Debunking the Freezone

These pages provide corrective information to false claims made on websites run by a small clique of ex-members who are no longer in the Church and now seek to spread lies about their former religion.

Religion scholars describe this phenomenon as apostasy, and it is as old as religion itself. The late Professor Bryan Wilson, one of the best-known scholars of religions, put it this way:

"Every religion which makes claim to a definitive body of doctrine and practice which it regards as exclusively its own, is likely to be faced with the fact that from time to time some erstwhile members will relinquish their allegiance and cease to subscribe to the formalities of the faith, in at least some, perhaps all, of its teachings, practices, organization, and discipline. Apostasy has been a common phenomenon in the history of the various denominations of the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition."

And he added,

“Neither the objective sociological researcher nor the court of law can readily regard the apostate as a creditable or reliable source of evidence. He must always be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader.”

All religions have had their apostates. Commenting about the phenomena of apostasy, a Jesuit writer observed in The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1913 that

“The most embittered and the most untrustworthy members of the Society (they are fortunately not very numerous) have ever been deserters from its own ranks. We know with what malice and venom some unfaithful priests are wont to assail the Church, which they once believed to be Divine, and not dissimilar has been the hatred of some Jesuits who have been untrue to their calling.”

The apostates who deride Churches of Scientology and their management today are likewise motivated by malice, venom -- and the profit-motive. In what follows, we will show that their claims are false and that they cannot be relied upon for accurate information.