Scientology: Difference between revisions

Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals, originally established as a secular philosophy in 1952 by science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, then recharacterized by him in 1953 as an "applied religious philosophy."

Scientology is officially represented by the controversial Church of Scientology. The Church presents itself as a non-profit religious organization dedicated to encouraging development of the human spirit. Providing counseling and rehabilitation programs, the Church offers itself as an alternative to psychiatry, which Scientologists believe to be a barbaric and corrupt profession. [1] Church spokespeople attest that Hubbard's teaching (called "technology" or "tech") has freed them from drug and alcohol addictions, depression, learning disabilities, mental disorders and other problems.

Scientology, however, has been the object of many allegations that sharply contradict the Church's self-description. Critics–including officials of several governments–have characterized the Church of Scientology as an unscrupulous commercial organization; it has often been described as a cult that harasses its critics and exploits its members. Many of the Church's most controversial actions are, critics argue, a direct reflection of Hubbard's Scientology teachings.

In 1977, Scientology cult offices on both coasts of the United States were raided by FBI agents seeking evidence of a suspected cult-run espionage network. Hubbard's wife Mary Sue and a dozen other senior Scientology officials were convicted in 1979 of conspiracy against the United States Government, while Hubbard himself was named by Federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator." Facing intense media interest and many subpoenas, he secretly retired to a ranch in tiny Creston, California, north of San Luis Obispo.

Main article: Scientology beliefs and practices

Scientology's doctrines were established by Hubbard over some 33 years from 1952 until his death in January 1986. Most of the basic principles were set out during the 1950s and 1960s. Scientology was expanded and reworked from Dianetics [2], an earlier system of self-improvement techniques set out by Hubbard in the 1950 book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. By the mid-1950s, Hubbard had relegated Dianetics to a sub-study of Scientology. The chief difference between the two is that Dianetics is explicitly secular, focused on the individual's present life and dealing with physical and mental or emotional problems, whereas Scientology adopts a more overtly religious approach [3] dealing with spiritual issues spanning multiple past lives as well as the present day.

Scientology beliefs are structured in a series of levels, with new initiates working their way up by steps to the more advanced strata of esoteric knowledge. This is described as the passage up "the bridge to total freedom," or simply "the bridge." The more advanced teachings are kept strictly confidential from those who are not sufficiently "spiritually prepared" to learn about them. The model is similar to that practiced by gnostic or mystery religions. Some particularly irreverent commentators on Scientology have also compared it to a role playing game where, typically, participants must gain experience points before their character can level up.

The central beliefs of Scientology are that:

• a person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a thetan) who possesses a mind and a body, accompanied by a lesser "genetic entity";
• that the thetan has lived through many past lives, stored memories of which can cause problems in the present day;
• and that a person is basically good, but is "aberrated" by the memories of past traumas.

The Church states that the goal of Scientology is a world without war, criminals, and insanity, where good decent people have the freedom to reach their goals.

Another basic tenet of Scientology is that there are three basic interrelated (and intrinsically spiritual) components that are the very makeup of successful "livingness": affinity, reality (or agreement), and communication, which equate to understanding. Hubbard called this the "ARC triangle". Scientologists utilize ARC as a central organizing principle in their lives, primarily based upon the belief that raising one aspect of the triangle increases the other two.

Scientology claims to offer an exact methodology to help a person achieve spiritual and ethical education, awareness, and improvement, so that he or she may achieve a level of spiritual purity as well as greater effectiveness in the physical world. The ultimate goal of Scientology is to "rehabilitate" the thetan, restoring its superhuman abilities to control "matter, energy, space and time" (MEST).

Scientology holds that the human mind consists of two parts: the "analytical mind" and the "reactive mind". Hubbard described the analytical mind as the positive, rational, computing portion, while the "reactive mind" operates on a stimulus-response basis. Scientologists believe that the reactive mind has a malignant effect, causing irrational behaviour and creating individual weaknesses as well as undermining efforts to create lasting, prosperous and sane societies.

The central methodology of Scientology is called "auditing", (from the Latin audire, "to listen"), which is one-on-one communication with a Scientology-trained "auditor". The auditor follows an exact sequence of commands, as set out by Hubbard, to "clear" the reactive mind. This is intended to help a person to unburden himself of specific traumatic incidents, prior ethical transgressions and bad decisions that collectively hold back the person – not unlike psychotherapy in its intentions, though using very different methods.

