I'm going through my videos of our many protests against Scientology and other Scientology-related things. I want these clips that I consider important to be out there for posterity, to provide more information for people who want to know more about Scientology, from a critic's viewpoint.

I was browsing for Christmas presents at a book store when I stumbled across this book. The back cover lists the 5 warning signs of corruption in religion:

1. Absolute Truth Claims
2. Blind Obedience
3. Establishing the "Ideal" Time
4. The End Justifies Any Means
5. Declaring Holy War

Scientology uses the religious nomenclature on Hubbard’s works to gain the advantage accorded to religion. When someone criticizes Hubbard’s writings, it’s not just criticism, it’s religious persecution. But is it? I wrote “The Hubbard is Bare” to criticize the scientific claims in the book Dianetics. Since Scientology considers Dianetics to be a religious writing as well as a philosophy and a science, does that make me a religious persecutor?

What religious organization teaches that, 75 million years ago, a tyrannical interstellar ruler named Xenu solved a galactic overpopulation problem by transporting beings to Earth and annihilating them with H-bombs? What religious organization disciplines its own members with measures ranging from suspension of pay and disbarment from premises up to labelling them as "fair game," for which they can be "tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed"?

What religious organization follows faithfully the teachings of a pulp science fiction author who claims to have visited Heaven over forty trillion years ago?

What religious organization has had its offices raided by government officials in three American states, Canada, Germany, Italy and France?

Welcome to the church of Scientology.

So, yes, Scientology works, so long as you wish to live in the Scientology World. But if you want to live in the Real World, it doesn't. I was in a cult myself for 6 years in my own Fake World. From that experience I can say that I prefer the Real World with its uncertainties and problems to my Fake World where I knew all the answers and felt the bliss of my mystical experiences. The Fake World is an easier world to live in, but what's the point? What is gained by living like some kids today so deeply involved in Dungeons and Dragons fantasy that they loose sight of food, sleep, jobs, family, friends? The Emperor in his new fake clothes was quite happy amongst people who also "saw" his wonderful robes, but when confronted by a child from the Real World, his Fake World disintegrated. Is living in a Fake World really worth anything? I think not.

First I must tell you that there is no scientific evidence for most of Hubbard's theories, despite his claim that they are "scientific facts". Secondly, Hubbard had no academic background to come up with theories of the mind, despite his false grandiose claims of world travel and incredible education. Finally, the actual scientific community and in fact the real world all dispute with credible evidence almost all of Hubbard's theories. Despite this, Hubbard still has a following. And since he and the Church of Scientology have placed his teachings into the marketplace of ideas, it is useful to all interested parties to have these ideas critiqued. But first, a brief overview of those ideas.

In the real world, the state of Clear is basically a rank within the Church of Scientology. In the real world, the superhuman qualities of Clear have not been perceived by independent investigators, nor have these superhumans been able to take over or at least greatly effect society in any fashion. In other words, although thousands of people have obtained the rank of Clear, there is no proof that any of them fit Hubbard's grandiose claims for them in Dianetics. Nor have they been able to accomplish what Hubbard claimed they could.

For Hubbard to call the reactive mind moronic, and yet declare that it can perform all these functions, seems to be contradictory. Since Hubbard did not seem to perceive this contradiction, he of course offered no explanation, so I offer two possible ones that could be presented to try to save the theory:

• The reactive mind connects with the analytical mind and utilizes some of its abilities.
• The reactive mind is actually a part of the analytical mind.

Either of these solutions is, however, actually a death blow to dianetics. The whole point of dianetics is that these two minds cannot communicate and are completely separate.

If Hubbard really respected science, he would welcome and help the scientific community in its attempts to both support and refute his theories. But he and his successors in Dianetics and Scientology refuse to join in scientific debate over the merits of his ideas, maintaining a dogmatic rather than scientific stance. My attempts to get the experiments from the Church of Scientology have been in vain. I have never heard of anyone who has seen them, nor even anyone who claimed to know how they were conducted. It is mainly for this reason, I believe, that dianetics cannot claim scientific validity. Until Hubbard's supposed original experiments are released to the public, dianetics can only be called science fiction.

Welcome to my world. I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, spending summers on my grandparents' farm bordering the Missouri River. I went to high school in Canada and Texas. I lived for 1 1/2 years in Clearwater, Florida and moved back to Phoenix in October 2001.

I have a B.A. in Religious Studies, and 9 hours toward a Master's. I was in a cult for 6 years.  This is my experience there.

Jeff earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies. In addition, he has completed extensive research on cults in general and Scientology in particular.

His interests in cults comes from his own six year experience in a small, Pentecostal church in South Dakota during the 1970's.

On October 1, 1993, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service formally announced that the Church of Scientology and its myriad corporate entities had been granted tax exemption. This was a stunning announcement considering that the IRS had been in almost constant battle with Scientology since 1966, had several court (and even a Supreme Court) rulings in its favor, and had compelling evidence of Scientology fraud, misrepresentation, and even harassment against IRS officials. The ruling, however, stopped thousands of lawsuits against the IRS and individual IRS auditors filed by or on behalf of Scientology. "THE WAR IS OVER!" trumpeted International Scientology News magazine, showing the huge rally Scientology held to celebrate their "victory" over the IRS which had created "false reports disseminated overseas." "…of all the many agencies that barked at Scientology's heels in the ensuing years, the most persistent - and the most dangerous - was the IRS… It's ultimate stated purpose: to destroy the Church of Scientology."

Did Scientology win a moral victory over the IRS that was illegally attacking a religion, or did the properly acting IRS cave in to the attacks of Scientology in the "war" Scientology had waged against the IRS?

This article will review the history of the IRS regarding Scientology, the October 1, 1993 tax-exemption for Scientology, and the reasons why this ruling should be rescinded. [...]

Although there are no reference notes in Dianetics to see what are Hubbard's ideas and what are borrowed, we can quickly eliminate the idea that dianetics appeared "from the blue" by Hubbard's own statements. In Dianetics itself is the statement that "many schools of mental healing from the Aesculapian to the modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of dianetics had been postulated". (3) Alfred Korzybski, Emil Kraepelin, Franz Mesmer, Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Spencer, and others are mentioned as resources in Dianetics, so we must assume Hubbard was crediting these people to some degree. He must certainly have known, then, of at least some of the research from his time which will be mentioned in this article. Hubbard in other settings acknowledged Sigmund Freud (especially through Commander "Snake" Thompson), (4) Count Alfred Korzybski, (5) and Aleister Crowley, (6) as contributors to his ideas on the human mind. In a speech in 1958, Hubbard stated that he had spent much time in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital medical library in 1945 during a stay for ulcers, where "I was able to get in a year's study." (7)

Hubbard's connection to the occultist Aleister Crowley is quite clear and noteworthy. Crowley called himself the Anti-Christ, the Beast of Revelations, and 666. Russell Miller has adequately chronicled Hubbard's connection in 1945 to John W. Parsons, who headed Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis chapter in Los Angeles. (2) Hubbard was an active member in this group for several months, and first met his second wife there. The Church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was actually infiltrating this group in order to break it up, but the following should suffice to dismiss this claim.

So, yes, Scientology works, so long as you wish to live in the Scientology World. But if you want to live in the Real World, it doesn't. I was in a cult myself for 6 years in my own Fake World. From that experience I can say that I prefer the Real World with its uncertainties and problems to my Fake World where I knew all the answers and felt the bliss of my mystical experiences. The Fake World is an easier world to live in, but what's the point? What is gained by living like some kids today so deeply involved in Dungeons and Dragons fantasy that they loose sight of food, sleep, jobs, family, friends? The Emperor in his new fake clothes was quite happy amongst people who also "saw" his wonderful robes, but when confronted by a child from the Real World, his Fake World disintigrated. Is living in a Fake World really worth anything? I think not.

The Church of Scientology has taken upon itself the goal of eradicating psychiatry from the face of the earth. This may seem like a strange project for a "church," until one reads the thoughts of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

In 1950 Hubbard published "Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health". This unscientific and unproven method of "clearing" the mind of problems was seen as an alternative to what psychiatry at that time was providing. At first Hubbard did not consider himself in competition with psychiatry, and in fact had sought psychiatric help himself earlier. But Dianetics was rejected by the psychiatric community and Hubbard gradually became more and more irate at the profession.

In 1969 the Citizens Commission on Human Rights was formed as an arm of Scientology to fight against psychiatry. In 1993 CCHR was granted tax exempt status in a secret IRS agreement of the Church of Scientology's exemption. CCHR and Scientology continue to attack psychiatry.

We have in Dianetics a work by a science-fiction writer who claims to have created a totally new and foolproof handbook of the mind with no documentation to prove his claimed research. This book has been actively sold by Hubbard's Church of Scientology for many years, and yet it is simply a synthesis of already published ideas with bizarre, unsubstantiated claims thrown in. The theories in this book, other than those found in previous works by others, have never been scientifically validated, and in fact, one attempt came up dry. (49) There is little scholastic or societal benefit to be derived from this work. S.I. Hayakawa put it well in his review of Dianetics: "The appalling thing revealed by dianetics about our culture is that it takes a 452-page book full of balderdash to get some people to sit down and seriously listen to each other!" (50)

[...] Falling into the last category is the Church of Scientology (COS), which has seen texts of secret Scientology teachings, affidavits and declarations from court cases, and even entire books by Scientology critics, made publicly (and anonymously) available on both the Internet and the Usenet, a collection of thousands of public discussion forums known as newsgroups. Rather than answering the criticism, Scientologists have responded in their standard manner-by attacking their critics with confrontation and litigation. This article is a summary of recent events in what began as the battle between Scientology and its critics and, because of these tactics, is now the battle between Scientology and the Internet. [...]

After we left the picket we decided to check out the Big Blue building on the way back to Sizzler to get Barb's bike, then go to the Shrine Auditorium to picket the event there (scheduled to start at 6:30pm).  As we drove around the Big Blue on LRH Way, a white van pulled up along side us at the light and Ed Richardson yelled at us "I have a message for you!" The light changed and I drove off. Richardson followed us. In fact he followed us for several miles, through back streets and everything. When he got behind us at a red light he'd come up to my window with his cell phone out and say "I have a message for you!"  I'd say "happy birthday to you too!" and drive off.  But when we pulled into the Sizzler parking lot, apparently the important message wasn't so important anymore because Richardson just drove on by and we never saw him again.

At the Sizzler we discovered that Barb's motorcycle was gone. I at first assumed it was stolen. But we called the police and it had been towed "at the request of the Sizzler." So we talked to the Sizzler manager again. He said he never authorized that the motorcycle be towed. So... what happened? Apparently somebody posed as the manager and got the towing company to tow the bike. Who would do that?