Resaerch paper on Scientology. IN MLA format.

Essay by GnarKill74College, UndergraduateA+, December 2004

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Scientology

There have been many disputes over the past four decades or so on the religion of Scientology. Many people regard it as nothing more than a brainwashing cult (Weldon, 7). However, there are tens of thousands believers of Scientology that will disagree. This religion is the fastest growing religious movement over the last 40 years (Cooper, 1). The founder of Scientology was Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, better known as L. Ron Hubbard.

L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tildon, Nebraska (Cooper, 1). He was an accomplished science fiction writer having his ideas expressed in more than 5,000 writings (Cooper, 1). In 1923, Hubbard began his studies of the mind and spirit, resulting in a manuscript entitled "Excalibur" in 1938. It was in this work that the word "scientology" was first introduced. The word scientology comes from the Latin, scio, which means "know" or "distinguish," and from the Greek word, logos, which means "reason itself" or "inward thought".

The word Scientology means the study of wisdom or knowledge. Scientology is defined as the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes, and other life (Catechism, 1). This work was never published because Hubbard said, "I decided to go further." (Hubbard, 11).

The "going further" resulted in Dianetics.

In his first book, Excalibur, Mr. Hubbard discussed life and what life entailed. There was no discussion of therapy to deal with life. In the book Dianetics, Hubbard not only discussed life, but he also discussed ways that would work as therapy for all people to help them deal with the problems that all people deal with daily. The word Dianetics comes from the Greek words dia, meaning through and nous, meaning soul, and is defined as "what the soul is doing to the body." (Cooper, 1). Thus,