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Religious Landscape Survey - 10 Million Scientologists?

I recently read an article that referenced a New Your Times article about a recently conducted survey done in the United States called the Religious Landscape Survey.

The New York Times article can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/u...6a86a120796fbc&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The survey itself is here:

http://religions.pewforum.org/

It is very interesting indeed, showing the religious affiliations of some 35,000 individuals who participated.

Now, keep in mind the church asserts there are more than 10 Million Scientologists. This can be shown be be an extremely inflated figure when one one considers there are only 8 to 12 million Jews (depending on the survey and if one is looking at practicing members of Judaism, etc.)

In other words, there should be as many Scientoloigsts as Jews in any sort of religious survey conducted.

Suffice it to say that Scientology is not even remotely comparable to Judaism in this Religious Landscape Survey. Jews are represented by 1.7% of the people surveyed. Scientology would be included with essentially all other minority religions in the "Other World Religions" category, coming in at <.3%

(Note the "Other Faiths" category includes specific faiths, and Scientology is not amongst these, hence it must be included instead in the "Other World Religions" category.)

Another note on Scientology's assertion of 10 Million members: I do wonder, does this include the endless numbers of people who have been declared? And if Joe Public left the church 20 years ago, do they still count him? For all they know he is a member of the Freezone now, which means some of those 10 million are Freezoners right? How many members of this board are included in that figure? If you add up the CFs of all the Orgs you would end up counting the same person many times (how many Org CF's were you listed in?)

Of course this assertion of having 10 Million members is widely regarded as ridiculously hopeful PR by the Church, but here at least is a recent survey data that gives some hard facts.

If there were 10 Million Scn's, it would require every Class V Org to be the size of Flag, a fact of arithmetic that seems to have eluded Church management. I wonder why that is . . .

Crusty Old Bastard
 

Lovesnightsky

Silver Meritorious Patron
This is an interesting question. I was never an executive, so these types of "facts" are not something I am familiar with. But I was under the impression, when on staff, that everyone who ever took a course and or a service was counted as a scientologist. This could mean someone coming in to do a $10 course once in their life, blow the course after five minutes and never return.
This was my personal impression and I can't back it up with any policy on the matter.
 
One Course Makes a Scientologist

Here is an excerpt of the Nightline interview from

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Story?id=2664713

This where Heber says that someone who took one course is a "member":

Jentzsch: Well, that's how valuable the course is. Eight million people, yes, over a period of the last-- Since 1954.

Yes Heber - and where are they now? I wonder if they still count Mike Rinder in the current 10 Million figure - I sure hope someone remembers to keep that addo list of 10 million in PT! I wonder if I am still on it :)

Crusty Old Bastard

* * * * *

Sawyer: Radio broadcasts are prepared, audiotapes reproduced by the thousands on high-speed copiers, original music created, all of this to encourage more people to join the movement, and join they do. The church says it now has centers in over 70 countries, with more on the way. Church leaders say this place, 520 acres south of Los Angeles, a place they call "Gold," is a sign of their rapid expansion. It is here where top church officials are planning the future. "Gold" is run by people who believe so strongly they've signed billion-year contracts with the church, a kind of priesthood, dressed in uniforms, working over 13 hours a day, earning just $30 a week. The church says these men and women are only the most dedicated of eight million members worldwide. Church of Scientology president Heber Jentzsch. (interviewing) How do you get to call them members?

Heber Jentzsch, President, Church of Scientology: Because they joined and they came in and they studied Scientology.

Sawyer: They took one course, maybe.

Jentzsch: Well, that's how valuable the course is. Eight million people, yes, over a period of the last-- Since 1954.

Sawyer: Critics say the actual figure is closer to 100,000, but unquestionably, thousands of people, including well-known celebrities, do swear by what they call "a technology of the mind."
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
If there were 10 Million Scn's, it would require every Class V Org to be the size of Flag, a fact of arithmetic that seems to have eluded Church management. I wonder why that is . . .

