"It will be found that those who will pay more were the most able to begin with and have the greatest value to others. Their worth as persons is greater."
L. Ron Hubbard, HCO PL 9 May 1965 "Auditing Fees"

Scientology - religion or not?

Contents of this site:

This site is not connected with or endorsed by the Church of Scientology or any of its front groups. L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology are trademarks of RTC (Religious Technology Center).

1. Introduction

I'm not going to tell you the history of the Church of Scientology here. Others have done better, for example Jon Atack in his books "The Total Freedom Trap: Scientology, Dianetics And L. Ron Hubbard" and "A Piece Of Blue Sky". To put a long story short, I believe that Scientology (founded by L. Ron Hubbard), which originally started in the middle of the century as a self-help movement, has turned into a power- and money-greedy organization. Its ultimate goal is "to clear the planet", that is, to create a society which lives according to Scientology rules.

"What's so frightening about that?" you may ask. After all, the Creed of Scientology doesn't sound that bad. However, it seems that the scriptures of Scientology contain other rules, most of which is not that liberal. In accordance with this, Scientology has developed an extreme dislike of places where its teachings are discussed freely. On the Internet, the place to do this is the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, established in 1991. To underscore their point, participants often quoted excerpts from Scientology scriptures. The Church did not approve of that and has tried several times to shut down the newsgroup altogether, cancelled single articles with especially offending contents, flooded the newsgroup with nonsense articles and raided homes of posters which have been particularly critical of the church.

The intention of this web page is to provide background information. It does so by presenting various documents. Most of them have been written by participants of alt.religion.scientology, others have been transcribed from printed editions. Many other web pages about Scientology are available, see below.

2. Documents

2.1. Books and Essays

2.2. Discussion of Scientology books

Tom Betz gives background information on the Scientology Personality Test.
Jeff Lee discusses "Introduction to Scientology Ethics"
Geoff Burling word-clears "Dianetics".
Geoff Burling discovers that "Dianetics" has changed over time.
Martin Hunt discusses the "Brainwashing Manual".
An anonymous comment on the origin of the "Brainwashing Manual" and reply by John Mark Ockerbloom.
Bob Lobsinger discusses "The Way To Happiness".
Chris Owen discusses Chapter 32 of "What Is Scientology?"
Chris Owen muses about "Images of a Lifetime", the upcoming "official" biography of L. Ron Hubbard.
Dave Bird looks into "History of Man", the "cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years".
Analise Hairabedian reviews "Art", L. Ron Hubbard's book on art.
Rod Keller sifts through "Have you lived before this life?" which is claimed to be a scientific study into past lifes.

2.3. Affidavits

2.4. Personal accounts of life in Scientology

2.5. Material related to alt.religion.scientology

The newsgroup alt.religion.scientology is dedicated to the discussion of Scientology. It has evolved into a high-traffic newsgroup, with at least 200 new articles daily.

Tom Betz: "A.R.S. spam FAQ. alt.religion.scientology used to be under a heavy spam attack between May and September 1996 with 500-1000 spammed messages a day.
Frank Copeland: "FAQ -- disappearing articles in a.r.s.". Read this if you suspect your article to a.r.s. has been cancelled.
Jim Bianchi: "Scientology -- a skeptic's view". One of many FAQs around.
Dave Bird: "Absolute beginners guide to Scientology". Tiny. Informative.
David Gerard: "ARS micro FAQ". Tiny. Heavily biased.
Tilman Hausherr: "Scientology in Germany. Frequently asked questions".
Martin Hunt: "Alt.religion.scientology Frequently Asked Questions". Very comprehensive, with many pointers to other documents.
Martin Hunt: "Who Is Who on ARS".
Rod Keller: "ARS Week In Review". Weekly summaries of what has been posted (and what Rod considered of interest).
Rod Keller: "Frequently Asked Questions on alt.religion.scientology". A nice FAQ for beginners.
Rebecca Jo McLaughlin: "A.R.S. Litigation FAQ". Who is sued by the Church, and why?
Jonathan Rosenoer has commented several times on the "Scientology vs. the Net" case in his magazine "Cyberlaw".
- Issue 4/95: "Internet Infringement"
- Issue 6/95: "Restraining Access"
- Issue 11/95: "Notice of Infringement"

