An Answer - Birte Hauge, The Church of Scientology, Denmark

This is to let the readers know how we in the Church of Scientology have a system of Ethics in order to keep its members happy and expanding: "In order to be happy and do well and in order to grow and exist as a group its members individually must be ethical", quote by L. Ron Hubbard.

If you look at this subject outside of its relations or worse without having studied or realised the religious belief of Scientology as a form of life, you easily could think that these ethical prescribtions are authoritarian.

To discuss the ethics of Scientology without thorough knowledge or experience regarding the philosophic truths and religious form of living of Scientology, and to discuss it from the viewpoint of how it MIGHT be applied by someone, is quite unreal.

Therefore let's consider the ethical prescribtions of Scientology in its correct context. They form a codex, which is recommended for use in the daily life situations like the man in the street possibly out of old custom handles the same way, it has methods which in this relation aren't strange at all or unusual, but it may when printed out of its correct context seem so. Scientology is a religion. A new religion with very old roots. That which it is most like is Buddhism, which will be evident through a thorough and un-prejudiced study of many works by the founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

Due to the strong connection of Scientology to the Buddhism principles although being renewed and formed into the style of the 20. century (Buddhism probably also was "modern" when it was formed 2500 years ago?) it may be difficult by the first glance to perceive it as a religion in a western socalled Christian country.

Any religious movement has during its first years had difficulties which follows when one enter new values and lifepatterns into a society. It may become pursued openly like the first Christians in Rome or it may be denied official recognition as a religion.

All the prescribtions aim at recovery and the intention is always clearly marked: The purpose of ethics is to make spiritual results and progress possible, and to impede harms and disturbances of those that are on the road to spiritual freedom.

In practise it derives from the Vinaya Pitaka, the Buddhist book of ethics, written about 2500 years ago.

The great majority of people seek betterment and sincerely wish to be ethical. A small percentage, however, caught tenaciously in the grip of their reactive natures, actively oppose any improvement in themselves and in their fellow men. Such persons inevitably attempt to undermine the spiritual advances of others. Ethics, rationally practised, assists the individual to travel the path to spiritual awareness more easily. Ethics is the balanced way, the highway rather than the byway, the practise of virtue.