In Dianetics, Hubbard proposed that the cause of "aberrations" in the human mind was the accumulated unconscious memories of traumatic incidents and guilty feelings dating back, in some cases, to before the moment of birth. He extended this view further in Scientology, declaring that thetans have existed for tens of trillions of years. During that time, they have been exposed to vast numbers of traumatic incidents.

The "Hidden Truth" about the nature of the universe is taught in a series of Operating Thetan levels (eight in all), for which the initiate needs to be thoroughly prepared. In the OT levels, Hubbard describes various traumas commonly experienced in past lives. He explains how to reverse the effects of such traumas by "running" various Scientology processes, and he describes how the problems arose in the first place.

Some of these may have occurred during the line of evolution. For instance, Hubbard claims that a previous state of existence as a wave-battered clam may produce a present-day inability to cry: "[the person] is about to be hit by a wave, has his eyes full of sand or is frightened about opening his shell because he may be hit" (Hubbard, A History of Man, 1952). On other occasions, traumas may have been deliberately inflicted in the form of "implants" used by mostly defunct extraterrestrial civilizations to brainwash and control thetans. These included such tortures as the Obscene Dog, "a sort of a brass dog in a sitting position and anybody who got around to the front of the dog got caught in some electronic current and passed through the dog to the dog's rear end and spat out." (Hubbard, "Assists", lecture of 3rd October 1968)

Most famously, those who reach OT level III will learn about Xenu, the galactic tyrant who stacked hundreds of billions of his frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatised thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual head lice that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Reportedly, the cost of reaching OT III approaches $360,000.

Scientologists argue that mentions of Xenu by non-Scientologists are "misleading characterizations made of these writings, with altered pieces of it taken out of context putting them up to ridicule." Critics of Scientology reject this, pointing out that Xenu is part of a much wider Scientology belief in alien past lives, some of which has been in the public domain for decades. For instance, the 1958 book Have You Lived Before This Life (ISBN 0884044475) documents past lives as described by individual Scientologists during auditing sessions. These included incidents such as being "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller, being transformed into an intergalactic walrus which perished after falling out of a flying saucer and being "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago".

Scientologists organize their personal relationships around the concept of the "Tone Scale", devised by Hubbard in 1951, which classifies people according to their emotional outlook and worth to society. They aim to be at the top end of the scale at a tone level of 40.0, at which level they will have an ability to issue commands to any object that exists in "matter, energy, space and time". This is claimed to extend to being able to control the physical environment on Earth, even down to fine-grained molecular and atomic levels.

At the other end of the scale are what Hubbard calls "suppressive persons", whose destructive actions can directly impede the progress of Scientology and individual Scientologists. The suppressive persons par excellence are said to be psychiatrists, for whom Hubbard had a special dislike. He claimed that they had been agents of repression for billions of years and were responsible for inventing pain and sex, both of which were "artificial wavelengths" on "exact frequencies that can be manufactured". [4]

Immediately prior to his first Dianetics publications, Hubbard was involved with the occultist Jack Parsons in performing rites developed by Aleister Crowley. Some investigators have noted similarities in Hubbard's writings to the doctrines of Crowley [5], though the Church of Scientology denies any such connection. An influence that Hubbard did acknowledge is the system of General Semantics developed by Alfred Korzybski in the 1930s. [6] Scientology also reflects the influence of the Hindu concept of karma.

Hubbard was repeatedly accused of adopting acade for Scientology in order for the organization to maintain tax-exempt status and avoid prosecution for false medical claims. These accusations have dogged the Church of Scientology to the present day, bolstered by numerous accounts from Hubbard's fellow science-fiction authors that on various occasions he stated that the way to get rich was to start a religion [7].

The word scientology has a history of its own. Although nowadays associated almost exclusively with Hubbard's work, it was coined by the philologist Alan Upward in 1907 as a synonym for "pseudoscience". [8] In 1934, the Argentine-German writer Anastasius Nordenholz published a book using the word positively: Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens, or Scientology, Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge. [9] Nordenholz's book is a study of consciousness, and its usage of the word is not greatly different from Hubbard's definition, "knowing how to know". However, it is not clear to what extent Hubbard was aware of these earlier usages. The word itself is a pairing of the Latin word scio ("know" or "distinguish") and the Greek λογος lógos ("reason itself" or "inward thought"). Hubbard said, in a lecture given on the 19th of July 1962 entitled "The E-meter":

So Suzie and I went down to the library, and we started hauling books out and looking for words. And we finally found "scio" and we find "ology". And there was the founding of that word. Now, that word had been used to some degree before. There had been some thought of this. Actually the earliest studies on these didn't have any name to them until a little bit along the line and then I called it anything you could think of. But we found that this word Scientology, you see–and it could have been any other word that had also been used–was the best-fitted word for exactly what we wanted.

