In article <691rhd$nt2$1 @news.net-quest.com >, J.M. Ivler <ivler@net-quest.com> wrote:

Not me. My wife. She has heard nothing about this until the 60 minutes episode. Then this tonite.

After the segment went to commercial she turned to me and asked me a few questions.

- Honey, that guy they interviewed, was he high up in the Church?

* Yep. It was sort of like listening to a Biship in your faith.

- The guy never answered a single question he was asked, he ranted and raved about psychologists, but the question was about getting that dying girl medical help. Is he nuts?

* I don't know. I'm not qualified to make that medical opinion.

- Seriously, this wasn't some sort of sick joke, was it?

* Nope. that appears to be the real person.

- First the stuff from the space opera, now this fruitcake, is anyone really involved with this nonsense?

* Yep. According to the Church over 8 million people.

- You're kidding, right?

* Nope.

- 8 million people follow this 'leader'?

* That's what they claim.

- Are they all nuts?

* Honey, I can't make that statement. I would like to state that I have the opinion that the 8 million number is bogus and that the number of people involved is far less. In addition, you aren't told the space opera story as a fact until you have dumped a great deal of money into it, so I would say that less than 20% of all active Church of Scientology members are aware of this part of the belief system. In total, if you had 50,000 active members, which I feel is about right, than less than 10,000 are in on the space opera.

- but most know about the nut case that was on TV?

* yep, in fact the stuff he read at the begining of the interview is right from the magazine that they just published this week…

I have to comment on your and your wife's observations.

You are correct that the 8 million number of members is bogus. Heber is lying, and he knows it. The cult (and its propaganda mouthpiece Heber) only states that Scientology has 8 million members in an attempt to portray Scientology as an acceptable new "religious" movement. The lie is repeated in order to pretend that Scientology is an expanding and credible organization.

Your figures about the real number of Scientologists are pretty accurate. Since Hubbard founded Scientology over 44 years ago, there have been approximately 50,000 individuals who have beencertified as "Clear", and more than half of those are no longer active in Scientology. I am one of the "Clears" no longer active.

In case anyone wonders where I got these figures, I will tell you… The last position I held during my years in Scientology's Sea Organization was Computer I/C and Address Officer. I was in charge of maintaining Scientology's mailing list for one of its so-called "advanced organizations". The figures are from Scientology itself. This is how I know the "8 million" membership number to be a lie.

Previous to holding the Computer I/C position, I held the post of Financial Planning Chairman and Treasury Secretary for the same Sea Org "advanced organization". From that position, I was responsible for ensuring funds were allocated for Scientology's weekly and monthly bulk mail promotional pieces. One of the cult's main promo pieces is The Auditor Magazine. It is supposed to be a monthly publication, according to Hubbard's policies in the OEC Volume II (exact reference available from me upon demand). At no time during my eight years in the "advanced organization" did The Auditor Magazine get sent to more than 250,000 individuals.

Out of the entire mailing list of 250,000 individuals, approximately 180,000 of those had simply bought a book (usually Dianetics) or had done an introductory (also called a "basic") course in Scientology. Approximately 45,000 individuals had completed a major course and/or "auditing" level. The rest of the names (25,000) consisted of individuals whose current address was unknown, or who had died, been declared "SP" (suppressive person), legal threats, "PTS" (potential trouble source), or who had asked to be removed from the mailing list.

Since he has been living the cultie life for close to 30 years, Heber has no idea how nuts he looks to those outside of his cult (and even to some Scientologists in good standing).

Thanks to many good people like Robert Vaughn Young, reporters are now hip to the fact that Scientologists are expert at the art of "Q&Aing" (Scienospeak for failing to answer questions), and many reporters know to simply repeat their questions until an answer is given or the cultie makes a fool of himself/herself by failing to answer the question.

Watch other top Scienoculties like Laura Vaughn, Eliott Abelson, David Miscavige, Warren McShane and Norman Starkey avoid giving answers to direct questions. Of course, they do this because Scientology executives who have contact with the media and attorneys are extensively drilled in avoidance and diversionary techniques. The trouble is, the world is wising up to Hubbard's mandated policies towards people who ask embarassing questions!

When one considers that fewer than ten thousand people have studied the "advanced teachings" (covering body thetans, Xenu and other science fiction crap), and even fewer accept Hubbard's sci-fi cosmology after studying it, one will realize that ten thousand deluded souls out of a planet populated by roughly six billion people is a VERY insignificant percentage! Do the math; 10,000 divided by 6,000,000,000 equals a ratio of 1 in 600,000, or .0000016!

