The New York Times carried several pages about how the IRS had changed its
long-standing ruling that Scientology was a business into one that
Scientology was a religion, and that therefore all of its business,
including the fees payed by members, were tax free.  National Public Radio,
in its All Things Considered,  broadcast a description of Scientology that
included, among other things, a reference to that article. The combination
has enabled me to understand more about S. 

	I was a teen-aged subscriber to Astounding Science Fiction when it
published Hubbard's article on Dianetics as its one-per-issue factual
article. I thought that dianetics was just one more rehash of psychological
ideas that were then current. One's experiences leave physical traces in
the brain that affect one's later emotions and concepts. Some of these
traces can be recalled as memories, while others cannot, or are not,
recalled, but still affect actions. If Hubbard wanted to call these traces
engrams, that was his privilege. At that time there was no attempt to
demonstrate the physical description and identification of engrams, any
more than there had been successful attempts to demonstrate and identify
the physical nature of Freud's or Jung's equally hypothetical constructs.
The only evidence was indirect, by estimating the emotions aroused by
discussing these engrams, either by some form of empathy or instruments
similar to lie detectors. Nowadays, I get a mailing about once a year
advertising such services, and I dismiss it as hokum.

	Insofar as this description is concerned, S is just another profitable
psychological therapy that justifies the former US classification, and the
present German classification, as a taxable activity. The fact that its
supporters are vehement in its support should carry no weight in that
analysis. So are the supporters of Repressed Memory Syndrome, former lives,
the militant militias, the Libertarians, and numerous other theories.
Whether S is true or false is also irrelevant. Government taxes the
profits, regardless of the truth or falsity of the claims or presentations.
To do otherwise would destroy our community with conflicting claims of all
those who would assert their right to operate without being taxed. 

	How then could the IRS change its opinion to agree that S is a religion?
The NYT strongly implied that S was blackmailing the officials of the IRS.
Not that the officials had committed any particular crimes, but S would
harrass them to political death by suits alleging all sorts of activities
that could be made to look deplorable. That is an expensive strategy, but
then S is an immensely profitable activity that could afford such a
strategy and, by the same token, would collect an enormous amount of extra
profit if it became non-taxable. 

	S demanded taxfree status as a religion, but what constitutes a religion?
Holding services? Holding regular meetings does not qualify an organization
as a religion, or corporations would be religions. Benefiting the members?
Same argument for the corporation's stockholders. For me, the NPR broadcast
answered the question. S has a theology that is revealed only to those who
have payed enough and earned sufficient status to qualify. That theology is
as foolish as any other religion, maybe more foolish than most. Although
supposedly secret, sufficient of it has been revealed to disclose its
character. S does not use this secret theology as its proselytizing medium,
as christianity uses the gospels. S uses this theology for two purposes.
The first reason is as an incentive to get its true believers to pay even
more money to obtain the secret. That is why S keeps the theology secret
from the public, and has sued those who have published parts of it for
violation of copyright. In this, S is quite correct. It owns the rights and
the rights are profitable as long as the copyright lasts. The second
purpose I will discuss later.

	S's theology is a sort of science-fiction theology, rather like Chariots
of the Gods and similar foolishness, a tribal creation story told in a form
that appeals to naive people raised in a scientific age. You can't prove
it, you can't disprove it, and its characters are supernatural entities.I
deduce that scientologists don't worship these beings, or pray for them to
save current scientologists from either tornadoes or their sins, or to
reward scientologists with either happiness or money. At most, these beings
are regarded as a Deist regards his god, as the creator who is now letting
the universe operate according to scientific laws. If that were all, there
would be as little point to S as to Deism or, for that matter, to strictly
predestined Calvinism. However, Hubbard took over from Calvinism the theory
of Original Sin. His beings, thetans I think they are called, just as the
christians'  Adam and Eve did, committed the original sin that binds us
into all eternity unless we work to overcome it. The thetans perpetrated
foul engrams upon our ancestors, engrams that we all have inherited and
must individually work out, through expensive S therapy, if we want to live
full lives. 

	That, I submit, is the characteristic that might enable S to qualify as a
religion. 

	However, the secrecy surrounding S's theology might also disqualify S as a
religion. Religions are characterized as presenting a theory that relies on
supernatural entities and is about the universe and man's position in it
and that prescribe how men should behave. All literate religions publish
their theologies so that the people may know them and be persuaded of their
truth. It is true that formerly men were burned at the stake for
translating the christian bible into the common language, lest the people
develop religious ideas that would jeopardize the religious bureaucracy (as
of course they did), but that tradition has been long discredited. In any
case, the bible was not secret, because it was always commonly available to
those who were educated in Latin, the official international language of
the time. The fact that S refuses to publish its theological documents
demonstrates that S is far more a secret, profit-making operation than it
is a religion. It doesn't want to spread its truth far and wide, as a true
religion would, but wants to keep it profitably secret. 

	That suggests that the US government must allow S to keep its tas-exempt
religious status only if it puts all of its present and future documents
into the public domain, or otherwise make them publicly available at
reasonable cost. Only then can S be considered to be a genuine religion. 

	Of course, doing that would much reduce the appeal of Scientology. When
its theological documents are seen to be just as foolish as those of other
religions, and to be without the historical background of the established
religions, it would be seen, to the rational observer, to be just another
profit-making self-help operation, regardless of its tax-exempt status. 

John Forester
forester@ccnet.com               726 Madrone Ave.
408-734-9426                     Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3041