The Church of Scientology vs. the Net:
Other sources of online information

This page created by Ron Newman.

Last major revision on July 29, 1996; a few links added or corrected on March 17, 1997. I have not had time to keep this page up to date in recent months; for a much more up-to-date (though less descriptive) list, see Marina Chong's A.R.S. Web Page Summary.

Scientology

For more online information on the Church of Scientology, check out all of the following:

• the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology can be noisy these days, but it's also where all this started, and it's often more up-to-date than any Web page can be.
• The IRC channel #scientology, described in this web page by Jessie Blalock. Many of the regulars in the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, as well as authors of other web pages on this subject, often hang out on this IRC channel.
• Andreas Heldal-Lund's Operation Clambake page contains pointers to Scientology's Secret Scriptures, as well as late-breaking news. Andreas is much more conscientious than I am about keeping his site up to date.
• Marina Chong's A.R.S. Web Page Summary
• Jim Lippard and Jeff Jacobsen's excellent article on Scientology and the Internet, in the June 1995 isue of Skeptic magazine.
• Tilman Hausherr's collection of first-person accounts by various people who are current or former members of the Church. I especially recommend the story of Kim Baker, a South African woman who left the Church as a result of the Internet.
• Chris Owen's web site Scientology Audited, which contains, among other things, official government reports on Scientology from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom; Judge Latey's child-custody ruling involving Scientology; and reports on Scientology's support for apartheid in South Africa.
• William Sims Bainbridge's description of Scientology's "Training Routines", from his 1978 book "Satan's Power"
• William S. Burroughs' experiences as a Scientologist, from his book "Naked Scientology", a collection of essays written in the early 1970s
• My online archive of newspaper and magazine articles about Scientology
• Paulette Cooper's 1971 book The Scandal of Scientology
• There are lots of other web pages critical of Scientology, seemingly more every week. Consult Marina Chong's A.R.S. Web Page Summary for a comprehensive (though necessarily incomplete) list. Here are a few I particularly like:
  • Modemac has written the best introductory pages for the newcomer to this subject.
  • Bob "Sloth" Bingham. The first web page on Scientology, and still one of the best. It was the inspiration for my own page.
  • Martin Poulter. With a particular focus on the United Kingdom.
  • Tilman Hausherr reporting from Berlin. Mostly in English, but he also provides some links to German-language materials. Contains a large number of personal stories by people who once were, or still are, in Scientology.
  • David Dennis (voluminous, but not updated since August 1995)
  • Steve at Castle Systems. This site includes a number of long essays and books about Scientology, including:
    • Margery Wakefield's first-person account The Road to Xenu
    • Jon Atack's The Total Freedom Trap
    • Bob Penny's Things that can be said to work: (Some observations on social control within Scientology. Bob Penny is one of the founders of FACTnet; his house and BBS were raided by Scientology agents on August 22, 1995.
  • Maureen Garde's collection of legal papers from various court cases involving Scientology
  • Scott Goehring, who started all this in the first place by "founding" the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology back in 1991.
  • Teodor Vaananen's pages on Cults, including Scientology
  All of these pages contain pointers to many other interesting documents, as well as to yet more web pages that I don't know about or haven't listed here.
• Jim Lippard's Skeptical Scientology Archive
• Don Lindsay's Non-Scientologist FAQs. (Don's FAQs predate all of the web sites on this subject, including mine.)
• Martin Hunt's comprehensive FAQ and Acronym Guide (an essential resource in dealing with the cult's strange vocabulary)
• the FTP sites of Jeff Jacobsen and FACTnet.
• an incomplete collection of Scamizdat, the on-line 'zine that reveals some of Scientology's innermost secrets
• The Fishman Papers page, maintained by Dave Touretzky of Carnegie-Mellon University. Steven Fishman, a former member of the Church, deposited a large number of "secret Scientology scriptures" into public court records. Copies of these papers may or may not be available at this web site, depending on how CMU reacts to Helena Kobrin's barratry. If they are not available at this site, you can probably find pointers there to places where they are now available.
• the Church of Scientology's three official web sites: www.scientology.org, www.dianetics.org, and www.lronhubbard.org, as well as the semi-official web page of Leisa Goodman, the Church's Media Relations director. See also the Church's propaganda rag Freedom Magazine. Tilman Hausherr has collected a comprehensive list of pro-Scientology web sites, the number of which seem to be growing.
• Another good, but increasingly outdated, source of official pro-Scientology information is Brian Wenger's FTP site. (Beware: the list of Scientology organizations is over 18 months old.)
• a bibliography of magazine & newspaper articles on Dianetics and Scientology, published between 1950 and 1969.

Cults in general

• Steve Hassan's home page. Steve Hassan is an ex-Moonie who has become an expert on cults and the mind-control techniques that they often use. On his page you'll find an ad for, and short excerpts from, his book Combatting Cult Mind Control.
• the Cult Awareness Network memorial page. Scientology managed to cripple this organization through abusive lawsuits, then purchased its name and trademark after forcing it into bankruptcy!
• Teodor Vaananen's page on destructive cults
• reFOCUS: Recovering Former Cultists Support Network
• the Ex-Cult Archive
• American Family Foundation, publishers of the Cultic Studies Journal and Cult Observer
• Watchman Fellowship is a rather right-wing Christian anti-cult group. I don't agree with them very much either theologically or politically, but they have had interesting run-ins with Scientology.
• Trancenet, a site containing material critical of Transcendental Meditation

Free expression on the Internet

The Digital Future Coalition represents libraries and others working to prevent the U.S. Congress from passing legislation favoring the interests of copyright holders over those of the general public.

For information on preserving free expression on the Net, browse the web sites of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, Voters Telecommunication Watch, Electronic Privacy Information Center, American Civil Liberties Union, and MIT's Student Association for Freedom of Expression (SAFE). See also the page for Hal Abelson's MIT class on "Ethics & Law on the Electronic Frontier".

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