The Wikipedia articles on Scientology are pretty good, by the way. (If I say so myself. I started WikiProject Scientology :-) Mostly started by critics but with lots of input from Scientologists, and the Neutral Point Of View turns out to be a fantastically effective way of writing about the stuff—before Wikipedia, there were CoS sites which were friendly and pleasant but rather glaringly incomplete in important ways, and critics’ sites which were highly informative but frequently so bitter as to be all but unreadable.
(Despite the key rule of NPOV—write for your opponent—I doubt the CoS is a fan of WP’s Scientology articles. Ah well!)
Quick reading suggests that Hubbard first founded “dianetics” in late 1949/early 1950, and it became “scientology” only in late 1953/early 1954. As far as I can tell it took them many years until they became Scientology we know. There’s some evidence of evaporative cooling at that stage.
And just as David Gerard says, modern Scientology is extreme case. By cult I meant something more like objectivists.
The Wikipedia articles on Scientology are pretty good, by the way. (If I say so myself. I started WikiProject Scientology :-) Mostly started by critics but with lots of input from Scientologists, and the Neutral Point Of View turns out to be a fantastically effective way of writing about the stuff—before Wikipedia, there were CoS sites which were friendly and pleasant but rather glaringly incomplete in important ways, and critics’ sites which were highly informative but frequently so bitter as to be all but unreadable.
(Despite the key rule of NPOV—write for your opponent—I doubt the CoS is a fan of WP’s Scientology articles. Ah well!)