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Stat check: Number of Scientologists?

uniquemand

Unbeliever
I thought the official membership organization of the Church of Scientology was the HASI. My understanding of the IAS is that it was born from Scientology Policy Directives, themselves an "off-source" issue type. I don't remember them being mentioned when I trained on Staff Status II, and issue types were given.

Of course, there are people who consider themselves scientologists who are not members of the Church of Scientology (although most of them once were), although the Church would probably dispute that they were scientologists. That's one of "those" questions.
 

MarkWI

Patron Meritorious
the cofs and the freezone both are not forthcoming about their true numbers. the cofs is concerned about "psychs" finding out who their members are and the fz is concerned about "osa" finding out who their members are.
Seems like a great deal of "Us versus Them" thinking is at work there. Cult anyone?
I don't think there are many freezoners either. 'Scientologist' is a collective membership mark owned by RTC, and only includes members in good standing with the Co$. I don't see any merit in calling oneself 'Scientologist', but I can understand that some freezoner do and that's fine with me.
 

Iknowtoomuch

Gold Meritorious Patron
Sure. It's really hard to do, though, because of all the assumptions. The IAS started in, um, 1984 or so, say 20 years. If we bumped the current receipt number up to date, it would now be er, ho hum, 200,000. It is not unreal that there have been some tens of thousands of one-offs, with more IASers havng an average of a few invoices each. Like a couple of annual memberships, a screw-this-it's-stupid-let's-get-a-lifetime-membership, and a donation or two towards upping one's status.

Which would give about 31,246 unique IAS members having paid in the past 1000 days. :)

Paul

Oh yes the doubling up. :thumbsup:
 

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
I seem to remember hearing some info from/via Marc Headley (on the Hamburg vids) that the last major International Event (would have been earlier this year, prior to the IAS Events) had a world-wide attendance of around 10,000. I don't know whether or not this number included SO & Staff in attendance.

It'd be very interesting to know the world-wide attendance for the recent IAS Events given the huge attendance-demand from CofS.

My point is that, even allowing for a healthy percentage of the usual "had to work/death-in-the-family/car broke down" etc., the actual number of practising members of CofS seems to have shrunk into insignificance.

Anyone have a clue on how to find Event attendance numbers?
 

Good twin

Floater
I thought the official membership organization of the Church of Scientology was the HASI. My understanding of the IAS is that it was born from Scientology Policy Directives, themselves an "off-source" issue type. I don't remember them being mentioned when I trained on Staff Status II, and issue types were given.

Of course, there are people who consider themselves scientologists who are not members of the Church of Scientology (although most of them once were), although the Church would probably dispute that they were scientologists. That's one of "those" questions.

How long you been out?

Wasn't enough money in HASI. HASI memberships didn't even count toward IAS. No wonder you're still using the tech. You musta left before it stopped working. LOL

GT
 

Nurse Pinch

Patron with Honors
my 2 cents worth

Lets zero in on solving this problem shall we? (my grade 1 must be unflat its not as-ising :bigcry: ). I dont know if this is a dumbass idea or not but here goes.

Take ANZO for example since we seem to have so many of them on this board. Anyone who has been on staff (or public) in any of the ANZO orgs within say the last 5 years please fess up with the number of event attendees at the most recent LRH B'day event you were at. If you dont know the exact number, just approximate it. Once all the orgs have reported up (that phrase sound familiar :omg: ) we can count the number of actual attendees to give us an idea of how many Scilons there are in Australia. We can then compare this number to the census number to get a ratio which can be applied around the world to approximate the number of attendees worldwide. I know the figures would be rough, but its better than nothing. Anyone want to share?

Pinchy.

PS. The same idea could be applied to CF size. Anyone who was on staff in the last 10 years or so (it wont have changed much) could give the data for their org and we could tabulate it.

PPS. If you are concerned about your identity and want to stay anonymous you can PM me (or someone you trust) the data and I/they could post it.
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Sydney and Melbourne events

Last time I was at an event in Sydney - early last year.

Total attendence - 700 max.

That includes staff and SO.

I was actually shocked at how few people were there - the figure I'm giving is probably generous.

Melbourne 6(?) months later - 120 max - including staff.

I would think these two places between them have at least 70% of the scio population of OZ/NZ

Not looking good for "the guys in the white hats with the S and the double triangle," Tonto!
 
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MarkWI

Patron Meritorious
I just got a message about a new membership that was purchased in 1999. The membership number was approx 133000. Anyone wanta speculate on how to do this math?

Sure. It's really hard to do, though, because of all the assumptions. The IAS started in, um, 1984 or so, say 20 years. If we bumped the current receipt number up to date, it would now be er, ho hum, 200,000. It is not unreal that there have been some tens of thousands of one-offs, with more IASers havng an average of a few invoices each. Like a couple of annual memberships, a screw-this-it's-stupid-let's-get-a-lifetime-membership, and a donation or two towards upping one's status.

Which would give about 31,246 unique IAS members having paid in the past 1000 days. :)

Paul

P.S. I misunderstood the numbers: I didn't get that it was cumulative. So you can all ignore my post entirely.

Probably 133000 is not the recipt number but the membership number.