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Ever since 1950 the various centers have logged the details of every person who came in, bought a book, did a test or bought a service.:duh:

If you combine all these names into one list (which the cult has done), then I am sure that after 58 years of doing this they can come up with a very large number, possibly to give a bit of credence to the wild claims made. :confused2:

However, as you point out, IF all these people had been genuine members, people who bought services, attended gatherings and so on, EVERY org in the world would be bigger than anything there is right now. The public lines would be so busy that literally thousands of new people would be coming in every week. The local impact and influence of $cn in each area would be huge. $cn would have pervaded into our everyday life. :unsure:

Has it? :no: :no:

No it has not. so, this tells us that the claims made are wholly fabricated. I remember events in the orgs. The same handful of people came every time. Were there any new people? Hardly ever. :melodramatic:

How many new people come in to the various orgs and centers each week to start a new course? Probably a handful. The bald fact of the matter is that far more people quit than come in. The turnover rate for staff and public is about 98%. :omg:

The remaining few have been so completely dominated and imprisoned in their own mental cage that they cannot perceive of any life outside of the cult.

This sad fact also applies to the kids. Those who have been brought up in the cult, knowing only Hubbard's teachings and learned through ritual indoctrination find it very difficult to cope if they decide to break out. :sad: :sad:

They have a set of values that are alien in the outside world. The same applied to those kids who were indoctrinated in the Hitler Youth. We had a few of them on lines in the 1960's and even then, as mature adults, they still manefested behavour patterns as learned through indoctrination. :nazi: :nazi:

So, when you hear the incoherent ravings of a cult spokesperson, just recognise that they are only spouting off the party line. Do they believe what they are saying ? Of course they do. After all, what would happen if they had questioning thoughts about the Goebbels' type propoganda they issue :unsure: :wacko: :whipped: ?

DM would be quite ruthless with them.

As and when the whole cult implodes, it will be interesting to hear if any of these propoganda clones revert to the "Nurenburg Defence". :melodramatic:
 

hartley

Patron with Honors
http://religions.pewforum.org/

It is very interesting indeed, showing the religious affiliations of some 35,000 individuals who participated.
It figures that Scientology would not be considered by them. The 1990 and 2001 New York City Uni surveys with a larger sample of 50,281 households had Scientology just above noise level with a 40% error.

I say 'consider' because the methodology of this survey would have recorded any Scientologists as either 'Other World Religions' or 'Other Faiths'. In any case they are less than 0.3% of the USA population.

The CoS currently claims 3.5 million members in the USA, IIRC that's 1.7%.
 

Lee_from_phx

Patron with Honors
Their claim to have millions of members is a lie....just like everything else they say.

Speculating on this makes about as much sense as debating how many angels can stand on the tip of a pin.

Now it is good to provide concrete proof that they are lying, but trying to find some rationale or basis for their claim of 10 million is a fool's errand.

That is a number they have pulled out of their ass without any basis in reality whatsoever.
 

ChaoticPsychotic

Patron with Honors
Well, I know that they send me junk mail to my parents house, my house, addressed to my maiden name, married name and several misspelled variations of my proper name...

So I must count for about 8 people just all by myself. And I am not even a Scientologist and will shoot whoever dares call me one!!:angry:
 
Addresso & Membership

Several years back I received a call from a young man in LA who was the IC of an addresso verification project. He asked if he could verify my current address and clean up any old addresses they may had for me. He then launched into listing off every address I had had for about the previous 10 years. There were a good number of them, some I had even forgotten. Some were variations of my name. All in all they easily had 8+ address / name combinations for me. So I think I likely was counted as a good 8 "members".

Also, don't forget - whenever you finish an auditor training level (an academy level, BC level, tech specialist course or internship) that counts as a "auditor made" stat. So an interned class IV counts are 6 "auditors" - minimum. I count for a dozen + "auditors" myself. So whenever you hear stats for "auditors", divide it by 5 (at least) and get a better idea.

