The New York Times carried several pages about how the IRS has changed its long-standing ruling that Scientology is a business into one that Scientology is a religion. Therefore all its business, including the fees paid by members, are 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. This combination has enabled me to understand more about Scientology.
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 dianetics might be just one more rehash of psychological ideas then current. The claim was that experiences leave physical traces in the brain which 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, Scientology is just another profitable psychological therapy that justifies its former U.S. and present German classification, as a taxable activity. That its supporters are vehement in Scientology's support should carry no weight in this analysis, for so are the supporters of Repressed Memory Syndrome, former lives regressions, the militant militias, the Libertarians, and numerous other theories. Whether Scientology 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 by all who might assert their right to operate without being taxed.
How then could the IRS change its opinion to agree that Scientology is a religion? The NYT strongly implied that Scientology was blackmailing the officials of the IRS. Not that the officials had committed any particular crimes, but Scientology would harass 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 Scientology 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.
Scientology demanded tax free status as a religion, but what constitutes a religion? Holding services? Regular meetings do not qualify an organization as a religion, or corporations could claim this status. Benefiting the members? Same argument for the corporation's stockholders. For me, the NPR broadcast answered the question. Scientology has a theology that is revealed only to those who have paid enough and earned sufficient status to qualify. That theology is as foolish as any other religion, maybe more foolish than most. Although supposedly secret, enough of it has been revealed to disclose its character. Scientology does not use this secret theology as its proselytizing medium, in the way Christianity uses the gospels. Scientology uses this theology for two purposes. First, as an incentive to get its true believers to pay even more money to obtain the secret. That is why Scientology keeps the theology secret from the public, and has sued those who have published parts of it for violation of copyright. In this, Scientology 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.
Scientology's dogma 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 extraterrestrial and 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 might regard 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 Scientology as to Deism or, for that matter, to strictly predestined Calvinism. However, Hubbard accepted from Calvinism a theory of Original Sin. His beings, thetans I think they are called, committed, just as the Christians' Adam and Eve did, 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 Scientology therapy, if we want to live full lives.
That, I submit, is the characteristic that might enable Scientology to qualify as a religion.
However, the secrecy surrounding Scientology's theology might also disqualify Scientology as a religion. Religions are characterized as presenting a theory that relies on supernatural entities, they are about the universe and man's position in it and they 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, and as of course they did, but that tradition has long been 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 Scientology refuses to publish its theological documents demonstrates that Scientology 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 Scientology to keep its tax-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 Scientology 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.
Copyright 1992-2005, The Association for Rational Thought