# I am starting to think L. Ron Hubbard wasn't conning people. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 24, 2009, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949 "2009-10-24T09:20:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/21 "2009-10-24T23:09:35Z")
Fascinating post. I think the one who truly believed it was John Campbell, but then he believed you could draw an electronic circuit and have it work. (Nowadays that’s not so farfetched, but in those days it was just crazy. Anyway, he meant a pen and ink drawing. And I think he believed in telephathy and telekinesis.) Thee is not the slightest reason to think that Hubbard believed in any of it. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/22 "2009-10-25T00:13:13Z")
There may well have been a meeting of science fiction writers in which Hubbard (or somebody else there) may have said something like “If you want to make a million dollars, you need to start a new religion.” It’s not clear that Ellison was there though. This story is told by a number of science fiction writers. If they were all there, the room was rather crowded. Ellison is not the most trustworthy of sources. It’s possible that Ellison heard the story and changed it to make him one of the people there. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/23 "2009-10-25T00:49:12Z")
Since there is not much of a factual question in the OP, and this is inevitably involves discussion of religion, this is better suited for GD than GQ. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/24 "2009-10-25T01:21:22Z")
Joe Smith and the Mormons are close to our time. We know what a shyster he was. L. Ron also has tracks you can see today. It takes a bit of insanity to start a religion but if you pull it off ,you will be rich and powerful. [Disillusioned Mormon: Start Your Own Cult!](http://mormonskeptic.blogspot.com/2007/06/start-your-own-cult.html) Here is how to get started. The other religions are old enough so the flaws of the originators have been able to be smoothed over. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/25 "2009-10-25T05:43:39Z")
My impression of the process of becoming ‘clear’ which is something I read from William S. Burroughs who flirted with Scientology was that it was a strict regimen of making you confront your fears. Presenting one with such evocative dualities is actually an useful tool. Essentially if there is anything the psychedelic era, of which L. Ron was a significant part should have taught us is that these techniques can be used for both good and ill. Certainly all the bits about aliens are questionable at best, but there is an argument to be made that people build up a mythology around the things that they cannot know. Oftentimes these people are far more congnizant of the mytho-poetic nature of their allegories. I’m not trying to justify Scientology in any way, but I think people are too ready to dismiss Hubbard’s views in their own ignorance. ‘Haha lets laugh at the psycho.’, but basically mental health is all about how you measure up to the baseline of the rest of the populace, and outliers are considered to be some kind of deviant, it’s all viewed through a negative lens. Outside of the norm and something is wrong with you, regardless of the benefits your particular ‘pathology’ brings to you and those around you. Basically I think people judge scientology out of a place of ignorance, they have no fucking clue what they are looking at, but like to pretend they are so that they can engage in the gestalt of PALATR. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/26 "2009-10-25T05:45:53Z")
> [@WarmNPrickly](#): > > It does seem that way to casual readers, but my mother-in-law is strong evidence that they are just as much a money religion as the next. I don’t have any problem with it except that in my mother-in-laws case she rather neglects all things not bhuddist. That’s a function of obsession, not a function of Buddhism. Buddhism is about freeing one from obsession. If you see the Buddha on the path, kill him. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/27 "2009-10-25T07:36:43Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Harlan Ellison claims to have been there whene Hubbard invented Scientology and talked extensively about it in a [magazine interview](http://cgi.amazing.com/scientology/harlan-ellison.html) in 1978: > > I don’t think Hubbard believed a word of it himself. God, how I love Harlan Ellison! Thank you for posting that, **Diogenes** , I I hadn’t seen that interview before. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/28 "2009-10-25T09:16:06Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Presenting one with such evocative dualities is actually an useful tool. Dualities? > [@](#): > > but basically mental health is all about how you measure up to the baseline of the rest of the populace No it isn’t. > [@](#): > > Basically I think people judge scientology out of a place of ignorance Ignorance of what? Mythopoesis? > [@](#): > > they have no fucking clue what they are looking at, but like to pretend they are so that they can engage in the gestalt of PALATR. Gestalt? ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/29 "2009-10-25T16:45:34Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > Aside from the Xenu wackyness, it is filled with weird word drills like: > > We must survive > We mustn’t survive > > We can survive > We can’t survive > > We should survive > We shouldn’t survive > > … > > I do create > I don’t create > > I can create > I can’t create > > and on and on for pages and pages and pages like that in Hubbard’s own nearly illegible hand. > > WTF? > > At this point, I gotta say, I think the dude really believed what he was talking about. Is there a psychological disorder, maybe listed in DSM IV, for people like Hubbard, or the Time Cube guy, who go on and on talking about absolute nonsense? What was he suffering from? First, I’m not a scientologist nor do I condone their more cult-like practices, but IME this looks like straight up [cognitive behavioral therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_therapy) (CBT). It eerily reminds me of a Cognitive Behavior affirmation worksheet that could be handed out in any clinical group setting… So, without judgement to its origins it is a variation of a common and sometimes effective technique within the science of psychology and may hearken to Dianetic’s psychotherapy roots. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/30 "2009-10-25T16:54:12Z")
