---- - **Name:** The Church of Scientology - **Head Quarters:** East Grinstead, Sussex, United Kingdom - **President/CEO:** - Creator: L. Ron Hubbard - President: [David Miscavige](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miscavige) - **Incorporated/Established Date:** 1959 - **Type:** #religious_institution - **Trust Score:** <span style="color: red;">LOW</span> <details> <summary><b>Trust Score Analysis</b></summary> <IMG src="https://publish-01.obsidian.md/access/1c31a6f93f82a49b0a9eb31193d6cdec/_images/scientology_trust_score.png" alt="Trust Score"/> </details> ## Mission Scientology's utopian aim is to "**clear the planet**", a world in which everyone has cleared themselves of their engrams. Auditing is a one-on-one session with a Scientology counselor or "auditor". ## About Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy. An organization that he established in 1950 to promote it went bankrupt, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics in 1952. He then recharacterized his ideas as a religion, likely for tax purposes, and renamed them Scientology. By 1954 he had regained the rights to Dianetics and founded the Church of Scientology, which remains the largest organization promoting Scientology. There are practitioners independent of the Church, in what is called the Free Zone. Estimates put the number of Scientologists at under 40,000 worldwide. Scientology beliefs include reincarnation, and that traumatic events cause problematic "engrams" in the mind. They claim that an activity called "auditing" can remove the "engrams". A fee is charged for each session of "auditing". Once an "auditor" deems an individual free of "engrams", typically after several years, they are given the status of "clear". Scholarship differs on the interpretation of these beliefs: some academics regard them as religious in nature; other scholars regard them as merely a means of extracting money from Scientology recruits. After being deemed "clear", adherents can take part in further activities called Operating Thetan levels, which require further payments. The Operating Thetan texts are kept secret from most followers; they are revealed only after adherents have typically given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Scientology organization. It has gone to considerable lengths to try to maintain the secrecy of the texts, but they are freely available online on sites such as the publisher WikiLeaks. These texts say past lives took place in extraterrestrial cultures. They involve an alien called Xenu, described as a planetary ruler 70 million years ago who brought billions of aliens to Earth and killed them with thermonuclear weapons. Despite being kept secret from most followers, this forms the central mythological framework of Scientology's ostensible soteriology. These aspects have become the subject of popular ridicule. From soon after their formation, Hubbard's groups have generated considerable opposition and controversy, in several instances because of their illegal activities. In the 1970s Hubbard's followers engaged in a program of criminal infiltration of the U.S. government, resulting in several executives of the organization being convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a U.S. Federal Court. Hubbard himself was convicted in absentia of fraud by a French court in 1978 and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1992, a court in Canada convicted the Scientology organization in Toronto of spying on law enforcement and government agencies, and criminal breach of trust, later upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2009, a judgment upheld by the supreme Court of Cassation in 2013. The Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgments as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business. Following extensive litigation in numerous countries, the organization has managed to attain a legal recognition as a religious institution in some jurisdictions, including Australia, Italy, and the United States. Germany classifies Scientology groups as an "anti-constitutional sect", while the French government classifies the group as a dangerous cult. ## Prominent Members - Tom Cruise - Elisabeth Moss - Michael Pena - Jon Travolta ## Online Presence - https://www.scientology.org/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology