorporation, arguing that a religious group could not control a city. The commune collapsed before the case could wind its way into appeals courts. 

In 1984, the Rajneeshees brought in 2,000 homeless people to essentially register as voters. The sect took over the town and the local school district.

Frohnmayer's federal counterpart, U.S. Attorney Charles Turner, became the target of an assassination plot orchestrated by a cadre of Rajneeshees acting on their own. Frohnmayer was on the hit list, along with higher-ups in the cult itself. The Baghwan's own personal physician was a target. 

The plotters also were responsible for a bio-terror attack at a restaurant in The Dalles, where a salad bar laced with salmonella sickened over 700 people. 

In Portland, the sect ran a vegetarian restaurant/disco called Zorba the Buddha. They purchased the downtown Martha Washington Hotel, housing for single women at the time, turning it into the Hotel Rajneesh, which was bombed in 1983, reportedly by a militant group. 

All of this started to collapse as Turner and other government officials zeroed in the commune's dark side. In September 1985, the guru's de facto second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela abruptly left her post, and the U.S., along with other top Rajneeshee officials. 

That November, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh pled guilty to two felonies, pay a fine and leave the country. 

Much has been written about the commune, both during the era and after. Arguably, no other body of work matches that of the Oregonian, which ran a 20-part series in 1985 and in 2011, a long-form narrative by investigative editor Les Zaitz, who worked on the earlier series. Included are personal essays written by followers who lived on the commune in the 1980s. 



The 1984 documentary will be available in four parts here after the live stream concludes. Click here for Part 1 http://www.kgw.com/story/news/2015/11/02/rajneeshpuram-30-years-since-collapse-oregon-commune/74885010/

Opinion on sale

The Hindu Businessline
November 2, 2015

The tricky world of online reviews

One area that is still outside Amazon’s purview is apparently ‘one star’ review of books. Political groups and religious cults apparently target books they dislike with a flood of ‘one star’ reviews with a view towards taking them off the shelves!


Consumers have always relied on ‘word of mouth’ to varying degrees for making their purchase decisions. This is especially if we have a good opinion of the opinion giver’s opinions! We are also discerning when it comes to accepting opinions. We often have specific people we would like to consult on particular product/ service groups: Ms X for kitchen-related stuff, Mr Y for electronics, and definitely not Mr Z for holiday recommendations.

The web took all this to an infinite level by allowing for comments and opinions to be tagged on to articles, and shopping sites. The advantage of reading a news item on the web is that one can start or join an on-going debate. Unfortunately, the anonymity seems to bring out the worst in some, and one has to sift through a lot of trash to find meaningful comments. Some newspapers, this one included, ‘moderate’ by reviewing comments before posting but I’m not sure I like the censorship.

When it comes to products and services, comments and opinions provide additional inputs, and are the modern ‘word of mouth.’ We suspect there must be psychological reasons why a larger number of disgruntled customers post an opinion as against satisfied customers; they are bitter, want to let go of some steam, and so on. Yet, this does not seem to act as a filter when we are reading the comments, and perhaps we do get influenced against the product. One negative comment may weigh more than a positive comment!

Response matters
Opinions are big when it comes to products and services. I have even used a potential comment on a website as a threat to extract better service from the reception desk of hotels. Research shows that positive reviews help drive traffic to a hotel, especially if it is a lesser known hotel. Fortunately, potential customers are more impacted by depth of comment (‘the faucet was dripping water all night and they did nothing about it’) as against a general praise (‘the people are so friendly’).

Other research shows when there is a high-percentage of negative reviews, high-involvement customers join in and tend to conform. Bad comments have a momentum of its own, so watch out if you see several bad comments, it does not necessarily mean a majority are rating it poorly. A kind of herd mentality, I guess.

Fortunately, Trip Advisor and many other sites allow the vendor or service provide to post a rebuttal. This not only helps provide the other side of the story but also suggests that this is a hotel that cares about opinions.

The credibility of the opinions as a source of additional information requires some policing on the part of commercial site administrators. Organisations whose exclusive business is providing opinions, such as Yelp, and Epinions.com regularly monitor and set up verification methods.

Amazon.com takes legal action against opinion frauds. It has sued several hundreds of individuals who were in the business of writing ‘five star’ reviews for products on Amazon for a fee as low as $5 (₹325). Amazon also uses algorithms to identify false reviews.

One area that is still outside Amazon’s purview is apparently ‘one star’ review of books. Political groups and religious cults apparently target books they dislike with a flood of ‘one star’ reviews with a view towards taking them off the shelves!