Is it any wonder that Heber (one of the 10,000) was appointed as a spokesman for the cult?

Just putting it all in perspective...

Warrior <warrior@electrotex.com>

read
http://www.xenu.net 
and
http:// www.entheta.net/ entheta/ 1stpersn/ warrior/
[now at http://www.xenu.net/entheta/1stpersn/warrior/ ]
and
http://berlin.snafu.de/~tilman 

To add to Warrior's personal experience, here are some of my notes on this interesting matter:

CoS' promoters are very good at making attractive claims, and perhaps one of the best ways to demonstrate their willingness to glibly overstate and misrepresent themselves on even the most fundamental matters is to look at their most basic data, membership numbers. It's also interesting to note that in the section of "Demographic and Statistical Facts About Scientology" on their own web site at <http:// www.scientology.org/ p_jpg/ heritage/ heriteng/ dmografx/ 27-idx.htm >, the numbers on the charts end between 1990 and 1995, the period when ex-members and critics say they began a precipitous decline. Can a "church" that is apparently outrageously dishonest about even its most basic facts, be trusted to provide any reliable information about itself?

• CoS' claims are contradicted by everything from polls and censuses to personal testimony and information in their own internal publications, not to mention often contradicting themselves. All indications are that there are fewer than 100,000 active members, and that the 8 million figure is a public relations exaggeration.

• There simply do not exist enough, or large enough, locations to serve a significant membership. There are only a few hundred churches and missions listed by CoS worldwide, fewer than a hundred in the US, and many of the missions turn out to be mail drops and members' homes or businesses; many of the churches and missions have closed or moved to smaller quarters in recent years. They do not have nearly the presence in physical facilities or members that religious groups in the range of 10 million members have, such as the LDS (Mormons).

• Reports indicate that many churches and missions pay staff almost nothing and let them sleep on the premises, and many staff members have spouses who are the family breadwinner, allowing them to survive on just a handful of members taking expensive courses and services.

• Even CoS' own numbers don't hold up to basic analysis. For instance, their most optimistic figure of of about 3,000 "groups" leaves an impossible average of over 3,000 "parishioners" per location. They claim to deliver over a million hours a year of their most basic service, "auditing", but it is normally done in 10-hour "blocks", not enough to service more than 100,000 active members.

• The number of people who have reached the first level of "clear" in their "processing" is only around 50,000 total in the history of Dianetics and Scientology, and nearly half of those were in the 1970s; currently the number is going up by only about 1,000 per year.

• Claims of actual shrinkage in CoS' membership in recent years reported by former members, is supported by the reduction in the number of churches and missions actually open, a reduction in the number of organizations and churches claiming "St. Hill Size", and CoS' evasiveness about providing verified statistics — or even statistics they used to provide, that might show decline over time. CoS' statistics now consist of things that are tangential, like the number of countries that they operate in, or the number of groups that they've formed.

• Even taken at face value, the growth in membership to the 70s from the 90s only keeps pace with worldwide population growth in that period, leaving CoS' percentage of the population claimed as members the same

Below is a history of CoS' membership claims, and some external data and analysis.

1977 CLAIM
5,437,000 — number of members given in the 1977 edition of "What Is Scientology?"

1991 CLAIMS
"Scientology now boasts of more than 8 million members in 71 countries"
Reported in the Hemet News 1991 series on Scientology, part 5

"Scientology has grown in 40 years to encompass 8 million members…"
Reported in USA Today 8/2/91

(above figures presumably provided to the press by CoS PR functionaries, but material showing the claim made directly by CoS was not available)

1991 INDEPENDENT SURVEY
"45,000 people claim Scientology", 1991 National Survey of ReligiousIdentification as reported in USA Today Nov. 18 '93

1992 CLAIM
"Eight million people, yes, over a period of the last— since 1954." — CoS International President Heber Jentzsch on ABC Nightline, Feb. 14, 1992, answering interviewer Forrest Sawyers's questions "How do you get to call them members?… They took one course, maybe?"

1994 CLAIMS
"Currently has between 8 and 10 million members worldwide and is growing very fast" CoS leader David Miscavige to Wolf Lotter from Austrian Profil-Magazine, December 1994

"This year, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Church of Scientology, our religion spans the globe. Today, nearly 13,000 church staff members minister the religion to some 8 million members, through 2,318 churches, missions and related organizations in 107 countries and in 31 languages. Each year, approximately 500,000 people participate in Scientology services for the first time in one of our churches or missions." — Rev. Heber Jentzsch, CoS Int'l President

1997 CLAIMS
"The world's fastest growing religion" — Main page at www.scientology.org , 1997, claim also frequently repeated by members and spokespersons.

