When I was a Scientologist I was part of something special. My family were all Scientologists, my school was a Scientology school. My classmates and teachers were all Scientologists. My friends were Scientologists. Virtually everyone I knew were Scientologists. Being part of the special Scientologist group was definitely formative in my early views on life.

Living in a Scientology world, one of the things you learn is that wogs, a derogatory term for non-Scientologists, literally can’t handle the truth. Scientologists view this as an important reality and it’s the driving force behind the secrecy of Scientology: they literally think that their beliefs are all true and are too powerful to expose to the public willy-nilly. And this is one of the early support beams for my defensive structures: the constant lying about our beliefs.

Being a Scientologist means lying and bending the truth. It means never truly being open with those outside your sphere of Scientologists. To me, that was always a cop-out all too convenient for those with weak minds. If you’re a Scientologist, be proud!

Stop lying! Lying is so intrinsic to Scientology that they literally don’t even know they’re lying sometimes. Public Relations and not being “out-reality” for wogs is such a native practice to Scientologists that it’s all over their website, all over the specific words they choose and the lines they speak. Weirdly enough, I can detect it immediately and I see how effective it is to people who don’t have their radars up.

Some examples:

On Scientology’s website in the FAQ section it says

… Scientologists increase their spiritual awareness and attain an understanding of both the spiritual world and, ultimately, the Supreme Being …

… spiritual nature and that of those around him, and, hence, more aware of God.

Scientologists don’t believe in God. Not even a little bit, at all. Any Scientologist that says they believe in God is lying to you either about being a Scientologist or believing in God. There is no in between and this isn’t an exaggeration. So how do they do this with a clear head? How can these well-meaning people lie to your face and still believe they are not liars? Word games!

“God” in this case doesn’t mean the God of Abraham, or Allah, or anything else you may be thinking of when you see that word. “Supreme Being” or “God,” in this case, means the 8th dynamic, or the concept of infinity, which Lafayette Hubbard and his followers occasionally refer to as God. It’s just literally the word infinity: all things in all directions forever.

It’s not an entity. Not a personal God, not a God at all. Not the God or God himself or herself. It’s just an abstract expression of infinity. Because you could technically get away with calling that God, they do and just run with it. That’s a small example. Let’s drill down a bit on a more egregious example.

Pay very close attention during the reading of this one:

Do Scientologists Believe They are Descended From Aliens?

Absolutely not. Scientology holds no such belief. Any suggestion otherwise is as absurd as asserting that those of the Christian faith believe themselves descended from aliens because they believe there is a Heaven.

Some of the information one finds on the Internet concerning Scientology religious beliefs is a mixture of misstatements, distortions and outright lies designed to twist Scientology theology. These scurrilous statements, issued by the “Internet fringe,” are not only patently untrue, they are intentionally designed to ridicule Scientologists and denigrate their actual religious beliefs.

Pay close enough attention? Did you catch the lies here? No? OK I’ll break it down for you.

1. No one thinks Scientologists believe they are descended from Aliens. They are answering one question while suggesting that they are answering another question. The quote above is actually quite true: Scientologists don’t believe they are descended from aliens. They don’t! They believe they are aliens. They believe we all are. Read the quote again. Do you see how it looks like they are denying that but in reality they’re denying something that no one is asking?
2. On top of that they are pretending that their beliefs are similar to Christianity, because they know the majority of people reading their page will be Christians or familiar with and friendly with Christianity. There is almost nothing in common between Scientology and Christianity. I didn’t learn about Christianity until I was a teenager and met a Christian. And believe me when I tell you, it was completely foreign to me.
3. The lies continue. Take a look at the first sentence of the second paragraph again, paying special attention to the first word: “Some of the information one finds on the Internet…” Some. Not all, not most, not a little, not a lot. Just “some,” a completely meaningless and open word. So to them, they’re telling the truth because sure, you can always find something somewhere that is false about Scientology. This entire paragraph is akin to saying something like: “Some of the information one finds on the internet about Nazis is a mixture of misstatements, distortions and outright lies designed to twist your understanding of Nazis. These scurrilous statements, issued by the “Internet fringe,” are not only patently untrue, they are intentionally designed to ridicule Nazis and denigrate their actual religious beliefs.” Well of course that’s a technically valid statement: there are lies about Nazis on the internet. But that doesn’t change the 99% of all things you read about them that are facts. The wording chosen here is specifically designed to deceive you into thinking they said something they didn’t.

If you’re a Scientologist, be proud! Stop lying. Stop deceiving. If you believe we’re all aliens, just say it! We all already know. Come out of the closet. Be proud.

If you grew up in Scientology like I did, or if you have OCD with word definitions you must have noticed that most people use words carelessly and usually incorrectly. Most of our modern English language is made up of words that don’t mean what they used to because people didn’t understand or care about the actual definition.

Now, I’m not necessarily one of those guys who has to have every semicolon in the right place and every word used exactly in the dictionary-correct way. I’m not. I do, however, tend to notice when they aren’t right, even if I don’t choose to care.

But sometimes words have very specific and very important definitions, particularly when you get into the territory of questions of legality and official documents. These are the times when the specific definitions of words are most important.

