Where are the "millions" of Scientologists?

[Steven]

Scientologists have claimed to have millions of members for years. One of their recent ads claims that 4.4 million join each year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHufD4iAP38

The thing is, where are all these people? If there are "millions" of Scientologists, why does Scientology's Youtube page have only about 6,600 subscribers?

http://www.youtube.com/user/churchofscie...CAQQwRs%3D

Why does Scientology's Facebook page have less than only 15,000 likes?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scientolog...893?ref=ts

Why do only a tiny handful of Scientologists post regularly on here?

If Scientology had millions of members, wouldn't their Facebook and Youtube pages have millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) as well? Wouldn't thousands be on Yahoo R&S discussing it here? Where are these "millions" of Scientologists?

[Hal Roach]

While I'm no fan of Scientology, I don't think this is a fair assessment to make. I can think of other religions that have numbers in the millions, yet aren't really represented in this forum or on the "official" internet channels. Mormons come to mind.

[Pirate AMâ„¢]

Claims of a number of people believing in or being the fastest growing are simply a logical fallacy. Argument ad populam does not work, any way that you try to use it.

Edit:
To be clear, it does not matter how many people are claimed to believe a thing or how fast a belief is growing, these claims do not say anything about whether the claim is true or not. Of course, given the success for TV/media ads, they are generally indications of the gullibility of people and their desire to follow/belong to the pack.

[tarielle_au]

They are all too busy taking part in brain washing sessions so they can believe that they'll fly away on a big space ship one day.

Scientology defines the word "insanity".

[Theta Works]

Hal is right. Where are the millions of Christians or Jewish or any other religion, for that matter? The internet is not a fair assessment. Look for yourself. Go to a Church and see how many are in your area. Then go to the over 170 countries where Scientology has over 9,000 Churches, Missions and groups and look and count, then you could truly say you looked.

[Amarillo]

Im an Indipendent Scientologist.
Im in agree with you: where are the millions of scientologist?
The church of scientologist it telling us a lot of PR (pubblic relation).
The church is counting a scientologist also who buy or receive just one book of Dianetics or Scientology...

But in first I want to tell you a truth.
The right sequence is:
you read a book
you apply what the book write
if you feel better doing that you are happy.
so, you read more and apply more and feel better more... why do you think that this is wrong?
This is the normal way of growing of one Scientologist.
Really is so important to know if there are millions Scientologist? I like only to grow and feel better.

But do you know another situation more serious:
Here in "yahoo answer" no one Scientologist of the church can read your questions... yes... in the church this is strictly forbidden. Big penalty are done to staff or student that are surfing the internet finding for Scientology opinion that are not the official website of the church... yeah, total repression... and this is done from a church that promote the personal freedom.
Here in the yahoo answers there are only two staff of the church that are answering. This two persons are the only authorized to read and answer in the Internet, no other body can.

I'm and Indipendent Scientologist that arrived to understand how wrong is the church asking only for money. Not looking for the real freedom or happyness of people.

Now Im happy to be in the Indipendent field because I can do the Bridge, without repeating courses more times (another problem of the church) and without the problem to find the lot of money, and i'm free to surf the internet telling you my thought.

[Jesco]

If a Scientologist is talking they are lying.
Scientology has THREE types of members, (or a combination of the three).
You can guess numbers from this...

1 Emotionally troubled members that give money
2 Emotionally troubled members that give their lives and free labor (Sea Org)
3 People at the top of the pyramid scheme

Thanks to the proliferation of free peach by the internet and protests by the group Anonymous their numbers are dwindling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rACTh28_P_A&feature=plcp
(short video by Anonymous)