"No question about it, the man knew how to tell a story, and how to hold an audience. We listened with rapt attention, convinced by the time he was halfway through his talk, that we were talking to a man well-versed in the world of promotion and printing." - Jeff Hawkins, Ch. 6
To know what a religion truly is, one must understand the mind, matter, and time from whence it came. The Church of Scientology's official website provides a ten-minute video on the life of its beloved founder, although there remains a high level of controversy over Hubbard's official biography. You may watch that video here, and I encourage you to. But instead of using what I wrote in my paper, which draws heavily on that video, I've found a more succinct description that draws on that video and the more accurate exposé called Bare-Faced Messiah: the True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, written by journalist Russell Miller. This description comes from Walter Martin's Religious InfoNet - Kingdom of the Cults.
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The founder of Scientology, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (L. Ron Hubbard, affectionately called “Ron” by Scientologists), was born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. Hubbard, a popular science fiction writer of the 1930s and 1940s, changed venues midstream by announcing at a New Jersey science fiction convention, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” The following year, in May 1950, Hubbard released Dianetics: A Modern Science of Mental Health, which has become entry-level reading for converts to Scientology. Hubbard’s overnight success with Dianetics virtually gave him a new career in writing self-help and religious books. His first book on Scientology was published in 1951, and the Church of Scientology in California was incorporated on February 18, 1954.
Building a global religion of six million adherents (perhaps 200,000 active) in a few decades was no small victory for Mr. Hubbard, whose abilities should not be underestimated. His claim to fame as a writer includes fifteen million published words in science fiction, essays, and articles. He supersedes this with twenty-five million published words for Scientology. Mr. Hubbard’s publishing achievements are notable, but his background upholds very few biblical Christian values, as we will see. He was raised on a small ranch near Helena, Montana, with four hometown churches, but his later cynicism of Christianity betrays his virtually faithless upbringing. His father served a career in the U. S. Navy, which allegedly afforded L. Ron Hubbard frequent travel abroad. He was also one of the youngest Eagle scouts in the history of the Boy Scouts of America. His books often carry a short biographical sketch of his accomplishments, also described in the Scientology Dictionary:
Hubbard’s academic degrees have come under question since Sequoia University was discovered to be an unrecognized diploma mill located in a two-story house in Los Angeles. It was closed down in 1958 by an act of the California Legislature.
It is true that he attended George Washington University for two years. He was placed on academic probation, as he said, for “some very poor grade sheets.” Although there are times he calls himself a “nuclear physicist,” he failed his only class on molecular and atomic physics. He also spent three months in a military course at the Princeton School of Military Government. Nothing has yet surfaced to confirm his alleged degree from Columbian College.
The success of Hubbard’s writing skills cannot be argued. The manuscript for Dianetics (180,000 words) was supposedly completed in three weeks’ time. Those who knew him said that he could type ninety words per minute with the old two-finger method. He had an altered typewriter with special keys for often used words, such as “and,” “the,” and “but.” His personal qualifications as a religious leader were everything but saintly. His first two marriages were disastrous. His second wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, sued him for divorce on April 23, 1951, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The microfilm copy of that case mysteriously vanished from the court records. However, an industrious St. Petersburg Times newspaper reporter found the original in storage at the courthouse. It was a twenty-eight page complaint to dissolve their Chestertown, Maryland, marriage of August 10, 1946. This was a bigamous marriage for Mr. Hubbard. He pretended to be a bachelor to Miss Northrup, yet he had not divorced his first wife, Margaret Grubb Hubbard. His first marriage was not legally dissolved until over one year after his second marriage. His second wife’s 1951 divorce allegations contained more than bigamy charges. She claimed sleep deprivation, beatings, strangulation, kidnapping of their child and fleeing to Cuba, and Ron counseling her to commit suicide, “if she really loved him.” The kidnapping was reported in several newspapers in 1951.
Sara Northrup had first met Hubbard through a Pasadena-based occult group led by Jack Parsons, a disciple of the late Alister Crowley, whose alias was “The Beast 666.” Crowley was a leading Satanist, sorcerer, and black magician. He founded the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), which promoted sexual magick. At its New York headquarters, the group’s historical records include letters between Parsons and Crowley that mention Hubbard several times. Northrup was Parsons’s girlfriend when they both met L. Ron Hubbard. As Parsons’s partner, she represented the Babylonian woman in Revelation, chapter 17, in the New Testament. Before she could fulfill Parsons’s plan, Hubbard swept her away in an out-of-state bigamous marriage (representing himself as a bachelor the entire time). In Parsons’s letters he blamed Hubbard for taking her from him.
