Notice: Fredric Rice may have removed segments of the replies given to questions if they contained copyrighted materials. After a very short while, Scientology "experts" refused to answer questions and started cut-and-pasting copyrighted cult propaganda. Additionally I removed URLs in some of the replies, and left them in others. And it's also important to note that eventually the unfortunate "Greg Churilov" cultist was ejected from askme.com for his typical Scientological behavior.

remiel asked this question on 5/27/2000:

I'm slightly confused. The Church of Scientology has claimed eight million members (and at another point climed nine million), and has claimed this figure for many years. My question is therefore twofold.

1) how can a group with a seemingly static membership claim to be the fastest growing religion in the world 2) does anyone have any figures on how many scientologists there are?

Desertphile gave this response on 5/29/2000:

Hi. Scientology Inc. claims that ANYONE who ever bought a book from them or filled out a form or "free personality test" is automatically, and forever, a Scientologits. This is indeed a very odd definition of "member." Note that 99% of people who have ever really been Scientologists cease being Scientologists in a year or so. Most people wake up to the fact that they are being lied to, cheated, and abused by Scientologists and Scientology, and "blow." It is extremely rare for someone to stay a Scientologist longer than a year or so.

The following article exchange may answer your questions better than I can with the time I have today.

======

From: Lronscam <NQSPAMLronsscam@aol.comNOTs>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 23:06:16 -0400
Message-ID: <siuej8tk5pj108@news.supernews.com>

Please make a note of this. This is the evidence anyone ever needs to realize how few members there are in Scn'gy. We know that the Philadelphia Org had around 180 members on their mailing list and not even that many taking courses. We know this because that is what Charlotte Kates claimed, who was a staff member there a few years back. She was even threatened by Scn'gy's lawyers that she was in possession of Scn'gy copyrighted material which was the alleged mailing list.

The Philadelphia Org is a very significant organization within Scn'gy. Philadelphia is where the..........bing....... Philadelphia Doctorate courses were developed. It also covers a great deal of NJ (Charlotte is from NJ), Delaware, parts of Maryland, perhaps even Virginia, as well as the greater portion of Philadelphia, as a place where Scn'gsts gather to pay for Scn'gy courses. It is an enormous area to cover for only 180 people to be on the mailing list and maybe 20 people to be taking a course.

The problem isn't Scn'gy failing in membership but surviving as it does on so few members. That is the incredible aspect of Scn'gy. If they had the 8 million members they say they had, they might just rule the world.

From: "Oxford Systems" <oxfordsystems@removethistoreply.usa.net>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 22:32:47 -0500
Message-ID: <8gnfmb$a22$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>

I had a friend / room mate that worked in the Philly org for a few years. He left in early 1995 or maybe late 1994 before moving to Atlanta. (Speaking of Atlanta, anyone know how many clams are active in the org there these days?) He told stories of long hours, low pay and utter disillusionment when he came to the realization that the "clears" weren't clear, that the Oh Teas had no powerz and that it was all a huge scam.

When I made the mistake of getting sucked in to the Atlanta Org after attending the LRH birthday celebration in March, 1996 and mentioned to him that I had told them that he was formerly on staff in Philly he practically begged me to not divulge any information about him to the church. Of course the church was just as insistent that I "get him in" or tell them how to contact him.

The thing is that the LRH birthday party was the most widely attended event I saw in Atlanta. (They rented out a hotel conference room on the north side to accommodate the party.) In a metropolitan area of more than 2 million people there could not have been anything over 250 to 300 people (and that is absolute tops for an estimate) in attendance and quite a few of those were children and teens. In a metro area the size of Atlanta where some of the traditional churches have to hold two, three or more Sunday morning services each and every week to accommodate the crowds this kind of attendance is no great shakes.

Maybe we should get the ARSCC to fund a "cult count" and survey of the number of people that are actually visiting and using the orgs on a regular basis. Here in the US that ought to be easy enough with the exceptions of LA, Clearwater and Hemet. Somehow I think that the number of actual active members in the US is under 100,000. Way under 100,000. Way, way under. Kind of like Battlefield Earth at the box office. :)

From: clkates@aol.com (Charlotte L. Kates)
Date: 27 May 2000 05:21:59 GMT
Message-ID: <20000527012159.11458.00000988@ng-ch1.aol.com>

Just to clarify--180 people are on the call-in list. These are certainly not all on course at once, 15-40 people is a close estimate, and those 15-40 people are all part of this 180 at any given time. The call-in list is comprised of reasonably active publics--people who would consider themselves "Scientologists."

Central Files, on the other hand, are huge, containing thousands upon thousands of names of people to whom bulk mail are sent, many, many invalid addresses and certainly *not* people who consider themselves Scns. A lot of these people are on the "Bookbuyer" list; that is, usually people who once bought _Dianetics._ CF is where Scn gets its (probably still inflated) 8 million members figure, since every person who fills out an interest blank, calls PDO (Planetary Dissem Org, or who staffs 1800-for-trut), buys a book at an Org, etc. is entered into the INCOMM system and CF.

There's certainly, however, only approximately 180 people in Philly who would actually describe themselves as Scientologists who are reasonably/moderately active at their Org, or even around it. The others--they're not Scientologists. Hell, the 8 million members includes people like me, Warrior, Arnie Lerma, Stacy Brooks, Jesse Prince, Robert Vaughn Young, Mike McClaughrey, Perry Scott, Margery Wakefield, Lawrence Wollersheim, etc. We're all in CF, after all...

From: "roger gonnet" <roger.gonnet@worldnet.fr>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 11:00:20 +0200
Message-ID: <8go2k7$mih$1@news3.isdnet.net>

Not so, the 8 millions figure had been explained by Robert Vaughn Young: he explained that they had to figure out in OSA a newx figure that would show an increase on the five millions already faked figure; so, they get it out of the thin blue and said: they are 8 millions now.

But nowhere there has been such a number, even adding everybody having ever bought a one book in scientology.

It's more than probable that the figure of DMSMH sold is faked too: i'd bet they never sold more than 7 millions for every language.

So, they know the correct number of active scienos now; that's about 40000... most of which will quit before Y2K is ended, and some of them replaced by other "new people in".

That is so evident when you see that in a large event in Paris, where lots of people from other fucking cults like Raelians were invited, they were unable to come with more than 300 persons, while in Lyon, with pasrt of the ettendants being the same than in Paris, they were uneble to get more than 80 persons... including me, to hear what they were saying (lots of nonsense and some defamations, for which they'll be sued sometimes!)

roger

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