vii. Is Scientology a Religion?

Islam, Judaism and Buddhism passed through similar stages and through a much larger duration than the few years the Church of Scientology has had to organize itself in a completely organized form and aspect.

From my viewpoint as a theologian and philosopher, and having studied the religion of Scientology in its writings and practices, I can strongly affirm that Scientology is a religion, in the very fullest sense.

The community of persons united with a complex body of beliefs, in its search for the infinite, the sacred, searching to place man into his proper relationship with the divine, is what one encounters in examining the beliefs and practices of the religion of Scientology.

One cannot see any religion without this factor which involves specific behavior toward this spiritual reality. Scientology seems to turn specially around the fact of survival and salvation, concepts clearly expressed by Xavier Zubiri as inherent tenets in any religious experience. The association or not with a God does not vary in any way the reality of this experience. This is not the case with Scientology, because Scientologists confirm their search for God and infinity in their eighth dynamic, although they do not glorify him. In fact, one of the accusations which separates Islam most from Catholicism is that the latter, so say the Moslems, let itself be carried away by idolatry after its continuous reforms.

The roots of Scientology (Buddhism and the Vedas) already point out that one can only through a complete knowledge of oneself commence to know and love God.