by Polo Maldonado-Martinez

Created on: March 20, 2010

There is a sense of confusion on the subject of Scientology, which at the same time is passionate and absolute. Apparently, no one is left indifferent; it has been praised as a religion or loathed as a cult some times by the same people who later changed their minds.

Along the years, many things have been told about Scientology; a lot bad, some of them good and some of them extremely good. I am not discussing here whether they are right or wrong, I am just intending to establish the facts. Most of the time, several of those things have been said with no precise inside knowledge of the subject; many of those words have been said in anger and hatred, others in utter misunderstanding; others, full of love and admiration. Some of them have been expressed in fear, others in frank terror. Others want to thank L. Ron Hubbard publicly for what they feel they have obtained.

Many have left Scientology saying that they felt betrayed; others keep going and loving the subject and the Founder. Some love the subject but question the Founder and the Church. Others reject the whole package.

There is a classification we could follow here, in order to understand the advance of this religion (yeah, a religion). To understand why it is a religion you just need to think of this; Christianity was a cult first, and later a "bona fide" religion, separated from Judaism; and something similar happened to Zoroastrianism and Buddhism regarding "Hinduism".

All great religions were cults sometime in the past, until they grew up. Scientology is following the steps of its predecessors. It has been attacked in the same way (Buddhism was practically erased from India by the Hindus, until recently; the same as Zoroastrianism by Muslims) and it is still growing.

The materialistic pseud-religions though could be called cults by the way they deal with their following

We need to start by separating three connected concepts; one is Scientology, the Subject, the other is Scientology the Movement and the third one is Scientology the Church and its related organizations.

Here I am referring to the three aspects of Scientology.

I propose a further classification.

First, there is the Scientologist who wants to improve his life and uses Scientology to do it so. He feels his religion is kind of a "spiritual tool". He continues practicing his earlier beliefs before starting to practice Scientology. He is practical, evaluates whatever he reads and tries to help people by using his knowledge.

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