We bitches be crazy !

Nope first thing i noticed,

LOL

So again, this is your belief. Nothing you say here is solid or even factual. It is possible to quantify these things, if you wanted to.

I say again, this is myth. Not based on facts and you believe it because it is important to you somehow. I would love to know why. I have opinions about the why but those are not fact, either.

To be clear, the statement that it is rare that a group survives the death of its founder is a myth.

Thanks for the info. This video is obviously one fraud endorsing another.

You peanut! Jerk!

I do not like people I don’t know telling me how to express myself.

It’s pretty clear that when you have a ‘charismatic’ leader who keeps total control over a new organisation, his death is going to be a existential challenge. As in the days of absolute monarchs, succession is crucial. A smooth transition (“The king is dead, long live the king”) was a fervently hoped for, and a death without an heir could trigger civil war.

This was what nearly happened when Hubbard died – Miscavige seized power effectively, and this minimised the damage, but Scientology took a huge hit in membership. If it had not had huge financial reserves it might very well have been in big trouble.

If you look at any period, there are a few religious organisations that are familiar today and many more that are unheard of. The survivors are typically those which established an effective constitution and good administration when the founder was still alive, so the transition of power was relatively painless.

Look back at the 50’s and there were a mess of ‘cult’ groups and alternative belief systems that are unheard of today:

Lysenkoism
Ancient Astronauts
The Bermuda Triangle
Christian Science (now in terminal decline)
The Aetherius Society (now all but extinct)
Too many sects based on ‘spiritualism’, and headed by charismatic leader to list

In any period, there are large numbers of new religious organisations and fringe beliefs. They are plainly like tadpoles – many arise, but only a few survive for any length of time. There are many reasons for this and the internal chaos a founder who refused to surrender absolute power until it was too late is plainly one of them.

I can’t point to an individual paper which establishes this – but you only have to look at the historical record to see that this is a valid argument.