About Ex-Members

Ok, some people don’t like their religion anymore and leave. That’s ok and I guess it happens daily if not hourly. But some – if you cut through the noise you’ll find it usually is just a handful in each religious group – some seem to have an urge to attack their former friends and claim the most ridiculous or horrible things have been done to them. With some it seems to be completely impossible to have a normal conversation. Others come across as complete fanatics. Here is what I wrote about it some years ago and it still holds true.

So what is an Apostate, or “ex-member”?

From the American Heritage Dictionary: One who has abandoned one’s religious faith, a political party, one’s principles, or a cause.

Usually apostates are called ex-members or former members.

Lonnie Kliever, Professor of Religious Studies at the Southern Methodist University, says about apostates:

“There is no denying that these (apostates) present a distorted view of the new religions to the public, the academy, and the courts by virtue of their ready availability and eagerness to testify against their former religious associations and activities.”

The full Study: The Reliability of Apostate Testimony About New Religious Movements

Why are ex-members poor sources of true information on Scientology?

Ex-members, called apostates, are an acknowledged phenomenon with known, predictable patterns, as documented by sociologists and religious scholars. To quote just one, Bryan Wilson, Ph.D. of Oxford University in the United Kingdom:

“The apostate is generally in need of self-justification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his former affiliations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest associates. Not uncommonly the apostate learnt to rehearse an “atrocity story” to explain how, by manipulation, trickery, coercion, or deceit, he was induced to join or remain within an organization that he now forswears and condemns. Apostates, sensationalized by the press, have sometimes sought to make a profit from accounts of their experiences in stories sold to newspapers….”

“Academics have come to recognize the ‘atrocity story’ as a distinctive genre of the apostate and have even come to regard it as a recognizable category of phenomena.”

This happens with other groups as well and even in marriages or broken friendships. The one who leaves sometimes goes a long way to explain how bad the relationship was or tries to justify that he abandoned his friends. This is a social mechanism and sometimes quite fantastic to listen to, but not a good measure to find the truth.

Some former members might complain about “bad experiences” they had or claim to have had. So, obviously they decided not to do something about it and left the organization. Maybe it was not the right thing for them. Just as most other religious organizations Scientology does not hold members who do not want to be members. Scientology practices do not work properly if done under pressure or false premises. So who wants to go, should leave or help to remedy perceived wrongs. Ex-members who try to make a living as “experts” on the faith they abandoned are clearly not neutral and not a good source for anything related.

An unbeatable way to find out something about Scientology is to go to a local church or mission and look around, get a tour and get informed. You can also go to a library and get a Scientology book. A pretty comprehensive book is one called “What is Scientology?” which tells about the Scientology belief and the organization structure (the book is also online since more than 10 years here).

There are also 18 basic books of L. Ron Hubbard in which he describes his findings and works in chronological order. Last but not least there are plenty of websites with free books or excerpts of Scientology material which the Church has put out over the last years.

If you are more interested what the Church of Scientology, the organization, does and supports, you should have a look at the Statistics page on this website.

DOCUMENTATION:
Bryan Wilson: Apostates and New Religious Movements
Kliever: The Reliability of Apostate Testimony About New Religious Movements
What is Scientology? Book online
Scientology Handbook online

A new round of questions? Go ahead!

Hi there,

and thanks for visiting this blog! I put it up to give you the opportunity to ask questions, about Scientology, Scientologists and whatever you feel is related to that. If you are here to make statements or raise a fuss, you are violating the only rule this blog has. So please, don’t to it.

- Louanne

“Scientologists Launch Slick New Ad Campaign”

says the “Open Sky Media Blog” and links to some video clips on Youtube showing the new Scientology ads:

Thanks, Jason!

(Moar)

Now I understand one thing or two….

How is Scientology doing in 2009? Well, I finally found some statistics on the Scientology Press Office website which I want to share. I’ll put them on ScientologyMyths.info as well (the one’s on there are from 2008 and a little stale now…). Here we go:

- The Church’s property holdings internationally have more than doubled in the last 5 years. The combined size of Church premises increased from 5.6 million square feet in 2004 to 11 million square feet in 2009.

- The Church has acquired 66 buildings since 2004 in major population centers around the world.

- The Church has completed 401,003 square feet of construction of new premises in the last 5 months. It currently has under construction another 475,887 square feet, including Churches in Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Quebec, Mexico City, Brussels, Rome and Tel Aviv.

- There are 8,071 Scientology Churches, Missions and groups in 165 nations, double the number five years ago.

- 80 million L. Ron Hubbard books and lectures on Dianetics and Scientology have been sold in the last decade, compared to 5.6 million in the prior decade, and 60 of that 80 million have been sold in the last two years-more than during the first 50 years of Dianetics and Scientology combined.