I’ve heard Scientology described as a religion by Scientologists and media outlets since I was a young child. But even as a child I knew something was different about Scientology that every other religion I had heard of. To be honest, actually there were a lot of things different about it but this one in particular is relevant to the topic of word definitions: Scientologists don’t worship anyone or anything.

Christians, depending on their branch, to one degree or another worship Jesus, God, Mother Mary and/or the Holy Trinity itself. They don’t just like or love Jesus, they worship him. Muslims don’t think Allah is great and that’s that, they worship him actively. Scientologists don’t worship anyone or anything. In fact, privately, worship itself is viewed in a similar way to how atheists might view it: a pointless exercise to an imaginary being.

I think we can all agree that whether Scientologists worship or not is probably not enough information to form a conclusion as to if it’s a real religion or not.

To do that we need to first re-discover what a religion is. Let’s take a look at some definitions.

Oxford Dictionary:

1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods
2. a particular system of faith and worship:
   “the world’s great religions”

So you can see that technically according to the Oxford Dictionary, Scientology actually isn’t a religion. How about another, less formal dictionary:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1. the service and worship of God or the supernatural
2. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

Here we can see that the second definition is calling the word religious, which from the same dictionary means:

relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity

And now you see the wide open definition Merriam-Webster gives you:

a personal set or institutionalized system of attitudes relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity

Under this definition, Scientology is a religion. None of the other definitions allow for Scientology to be considered a religion because there is no worship in Scientology. In this definition Scientology certainly is a religion.

But wait, what else is a religion in this definition?

An institutionalized (or personal) system of attitudes relating to faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality.

What is faithful? By the same dictionary:

steadfast in affection or allegiance

So according to Merriam-Webster, anything that can fit this description is a religion:

A system of attitudes relating to faithful (steadfast in affection or allegiance) devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality.

Now I’m no lawyer but I’m pretty sure any lawyer put in a position where the courts agree to this definition could argue virtually anything that is an institution with ideas about being devoted to any reality would likely fit this description.

If we accept this definition, let’s explore some of the areas of life that religion hasn’t yet been properly identified.

Science is an attitude relating to allegiance to an acknowledged ultimate reality: evidence predicts the state of things past, present and future.

Atheism is an attitude relating to allegiance to not believing in supernatural beings without sufficient evidence: that is to say, the acknowledged reality that these things likely don’t exist unless proven otherwise.

Abortion clinics are an institutionalized system comprised of people with an attitude related to the devotion to protecting and preferring the quality of life of the mother and/or fetus over the life of the fetus, dealing with life and death.

The United States Government is an institutionalized system which clearly demonstrates attitudes about devotion to freedom, liberty and even God. By the above definition, The United States Government itself is a religion.

Basically anything you can think of which has a system of important beliefs can be said to fit this description.

Without the word “worship” in the definition, the real meaning of religion is lost and nearly anything can be considered a religion.

I would argue that if we accept the widest definition available the word religion is, certainly for tax-exemption, religious protections and other legal purposes, meaningless. Oxford Dictionary has a more specific definition of religion that actually cuts out these unintended hop-ons and is the most appropriate legal definition.

Therefore I would conclude that we’re faced with two choices and paths:

Either Christianity and Islam are religions because they include actual worship in their practices and entities like Scientology aren’t because they don’t or nearly everything we can think of should be considered a religion and granted tax-exempt status and religious freedoms.

From the IRS Website:

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

Exempt purposes is explained elsewhere on the IRS Website:

The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.  The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.

As you can infer from these purposes listed, the overall idea here seems to be that those parts of society which government doesn’t reach into or doesn’t reach into enough, which are publicly beneficial need help from donations and shouldn’t be taxed. You may notice here that the overall idea does seem to be charity and doing good for humans in general.

Scientology was granted tax exempt status by the IRS in 1957 but later a branch of the church in California had its tax exemption status revoked in 1967. Scientology famously began an illegal campaign against the IRS dubbed “Snow White,” in which top Scientologists were breaking into IRS offices and stealing documents, bugging IRS offices and more.

In 1977 Snow White was stopped by the government and 11 top Scientologists including L. Ron Hubbard’s wife were sent to prison. The response from Scientology was to disassociate from those people and start a legal campaign, suing the IRS literally thousands of times from Scientology and Scientology’s front organizations until the IRS finally succumbed to the pressure and granted tax exemption for Scientology in 1993. I was at the announcement event which can be found online (I’m in the crowd somewhere).

Scientology is often described as a religion but I challenge that description as either meaningless or wrong. The lack of any system of worship may disqualify Scientology from being accurately described as a religion or religious. But let’s assume that Scientology is a religion and is exempt. Are our exemption qualifiers being met?

One thing about Scientology that I would argue makes them ineligible for tax exemption as a religion other than that they might not actually be considered a religion by definition, is that their beliefs and materials are not freely available, even to Scientologists. I would argue that it’s impossible to consider tax-exempt donations could be given with proper consent to an organization which does not freely disclose it’s core beliefs and tenants.

I am not aware of any organizations which hide their beliefs, lie about them and on top of that charge money for them, that I would consider a charitable organization.

What do you think about this?