This fun Cracked article may come in handy: [L. Ron Hubbard’s 5 Most Impressive Lies (Besides Scientology)](http://www.cracked.com/article_16337_l-ron-hubbards-5-most-impressive-lies-besides-scientology.html) ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/31 "2009-10-25T19:06:48Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > Is there a psychological disorder, maybe listed in DSM IV, for people like Hubbard, or the Time Cube guy, who go on and on talking about absolute nonsense? What was he suffering from? This example of a “psychological disorder/ nonsense rambling” that you posted is ironically a treatment for many DSM IV diagnoses, so unless the “crazies are running the loonie bin”, which, unironically, I have found is often the case, then your assumptions are misinformed, and in fact biased. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/32 "2009-10-25T23:08:50Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > There are claims that Hubbard believed himself to be the reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes, and that this is why he tried to get Scientology into Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. **And that he believed he had, in an earlier life, buried a treasure in the Mediterranean, and spent a lot of time on his ships actually loking for it**. It seems likely enough to me that he did believe some of the hokum he came up with. I can’t ring myself to believe that he believed \*all \* of it. Well hell, I watched the program about the 7 wonders of the ancient world on A&E last night and it gave me a twinkle of inspiration to start an earnest search and maritime expedition in the Mediterranean to find the the sunken lost treasure of the [Temple of Artemis at Ephesus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Artemis_at_Ephesus), pillaged by seafaring Barbarians and sunk upon their home voyage by a storm. Or was it the pillaged treasure of the mauseloeum of Halicarnassus? Is there any way to recreate or simulate ancient weather patterns in the mediterraneaen and find a possible location for the most likely storm that would sink a fleet during any given season? ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2009, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/33 "2009-10-26T00:04:31Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > Well hell, I watched the program about the 7 wonders of the ancient world on A&E last night Sorry, it was the History channel, same difference, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2009, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/34 "2009-10-26T00:28:06Z")
[Quote=Devilsknew] Is there any way to recreate or simulate ancient weather patterns in the mediterraneaen and find a possible location for the most likely storm that would sink a fleet during any given season? [/Quote] Cybernetic dowsing, really, when one thinks about it. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2009, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/35 "2009-10-26T02:37:39Z")
The first true and unqualified prediction and time travel into the past based upon physical, meteorological, oceanographic, geological, and historical evidence as synthesized in cybernetic space. Hypothesis to confirmation. Be able to further the science of meteorology and Computer Science correlating to the human story. Radiologic Microwave science could probably map it too, Low Freak. Sonic-graph. HARP ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/36 "2009-10-27T18:52:44Z")
Apparently, the University of Wiscosin-Madison is the place to look for this kind of past predictive weather software. Dowse just to the North of you Chidopes. They have the right academic and research program and technology… got some serious MIT leadership there, starting this year. I’m sure they are probably working secretly with HAARP, as well. How do I access that without having a degree? ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/37 "2009-10-27T20:38:21Z")
Every once in awhile I read something on the Dope that changes my mind or causes me to reflect in a profound way, when ever I do I feel like a better person. Thank you, **njtt**. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/38 "2009-10-27T21:52:34Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > But surely the Buddha did not make up what now seems to be the crazier stuff there. As I have always understood it, anyway, the belief in reincarnation in various forms was already part of the culture he grew up in. What he added was the notion that it is a _bad thing_ to be reincarnated (because all life is suffering) and that if you do things right you can actually _avoid_ being reincarnated. Maybe some of contemporaries would still have thought that crazy, but it is not nearly as crazy as the whole reincarnation as animals, etc., stuff can sound to a modern secularist. That reincarnation was bad was already part of the Hindu tradition before Buddhism. It has never been a good thing. The idea of an escape from the wheel of _samsara_ (continuous rebirth) was likewise, already an established concept. Buddha actually downplayed questions about reincarnation or life after death as unimportant and irrelevant. What he contributed (or at least, what Buddhism contributed) was the explanation for unhappiness in life (“all suffering is caused by desire”), and the methodology for attaining enlightenment – escaping from suffering – in THIS life (the eightfold path). He really added nothing new doctrinally or theologically. For the most part he ignored metaphysical/theological type questions completely. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/39 "2009-10-27T22:56:45Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > He was only a second-rate SF author in the first place. Now if one of the greats had started a religion, Asimov, Herbert, Vance, Heinlein, etc, that would have really been something to see. What tales and theologies they would have spun! [Heinlein, did you say?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_All_Worlds) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949/40 "2009-10-27T23:22:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Heinlein, did you say? I already mentioned Heinlein (and others’) fake religions upthread. It’s not the Church of All Worlds that I wonnder about in that book – i have a suspicion that he based the Fosterite Church in **Stranger in a Strange Land** at least in part on Hubbard’s foray into revelation. But not too much – Heinlein didn’t want to court disaster, I’m sure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-think-l-ron-hubbard-wasnt-conning-people/514949.md?page=3)