And going down I hope!

John

WONderful!!  Does the U.S. publish census figures on the population of
Scientologists in the U.S.?

Its Offical!!!  the recent census figures from 1996 record 1500
Scientologists in Australia.

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Source? The previous census gave only 1091.

- --
Home Page: <URL:http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/>
Not the Scientology Home Page: <URL:http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/scn/>

Keep it in Usenet. E-mail replies and 'courtesy' copies are not welcome.
If you're selling, I ain't buying.

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On Sun, 05 Oct 1997 04:38:45 +1000,

:Its Offical!!!  the recent census figures from 1996 record 1500
:Scientologists in Australia.

Precisely 500? Kewl.

BTW, you should probably get better anonymisation. From your header -

From: Anthony Fore <T...@four.com.au>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Australian Census says 1500 Scientologists
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 1997 04:38:45 +1000
Organization: Sekret Seven
Lines: 2
Message-ID: <34368D35.4BFC@four.com.au>
Reply-To: T...@Four.com.au
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I)

- it should be possible to tell from the NNTP-Posting-Host: line precisely
which lab PC you were using at the time. I certainly hope you don't keep a
habitual usage pattern of ANY kind.

Nice to see you back BTW.

--
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for ISPs to continue to block earthlink.net email and Usenet messages from
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On Sat, 04 Oct 1997 15:58:25 -0700,

:> Its Offical!!!  the recent census figures from 1996 record 1500
:> Scientologists in Australia.
:And going down I hope!

Actually, the 1991 census gave 1091.

Is this *precisely* 1500?

Where can we look this info up?

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In article <slrn63dqsp.d91....@thingy.apana.org.au>,

Well, obviously, Scientology is using its miracle technology to grow and
expand.  To a round figure, no less.

--Eric Smith
(Is Australian census data Webbed?)

Let's do some statistics:

GOVERNMENT BODY CLAIMS
----------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------
Australia                      1991               1996      
-------------------------------------------------------------
Total Population:          17,269,000 (*)     18,260,863 (**)
Admitted Scientologsts:         1,091 (+)          1,500 (++)
Scientologist Density:     0.00006318%        0.00008214%
-------------------------------------------------------------

Big win!  0.000019% growth rate in Australia!

Now let's see if the Australian Orgs are pulling their weight:

-------------------------------------------------------------
World                          1991               1996
-------------------------------------------------------------
Total Population:        5,365,419,152 (+)  5,771,326,100 (+)
Claimed Scientologists:      8,000,000 (~)      8,000,000 (~)
Claimed Density:              0.001491%          0.001386%
Australian Population:      17,269,000         18,260,863
Expected Aus. Scns:             25,748             25,310
-------------------------------------------------------------

Analysis: the number of Scientologists in Australia is about 20 times
smaller than we would expect if the 8 million figure is correct and that
Scientologists are evenly distributed around the world (anecdotal evidence
suggests otherwise).

(*)  Source: CIA World Factbook, July 1996 estimate

(**) Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (via Rev.Dr. David Gerard)

(+)  Source: US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbsum.html)

(++) Source: Anon posting quoting 1996  Australian Census

(~)  Source: Numerous Scientology publications.  Despite claiming massive
     worldwide growth, the official number of scientologists has remained
     constant for six years.

SCIENTOLOGY CLAIMS
------------------

Scientology offers demographics:

http://www.scientology.org/p_jpg/heritage/heriteng/dmografx/27-table.htm

Data is complete in five year intervals to 1990, with some 1992 figures.
Observations:

  - "Number of practising scientologists" is not listed.

  - Growth in ALL categories is polynomial before 1990.

  - 1990 figures show growth rate INCREASING in: Number of Auding Hours
    Delivered Yearly in Churches and Missions (Not Cumulative); Scientology
    Publications Distribution; Number of Community Action & Social Reform
    Groups; Number of Churches, Missions and Organization; Dianetics Books
    Sold;

  - 1990 figures show growth rate DECLINING in: Number of People
    Participating in Scientology for the First Year (Per Year).

Analysis: Scientology is not attracting new people as quickly as it used
to.  By scientology's own figures, he growth rate of publications/
/organizations/auding hours is greater than the growth rate of new
members.  From this we can conclude that existing members are receiving
more publications in the mail and undergoing more auditing than before.

The 1990 date coincides approximately with the commencement of the war
against the Internet.

Murray

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On Sun, 5 Oct 1997 20:27:45 GMT,
Eric S. Smith: Left-Field Marshal <cs...@blaze.trentu.ca> wrote:
:In article <slrn63dqsp.d91....@thingy.apana.org.au>,

:>>Its Offical!!!  the recent census figures from 1996 record 1500
:>>Scientologists in Australia.
:>Source? The previous census gave only 1091.
:Well, obviously, Scientology is using its miracle technology to grow and
:expand.  To a round figure, no less.

Round figures happen. I would be surprised by growth in the figure though.
Must look up past Censuses some time though.

:--Eric Smith
:(Is Australian census data Webbed?)

Not much of it - have a look at http://www.abs.gov.au/ . Basically they
want us to buy data we've already paid for in taxes, and which was
acquired compulsorily anyway.

--
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 I hereby encourage all earthlink.net users to leave for a provider whose
email and Usenet messages are not boycotted by the rest of the net, and
for ISPs to continue to block earthlink.net email and Usenet messages from
Earthlink, until earthlink.net *stop* the flow of junk email and spam.

On 6 Oct 1997 12:29:06 +1000, f...@thingy.apana.spaaaamtraaaaap.org.au

Perhaps the growth is easily explained. Just imagine .au clams being
ordered in 1996 to put "Scientologist" in the "Religion" section come
census time to make it look like the cult is growing here. Plausible?

Whatever the real reason for this increase, I'd say there are *more*
than just 1,500 in the country. It's likely there are some who don't
mention their true religious affiliation on the census form, perhaps
due to paranoia about what the government might do with that sort of
information (I have wondered from time to time if ASIO or the Federal
Police keep tabs on our favourite cult on the quiet).

Still, 1,500 falls far short of the number dreamed up by an official
cult mouthpiece in "The Weekend Australian" from 1 February this year:

  ... by the mid-1990s, Scientology had a firm foothold in Australia
  with, according to a spokeswoman, Virginia Stewart, "two churches
  in Sydney, and one in Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and
  Perth". Stewart estimates the total membership at about 150,000.

If the census data is reasonably accurate, that's quite a discrepancy
there. Two orders of magnitude in fact. But, exaggerations like that
didn't seem to bother Hubbard very much, so I guess they don't bother
Virginia very much either.

150,000 is about 0.8% of the current population of Australia (about 19
million) and is probably more than the total number of people serving
in our military forces, both regular and reserve!

Somehow I think Virginia is including BTs in the count.

The ABS should start its own religion. They'd clean up.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Neil Muspratt SP3.07                    n...@gargoyle.apana.org.au |
| Brisbane Australia                                                 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

We have never had the idea of recognising the Church of Scientology
as a religious association.

- French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, 30 July 1997

I don't think so.  After some 40 years involvement with Co$ in WA
(roughly 10% of Aust population) I would say 150 here would be the
maximum - I knew *all* Scios personally, plus I had familiarity with
Central Files and the Academy etc.  And of that 150 there were only
ever about 50 that could remotely be considered 'active'; the rest
spent their time dodging registars, missions, events  and the like.

And there is no doubt that the borg has been in decline for some years
as the old-timers die out or blow.

Ex Scio Kid