Main article: Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology was first incorporated in Camden, New Jersey as a nonprofit organization in 1953. Today it forms the center of a complex worldwide network of corporations dedicated to the promotion of L. Ron Hubbard's philosophies in all areas of life. This includes:

• drug treatment centers (Narconon);
• criminal rehab programs (Criminon);
• activities to reform the field of mental health (Citizens Commission on Human Rights)
• projects to implement workable and effective educational methods in schools (Applied Scholastics);
• a campaign to return moral values to living (The Way to Happiness)
• an organization to educate and assist businesses in the use of Scientology management techniques (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, or WISE)
• a consulting firm based on Hubbard's management techniques (Sterling Management Systems)
• and a campaign directed to world leaders as well as the general public to implement the 1948 United Nations document, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (with particular emphasis on the religious freedom elements).

The Church of Scientology has been, and remains, a controversial organization. Countries have taken markedly different approaches to Scientology. In the United States, Scientology declares itself to be a religion and regularly cites religious protection under First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Canada the Church of Scientology is legal but has the unique distinction of being criminally convicted as a corporation of two counts of breach of the public trust (for an organized conspiracy to break into government offices) following a trial by jury.

Other countries, notably in Europe, have regarded Scientology as a potentially dangerous cult and have significantly restricted its activities at various times, or at least have not considered that the branches of the Church of Scientology met the legal criteria for being considered religion-supporting organizations. In Germany for instance, Scientology is not seen as a religion by the government but as a commercial business with potentially anti-democratic tendencies, and has been subjected to state surveillance as a result. The United Kingdom government does not recognize Scientology as a bona fide religion, and it has been subjected to considerable pressure from the state in Russia.

Scientology has also been the focus of criticism by anti-cult campaigners and has aroused controversy for its high-profile campaigns against psychiatry and psychiatric medication (see opposition to psychiatry, below).

The many legal battles fought by the Church of Scientology since its inception have given it a reputation as an extremely litigious organization. (See also: Scientology and the legal system)

Main article: Free Zone

Although "Scientology" is most often used as shorthand for the Church of Scientology, a number of groups practice Scientology and Dianetics outside of the fold of the official Church. Such groups are invariably breakaways from the official Church and usually argue that it has corrupted L. Ron Hubbard's principles or has otherwise become overly domineering. The Church takes an extremely hard line on breakaway groups, labeling them "apostates" (or "squirrels" in Scientology jargon) and often subjecting them to considerable legal and social pressure. Breakaway groups avoid the name "Scientology" so as to keep from being sued, instead referring to themselves collectively as the Free Zone.

Free Zone groups are extremely heterogeneous in terms of doctrine—very unlike the official Church. Some Free Zoners practice more or less pure Scientology, based on Hubbard's original (Church-published) texts and principles but without the supervision or fee system of the official Church. Others have developed Hubbard's ideas into radically new forms, some of which are barely recognizable as being related to Scientology.

Main article: Scientology controversy

Of the many new religious movements to appear during the 20th century, Scientology has been one of the most controversial almost since its inception. The Church of Scientology has come into conflict with the governments and police of several countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany) numerous times over the years, though supporters point out that many major world religions have found themselves in conflict with civil government while in their early years.

The nature of Scientology is hotly debated in many countries. Scientology is considered a religion in the United States and Australia, and thus it enjoys the constitutional protections afforded to religious practice (First Amendment to the United States Constitution; Australian Constitution, s 116). In the United States, the church obtained "public charity" status (IRS Code 501(c)(3)) and the associated preferential tax treatment after extended litigation. Some European governments (including Germany) do not consider the Church of Scientology to be a bona fide religious organization, but instead a commercial enterprise, or a totalitarian cult (see the list of alleged cults).