- The number of individuals completing auditing and training has doubled since 2007.

- Since the Church undertook to publish and reproduce its scriptural materials in-house in 2007, the average price of Mr. Hubbard’s books and lectures sold has decreased dramatically.

- There were 12.4 million visitors to the Scientology website in the last year alone coming from 234 countries, with 23 million video views.

- 4.5 million pages of L. Ron Hubbard’s writings have been translated in the last 10 years alone compared to a total of 359,459 for the prior 50 years, making him the most translated author in history-according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

- Today there are 196,000 Scientology Volunteer Ministers worldwide-there were 45,000 in 2004. Volunteer Ministers helped over 1.4 million people in the last year alone, a 300% increase over the 2004 figure of 550,000 people helped

Sounds impressive!

- L

Scientology: allegations and the truth

A little reminder from ScientologyMyths.info :

What is an Apostate, or “ex-member”?

From the American Heritage Dictionary: One who has abandoned one’s religious faith, a political party, one’s principles, or a cause.

Usually apostates are called ex-members or former members.

Lonnie Kliever, Professor of Religious Studies at the Southern Methodist University, says about apostates:

“There is no denying that these (apostates) present a distorted view of the new religions to the public, the academy, and the courts by virtue of their ready availability and eagerness to testify against their former religious associations and activities.”

The full Study: The Reliability of Apostate Testimony About New Religious Movements

Why are ex-members poor sources of true information on Scientology?

Ex-members, called apostates, are an acknowledged phenomenon with known, predictable patterns, as documented by sociologists and religious scholars. To quote just one, Bryan Wilson, Ph.D. of Oxford University in the United Kingdom:

“The apostate is generally in need of self-justification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his former affiliations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest associates. Not uncommonly the apostate learnt to rehearse an “atrocity story” to explain how, by manipulation, trickery, coercion, or deceit, he was induced to join or remain within an organization that he now forswears and condemns. Apostates, sensationalized by the press, have sometimes sought to make a profit from accounts of their experiences in stories sold to newspapers….”

“Academics have come to recognize the ‘atrocity story’ as a distinctive genre of the apostate and have even come to regard it as a recognizable category of phenomena.”

This happens with other groups as well and even in marriages or broken friendships. The one who leaves sometimes goes a long way to explain how bad the relationship was or tries to justify that he abandoned his friends. This is a social mechanism and sometimes quite fantastic to listen to, but not a good measure to find the truth.

Some former members might complain about “bad experiences” they had or claim to have had. So, obviously they decided not to do something about it and left the organization. Maybe it was not the right thing for them. Just as most other religious organizations Scientology does not hold members who do not want to be members. Scientology practices do not work properly if done under pressure or false premises. So who wants to go, should leave or help to remedy perceived wrongs. Ex-members who try to make a living as “experts” on the faith they abandoned are clearly not neutral and not a good source for anything related.

An unbeatable way to find out something about Scientology is to go to a local church or mission and look around, get a tour and get informed. You can also go to a library and get a Scientology book. A pretty comprehensive book is one called “What is Scientology?” which tells about the Scientology belief and the organization structure (the book is also online since more than 10 years here).

There are also 18 basic books of L. Ron Hubbard in which he describes his findings and works in chronological order. Last but not least there are plenty of websites with free books or excerpts of Scientology material which the Church has put out over the last years.

If you are more interested what the Church of Scientology, the organization, does and supports, you should have a look at the Statistics page on this website.

DOCUMENTATION:
Bryan Wilson: Apostates and New Religious Movements
Kliever: The Reliability of Apostate Testimony About New Religious Movements

What is this with Scientology & Wikipedia?

In May 2009 a lot of media reports claimed that “Scientology was banned from Wikipedia”. Nothing is further from the truth, as usual, when it comes to reporting about Scientology. It took a while to grasp what happened but here we go. The following is a very short explanation and I preventively apologize to Wikipedians for simplifying things for the sake of a better understanding.

Wikipedia.org is a website that hosts about 2 million English articles about any conceivable subject in the world. Amongst those are several articles that deal with Scientology or related subjects. Anyone can edit in Wikipedia, i.e. change the articles in alignment with a complex set of Wikpedia Policy such as “WP:RS” that says that any fact statement in an article has to be backed up by a reliable source. “Reliable source” (RS) then is defined as secondary literature such as news articles or peer-reviewed expert opinions. Documents such as certificates, diaries, religious scripture are not or only exeptionally allowed as sources for the articles. So far, so good.

In real life articles in Wikipedia are subject to the editor’s opinion, personal viewpoints etc that color his/her edits accordingly. In an effort to control this Wikipedia does not allow representatives of organizations to edit their own articles.

