What is Scientology? What do they believe? How do they worship, and who do they worship? With all the talk of Tom Cruise in the news lately, The Church of Scientology has been dragged into the spotlight. Everything from war of the worlds, to Cruise’s assault on psychiatry has Americans asking the same questions.
In Farrow’s article "The A-listers' belief system." he states that Scientology has been one of the fastest growing queries on Google (1). Most of this interest can be attributed to Cruise’s new found enthusiasm for scientology. Having Paramount executives visit scientology “celebrity centers” and attacking psychiatry and psychology openly Cruise has incited this interest (Farrow 2).
Scientology was started by science fiction writer Lafayette Ron Hubbard in 1953 (Farrow 1). According to Hubbard’s book The Fundamentals of Thought scientology the word means “knowing how to know” (7). Essentially knowing how to understand the soul and what ales it. Hubbard claims that 75million years ago earth was taken over by aliens. These aliens called “thetans” took over humans causing all our pain and suffering (Bentayou 16). Getting rid of these spirit aliens is scientology’s purpose.
Thetans is better described by Reitman, in her article Inside Scientology the following is a quote from that article.
They(Scientologist) assert that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5
trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and "implanted" with a number of false ideas including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to
this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.
What is even more interesting is how scientologist says they relive themselves from thetans. The basic practice and the only form of worship is auditing. Auditing is a process were a person is hooked up to a machine called electropsychometer or E-meter. This machine is similar to a lie detector. A church minister of sort then asks questions. The E-meter tells when the person being audited is bothered by a question or subject. The question is asked and discussed until the E-meter gives the desired result. The audited person is not allowed to leave the session until the auditor is satisfied (Reitman).
What is even more disturbing is that church members are charged for these audits. An audit can cost up to $8,000 for a 12 ½ hr session. This is not surprising since it is reported that Hubbard once said “I'd like to start a religion, that's where the money is” (Reitman).
Yet Scientology has been growing since its start. Some say more in the past five years than in the other fifty combined. Scientologist say their membership is approximately 800,000, but more reasonable numbers are 100 or 200 thousand, most being in the U.S. Hubbard says during his 1964 interview with James Phelan "We can't give you our exact membership total, because it doubles every six months." Phelan then writes “A quick computation shows that if Scientology has two million followers today(1964) and is doubling every six months, it will number more than eight billion people by March. 1970. Long before then the last holdout will obviously have given in, and everyone on earth will be a Scientologist.” (2)
So what kind of church is this? First they were started by a Sci-Fi writer. Second they believe that extraterrestrials have taken over there bodies. If that is not enough they charge you for the basic worship of the church. Then to top it all off they lie about their membership. Sounds like something you want to be a part of.
The fact is that thousands are a part of scientology, and apparently a lot more are interested. According to Farrow in May of last year when Tom Cruise spoke so openly on Oprah, things started to pick up. The official church website’s visits went up by 263%. Barns and Noble reports that the sale of Dianetics one of Hubbard’s books more than doubled in June 05 (4).
Cruise has been a strong recruiter for Scientology. Whether it be his new wife Katie Holmes or the thousands of his followers cruise has been a good thing for scientology. In fact a lot of celebrities are scientologist besides Cruise and Holmes, there’s John Travolta; Kelly Preston; Kirstie Alley; Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson voice); and of course Lisa Marie Presley. All help make scientology big business bringing in 300million a year from booksells mostly written by Hubbard. (Farrow 2) Don’t forget about the auditing which brings in at least $1000 to $1500 a year from the poorest of scientologist (Bentayou)
What this all boils down to is that scientology is a business not a religion. It reminds me of the old Amway scam, with one exception this id people’s eternity they are dealing with. There are countless complaints against the church from ex members. The Church has had a whole lot of time in our court system. Fighting for Tax exemptions and defending itself against angry families who have lost money and loved ones to this cult.
In My opinion Scientology is nothing more than paying someone to brainwash you. They brainwash you to buy their books, they brainwash you to buy their audits, and if you can not afford that they brainwash you to work for them so you can pay for more brainwashing.
If L. Ron Hubbard didn’t say that religion is where the money is, his church sure does.
Work Cited
Bentayou, Frank. "Scientology: More than a celebrity Cruise." Christian Century 122.16 (2005): 16-16. Academic Search Elite. 4 December 2006.
http://search.ebscohost.com/.
Farrow, Boyd. "The A-listers' belief system." New Statesman 134.4751 (2005): 28-30. Academic Search Elite. 4 December 2006.
http://search.ebscohost.com/.
Hubbard, L. Ron. Scientology The fundamentals of Thought. Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc, 1997.
Phelan, James. "." Saturday Evening Post 237.11 (1964): 81-85. MasterFILE Premier. 6 December 2006.
http://search.ebscohost.com/.
Reitman, Janet. "INSIDE Scientology." Rolling Stone (2006): 55-67. Academic Search Elite. 16 November 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.
