The building statistics are certainly plausible, as can be seen through the Buildings category of this blog, and the Guinness Book one as well (it's official). The other stats, I am not sure, but if true, it would certainly be a major fail for Scientology critics and Anonymous. I have already posted critics' and Anonymous own statistics: that in spite of their claims, they have not managed to close down a single organization or mission, while in fact these doubled in five years to now reach, if we have to believe that article, 8,071 Scientology Churches, Missions and groups - almost one for each protester in the peak of Anonymous protests of Feb 2008.
Scientology certainly has many cultish aspects and there's certainly much to criticize about it, but the bigoted way Scientology critics and Anonymous go about it only helps Scientology expansion. Just take a look at the comment section of that article - instead of addressing the facts of the article, it's just cries of "cult shill" and "ban Louanelee".
The whole Scientology criticism thing has become so pathetic it hardly is worth spending much time one it anymore. It's over, and the CoS will just quietly continue to expand, ignoring the discredited cries of wolf from critics - until at last some sort of intelligent and credible criticism appears.
All critics manage to do eventually with their cruel and unfounded accusations is to draw a lot of sympathy for Scientologists and a fair amount of interest for Scientology - at least enough to keep on "feeding the beast".
Daily Kos: State of the Nation
Scientology has its expansion statistics out
by louannelee
Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 06:20:29 PM PDT
The Church of Scientology International published its 2009 statistics. Notably everything is compared to a five-year-range which might be an odd way of counting, but impressive nevertheless. What do you have to say about it?
- louannelee's diary :: ::
- The Church’s property holdings internationally have more than doubled in the last 5 years. The combined size of Church premises increased from 5.6 million square feet in 2004 to 11 million square feet in 2009.
- The Church has acquired 66 buildings since 2004 in major population centers around the world. For example: Berlin, New York, Greater Los Angeles area.
- The Church has completed 401,003 square feet of construction of new premises in the last 5 months. It currently has under construction another 475,887 square feet, including Churches in Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Quebec, Mexico City, Brussels, Rome and Tel Aviv.
- There are 8,071 Scientology Churches, Missions and groups in 165 nations, double the number five years ago.
- 80 million L. Ron Hubbard books and lectures on Dianetics and Scientology have been sold in the last decade, compared to 5.6 million in the prior decade, and 60 of that 80 million have been sold in the last two years-more than during the first 50 years of Dianetics and Scientology combined.
- The number of individuals completing auditing and training has doubled since 2007.
- Since the Church undertook to publish and reproduce its scriptural materials in-house in 2007, the average price of Mr. Hubbard’s books and lectures sold has decreased dramatically.
- There were 12.4 million visitors to the Scientology website in the last year alone coming from 234 countries, with 23 million video views.
- 4.5 million pages of L. Ron Hubbard’s writings have been translated in the last 10 years alone compared to a total of 359,459 for the prior 50 years, making him the most translated author in history-according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
- Today there are 196,000 Scientology Volunteer Ministers worldwide-there were 45,000 in 2004. Volunteer Ministers helped over 1.4 million people in the last year alone, a 300% increase over the 2004 figure of 550,000 people helped.