As “anyone can edit” Wikipedia does not require to give any credentials or personal data to become an editor. Nameless editors however get registered with the IP address (internet connection) their computer is using at the time of the edit. Registered users can choose a nickname. The more edits a user does the more “status” he/she gets on Wikipedia (which should indicate that the “top editors” of Wikipedia are either very rich, on social welfare or without a job/student, i.e. they seem to have a lot of time to research and increase article content).

In December 2008 a committee of high status, elect editors of Wikipedia took on a task to investigate why articles about Scientology have a lot of noise surrounding them, for example lots of changes back and forth and hostile “discussions” about the articles. Their investigation revealed a pro- and an anti-Scientology faction heavily violating another of Wikipedia’s Policy: “Neutral Point Of View”. In short this means, editors should be “neutral” about the subject they write about (Not “disinterested” or “careless” though it could be understood that way).

As a result of the investigation the above committee, formally called the “Arbitration Committee”, ruled to ban 13 pro-Scientology and 15 anti-Scientology editors from further editing any Scientology remotely connected with “Scientology” (about 430 if my count is right), with the purpose to remove the debatants from the article area. This ban is enforced by another group of uebereditors (called “Administrators”) that have the power to cancel accounts and block internet computers from logging onto Wikipedia.

Also, the 12 ArbCom members decided to block any edits coming from computers that are connected to internet lines that are rented or owned by the Church of Scientology. This part of the ruling somewhat lacks evidence that the Church of Scientology has been involved in editing articles on Wikipedia (not that the media would care about this minor detail) but consequently IP addresses officially registered by the Church of Scientology are now supposed to be blocked. So anyone working inside a Church of Scientology would be technically blocked from editing the articles (unless he/she uses a wireless internet line or jumps over to Starbucks to log on from there). The whole “ruling” will be reviewed in six months. Meanwhile banned editors could – if they chose to – register under a different name and continue editing as before. This is what seems to be happening in the article now (June 2009).

And what is the viewpoint of the Church of Scientology?

Who cared to ask the Church about their viewpoint on the above “ban” was sent a statement of the Church of Scientology International that said the following:

STATEMENT ON THE WIKIPEDIA CASE

This is a routine internal action by Wikipedia to clean up its editing process. We understand that postings from the Department of Justice and CIA have also been blocked from time to time. This is not new. However, more importantly is the fact that Wikipedia finally banned those who were engaged in unobjective and biased editing for the purposes of antagonism as opposed to providing accurate information. We hope the decision will result in more accurate and useful articles on Wikipedia as the site evolves. Meanwhile, anyone wishing to know about Scientology should visit scientology.org where they can find more than 300 individual videos, totaling over 4 hours of information.

And now what?

The Wikipedia committee took somewhat over six months to decide to restrict the editing rights of Wikipedia editors for somewhat under six month. I say: The Wikipedia concept of anonymous editors does not work for polarized subjects, namely religious, philosophic or political issues. It also does not work for brands whose competitors want to screw their competition.

if you want to learn something about Scientology go to the source, like scientology.org or whatiscientology.org.

References / more information:
The “Arbitration Commitee” ruling, 28 May 2009
The Register “Wikipedia Bans Scientology”, 29 May 2009
The Register, ArbCommember resigns after being caught violating Wikipedia rules, 26 May 2009
Wikipedia about Wikipedia
Scientology.org

Scientology Information Campaign Drives Tenthousands to Scientology.org Website

Scientology Know Yourself, Know Life (http://www.scientology.org) ads, launched May 18th, by the Church of Scientology’s International office have been running in the US and Canada on MTV, Discovery, The Learning Channel, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox News and Fox Sports. The Know Yourself, Know Life ads have been driving tenthousands to the referenced website to find out about Scientology. The current Know Yourself Know Life ads will air daily until the end of 2009.
Additionally, the video channel website http://www.scientology.org features a new section called “Meet a Scientologist” with videos of 100 Scientologists from all walks of life – bus driver, artists, inventor, doctor, professionals, race car driver, equestrian, housewife, and others – in their life situations. Visitors can learn why these people chose Scientology as their religion.

The Church’s website explains that Scientology is an applied religious philosophy and features visual depictions of some of the Church’s core principles. The website also details four of The Church of Scientology’s worldwide campaigns – anti-drugs, human rights, volunteer ministers and The Way to Happiness (a common sense moral code) as well as data on the secular programs of Narconon and Applied Scholastics – programs that address drug addiction and literacy.