Crusty Old Bastard
 

lrnobs

Patron with Honors
Of course this assertion of having 10 Million members is widely regarded as ridiculously hopeful PR by the Church, but here at least is a recent survey data that gives some hard facts.

If there were 10 Million Scn's, it would require every Class V Org to be the size of Flag, a fact of arithmetic that seems to have eluded Church management. I wonder why that is . . .

Simple grade school math and our own experience shows the COS claim to be nonsense.

Here is an official census site.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/religion.html
2001 shows about 55,000 USA members.

From a recent David Miscavige quote "After a recent review of our central files we discovered that our count of 10 million Scientologists was in error, we actually have a gazillion trillion billion Scientologists" :eyeroll:
 

Zinjifar

Silver Meritorious Sponsor
The major point is that there is no 'counting' being done at all. The numbers are pure imagination based on 'how many Scientologists *should* there be?'

Any after-the-fact rationalization for how the numbers are 'counted' is purely fantasy, since there *is* no counting.

Actual 'stats' is the kind of 'stats' the 'Church' doesn't want.

Zinj
 
The major point is that there is no 'counting' being done at all. The numbers are pure imagination based on 'how many Scientologists *should* there be?'

Any after-the-fact rationalization for how the numbers are 'counted' is purely fantasy, since there *is* no counting.

Actual 'stats' is the kind of 'stats' the 'Church' doesn't want.

Zinj

This is true :yes:

Three members of my family, covering 2 generations (like 40 years !) have worked in 'addresso' aka 'central files', and when each of them have attempted to introduce any sort of reality (ie not of the "What's true is what 'up-lines' want to be true" type reality) those down-stats weren't ever recorded.

Several hundred KR's and FPRD's later, we all finally got too old for all the bullshit.
 
An Influx of Public!

We are forgetting the new test centers though!

These, most assuredly, are creating an influx of public. Certainly by now they must have flowed endless thousands to the new spiffy Ideal Orgs.

In fact, every report I have heard of every test center has been they are nearly utterly empty. I have to visit one myself. I was by one on a Friday afternoon / early evening last year - it was closed.

The church of course promotes a wave of interest, etc.

Yet these "Ideal Orgs" are in fact small, no larger than a decent size Class V org of the last few decades. Their deliver stats are hardly impressive and no where NEAR true St. Hill size.

The numbers continue to decline. The staffs are young, mostly kids of older Scn's. The number of auditors made is utterly dismal. Ideal Orgs making one or two auditors a month. Wow.

10 Million strong and growing every second.

The pomposity truly knows no bounds.

Crusty Old Bastard
 
CoS Active Membership

I apologize I don't have time to search out the post right now (it's here on ESMB somewhere) but it posited the actual number of active Scn's worldwide at between 50,000 to 75,000.

This would seem realistic in light of the published Completion Lists.

Scn's membership claims include everyone who ever took a personality/stress test or mailed in to an org. They are pure PR/bogus.

And frankly Misavage doesn't care any more about "new public". The CoS money flow comes from established "rich public", offshore bank acounts, and their real estate holdings.

They clearly don't care about tech delivery any more, viz. no real tech training above Class VI for years (where are the VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII's)?

And the SnrC/S Int., the senior authority on Scn. technolgy (Ray Mithoff) is incarcerated at the SP Hall at Int. Base.

This is how the endgame will be played.

The current rich public will be milked to the max on retreads of the non-working OT Levels with expensive Sec-Checks in between. The general Scn. public will be milked to the max on the promise of the non-working OT levels. All of them will be milked for so-far-non-existent Super-Power and its dinosaur $4 billion building in Clearwater.

Where does the insanity end?

Stop it now, for the greatest number of dynamics, or just common sense

JHW

I'll shut up now.
 

Alan

Gold Meritorious Patron
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?p=302458#302458

There has been a lot of discussion as to how many Scientologists there really are. As I had access to actual figures, lists and stats when I was at the Int Base, I thought you might appreciate some factual information for a change.

The Church claims millions – the figure has been variously given as 8 or 10 million by Heber over the years, depending, I guess, on the alignment of the planets or what he had for breakfast. And early last year, Mike Rinder claimed 20 million in an interview - before he blew.

