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religion, cult or tax rort? - ABC Online
18 November 2009, 12:34 am

Senator Nick Xenophon's attack on the Church of Scientology has raised several questions about its position within Australia.

A lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at La Trobe University, Dr Rod Blackhurst, spoke to The World Today about the Church and the current controversy.

Depending what country you are in, Scientology could be a religion, a cult, a quasi-religion, or a religious charity.

It was founded by the science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s and in 1983 the Australian High Court ruled it is a religion.

Dr Blackhurst says Scientology is able to thrive because of the difficulty in defining religion.

"Generally speaking, it seems to behave as what you'd describe as a cult, certainly not as a full-blown religion in the sense that Christianity or Buddhism or Islam are religions," he said.

"It's a new religion, there's lots and lots of these new religions. By and large they're referred to as cults or sects."

He says Scientology takes advantage of the confusion over what constitutes a religion.

more at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/18/2746624.htm

[News Thetan]

Cult v religion - ABC Online
18 November 2009, 7:06 pm
ELEANOR HALL: Depending what country you're in, Scientology could be a religion, a cult, a quasi-religion, or a religious charity.

It was founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s and in 1983 the Australian High Court ruled it is a religion.

Dr Rod Blackhirst is a lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

He told Barney Porter that Scientology is able to thrive because of the difficulty in defining religion.

ROD BLACKHIRST: Generally speaking, it seems to behave what you'd describe as a cult, certainly not as a full blown religion in the sense that Christianity or Buddhism or Islam are religions. It's a new religion, there's lots and lots of these new religions. By and large they're referred to as cults or sects.

BARNEY PORTER: You're saying it is a new religion and you're saying it's a cult, I mean do we need to come up with a definitive definition here?

ROD BLACKHIRST: Yeah that's the problem, there's no certain definition of what a religion is and Scientology plays upon that. It thrives in that ambiguity of exactly what a religion is.

And in different parts of the world there's different answers to that; largely decided by courts and judges because religions in this particular case, come with tax exemption and that really is the crucial issue.

What is a religion? Only matters in the public sphere in as much as in most places it provides you with a tax exemption.

BARNEY PORTER: It has elements of Freud, Buddhism and Hinduism; it seems to draw on several philosophies.

ROD BLACKHIRST: It's essentially a mishmash of stuff, it's syncretic, that is to say. By and large it's closest I guess to Buddhism in some ways. Basically what L. Ron Hubbard did - the founder of Scientology, he was a science fiction writer and he took some of the basic simple techniques of Buddhism and as you say, elements from other religions and he re-packaged them with a scientific veneer and then linked it to his particular science fiction.

So it's a very strange sort of mixture of stuff from all different traditions; but probably closest in some ways a perversion of the doctrines of Buddhism.

BARNEY PORTER: Is it dangerous?

more at http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2746299.htm