The word Scientology literally means “the study of truth.” It comes from the Latin word “scio” meaning “knowing in the fullest sense of the word” and the Greek word “logos” meaning “study of.” Scientology is the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life.
The Scientology religious philosophy was founded by L. Ron Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard is a 3-time Guinness Book of World Records holder of the most published works by a single author, most audio book titles on Earth and most translated author.
The “Know Yourself Know Life” (http://www.scientology.org) ads are sponsored by the Church of Scientology which was formed in Los Angeles in 1954 by a group of Scientologists, and within a few year churches were formed across the country and around the world. Today there are 8,000 churches, missions and related organizations in 164 countries. For more information you can also visit http://www.whatisscientology.org.

(Original here)

Do Scientologists believe in aliens? What is Xenu?

On popular demand, an updated post from ScientologyMyths.info:

Do Scientologists believe in aliens?

No. Scientologists believe people are spiritual beings, not their bodies, and that they move on to another body once they die. Some believe they have been around for a long, long time. Some believe that this universe is a massive infinite space and that there is life on other planets. So it could be said that some Scientologists believe in “aliens”, meaning life on other planets.

Now, I have never seen any writings about (or Scientologists talking about) a belief that an alien lives inside them or that there is a spaceship buried somewhere waiting to take all Scientologists away.

There is no worshipping of aliens found in Scientology scriptures. Nor does such worshipping take place informally.

There are some people spreading the utterly false idea that Scientology is based on alien beliefs or ancient aliens or something of that nature. Scientology is based on communication, knowledge and understanding and provides help to master life and gain more understanding about it.

There are a lot of twisted interpretations of Scientology religious beliefs on the internet. I am happy you came here to find out more! Contrary to rumors and biased media reports this is not Scientology’s “Creation Theory”. The purpose of these bigots is to ridicule Scientologists, trying to make fun Scientology’s true religious beliefs. Well, if they have to invent stories to ridicule Scientology then the true Scientology seems to be worth to look at. You can do that at the Scientology Video Channel, for example.

Are Thetans alien souls that have taken over our bodies, and we’re trying to get them out?

Thetans are us, soul, spirit. I don’t know what an alien soul is. A soul that is from another world? A soul that is inhabiting an alien?

I don’t know anyone who has had their body taken over by an alien soul. No one has ever told me that they had gotten the alien soul out, or mentioned that they were working on getting an alien soul out. I don’t know of any scriptures that refer to alien souls in our body. This all sounds like another invention of some anti-Scientology jerks who make up stories to go “ho-ho-ho” about Scientology.

Scientologists do not pray to or worship somebody called Xenu, Xemu or Zenu. This is a myth.

In Scientology, basic beliefs of the Scientology religion are publicly available to anyone, in any one of the eighteen basic books of Dianetics and Scientology and the 280 lectures going along with them, in every Church and Mission of Scientology worldwide. Also in public libraries, internationally. This material is so easy to get, read and listen to, it hurts. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his books and spoke in his lectures about the origins of the Universe, the questions of Man’s relation to a Supreme Being and the Creation theory (called “The Factors”) of the Scientology religion. No secrets, nothing. Just plain, public books and lectures. Xenu, Xemu or Zenu are not mentioned, part of or hidden in the core beliefs of Scientology. Nope.

A note for the sceptic:

Scientology is done step by step. You are not given all the scriptures in one fell swoop and told to read them. You learn basics, then you learn more intermediate data, then there is more advanced information. This is not unique to Scientology, see the Scriptures Chapter. It is a central belief of all Scientologists that people must be properly prepared — spiritually and ethically — to receive these materials and that premature exposure would impede the spiritual development of individuals so exposed, an outcome that is inimical to the goal of Scientology — the achievement of spiritual freedom for everyone living on this planet.

There are not many such scriptures. A number of years ago some confidential Scientology materials were stolen, altered and released by admitted enemies of the Church. There is no complete “OT” or “OT Level” information available on the internet but only altered and perverted data.

As Scientology is done on a gradient, and OT Levels are considered to be upper level, and confidential, a great many (close to 95%) of Scientologists have never read this information. The confidentiality is because this information, gotten into the wrong hands and perverted (as has happened) can cause a great deal of upset and misunderstanding. Scientologists do not discuss this information as they have been asked not to.

BUT – all this nonsense that this uppper level material would contain a “Creation Myth” or something is. not. true. These scriptures do not contain core beliefs of Scientology. Those are – as I said before – openly available.

So, to find out what Scientology is: get a book, read it. Most of them are in public libraries. Seriously.

You might learn something.

- Louanne

Got questions? Go ahead!

Hi there,

and thanks for visiting this blog! I put it up to give you the opportunity to ask questions, about Scientology, Scientologists and whatever you feel is related to that. If you are here to make statements or raise a fuss, you are violating the only rule this blog has. So please, don’t to it.

- Louanne

Scientology Myths Trailer is up!

A very nice person was creating a trailer for ScientologyMyths.info.

Check it out!