The writer teaches at Suffolk University, Boston, and Jindal Global University, Delhi NCR

(This article was published on November 2, 2015)

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/opinion-on-sale/article7834118.ece

Ku Klux Klan info leaked by Anonymous; Mayors, Senators, Alabama KKK group included

Leada Gore
AL.com
November 02, 2015 

Anonymous 

The hacktivist group Anonymous has begun publishing personal details of members of the Ku Klux Klan, including information allegedly connected to groups in Alabama.

In a press release, Anonymous said it has launched "Operation KKK," an effort to reveal personal information on members of the white supremacist group. The group originally said it would release information on as many as 1,000 KKK members on Nov. 5 but posted some phone numbers and emails Sunday and Monday.

"You are legally free to live and be any which way you choose to live and be," Anonymous said in a message directed to the KKK. "Keep in mind, it is not illegal nor oppressive to hurt your feelings. With that said, we are stripping you of your anonymity. This is not a threat, but rather a promise."

The two groups first squared off last summer during unrest in Ferguson, Missouri over the police-involved shooting death of black teenager.

Alabama groups

The first wave of postings included email addresses and phone numbers Anonymous claims belong to KKK members and groups. So far, four separate postings include 57 numbers and 23 email addresses. None of the information has been verified.

One of those emails apparently belongs to an Alabama group - invisibleempireofalabama@gmail.com. Requests for comments sent to that email address have not been returned.

In previous online postings, Anonymous had listed names of four KKK groups in Alabama: the International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Pinson; Loyal White Knights of the KKK in Birmingham; United Klans of America in Ashland; and North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Red Bay.

Of those groups, only the Loyal White Knights and United Klans of America are listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center's map of KKK groups in Alabama. It's unclear whether the other groups are official organizations or loosely organized groups. SPLC estimates there are 72 KKK groups nationwide with an estimated 3,000 members.

Anonymous said the rest of the information will be released Nov. 5 to coincide with the group's "Million Mask March" planned for that day.

Elected officials

In a separate leak, Anonymous posted a list of elected officials, including U.S. Senators and mayors, that it claims are affiliated with the KKK. None of the elected officials on the unverified list are from Alabama and some of those named are quickly issuing denials.

"This allegation is false, insulting and ridiculous," said Lexington, Kentucky mayor Jim Gray, whose name was included on the list. "I have never had any relationship of any kind with the KKK. I am opposed to everything it stands for. I have no idea where this information came from, but wherever it came from, it is wrong."

Florida man in failed-exorcism slaying found guilty, gets life

Kristen Mitchell
Tampa Tribune (TNS)
November 2, 2015

Florida is known for its bizarre inhabitants. 

CLEARWATER — After 17 years and a two-week trial, Helene Ball's family is one step closer to closure.

Bobby McGee, 60, was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday afternoon in the 1998 stabbing death of his wife, Ball.

McGee stabbed Ball, 44, 19 times in what his defense called a failed exorcism to cast out demons inside her.

McGee's public defenders, Jane Matheny and John Swisher, maintained their client, who has received psychiatric treatment while in custody for much of the last two decades, was insane at the time of the slaying.

But Amy Stout just calls him a liar.

"I've waited 17 long years for them to say the word 'guilty,' " said Stout, Ball's daughter, outside the courtroom Friday.

Stout was a teenager when her mother was killed. After the verdict was announced, Stout and Ball's niece gave statements to Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Nancy Moate Ley prior to McGee's sentencing.

Fun stuff: FloriDuh, weird news, photos and more
Stout said her mother, a nurse at the Pinellas County Jail, was kind and loving.

"You didn't know her at all," Stout said Friday in the courtroom. "She was full of life."

McGee in 1998 wrote in his diary about how he thought Ball, then his wife of three months, was possessed by the devil. He thought by doing an exorcism he could save the marriage, his defense team asserted. McGee never intended to kill his wife, they argued.

Ley sentenced McGee to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Anne Lardner, Ball's niece, said after hearing about McGee's mental state for two weeks, someone needed to speak up for her aunt.

To the court, Lardner said if McGee wants to see the devil, he should look at himself. Ball was a beautiful, fun-loving person who cared about everybody, she said.

"You were the cockroach she just couldn't get rid of," said Lardner, who was 10num>frac>numer>1/numer>denom>2/denom>/frac>/num>when Ball was killed. "I hope you hate yourself as much as the world hates you."

Since shortly after his arrest in 1998, McGee has undergone treatment to restore his competency to stand trail.

He has a history of mental illness and religious delusions, and considers himself a prophet of God.

Before he was sentenced, McGee stood before Ley and benches filled with Ball's loved ones, and read a poem about kindness.

Ball was McGee's sixth wife.

