I was reading headlines where Jett Travolta was having a Scientology Funeral, and since I didn't know what the heck that was, I looked in the dictionary for the word. Surprised!!!! The word Scientology isn't even in the dictionary. I did research on Scientology Funeral and got some info, but why wouldn't the word be in the dictionary if it's really a word? Just curious.

'Scientology' is in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Your dictionary might not be updated often enough Scientology is a recent invention.

I looked in 'Thesaurus' and 'Merriam-Webster', two of the best known sources.

What did the Oxford English Dictionary say it meant?

And if it's a recent invention, it might have a weak foundation.

Before the end of time, the world will grow weaker, and wiser.

The germ of the idea for Scientology came from a group of science fiction writers in the late 1940s. Of course, L. Ron Hubbard was there, but I am not certain of the others. Possibly Asimov, DeCamp, and Farmer were in the group. They were complaining how difficult it was to make any real money writing SF. Someone asked, "What's the easiest way to make a lot of money?" Another answered, and they all agreed, that the easiest way to make a lot of money was, by far, to invent a religion. A few years later, L. Ron Hubbard "discovered" Scientology.

I know very little about Scientology, but I do know one thing. More people believe in each of the following than believe in Scientology:

Bigfoot/the Yeti
Chupracabra
the Davinci Code was factual
Ghosts
the Loch Ness Monster
Reincarnation
Rastafarianism
Vampires
the various Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy theories
Werewolves

quote:

Originally posted by honilov:


What did the Oxford English Dictionary say it meant?

" Scientology: A system of philosophy founded in 1951 by the American writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) whose proponents seek self-knowledge and spiritual fulfilment through graded courses of study and training . [A proprietary name]"

Harlan Ellison in an interview:

"Scientology is ********! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes!

I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers.

...

We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This ********'s got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

Wings: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: "The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it."

Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stole a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that ********, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that ********.
...

Ellison: And science fiction fans will go for any goddamm thing. They'll believe anything, man, they will believe in the abominable snowman and the Bermuda Triangle, in Pyramid Power, in EST, in Scientology, in the Second Coming, they'll believe in any goddamm thing, they don't give a ****. They go to see Star Wars; they think it is for real!
...
Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".
Here.

I knew I was forgetting a main player in that (and didn't remember the others). Ellison is the guy I never remember. (In my mind, I think of him and come up with Farmer. I do it when trying to credit a story, too.) Kornbluth and Del Rey were the other two that I had in mind, but the best I could come up with was DeCamp. (Did Kornbluth write under another name?)

According to wikipedia, kornbluth wrote under Cecil Corwin and S. D. Gottesman.

I first read the Hubbard bit years ago, in a wonderful book by Ellison, as I recall it was Dangerous Visions. I think he's terrific. I also love Arthur C. Clark, I like hard SciFi, not that fantasy crap. Unless it's got symbolic truth, or some other redeeming quality.

Thanks all. I can see why it wasn't in the dictionary. It's very interesting to know about it, tho. Too bad it took a young man's death for me to hear about it.

Hi Honi,
Have a look at Wikipedia if you want to know more. Some of their beliefs are totally nuts.
I found Andrew Morton's biography on Tom Cruise a disturbing insight into how Scientology operates. It's a quick read, and I don't know how acccurate it is, but it's very interesting. Take a look at some of the reviews here:
Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography

Scientology might not have as many believers as some of the crazy things DG mentioned, but it is nevertheless a bizarre and dangerous cult.
There's also a documentary that's well worth looking at, made for the UK's Panorama by John Sweeney. It's available on YouTube:

BBC Panorama - John Sweeney And Scientology Pt 1

Thanks dg. Very interesting video, and read. It sounds rather scary.

If we insist that our own particular brand of lunacy deserves to be tax exempt, what can we expect other than that newer and jazzier ones, with celebrity adherents even, will spring up? So what's new?

Our Charity Commissioners in Britain, who decide what and what is not a charity and regulate the accounts and activities of those bodies which are, ruled that Scientology is not a religion nor qualified as a charity.They were particularly unimpressed by the fact that Scientology was a pay-as-you go 'religion'.The organisation demands regular payments of its adherents,at each level, such that to reach the higher levels of understanding costs £100,000 or more.We don't think that's 'religion' or 'charity', we think it's profiteering from the (gullible?) faithful.

Were it a charity, it could reclaim all the income tax paid by donors.So if it received a gift of £80 from a standard rate taxpayer that gift would become £100 in their hands.Donors here get little or no tax relief on their gifts to charity.If they are wealthier and pay the gift out of the top slice of their income the donors may claim about 18 per cent of it as tax relief, which is agreeable but not much of a benefit. (They pay 40 per cent on the top slice)

I, too, used to know what is Scientology and forgot. However, I did learn three things from reading this thread:

1) I can start a religion.
2) I can start a church so that my income becomes tax exempt.
3) I can judge my success in the area of religion by comparing my fans to what I imagine to be the number of fans that such other movements, crazes, etc. have.

I may toy with #3 above.

Everybody wants to make a buck on the back of the poor working man! WHO PAYS TAXES. LIKE I DO.

That's why I respect an honest cook, plumber, carpenter, cleaning lady, yard maintenance worker -- whoever will exchange an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

I reserve my contempt for those who try to sell me a silly fantasy: eternal youth, eternal life, multiple sexual partners (houris) in the afterlife, prophecies, harps and choruses of angels -- hey, gimme that ol' time rock'n'roll -- precognition, re-incarnation, freedom from engrams, a numerical system of predicting the next lottery winning number, a product that will give me the complexion of a sixteen-year-old -- without the zits! - the ability to 'recognize ' my next sexual partner or spouse, the ability to speak to dead folks and hear them tell me how they're happy now, and "understand" everything.

Why can't some people just accept out simple, limited humanity? Such as it is, it's GREAT!

babthrower: There we have it: I am on your (s)hit list, because I offer prophecies. . . .

This is a basic summary of Scientology.

Who is Xenu?

quote:

"Scientology is ********!

I once went to talk given by Harlan Ellison decades ago. I believe that every other word would have been bleeped on this site.