What Is…?

Question by Pit Bull Owned!: what is…?
What is Scienctology (sp.. sorry) I just recently heard that term used for a type of religion, I was courious to know if anyone new what it was or what it is about…
thanks

Best answer:

Answer by F-Answering-Q!
Hi , here are a few details

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] (http://www.scientology.org/en_US/religion/heritage/pg011.html) 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 and the courts of several countries—have characterized the Church of Scientology as an unscrupulous commercial organization; it has often been described not as a religion, but a man-made 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.

Origins of Scientology
Scientology was expanded and reworked from Dianetics [2] (http://www.neuereligion.de/ENG/Wolf/pg6.htm), an earlier system of self-improvement techniques originally set out by Hubbard in the 1950 book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Immediately prior to this work, Hubbard was intensively involved with the occultist Jack Parsons in performing the occult rites developed by Aleister Crowley. Some critics have seen many similarities in Hubbard’s writings to the doctrines of Crowley [3] (http://www.xenu.net/archive/lrhbare/lrhbare08.html).

By the mid-1950s, Hubbard had relegated Dianetics to being a sub-study of Scientology, although it is still promoted and delivered by Scientology organizations. 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 [4] (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/finsbury/124/last.htm) focused on dealing with spiritual issues spanning multiple past lives as well as the present day.

Hubbard was repeatedly accused of adopting a religious facade 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 [5] (http://www.bible.ca/scientology-1million-start-a-religion.htm).

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”. [6] (http://www.instinct.org/texts/bluesky/bs3-4.htm) 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. [7] (http://www.scientologie.de/scientologie/index.htm) 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 ????? 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.”

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