A long time ago, in the 7th century CE, there lived a man named Muhammad ibn Abdullah. Muhammad was a merchant, managing caravans engaged in trade mostly in the Arabian Peninsula, including trade in slaves.
At age 40, while allegedly meditating in a cave on Mount Hira, located near Mecca, Muhammad told others that he had received a revelation from an angel named Gabriel. Gabriel commanded the merchant to “Read aloud.” Muhammad told the angel he could not, as he was illiterate.
The angel then embraced Muhammad and compelled him to recite the words of what would become the first verses of the book Quran, which means “Read aloud.” This hallucination continued over the next twenty-three years until his death. Muhammad filled his book with Gabriel’s words. People believed Muhammad, and his hallucinations became a new religion.
The book details a system of rules and values known as “sharia,” which guide all aspects of life. Muhammad called his hallucinations “Islam,” which means “submit” or “surrender.” Submit and surrender to what? To the will of an invisible entity he invented. The entity is known to the world as “Allah,” which means “god” in Arabic, but the entity has 99 names.
The book tells its adherents of a Day of Judgment, where they will be held accountable for their deeds. This is possible because each of them has an ethereal entity inside them known as the “ruh” (plural “arwah”) or soul. Paradise or hell awaits ruh based on faith and actions.
Today, Muhammad’s religion boasts of more than a billion and a half followers.
Joseph Smith Jr. was born in Vermont in 1805. He grew up in western New York during the Second Great Awakening. Smith’s family, involved in this religious fervor, was influenced by various denominations, including Baptist, Methodists, and Presbyterians.
At the age of 14, Smith claimed he had a vision in which God and Jesus Christ appeared to him. In 1823, Smith said he had an encounter with an angel named Moroni who revealed the existence of an ancient record written on golden plates buried in a nearby hill called Cumorah. According to Smith, these plates contained the religious history of ancient inhabitants of the Americas, including their interactions with God.
Smith was allowed to retrieve the golden plates in 1827. With the help of divine instruments the Urim and Thummim, he translated the writings on the plates into English. This resulted in the Book of Mormon, which he published in 1830. The book tells the story of several groups of people who migrated from the Middle East to the Americas thousands of years ago. It covers their religious teachings and eventual encounters with Jesus Christ after his resurrection.
The Book of Mormon is considered scripture by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith claimed additional revelations. Today, the LDS Church is one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in the world, with millions of members worldwide.
L. Ron Hubbard was a prolific writer of science fiction, he developed a system that he said could address various psychological issues and improve mental well-being. He called this system “dianetics,” publishing a book by that name in 1950. This was when he was around 40 years old.
In Dianetics, Hubbard conceives of an idea he calls the “reactive mind,” which was the source of irrational fears, insecurities, and other emotions and psychological problems. He claimed that, by using his system, individuals could rid themselves of the negative influences of the reactive mind (called “engrams”) and achieve a state called “clear,” where they would be free from these mental burdens.
Hubbard pivoted from dianetics and created a church he called “Scientology.” According to the secret doctrine of the church, there exists an entity called “Xenu.” Xenu was ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, an ancient civilization that existed 75 million years ago. Xenu gathered large numbers of people from various planets, including Earth, under the guise of tax audits, and then subjected them to mass genocide by exterminating them with hydrogen bombs.
The disembodied spirits of these victims, called “thetans,” were implanted with false beliefs through a complex process, which has had lasting effects on humanity. The thetan is the individual’s true identity. According to doctrine, the state of the thetan greatly influences an individual’s personality and outlook on life. Traumas experienced in past lives are believed to affect one’s current state of mind and behavior.
One of the religion’s rituals is called “auditing.” It’s a central technique used to address spiritual trauma and improve the state of the thetan. During auditing sessions, a trained auditor guides an individual through a series of questions and exercises aimed at uncovering and resolving past traumas and negative experiences.
Scientology cannot boast of the numbers enjoyed by Islam or even Mormonism, the numbers of devotees to Hubbard’s religion may be in the millions.
In his late-30s, Robert Stoller, a psychiatrist and dabbler in dream telepathy, discovered an entity he called “gender identity,” which he said exists independent of the characteristics of physical body.
Stoller came upon the idea while working with patients experiencing body dysphoria. What these individuals told him was interpreted as persons experiencing a profound incongruence between their birth sex and the gender they really were.
Stoller took this as a genuine experience and created a system that differentiated biological sex (reality) from gender identity (mythology), arguing that, while the former is determined by physical anatomy, the latter is a deeply ingrained sense of being female, male, or something else.
Stoller taught his followers that “core gender identity,” which he said was a fundamental and unchangeable sense of being male or female, develops by the age of three.
Stoller’s ideas played a key part in the development of gender affirming care, or GAC, which involves chemical and surgical intervention to make a man into a woman. Thus, in this way, bodies of believers are physically and physiologically altered to produce simulacra of the gender identity they believe is their authentic self.
All these doctrines have this in common: concepts central to the respective ideologies enjoy no empirical support. Moreover, their core concepts are conveniently nonfalsifiable. In the case of gender identity, while Stoller’s construct is not falsifiable in terms of itself, the gender of a person is empirically determinable. If a man claims to be a woman, a check of gametes will determine whether this claim is true in nearly every case. But the followers of Stoller’s religion will always fall back on the nonfalsifiability of faith belief. Like the Muslims, Mormon, and Scientologist, the authentic self is a subjective claim impervious to disconfirmation.
The philosopher of science Karl Popper used the falsifiability criteria to distinguish scientific theories from non-scientific ones. According to Popper, for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable; that is, there must be conceivable empirical observations that could potentially refute or disprove the theory. In contrast, nonfalsifiable claims cannot be subjected to empirical testing or falsification, often because they are formulated in a way that makes them immune to disconfirmation. This characteristic can pose challenges for assessing the validity or reliability of such claims within scientific or rational discourse.
If medicine is to proceed scientifically, then it must not rely on concepts that are impervious to disconfirmation. This is why the practice of auditing is not part of medical practice (that and Hubbard’s hostility toward the profession, not to mention psychotherapy has an established presence). At least presumably. After all, gender affirming care rests on a concept impervious to disinformation and Stoller’s construct is part of medical practice. It justifies the application of powerful drugs and hormones and surgeries to transform gendered bodies into simulations of their opposites.
freedom and reason 