The Church of Scientology pursues an extensive public relations campaign arguing that Scientology is a bona fide religion. The organization cites numerous scholarly sources supporting its position, many of which can be found on a website the Church has established for this purpose. [10]

Critics dismiss many of these studies as biased, contending that the studies were commissioned by Scientology to produce the results that Scientology desired. Academic papers that conclude that Scientology is a not a legitimate religion have also been published (some are available online in the Marburg Journal of Religion). [11]

In the U.S., in October of 1993 the Internal Revenue Service, after reviewing voluminous information on the Church's financial and other operations, recognized the Church as an "organization operated exclusively for religious and charitable purposes." [12] The Church offers this tax exemption as proof that it is a religion.

In 1982, the High Court of Australia ruled that the State Government of Victoria could not declare, as they had, that the Church of Scientology was not a religion on grounds of charlatanism (Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner Of Pay-roll Tax (Vict.) 1983, 154 CLR 120).[13]

"Charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers."

Another point of controversy is Scientology's infiltration of the United States Internal Revenue Service in what Scientology termed "Operation Snow White". Eleven high-ranking Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard, served time in federal prison for their involvement in this infiltration.

The ongoing controversies involving the Church of Scientology and its critics include:

• Scientology's harassing and litigious actions against its critics and "enemies."
• Differing accounts of L. Ron Hubbard's life, (critics charge Scientology with being a cult of personality, with much emphasis placed on the alleged accomplishments of its founder). Scientologists claim that government files, such as those from the FBI, are loaded with forgeries and other false documents detrimental to Scientology.
• Deaths of Scientologists due to mistreatment by other members.
• Scientology's disconnection policy, in which members are encouraged to cut off all contact with friends or family members critical of the Church.
• Criminal activities by some members of the Church of Scientology.
• Claims of brainwashing and mind control.
• Accounts of L. Ron Hubbard discussing his intent to start a religion to make money.

Scientology is vehemently opposed to psychiatry and psychology. According to the Church of Scientology, this opposition is focused on psychiatry's practices:

What the Church opposes are brutal, inhumane psychiatric treatments. It does so for three principal reasons: 1) procedures such as electro-shock, drugs and lobotomy injure, maim and destroy people in the guise of help; 2) psychiatry is not a science and has no proven methods to justify the billions of dollars of government funds that are poured into it; and 3) psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II. [14]

L. Ron Hubbard was bitterly critical of psychiatry's citation of physical causes for mental disorders, for instance chemical inbalances in the brain. He regarded psychiatrists as denying human spirituality and peddling fake cures. He was also convinced that psychiatrists were themselves deeply unethical individuals, committing "extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them." [15] The Church of Scientology claims that psychiatry was responsible for World War I [16], the rise of Hitler and Stalin [17], the decline in education standards in the United States [18], the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo [19], and even the September 11th attacks [20].

Scientology's opposition to psychiatry has also undoubtedly been influenced by the fact that a number of psychiatrists have strongly spoken out against the Church of Scientology, resulting in pressure from the media and governments. Hubbard came to believe that psychiatrists were behind a worldwide conspiracy to attack Scientology and create a "world government" run by psychiatrists on behalf of Soviet Russia:

Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are members of the Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental health groups in the world that had sprung up ...

Their apparent programme was to use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and pre-frontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters ... These fellows have gotten nearly every government in the world to owe them considerable quantities of money through various chicaneries and they control, of course, income tax, government finance — (Harold) Wilson, for instance, the current Premier of England, is totally involved with these fellows and talks about nothing else actually. (Hubbard, Ron's Journal 67 [21])

In 1966, Hubbard declared all-out war on psychiatry, telling Scientologists that "We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one." He committed the Church of Scientology to the goal of eradicating psychiatry in 1969, announcing that "Our war has been forced to become "To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms." [22] Not coincidentally, the Church of Scientology founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights that same year as its primary vehicle for attacking psychiatry.