Scientology defends Hubbard’s connection to the Parsons black magick cult by stating that he went undercover to infiltrate it on orders of the Naval Intelligence. Supposedly, several prominent scientists were visiting Parsons’s OTO temple, and Ron’s job was to shut it down. Jack (John Whiteside) Parsons was a noted rocket scientist, but the explanation presented by Hubbard seems far-fetched. It lacks rationalization for why an undercover agent would soil the operation with a bigamous marriage. No record has ever been produced to prove that Naval Intelligence hired Hubbard for such an operation.
Hubbard’s working knowledge of black magic and the occult satisfied Parsons. In one letter he wrote to Crowley he speaks highly of Ron’s knowledge of the rituals. The Bible, however, condemns occult practices as abominable, and God says that He will cut off the participants from His presence (Deuteronomy 18:9–12).
The resources claimed by Hubbard for Dianetics include, “the medicine man of the Goldi people of Manchuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles, and modern psychology. Among the people questioned about its existence were a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats. Dabbles had been made in mysticism, data had been studied from mythology to spiritualism.”
Hubbard’s third marriage, to Mary Sue Whipp, lasted the rest of his lifetime. She captivated worldwide attention, in 1977, as the mastermind behind a sinister covert operation against various levels of the United States government that could rival a spy novel. Hubbard was living in California at the time, but his impenetrable shield prevented direct connection with the illegal activities.
Hubbard spent his final years in seclusion from the public eye. Top Scientologists isolated him from most family and church members until his death in Creston, California (a small town north of San Luis Obispo). According to a copy of his death certificate, he succumbed to a cerebral vascular accident (stroke) on January 24, 1986. In their refusal to believe that such a great “science of the mind” master could die a horrific death, the word “dead” or “died” was never used at his eulogy. Scientologists announced that L. Ron Hubbard decisively “discarded the body” to move onto the next level of research, outside his body. How this new research would become available to planet earth is left unsaid. Hubbard himself apparently encouraged an examination of his belief system such as that undertaken in this volume. The seventh article of the Creed of Scientology states, “All men have the inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely on their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinion of others.” If they hold faithful to their creed, they should expect counter writings. With this, we counter the opinions of L. Ron Hubbard.
To know what a religion truly is, one must understand the mind, matter, and time from whence it came. The Church of Scientology's official website provides a ten-minute video on the life of its beloved founder, although there remains a high level of controversy over Hubbard's official biography. You may watch that video here, and I encourage you to. But instead of using what I wrote in my paper, which draws heavily on that video, I've found a more succinct description that draws on that video and the more accurate exposé called Bare-Faced Messiah: the True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, written by journalist Russell Miller. This description comes from Walter Martin's Religious InfoNet - Kingdom of the Cults.
------------
The founder of Scientology, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (L. Ron Hubbard, affectionately called “Ron” by Scientologists), was born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. Hubbard, a popular science fiction writer of the 1930s and 1940s, changed venues midstream by announcing at a New Jersey science fiction convention, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” The following year, in May 1950, Hubbard released Dianetics: A Modern Science of Mental Health, which has become entry-level reading for converts to Scientology. Hubbard’s overnight success with Dianetics virtually gave him a new career in writing self-help and religious books. His first book on Scientology was published in 1951, and the Church of Scientology in California was incorporated on February 18, 1954.
Building a global religion of six million adherents (perhaps 200,000 active) in a few decades was no small victory for Mr. Hubbard, whose abilities should not be underestimated. His claim to fame as a writer includes fifteen million published words in science fiction, essays, and articles. He supersedes this with twenty-five million published words for Scientology. Mr. Hubbard’s publishing achievements are notable, but his background upholds very few biblical Christian values, as we will see. He was raised on a small ranch near Helena, Montana, with four hometown churches, but his later cynicism of Christianity betrays his virtually faithless upbringing. His father served a career in the U. S. Navy, which allegedly afforded L. Ron Hubbard frequent travel abroad. He was also one of the youngest Eagle scouts in the history of the Boy Scouts of America. His books often carry a short biographical sketch of his accomplishments, also described in the Scientology Dictionary:
- [He traveled] extensively in Asia as a young man. He studied science and mathematics at George Washington University, graduating from Columbian College. He attended Princeton University and Sequoia University. Crippled and blind at the end of the war [World War II], he resumed his studies of philosophy and by his discoveries recovered so fully that he was reclassified in 1949 for full combat duty. It was a matter of medical record that he has been twice pronounced dead and that in 1950 he was given a perfect score on mental and physical fitness reports.
