Hear Hear!!!

EMPTY real-estate. The vast majority of the buildings which have been opened in the name of the Co$ are nothing but HOLLOW SHELLS. Nobody there. Nothing inside. Only the sign outside. That’s all! You see the opening of these buildings with great big ribbons over the front, the crowds of Scientologists outside, shouting, yelling, great big smiles on their faces – and a big Video screen with an address by DM saying how wonderful everything is…then they all go home and leave the building hollow.
Honestly!!!

Well here’s one who ain’t! I read a copy of Dianetics, and was enchanted with it. But then just when I was ready to join up I saw the BBC Prog ‘Scientology the way to total freedom’, and then soon after was approached by a twit in Melbourne. I had to make up my mind quickly, and thank goodness I made the right decision. I told him to get stuffed. Those are not the actual words I used, but you get the general idea. Since then I have been very interested in the facts behind Co$. And the more I hear the angrier I become. The number of people this so-called ‘church’ has led to ruin. All the best to you Mike, and well done for getting out when you did!

Richard C., from what I’ve picked up most active members are regged hard to pay for lifetime memberships. What I think that actually results in, is a lot of IAS lifetime memberships held by people who were once active but left and are never coming back. We’ve even seen children be bought lifetime memberships.

That seems to be reflected in claims of local membership that are hundreds or thousands higher than the obvious reality, and national claims twenty thousand or more too high — and that’s when they’re not claiming the numbers in central files, which are ridiculously high based on every contact over decades.

I disagree. I think virtually every person who is willing to identify as a Scientologist is a member of the IAS. If they can’t afford $500 they’re not going to be going anything in Scientology anyway.

This is why it’s a lie when Scientology claims they have no way of accurately counting the number of Scientologists in the world. The IAS has a record of ever one, even the ones who are no longer scientologists. And the maximum number they ever had was 40,000 and it’s far less than that today.

Very few scientologists belong to the IAS. $500 dollars is a lot of money for a working person. Auditing services and/or courses are not “more affordable” for IAS members (you only get a 10% discount on books and services). Internal statistics (like the number of academy, extension course and public students) would be a better measure of exactly how many. So, the cited figures do not perfectly indicate how truly unpopular the religion is

I agree that it is likely in a financial meltdown but we don’t know what sort of regular income they are getting at Flag and the main Sea Org Orgs. Let us say that there are 7000 Sea Org members then I am sure it will cost at least $30 per day to maintain them. 7000*$30*365 = $76,650,000 per year. This is needed in the form of spendable income so where is it coming from? If Mike is right and they are getting in income of $2m per week from auditing and training then they have this covered. If not, then they are using a proportion of dono money as spendable income. And the dono money will surely reduce over time as they lose long-time whales or the whales have less money to give. My feeling is because there has been such a major shift towards donos then it is this dono money that is keeping them operating on a day-to-day basis. And I would imagine that it is the buildings outside the US that are tipping the balance against them because the Scn publics there do not have the money to pay for the upkeep and taxes on these buildings.

Yep.