Around the same time, Hubbard also decided that psychiatrists were an ancient evil that had been a problem for billions of years. He cast them in the role of assisting Xenu's genocide of 75 million years ago. In a 1982 bulletin entitled "Pain and Sex", Hubbard declares that "pain and sex were the INVENTED TOOLS of degradation", having been devised eons ago by psychiatrists "who have been on the [time] track a long time and are the sole cause of decline in this universe." (Hubbard, HCO Bulletin of 26 August 1982)

Prominent Scientologists, notably Tom Cruise, have been extremely vocal in attacking psychiatric medication. This has attracted considerable criticism from supporters of psychiatry and sufferers of mental illnesses, but has been defended and promoted by Scientologists. [23]

Main Article: Scientology vs. the Internet

Leaders of Scientology have undertaken extensive operations on the Internet to deal with growing allegations of fraud and exposure of unscrupulousness within Scientology. The organization states that it is taking actions to prevent distribution of copyrighted Scientology documents and publications online by people whom it has called "copyright terrorists". Critics claim the organization's true motive is an attempt to suppress free speech and legitimate criticism.

In January 1995, Church lawyer Helena Kobrin attempted to shut down the Usenet discussion group alt.religion.scientology by sending a control message instructing Usenet servers to delete the group on the grounds that

(1) It was started with a forged message; (2) not discussed on alt.config; (3) it has the name "scientology" in its title which is a trademark and is misleading, as a.r.s. is mainly used for flamers to attack the Scientology religion; (4) it has been and continues to be heavily abused with copyright and trade secret violations and serves no purpose other than condoning these illegal practices. [24]

The Church also started suing people for posting copies of its copyrighted scriptures on the newsgroup and the World Wide Web, and pressed for tighter restrictions on copyrights in general. This effort was spearheaded by the late U.S. Representative Sonny Bono, a Scientologist, who introduced the controversial Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The even more controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act was also strongly promoted by the Church and some of its provisions (notably the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act) were heavily influenced by Church litigation against US Internet service providers over copyrighted Scientology materials that had been posted or uploaded through their servers.

Beginning in the middle of 1996 and for several years after, the newsgroup was attacked by anonymous parties using a tactic dubbed "sporgery" by some, in the form of hundreds of thousands of forged spam messages posted on the group. Although the Church neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the spam, some investigators claimed that some of the spam had been traced to Church members.

The Church of Scientology has made a concerted effort to attract and serve artists and entertainers -- they have special facilities in Hollywood and elsewhere that are designated "celebrity centers." Public awareness of Scientology has been promoted by Scientologists in the entertainment industry, including such well-known actors as John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise and his recently converted fiancee Katie Holmes. Cruise in particular has made a reputation as an outspoken Scientologist, publicly criticizing Brooke Shields on national television for her use of anti-depressants in recovering from postpartum depression.

See List of famous Scientologists.

Template:Spoiler The 1999 satirical film "Bowfinger" includes an organisation called "Mindhead" as a thinly-veiled reference to the Scientology movement. The Mindhead organisation features a wealthy, charismatic figurehead and its adherents include prominent film celebrities.

Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis (1996) also parodies Scientology in the illustration of a self-help corporation called Eventualism.

The computer game Fallout 2 has a "religion" named "The Hubologists". Much of the Hubologist teachings are similar to Scientology's teachings. By and large, actions that hurt the Hubologists are considered good things for the world of Fallout, and those that aid them are considered bad things for the world of Fallout. However being "scanned" and cleansed by Hubologists (a jab at the belief in Thetans and Xenu) can increase the protagonist's luck.

Frank Zappa's concept album Joe's Garage talks about L. Ron Hoover's 'Appliantology'.

On TOOL's album Ænima, in the song Ænema the lyrics include "Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and fuck all his clones".

Alex Cox's film Repo Man features a character telling another character to read 'Diaretics - The Science Of Matter Over Mind'.

In the TV series Millennium, the episode "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" involves a Scientology-like religion called "Selfosophy", formed by a science-fiction writer named Onan Goopta. Selfosophy boasts of its celebrity adherents and employs a device called the "Onan-o-graph", similar to Scientology's E-meter.

The TV series The 4400 contains a cult-of-personality organization that promises special powers to people following its course of study, courts celebrities, including advancing them more quickly than non-celebrities, encourages its members to disassociate from people opposed to the organization, uses technological devices during therapy-like sessions, and confiscates psychiatric drugs from its members.