McGee was involuntarily committed under the state's Baker Act in 1994 and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After he was discharged, he did not follow up and seek treatment.

"He did not believe that he was mentally ill," Matheny said during his closing argument Thursday. "He believes he's doing God's work."

Shortly after marrying Ball, the two split up and McGee left their house. His defense said McGee wanted to work things out, so he hid in her attic and waited for her to come home one day so he could perform an exorcism.

Assistant State Attorney Rene Bauer, who worked alongside Assistant State Attorney Richard Ripplinger, said McGee was "dressed to kill" when he confronted his wife the day she died. Waiting in the attic showed premeditation and planning leading up to the stabbing, Bauer said.

After his arrest, McGee expressed concern about how he would be treated at the jail because Helene Ball worked there, Bauer said, and what his parents would think about what he had done.

"He knew the consequence of his actions; he knew the difference between right and wrong," Bauer said. "There's nothing delusional about it."

From the defense table Bobby McGee interrupted Bauer during her closing arguments several times, saying he didn't mean to kill his wife and that it was not planned.

"Not true, not true," he said, a worn red Bible on the table in front of him.

But Friday, after about two hours of deliberation, the jury decided otherwise.

"He hid behind a Bible for 17 years," Ripplinger said outside the courtroom. "But not anymore."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-failed-exorcism-death-bobby-mcgee-20151102-story.html

FIRE: Japanese Happy Science Teacher Ryuho Accused Of Leading Cult

Chimp Reports
June 22, 2012

Happy Science entered Uganda in 2008. It has since spread beyond Kampala to Lira, Karuma, Tororo and Entebbe.

Now it is engaged in an aggressive and expensive promotional campaign heralding the appearance of its founder on 23rd June at Namboole Stadium.

That founder is Ryuho Okawa, a 55-year-old former businessman who was born as Takashi Nakagawa on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s main islands.

Okawa claims that in 1981 he experienced “Buddha Enlightenment,” which led him to organize Kofuku no Kagaku (“science of happiness”) in October 1986 to offer “salvation for all humankind.” Okawa has gained a wide audience through publishing and films.

Today he is one of Japan’s wealthiest men.

Happy Science is one of “new religions,” that have sprouted in Japan since World War II. It advertises itself as “a universal religion open to people of all religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.”

But more than this, Okawa claims to be the most important person in the world today: El Cantare, the literal reincarnation of the original Buddha and “the supreme God of Earth.”

In 1991, the Associated Press quoted Okawa as boasting that “I came here as more than the Messiah…This universe, this world were based on my words and my teachings.”

How did Okawa come to such stunning delusions of grandeur? One reason is that he is a practicing occultist—a spirit medium.

And like Alice Lakwena, Credonia Mwerinde, and Joseph Kony, he confounds and controls his followers by claiming to speak for the dead.

The Japan Times explains that before founding Happy Science, Okawa “wrote books in which he channeled the spirits of Muhammad, Christ, Buddha, and Confucius,” among others.

Strangely, these long-departed religious leaders and geniuses had much the same message: “Japan is the world’s greatest power and should ditch its Constitution, rearm and lead the world.”

Indeed, in 1991 the Associated Press described Okawa’s passionate sermon at a giant rally where he declared the Japanese “a chosen people” who are destined to “destroy the United States and the Soviet Union,” making China “a slave” and Korea “a prostitute.
But what does all this mean to Christians in Uganda?

Scripture commands followers of Jesus to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

Christians will find the vast doctrine of Happy Science neither happy nor scientific. It’s a bizarre, complex combination of New Age and eastern mysticism, mixed with Okawa’s sci-fi fantasies of lost civilizations and multi-dimensional beings.

And it conflicts violently with the Bible in almost every major category of belief. Okawa denies the Trinity, the unique deity and incarnation of Jesus Christ, His atonement for sin and resurrection, and the doctrine of everlasting punishment.

In his books Okawa shamelessly makes Moses, Peter, Paul and even Jesus his spirit puppets to mouth his occultic messages.

At a time when many are seeking hope, longing for answers, and hungry for something “new,” Ugandans need to know that Happy Science is a hollow substitute for the Good News that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Curious churchgoers who are tempted by Okawa’s pride and pageantry should beware lest, “as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3). “No wonder,” the Apostle Paul continues, “for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds” (vv. 14–15).

The writer is a graduate of African Bible University who is involved in research and documentation of New Religious movements and the defense of the Christian faith”.

The views expressed herein are the author’s not Chimpreports.com management.

http://www.chimpreports.com/4827-fire-japanese-happy-science-teacher-ryuho-accused-of-leading-cult/