Scientologists protest psychiatry at national conference

NIAGARA FALLS - A weekend conference of psychiatrists was picketed here Friday by Scientologists who marched outside the convention center banging drums and carrying signs that read, “Psychiatry kills.”

More than 200 psychiatrists and mental health professionals from across the country are attending the second annual Comprehensive Review of Psychiatry in the Conference Center Niagara Falls.

The pickets belong to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and has more than 135 chapters in 34 countries. One of the organization’s more famous members is actor Tom Cruise.

“Their beliefs have nothing to do with psychiatry,” said Dr. Steven Dubovsky, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University at Buffalo, which is co-sponsoring the conference with the Western New York Psychiatric Society. “They have the same credibility as people who say they’ve been kidnapped by aliens in flying saucers.”

One of the speakers on Friday’s program was Dr. Daniel Fisher of Washington, D.C., a former schizophrenic who said he was cured by psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.

The Scientologists weren’t allowed inside the convention center, but they wouldn’t have been swayed in their beliefs.

One of their signs, “Psychiatric drugs create kid killers,” referred to school shootings such as the one that occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Eric Harris, one of the two teens who killed 13 and wounded 21, was on the Prozac-like drug Luvox at the time.

“At least eight of the 13 school shooters in recent years were on mind-altering drugs,” said Bruce Wiseman, the commission’s national president, who came from Los Angeles for the protest.

Wiseman said there are 10 million children in the United States on psychiatric drugs that are known to cause suicidal thoughts and behavior. Children with attention deficit disorders are given Ritalin, which is as addictive as cocaine, he claims.

Dubovsky brushed aside that argument as “nonsensical.”

“That’s like saying you shouldn’t give penicillin to a child with pneumonia,” Dubovsky said.

The Buffalo chapter set up an exhibit of anti-psychiatry panels and videos in the Niagara Center, the former Occidental office building near the Rainbow Bridge, that will coincide with the convention.

Dramatic placards and video images decrying psychiatrists as “Masterminds of destruction” and the science as “An industry of death” had a profound effect on some of the people viewing them.

Patricia Felske, a mother of four from Toronto, had one word for her reaction to the exhibit: “Horror.”

The Scientologists said they will picket outside the convention center again today and Sunday.

Consumer Alert: Scientologists “unqualified”

“Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill… (Scientology is) the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.”
- Justice Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, quoted at What judges have to say about Scientology

• Scientology Kills
• Research resources on Scientology

Hate Group within a Hate Group

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a front organization for the Church of Scientology. Both organizations are hate groups actively involved in unethical behavior.

• More articles on the Citizens Commission on Human Rights
• Research resources on CCHR

Reported by Religion News Blog

I slammed Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin the other day for not taking a stronger stance and calling for more action with Planned Parenthood. I accused him of only keeping theology in the intellectual realm and taking no action with it. I thought that was wrong. As apologists, we come in more contact with skeptics and unbelievers than the average Joe Pastor, and it is my position that we should use that responsibility wisely and for the glory of God. If the only Christian that a skeptic comes in contact with is an apologist who turns him off of the faith forever, how is that going to look for said apologist at Final Judgement time? This is why I believe that we, as apologists, have been entrusted with a greater responsibility.

While I still stand behind my original statements on July 20, I now realize that Jimmy Akin’s ministry is purely intellectual, so it only makes sense that the answer stay in the theoretical realms. His purpose is to give us the facts, but let us decide what to do with them. This is what God has set his ministry up to do. Akin seems very sincere in his faith from everything I’ve read in his blog.

I was hasty in my comment, and the blog entry I read today proved to me as much. Akin handled this situation very well. While he still didn’t use Scripture to point the seeker in the right direction, he nonetheless arrived at a similar conclusion to what those of us who believe in sola scriptura would have.

I have a lot of respect for Akin’s minsitry, or else I wouldn’t bother to read his blog everyday.

Almost everyday, I read the apologetics news and blogs. Sometimes there is a lot of useful information, sometimes there isn’t. Today I happened on something in James White’s blog that really struck a chord with me, and I wanted to share it with everyone:

Sometimes I take a little trip through a residential area to avoid a bad corner on my way to the office. This morning as I went through this area I glanced at the thermometer and saw it was reading 111 degrees at only 10am. The thought crossed my mind, “I wonder if Jehovah’s Witnesses are out in this furnace?” I turned a corner and what did I see? An entire group of JW’s. And there, rolling up to someone’s door, three JW’s led by…a man in a wheelchair. Remember, it’s 111. I know, the “official” temperature was probably only 107 or so, but, that’s in the shade, and that man in the chair was not in the shade. I looked down the road and saw the inevitable van heading their way. They were at the end of their “service ministry.” I wondered when they had started.

In case you are thinking I am going to try to do the “look at what those trapped in false religion will do for a lie while so many blessed with so much truth in Christ waste their lives satisfying their own personal desires” thing–while that is all quite true, that’s not where I’m going. Instead, my thoughts turned to a phrase I have used a number of times on this blog, “Theology matters.” I look at those folks going door to door spreading a message of…what? They do not believe they are “in” Christ. They have no heavenly hope, they are not in the New Covenant, they do not stand justified in the righteousness of Christ, they have no sure promise of final salvation. They truly have nothing more than a second-class salvation system.

What about you? Most of my readers have been blessed to be part of a sound, biblical fellowship of believers. You may be going today, or just now returning from, a church where the gospel–in purity, in truth–was proclaimed this day. So let me ask you, because I know all too well how it is: how much did you rejoice in that gospel this day? Did you consider the glory of being redeemed, forgiven, freely, so that you are the blessed man or woman of Romans 4:7-8? Or were you distracted by…so many of those things that get in our way of rejoicing in what is truly important? Got cut off on the way to church? Got a late start because [fill in the blank] just can’t get out the door on time no matter how early he/she gets up? Upset because Mr. X or Mrs. Y said something snippy to you on the way into Bible Study? Thinking so much about duties next week you could not even hear the sermon after the first 90 seconds? No, I wasn’t following you around. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

The ease with which we are distracted from worship says a lot about how much we really love the gospel. If we treasure it so that it defines us and has captured our hearts, will we not rejoice in its proclamation, revel in contemplating its truths? How often we lose so much blessing because we are so earthly minded!

So as you go to church today, rejoice that you are not enslaved to a system that would have you proving your worthiness to Jehovah in a wheel chair in the Arizona sun. And pray God’s Spirit will aid you in worshipping God in spirit and in truth this day.

http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=1448

This means a lot to me because today for two reasons: first, I had a petty dispute with my dad. It’s over now, and our relationship better. Through the hardship, I saw the sanctifying grace of the Lord through Jody’s parents–Denny and Carol, Mom and Dad–and I realized (again) how wonderful it is to serve the Lord. I wanted to share that same sanctifying grace to my own father, who doesn’t know it but I hope will see it through me the same I way I have seen it through others.

The second reason it meant something to me was that Jody and I got into a huge traffic snarl outside the Radisson. They were hosting a Jehovah’s Witness convention, and we were driving by when the convention was letting out. Cars and those omnipresent buses were holding up traffic on Summit St.