The computer role-playing game (by Origin Systems and Richard Garriot, aka Lord British), Ultima 7, also contains references to Scientology with its own religion called "The Fellowship". Early on in the game in Britannia, you will be given option to join the Fellowship and, in order to do this, you are subjected to a personality test by the leader, Batlin. Of course, any answer to any of the questions posed is interpreted as some flaw in your character; there are no "correct" answers that do not ultimately lead to the conclusion that you, the Avatar, need the Fellowship. The Fellowship also believes in a basic tenet, which is called the Triad of Inner Strength: "Strive for Unity", "Trust Thy Brother" and "Worthiness Precedes Reward". In the end, the Fellowship is shown to be one of the ploys of the Guardian (a powerful, but evil red extraterrestial) to corrupt and destroy Britannia, with Batlin being in on the plan.

The PlayStation 2, XBox, and computer video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas contains a cult called the Epsilon Program that heavily parodies Scientology's symbols and activities.

Crisscross by F. Paul Wilson involves a corporation/religion/cult called the Dormentalists, which teaches converts how to awake their 'inner, personal Xelton' and is obviously based upon the beliefs of Scientology.

Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel Snow Crash (1992) includes a major character called L. Bob Rife, who is intent on brainwashing the world's population with an ancient Sumerian mind virus.

Norman Spinrad's novel The Mind Game (1980) is a story about a film director whose wife becomes involved in a religion/cult called "Transformationalism" created by a science fiction author. The cult maintains a Celebrity Center, and the Transformational enlightenment uses a process that may be similar to auditing.

• Alt.religion.scientology
• Cult checklist
• List of articles about Scientology
• List of purported cults
• List of religious organizations
• Narconon
• Scientology controversy
• Scientology vs. the Internet
• Scientology and Homosexuality

• L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology: An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature by Marco Frenschkowski [25]
• The Fishman Affidavit Includes details of some of Scientology's high-level "Operating Thetan" teachings. [26]
• Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard by Russell Miller (N.Y.: Henry Holt & Co., 1987) ISBN 0-8050-0654-0 An unauthorized biography
• A Piece of Blue Sky, by Jon Atack (Lyle Stuart, 1990), ISBN 081840499X A critical history of Scientology, by a Scientology archivist and former Scientologist.

• Dianetics.org - Official 'Dianetics' site
• FreedomMag.org - Scientology's 'Freedom' Magazine
• Scientology.org - 'Church of Scientology' home page
• ScientologyHandBook.org - Online Text: Scientology Handbook
• Theology.Scientology.org - Online Text: 'Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion'
• Theta.com - Scientology 'Human Rights Newsroom'
• WhatIsScientology - Online Text: 'What is Scientology?'

• fzaoint.org - Freezone AO International site

• AmericanReligion.org - The 'Church' of Scientology
• Cesnur.org - Information on Scientology
• ItsARuby.com -Recommended sites on Scientology
• ReligiousTolerance.org - 'Religious Tolerance' Site
• UCalgary.ca University of Calgary: 'Religious' Status of Scientology

• Clambake.org - Operation Clambake (Xenu.net and .com mirror site)
• Lermanet.com - Exposing Scientology
• Scientology Lies - Lists of criminal acts and false statements - plus a FAQ
• Skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary entry on Dianetics
• The Secrets of Scientology - David S. Touretzky's web site exposing the various technical tricks behind Scientology
• TruthAboutScientology.com - The Forbidden Side of Scientology
• WhyAreTheyDead.net - Scientology-related deaths
• Xenu TV - Xenu TV
• Church of Scientology, Co$ - Rotten.com's take on Scientology
• An Introduction to Scientology from a critical perspective

• Penthouse: L. Ron Hubbard Jr. Interview - Transcript of a Penthouse interview of L. Ron Hubbard's son, discussing Scientology.
• Time Magazine article repost - Time cover story on Scientology, by Richard Behar
• Rotten Library - Rotten.com article on Scientology
• Quill Quill article: Scientology from inside out by Robert Vaughn Young
• Transcript of 20 hours of interviews with former senior Scientologist Jesse Prince
• Lisa McPherson case
• Scientology related deaths
• Scientologists vs. Psychiatrists - Slate article.

• Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr. a.k.a. Ronald DeWolf: L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
• Russel Miller: Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard"
• Margery Wakefield: The Road to Xenu: a narrative account of life in Scientology

• Groups.Google.com - Google link to Usenet newsgroup: alt.religion.scientology
• ARS Week In Review - alt.religion.scientology Week In Review
• ReligionNewsBlog.com - Religion News Blog: Scientology News Tracker

• List of all internet domains owned by The Church of Scientology and its associates