Scientology claims to possess the only workable mental health technology. These pages, however, show the pathetic mental state to which Scientology drove one of its members. This site is not affiliated with the Church of Scientology.

At the end of May 1996, while the Church of Scientology was busy flooding the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology in order to suppress any critical information about the church, the newsgroup's resident telepathic auditor, Koos Nolst Trenite, sent one of his Ron's Inspector messages by email to the newsgroup regulars, so that they wouldn't miss his latest Important Pronouncement.

One of the lines contained therein asked for constructive criticism. Since I bore Koos no ill will (actually, I pitied him), I offered some, in this email message.

Koos responded, but he also posted the reply to ars, which is generally considered to be a breach of network etiquette.

Because I didn't feel that he understood some of what I had been saying, I emailed him this response privately.

Once again, he posted his response to the newsgroup, selectively editing my (IMHO) rational arguments so that he could pick minor nits. (He also sent a second version of this to me, providing his postal address so that I could send him a copy of the local Scientology propaganda newspaper.)

In my next message (mailed to Koos and posted to ars), I committed a horrible crime: I asked Koos for proof of his claims of telepathic abilities.

In his next response, Koos refused to provide any proof of his abilities, evaded all of my other questions, and reiterated his claim that radio waves didn't exist before Marconi discovered them.

In my final response, something I said must have really upset him, for in his next message, he declared me to be a Suppressive Person. This message contained my responses from the previous message, with all of his lines excised.

Because of the spam that was plaguing ars, and due to the fact that half of my side of the conversation was in email only, only parts of the exchange were seen by people on the newsgroup. At the request of Brian Boru, therefore, I created this set of Web pages.

Historical Note: A few years after this exchange occurred, Koos Nolst Trenite was arrested and committed to a sanitarium for the drowning death of his daughter. I seriously considered removing these pages from my Web site, because they were no longer amusing, but tragic. After much deliberation, I have decided to let them remain as a warning: Had Scientology not instilled into Koos a fear and hatred of psychiatrists, he might have been able to seek professional help before this tragedy occurred. And it goes without saying that if Scientology really was able to cure mental illness, it never would have happened in the first place.