Scientology :: essays research papers

The Truth About Scientology Scientology was created around 1950 by a science fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology was presented as a religious philosophy, but is actually a warped sense of both religion and science, fused together to create a belief system that is quite damaging to people’s psychological state. Scientologists believe that man is ultimately capable of determining the outcome of all aspects of his life: mental, emotional, as well as physical. It is a twentieth century religion that teaches that one’s health and wellness is something that man is in control of. Man is a spiritual being endowed with abilities well beyond those that he normally imagines. He is able to solve his own problems, accomplish his goals, gain lasting happiness, and also achieve new states of understanding he may never have dreamed possible. As for science, science is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Science uses a system, known as the scientific method, to explain general truths and phenomena. As you can understand now, scientology does not meet the requirements of what it takes for something to be classified as a science. However it is a set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific when they are not scientific, a term known as a pseudoscience. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the creator of scientology, published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, and insisted that it was a science. He claimed that dianetics "...contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psycho-somatic ills, with assurance of complete cure.† The truth of the matter is that no scientific testing has been done that would credit this set of ideals. Scientology is a confused mixture of harmfully applied psychotherapy, oversimplified, foolish and irrelevant rules and ideas and science-fiction nonsense that is presented to its members as profound spiritual truth. It is not based on scientific testing; rather it is a cult that was created in the hopes that it could use its mind controlling techniques to manipulate people into handing over their money.