Hubbard’s academic degrees have come under question since Sequoia University was discovered to be an unrecognized diploma mill located in a two-story house in Los Angeles. It was closed down in 1958 by an act of the California Legislature.
It is true that he attended George Washington University for two years. He was placed on academic probation, as he said, for “some very poor grade sheets.” Although there are times he calls himself a “nuclear physicist,” he failed his only class on molecular and atomic physics. He also spent three months in a military course at the Princeton School of Military Government. Nothing has yet surfaced to confirm his alleged degree from Columbian College.
The success of Hubbard’s writing skills cannot be argued. The manuscript for Dianetics (180,000 words) was supposedly completed in three weeks’ time. Those who knew him said that he could type ninety words per minute with the old two-finger method. He had an altered typewriter with special keys for often used words, such as “and,” “the,” and “but.” His personal qualifications as a religious leader were everything but saintly. His first two marriages were disastrous. His second wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, sued him for divorce on April 23, 1951, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The microfilm copy of that case mysteriously vanished from the court records. However, an industrious St. Petersburg Times newspaper reporter found the original in storage at the courthouse. It was a twenty-eight page complaint to dissolve their Chestertown, Maryland, marriage of August 10, 1946. This was a bigamous marriage for Mr. Hubbard. He pretended to be a bachelor to Miss Northrup, yet he had not divorced his first wife, Margaret Grubb Hubbard. His first marriage was not legally dissolved until over one year after his second marriage. His second wife’s 1951 divorce allegations contained more than bigamy charges. She claimed sleep deprivation, beatings, strangulation, kidnapping of their child and fleeing to Cuba, and Ron counseling her to commit suicide, “if she really loved him.” The kidnapping was reported in several newspapers in 1951.
Sara Northrup had first met Hubbard through a Pasadena-based occult group led by Jack Parsons, a disciple of the late Alister Crowley, whose alias was “The Beast 666.” Crowley was a leading Satanist, sorcerer, and black magician. He founded the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), which promoted sexual magick. At its New York headquarters, the group’s historical records include letters between Parsons and Crowley that mention Hubbard several times. Northrup was Parsons’s girlfriend when they both met L. Ron Hubbard. As Parsons’s partner, she represented the Babylonian woman in Revelation, chapter 17, in the New Testament. Before she could fulfill Parsons’s plan, Hubbard swept her away in an out-of-state bigamous marriage (representing himself as a bachelor the entire time). In Parsons’s letters he blamed Hubbard for taking her from him.
Scientology defends Hubbard’s connection to the Parsons black magick cult by stating that he went undercover to infiltrate it on orders of the Naval Intelligence. Supposedly, several prominent scientists were visiting Parsons’s OTO temple, and Ron’s job was to shut it down. Jack (John Whiteside) Parsons was a noted rocket scientist, but the explanation presented by Hubbard seems far-fetched. It lacks rationalization for why an undercover agent would soil the operation with a bigamous marriage. No record has ever been produced to prove that Naval Intelligence hired Hubbard for such an operation.
Hubbard’s working knowledge of black magic and the occult satisfied Parsons. In one letter he wrote to Crowley he speaks highly of Ron’s knowledge of the rituals. The Bible, however, condemns occult practices as abominable, and God says that He will cut off the participants from His presence (Deuteronomy 18:9–12).
The resources claimed by Hubbard for Dianetics include, “the medicine man of the Goldi people of Manchuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles, and modern psychology. Among the people questioned about its existence were a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats. Dabbles had been made in mysticism, data had been studied from mythology to spiritualism.”
Hubbard’s third marriage, to Mary Sue Whipp, lasted the rest of his lifetime. She captivated worldwide attention, in 1977, as the mastermind behind a sinister covert operation against various levels of the United States government that could rival a spy novel. Hubbard was living in California at the time, but his impenetrable shield prevented direct connection with the illegal activities.
Hubbard spent his final years in seclusion from the public eye. Top Scientologists isolated him from most family and church members until his death in Creston, California (a small town north of San Luis Obispo). According to a copy of his death certificate, he succumbed to a cerebral vascular accident (stroke) on January 24, 1986. In their refusal to believe that such a great “science of the mind” master could die a horrific death, the word “dead” or “died” was never used at his eulogy. Scientologists announced that L. Ron Hubbard decisively “discarded the body” to move onto the next level of research, outside his body. How this new research would become available to planet earth is left unsaid. Hubbard himself apparently encouraged an examination of his belief system such as that undertaken in this volume. The seventh article of the Creed of Scientology states, “All men have the inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely on their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinion of others.” If they hold faithful to their creed, they should expect counter writings. With this, we counter the opinions of L. Ron Hubbard.
