Talk:Scientology

Merge

The merge seems like a good idea. They are pretty much the same topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.83.172.29 (talk • contribs)

Confusion

This article has the information that should be at Church of Scientology because it is about the organization, how many members, and so on. While the Church of Scientology article goes into details about the philosophy. Scientology is like, 35,000 words in books, it is a philosophy or call it something else, but written books do not a Church make. Willing to discuss. Terryeo (talk) 15:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

As I see it, we have very little info on either the Philosophy (teachings, whatever you call them), nor on the organisation that go with the teachings. For this reason ,we should probably merge all of it into Scientology --Eptalon (talk) 15:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I have done the merge; feel free to edit --Eptalon (talk) 16:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Talk form the Church of Scienotogy page (moved here)

Links critical to the organisation

Hello, are many people who believe that what the organisation does is perhaps not that good. Unfortunately, we lack links to such organisations, in the other websites section. So if anyone has a good link we could put as opposing, please do. Until we have at least one such link, I will flag this article as NPOV. --Eptalon 12:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Added a link to Operation Clambake, which is the most well-known site critical of the Church of Scientology. Archer7 - talk 13:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Merging

This article is very badly written. I therefore propose to merge releavant sections into Scientology, and then degrading this to a redirect. --Eptalon 18:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agree that most of the information that is found here better belongs on the Scientology page. However, I don't see much problem with changing the focus of this article to be about the actual Church of Scientology, instead of Scientology beliefs in general. · Tygrrr^·talk· 18:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I think tactically it would be better to first focus on one of the two (and describe the other aspect in the same article). Since Scientology (and their methods) have always been controversial, I do not think it will be too hard to get the material for both articles. What we need to be aware of is that they will probably also be reading; therefore keeping the thing neutral is curucial (for this, see the section above for the current NPOV problem of this article.--Eptalon 23:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we have a bit of a problem with the Scientology article. "They say, scientology is a cult, and a machine to make money" - as far as I know (I'm not a Scientologist), they've only really said that about the Church of Scientology. The COS runs (or has a say in the running of) almost all the Scientology organisations in the world, but there are some independent movements that teach Scientology outside of the Church. Scientology is just the beliefs behind it, not the organisation. Archer7 - talk 13:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Scientology is an area of knowledge, or a sort of knowledge. Compare it to, perhaps, carpentry or hair-cutting or biology. It is about something. And contained in many books that are found in libraries and, of course, sold by the Church of Scientology. But the Church is an organization. It buys property, collects money from people in a several ways, it has organization and people in its organization. Two articles probably make sense. Terryeo (talk) 14:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Scientology is (supply missing word)

The mystery word. The word critics and parishioners don't agree on. The alchemy sort of word wanted for understanding. What is that word? Well, it isn't "beliefs" because you can ask anyone who has succeeded at the subject and they will tell you there is no belief in it. Critics who failed the subject, or who never studied the subject might say "beliefs". And when it comes to the Church of Scientology, critics might get away with "beliefs". But Scientology is data. It is recorded information on CD or in print, it is millions of words of data. Scientology is knowledge that is written, which encourages the reader to understand knowledge. It is a philosophy, different because it encourages understanding, rather than encouraging the reader to "know". Because this understood knowledge is about the mind and and about the spirit, it is disseminated by a Church. Critics don't get it. Critics make great issue with an unknowable "danger" about Scientology. May we discuss and arrive at common ground, for the benefit of readers, please? Terryeo (talk) 01:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

At the moment, we use movement based on a system of beliefs (and we also say that Hubbard contributed most of the writings that led to this system of beliefs. Personally, I think thats fairly (perhaps too?) generic.--Eptalon (talk) 11:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, every critic wants nothing more in the world than everyone, everywhere, to become convinced that Scientology is "A system of beliefs". But it isn't. Scientology is the knowledge of L. Ron Hubbard set onto paper. It is disseminated by the Church he founded because his knowledge was about the spirit. Now, if you read his words and come away convinced that there is no spirit, that mankind has no spiritual aspect. Then that is perfectly fine with the author, fine with the Church, fine with the Church's members. No problem, believe anything you want to. But "A system of beliefs" is the one thing Scientology is not. The Church doesn't present Hubbard's philosophy that way and Hubbard didn't present his philosophy that way. That is a made up fairy tale.

Scientology is an applied religious philosophy developed by L. Ron Hubbard. It is the study and handling of the spirit . . .

From What is Scientology.org [1] Terryeo (talk) 06:00, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Christianity is a system of beliefs based on the writings of a number of people - four in the New Testament, a number of them in the old Testament; plus a number of scholars interpreting these; for lack of a better word it is called religion; Islam is based on the writings of one person, plus a number of scholars interpreting,... In France, Scientology is currently accused of supporting a system to defraud people; So if we accept that Scientology is anything spiritual, then I think system of beliefs is not too bad; what other new religious movements are there that are as young as Scientology (which was first talked about in the 1950s, I think)? - What title do we apply to them? --Eptalon (talk) 09:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Christianity is founded on the idea that Christ rose from the grave as a demonstration of his alliance (or call it other relationship) with God. And upon this datum, and other historical data (which would be difficult to prove or disprove), we have "belief". Because we can not prove beyond doubt that Christ was the Son of God, we must fall back to "belief". And Islam, is likewise based on "belief". Certain events in the far past are not visible to our observation, today. Practitioners consider those past events did happen, further, they happened for the reasons their holy texts say. But Scientology is not founded on far past events. It does not request or require that practitioners "believe" past events. Thus, a Christian can be a Scientologist and be in good standing with both Churches. Because one Church believes, while the other Church neither encourages nor discourages belief. Terryeo (talk) 17:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be best to rename it into "body of beliefs and related practices created by L. Ron Hubbard", that the main article is using. "Movement" is very far from what it seems to be. The main article's definition was reached after lengthy discussions, and it appears to be acceptable to many editors. --Codex01 (talk) 16:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Map of countries and churches

This map is kind of misleading. It's true that there are churches in these countries, but the caption on the page says that grey areas don't have a large Scientology presence. The problem is that many of the yellow areas do not have a large presence, either. This XLS file says that the New Zealand census reported 357 Scientologists in the country. That is not a large number. Numbers are similar in Australia. [2] There are a lot of other examples I could give. I think this map just makes Scientology look like it is more popular than it is. It may be technically accurate, but it is still misleading. Grayfell (talk) 05:23, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the map from the page, for now. Grayfell (talk) 05:34, 13 February 2014 (UTC)