Well, here’s the actual data on the Church’s international address lists and statistics. This data is three years old – but then I doubt seriously if there’s been an increase!

Here’s the way it works: Orgs all over the world have their “CF” (Central Files), which is matched by their Addresso list. Addresso is the name index of Central Files. CF – by policy – includes everyone who has EVER bought anything from an organization, right back to the beginning. It’s against policy to ever retire names. You can only delete people who have died (nice of them), or dead-file “Suppressives.” Other than that, every name is kept.

There are two categories of names. The first is Book Buyers. That is anyone who has ever bought a book from an organization, including people who bought a copy of Dianetics or another Div 6 level book, and did nothing else. The second category is commonly called “Trained and Processed.” That’s anyone who has EVER bought training or auditing from an Org – including people who just took a Comm Course or a Div 6 Course and never did anything further.

Every Org sends its names to their Continental Office (CLO) and they keep a Continental Addresso in these two categories. And every Continent then sends their names to Int, and that becomes the Int Addresso. And, by the way, Missions send their names to the Orgs as well, so this also includes Mission names. So the Cont Addressos are the sum of the individual Org and Mission lists, and the Int list is the sum of the Cont lists – in other words, the total total internationally.

Here’s the punch line: The Int Addresso has about 200,000 names in the Trained and Processed category, and 2 million in the Bookbuyer category. That’s 200,000 people who have EVER bought a course or auditing, TOTAL, and 2 million who have EVER bought a book from an organization, TOTAL.

These lists are in pretty bad shape, and that’s quite a flap for International Scientology. From memory, about 20 to 30% of the list cannot be mailed to as they are “Address Unknowns” - people that have moved and they don’t have a current address. The Orgs have not been good about maintaining their lists over the years.

The other huge flap with these lists is that a huge percentage of those on the list are not active in Scientology. How many? No one knows. They are called, euphemistically, “off-lines Scientologists.” Ha! They really have no clue as to how many still consider themselves Scientologists.

How many on these lists are actually active? Let’s look at some more numbers. Every Org keeps a stat called “Bodies In The Shop” (BIS). That may sound like a stat for an auto repair business, but no, it’s an Org stat. It means anyone who came into the Org that week for any reason – training, processing, events, Sunday Service, whatever. It includes walk-ins. It includes people who are given a Comm Course, mini-course, whatever. Each person is counted only once that week (as far as we know!). That statistic (and this is as of three years ago) is 16,000 to 18,000, total. Worldwide.

Let’s look at Event Attendance internationally. This is counted and monitored after every event and is the subject of many meetings and plans and flaps. That’s why there’s always such a panic before an event and endless phone calls, badgering public, confirming and “reconfirming” on and on. 40,000 is considered a great event attendance. A usual event attendance is more like 20,000 to 30,000. This is all over the world, all countries, and includes video replays in remote areas.

So how many active Scientologists are there really? Based on what I know, I would say that a figure of 50,000 active Scientologists would be very optimistic. That would be on the high side.

As a non-Scientologist friend of mine put it, “that’s not even a good Raiders game.”

They claim 20 million? That number, I can tell you with certainty, is pulled out of a hat. In other words, to speak plainly, it’s a LIE.

They justify that to themselves by saying, well, that that is the number of people worldwide who have EVER been exposed to Hubbard or his books, including those who bought books in public bookstores, those who took WISE business courses or ABLE study courses without being told it was Scientology, or were handed a copy of The Way to Happiness and so on. It all totals up!

Well, say that’s true. And there are less than 50,000 still active? Let’s see, that means they must have a 99.75% failure rate, doesn’t it?
 

promise

Patron
Cruise exposure = Scientologist ???

The recent u-tube TC video, looked like it was from an actual event.

At the end it says that Mr. TC alone introduced over 1 Billion people to Scientology.

Who knows how that is counted. Anyone that ever heard of Tom C has been introduced to Scientology??
 
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