That means that up to 1999 no more than 133000 people paid a yearly or lifetime IAS membership, staff included as it was paid by the org for them in 1994. So it is safe to say that in 1999 the maximum number of active scientologist could not have been more than that, because it is/was mandatory to have IAS membership to be on services after the free 6 months intrductory membership, which is not included in that number.

If you paid to the IAS any amount for membership not later than 1999, you are part of that number, even if you paid only one year or just an account and then left Scientology. Many left between 1984 and 1999, so the active scientologists in 1999 were certaintly less than that cumulative number, but not more.

The point is - millions of scientologist is a lie. But we all know that.

Anyone else joined the IAS after 1999 and has his receipt handy?
 

Div6

Crusader
In DC (arguably Scientology's oldest "field") the last few IAS events have been held in hotel spaces that accommodate 300 people. And that will include all the kids and staff.

That is pretty downstat from the 1st IAS event ever held in DC. 500+.

Just an off the cuff observation.
 

Lee_from_phx

Patron with Honors
I do not know how many $cientologists there are in the world today.

What I do know is that there are fewer today than there were yesterday.

There are more today than there will be tomorrow.

The cult is bleeding victims as quickly or more quickly than it ever has. The difference is that its ability to entice new suckers into trying to buy a bridge is declining by the minute. As the public grows wise to the cult, it has to go to ever greater lengths to find new people to victimize. The end result is a slow-motion suffocation.
 

anon2019

Patron with Honors
Here's a video by happy smurf taken within the last month interviewing Andy Knapp, a security guard from the HGB building in Hollywood.At 1:15 Andy claims about 50,000 members, this is the lowest figure i have ever heard from a current member of the sea org. I would take this figure to be roughly correct

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pJ0uEA-RxU
 

Carnaubawax

Patron Meritorious
Here's a video by happy smurf taken within the last month interviewing Andy Knapp, a security guard from the HGB building in Hollywood.At 1:15 Andy claims about 50,000 members, this is the lowest figure i have ever heard from a current member of the sea org. I would take this figure to be roughly correct

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pJ0uEA-RxU
I tend to think that if a Churchie is saying 50,000, that the real number will be less. It's really really odd that he gave that number though, as it's not anything the cult would want him to say...
 

Carnaubawax

Patron Meritorious
Here's a video by happy smurf taken within the last month interviewing Andy Knapp, a security guard from the HGB building in Hollywood.At 1:15 Andy claims about 50,000 members, this is the lowest figure i have ever heard from a current member of the sea org. I would take this figure to be roughly correct

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pJ0uEA-RxU

I dunno who the guy is who is talking to the Scn, but he is very good. He is respectful, polite and very well informed.

Great work!
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
"How many Scientologists are there?" is a very vague question, and not very answerable.

These questions have specific answers (and these totals may not be similar at all) even if the answers are not known on this board:
  • How many people have current IAS memberships, whether annual or lifetime?
  • How many people attended the last event, worldwide?
  • How many people consider themselves CofS Scientologists, whether included in the above or not?
  • How many people would tick the box "Scientologist" on a census, in preference to any other of the choices (such as "Christian", "Agnostic", "Prefer not to say"?)

In the early 90s when I was in the SO I heard the figure of people who attended events was around 25,000, maybe 29,000; the number of people who accepted an amnesty that was being VERY heavily pushed was in the low 20,000s. A few years ago I heard the number of IAS members was something like 30,000, but that was online info not from what I heard while in.

Paul
 

Feral

Rogue male
"How many Scientologists are there?" is a very vague question, and not very answerable.

These questions have specific answers (and these totals may not be similar at all) even if the answers are not known on this board:
  • How many people have current IAS memberships, whether annual or lifetime? Your figure is the lowest I've heard, consensus; 40,000
  • How many people attended the last event, worldwide? About 10,000 according to BFG That does not include SO
  • How many people consider themselves CofS Scientologists, whether included in the above or not? No clue see next
  • How many people would tick the box "Scientologist" on a census, in preference to any other of the choices (such as "Christian", "Agnostic", "Prefer not to say"?) 55,000 us, 2508 Aust, 213 nz, ETC. DC ANON came up with 61,980 without including Tiawan, Africa, Mexico, Spain, Russia etc. so I would guess a new total of 100,000, that includes the chidren of scios as well as FZers that still regard themselves as scios.

    Public available to the orgs in times of financial need? Now that is the question!!!

<Snip>

Paul

Answers inside

 

Lee_from_phx

Patron with Honors
In the early 90s when I was in the SO I heard the figure of people who attended events was around 25,000, maybe 29,000; the number of people who accepted an amnesty that was being VERY heavily pushed was in the low 20,000s. A few years ago I heard the number of IAS members was something like 30,000, but that was online info not from what I heard while in.

Paul

Are you talking about the "amnesty" from when the IRS agreed to pretend that the money grubbing cult was a legitimate religious organization?

The cult manages to recycle a lot of its old victims this way.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Are you talking about the "amnesty" from when the IRS agreed to pretend that the money grubbing cult was a legitimate religious organization?

The cult manages to recycle a lot of its old victims this way.

Dunno. I don't keep track like that. I just remember talking to the unhappy guy in Senior HCO Int who had the hat of getting "all scientologists" to take the amnesty. I can't imagine the fact of there having been an amnesty influencing the IRS decision much either way.

Paul
 
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