2.6. Other stuff

Hubbard says: Scientology is not a religion
Scientology vs. the IRS (see also Chris Owen's pages)
Martin Hunt: ARS Acronym/Terminology FAQ. For all those who want to understand original Church documents.
Martin Hunt: Who Is Who in Scientology.
The Cancellation of Flag Order 3879 gives insights into the power struggle inside Scientology after Hubbard's death.
Dianetics did undergo scientific testing at least three times. Both a Ph.D. thesis and a Master's thesis failed to show a beneficial effect. A case study reported in Psych. Newslett. 10: 131-141 (1959) failed to find any evidence for the "reactive mind".
J. Sci. Study Rel. 27: 630-636 (1988) finds that Scientology may have some benefits for long-term members.
Read also what the Church has to say about its former members - Scientology Dead-Agent packs (under development).
Here is some rough outline of what hopefully will evolve into a overview of Scientology and Christianity -- the reason to write this is that Scientologists insist that Scientology and Christian faith are compatible; however, they are not.
How many members does Scientology have? This question is difficult to answer; a few attempts can be found on this page.
Peter Forde: A Scientific Scrutiny of OT3. From Germany or the Netherlands.
If you want to learn more about the author, read his affidavit or his experiences in Scientology.
Information about Narconon:
- Gisle Hannemyr: The Narconon FAQ
- Chris Owen: Narconon and Scientology
- The Superiour Administrative Court (VGH) Baden-Württemberg has ruled that it may be claimed that Narconon has cured nobody from drug addiction: VGH Baden-Württemberg, 1 S 3021/92 (German).
- In Germany, Narconon must be supervised by a nurse oder physician. Ruling of the local court (AG) Miesbach, AG Miesbach Cs 65 Jz 21802/90 (German).
- Excerpt from Christiane F., Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, about her experiences at Narconon.
  [ German | English translation ]
Scientology censors internet access of its members
Scientology frontgroups (work in progress)

2.7 Historical pages

These pages are mainly of historical interest.

Marina Chong: The CAN mirror pages.
CAN (the Cult Awareness Network) was bankrupted in 1996 by ongoing litigation. The CAN trademark was bought by a lawyer acting for the Church of Scientology; therefore, if you now call CAN for help, you contact a cult.
Ron Newman: "The Church of Scientology vs. The Net".
One of the first anti-Scientology web pages. Offers a chronology of events between 1994 and 1996.
Shelley Thompson: "Biased Journalism".
Archive 1995-1998.

3. Scientology versus Germany

4. Other places

There are other places with information about the Church of Scientology on the WWW. Most are more or less opposed to the actions of the cult. Some of them can be found in the following list. Have also a look at the Yahoo Scientology page for further sites.

4.1. Pro:

Tilman Hausherr maintains a fairly complete list while I have only a few selected links.

Scientology has lots of official web sites, amongst them one on L. Ron Hubbard, one on Dianetics, and one on Scientology. (A must read: Ron, The Poet.)
Bob Brooks gives a personal account why he joined Scientology.
Brian Wenger's ftp site contains many documents not available elsewhere, e.g. many chapters from "What Is Scientology?".

4.2. Free Zone:

The Free Zone, consisting mostly of disaffected Ex-Scientologists, believes in the "Tech" but sells it much cheaper than the Church of Scientology. Scientology is hostile to the Free Zone, calling its members "squirrels".

The Free Zone has its own newsgroup, alt.clearing.technology. This newsgroup has its own homepage and an archive.
The Freie Zone e. V. is a German association of Free Zone members. They also have part of A. Nordenholz' book Scientologie online, which appeared in 1934, well before Hubbard invented Scientology.
FreeZone America
Electra's Essays
Scientology reformer's page by "The Pilot"

4.3. Anti:

The complete list of anti-Scientology pages. This list is also posted regularly to alt.religion.scientology. Another list (that also contains one-line descriptions) is irregularly posted by Martin Hunt.

Operation Clambake (the page of Andreas Heldal-Lund)
Dave Touretzky maintains another one of the Fishman pages. He also has various essays on E-meters and the NOTs scholar page which discusses the upper Scientology levels.
Maureen Garde used to have a large collection of legal material concerning Scientology. While she removed the original files, several mirrors (Germany, Netherlands) have sprung up. (See also the list of Scientology Court Files on "Operation Clambake")
Karin Spaink has a huge collection of material, including a mirror of Ron Newman's page (occasionally updated), and the first webbed Fishman affidavit in the Netherlands.
Chris Owen calls his site "Scientology audited". It features, among a lot of interesting documents, the Anderson Report which resulted in a ban of Scientology in Australia or the Foster Report, a UK governmental report. You also find essays written by Chris himself:
Ray Randolph has set up the Multi-Media page on Scientology. Listen to some of the original tapes!
Xenu TV: more Scientology-related multimedia.
Jeff Lee presents some of the internal documents of the Church that were seized by the FBI in 1977.
Jim Lippard's and Jeff Jacobsen's article for the Skeptic magazine about Scientology v. the Internet. Jim Lippard also provides some pictures of private investigators hired by the Church of Scientology.
Scientology likes to decorate itself with celebrities; to keep track of them Tilman Hausherr has compiled the Scientology Celebrities FAQ.
Scientology in Greece
Happy Valley is the place where Scientology has one of its prison camps (called the "Rehabilitation Force Project" or RPF). Satellite shots of the area.

4.4. Search

5. Server stats

Please email problems and comments to Cornelius Krasel (krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de)