"To the eight million parishioners of the Church of Scientology, Scientology is their religion" — (c) 1997 claim at http:// news.scientology.org/ ads/ iht/ ihissu07/ ihissu07.htm 

"Scientology is an international religion located in more than 120 countries, with 8-million members" — From a rebuttal letter to the St. Petersburg (FL) times entitled "Scientology report continues distortions" by CoS spokesperson "Rev." Brian Anderson, Vice President CoS of Clearwater, 11/8/97

"If any of the things these people say are true, there would not be 8-million Scientologists in the world today" — CoS Office of Special Affairs (OSA) senior official Mike Rinder commenting on accusations made by former scientologists at a press conference, Dec. '97

NEW CLAIM?
"John starts mouthing a litany of Scientology wins & successes, about the 10 million (not 8) Scientologists in the world" — John Carmicheal, CoS "PR man for the New York City Org" (DSA), as reported by Garry Scarff, early Dec. '97

SOME PERSPECTIVE
The Mormon Church (LDS) claims about the same number of members but also has the much more obvious public profile to prove their stature; they dominate their spiritual center of Salt Lake City in Nevada , have the large Brigham Young University system, and have hundreds if not thousands of obvious church buildings across the US with more around the globe. Here are "Preliminary membership data estimated to 1 January 1997" from the LDS website at <http:// www.lds.org/ Global_Media_Guide/ Key_Facts_and_Figures.html >:

• Worldwide: 9,700,000
• U.S.: 4,800,000
• Number of Church units worldwide (congregations): 23,200
• Languages in which the basic Church curriculum text is available: 145
• The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ
  • 78 million copies published since 1830
  • Approximately 4.5 million copies distributed in 1995
  • 90 languages in print

CoS, in contrast, claims to have over a thousand "churches, missions, and groups", yet lists only a few hundred on their web pages (less than a hundred in the US), many of which turn out not to be active.

THE TRUTH?

• "I was one of a few SO staff who worked on the computerization project which consisted of entering to the mailing list the name and address of *every* person….

  As I have said before, approximately 10% of the entries on the mailing list are "UNK" (address unknown). Approximately 180,000 have ONLY read or bought a book, or have done a basic course. About 40,000 or so have done a "major service" *and* are still in good standing.

  The entire mailing list for all of Canada, the US, Mexico and Central and South America is only about 250,000 names. Only 15 – 18 percent of these 250,000 names can be considered members…."

  - "Warrior", former CoS certified "address officer", posting to a.r.s. Nov. '97

• "According to FACTNET records, a 1987 internal Church document indicated less than 50,000 members.

  I have personal knowledge that in 1990 the Central Files at the Flag Service Org (FSO) contained about 40,000 names. Per Church policy, the names of any person who purchases services at a lower org are forwarded to the FSO, for inclusion in their central files. Many of these names were duplicates, the same people with previous or incorrect addresses. Many had not purchased services for over ten years, some were deceased."

  - Joe Harrington, former scientologist, posting to a.r.s. Mar. '95

• "Therefore we set the 1991 goals as follows:

  • Build the membership to 100,000 active members.
  • …
  • Change the order of magnitude on the Free Membership Program by getting all new Scientologists signed up as Free Members as soon as they purchase their frst book or service and increasing this membership to 200,000 members."

  - A 1991 publication for staff members from the IAS (Int'l Assn. of Scientologists); membership in IAS is a prerequisite for participating in "church" activities or receiving "services"

• "1994 *I* kept the little org open. $12,000+ in donations. (more than that, I don't have all the receipts) It was after I left that two different staff members told me I had kept them open that year.

  Once, I'm guessing around 1990, the staff had paychecks of 2-5 thousand each one week. They had sent someone to Flag who had spent about a million dollars.

  Staff pay is typically nothing here, I know because I was on staff several times. By nothing I mean under $20 per week…. IOW, it only takes a few, very few live ones to keep the doors open.

  Remember, the sea org dudes at the little org sleep in the building and do not have vehicles. I had/have a breakdown of what it costs to keep the doors open at the little org, right around $3,200 per month. Maybe less now as they are down to one single phone line. The big org owns the building so maybe that is not that expensive to keep open.

  Why are there so many females in the orgs? Because their husbands work Wog jobs to support the families….

  Also, at least here in Vegas, things like toilet paper and coffee are donated. The org does not pay for them."

  - Ted Mayett, posting to a.r.s. 01/13/98