Pretty interesting read.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all

2/7/2011 3:37:41 PM

Quote :

" During the Second World War, Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy, and he later wrote that he was gravely injured in battle: “Blinded with injured optic nerves and lame with physical injuries to hip and back at the end of World War II, I faced an almost nonexistent future. I was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple.” While languishing in a military hospital in Oakland, California, he said, he fully healed himself, using techniques that became the foundation of Scientology. “I had no one to help me; what I had to know I had to find out,” he wrote in an essay titled “My Philosophy.” “And it’s quite a trick studying when you cannot see.” In some editions of Hubbard’s book “The Fundamentals of Thought,” published in 1956, a note on the author says, “It is a matter of medical record that he has twice been pronounced dead.”"

They're telling L Ron Hubbard's version of events. He was never wounded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_L._Ron_Hubbard

Quote :

"Sixteen years later, the Los Angeles Times obtained Hubbard's medical records through the Freedom of Information Act. The records stated that Hubbard had told doctors that he had been "lamed" by a chronic hip infection, and that his eye problems were the result of conjunctivitis caused by exposure to "excessive tropical sunlight". Hubbard's post-war correspondence with the VA was also included, including letters in which he requested psychiatric treatment to address his "long periods of moroseness" and "suicidal inclinations." He continued to complain to the VA about various physical ailments into the 1950s, well after he had founded Dianetics; the Times noted that, significantly, Hubbard had promised that Dianetics would provide "a cure for the very ailments that plagued the author himself then and throughout his life, including allergies, arthritis, ulcers and heart problems." Other documents on Hubbard's medical file stated that he had injured his back in 1942 after falling off a ship's ladder."

Also interesting is his fake PhD.

2/7/2011 4:07:10 PM

Scientology is right on par with the rest of religion, it's just newer so it's easier to call bullshit.

2/7/2011 4:28:43 PM

I am a fan of Mr. Haggis from many years ago. I liked "Due South," though that cannot possibly mark me well.

Quote :

"Scientology is right on par with the rest of religion, it's just newer so it's easier to call bullshit."

We have reports from Mr. Hubbard's own mouth where he claims that religion is a good way to gain money and fame (appropriate enough, since I couldn't name any of his novels off the top of my head). We do not have the same claims from Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or Siddharta Guatama.

2/8/2011 12:31:46 AM

Yes, except he wrote the holy books to his religion whereas those men did not. Those men did not profit from their religions, but the leaders that followed them sure as shit did.

Hubbard learned it from the organized religions in place already that make untold treasures off the P.T. Barnum principle.

But really, how much less believable is Xenu and the Thetans than a person who happens to be a god dying, coming back to life, walking on water, healing the sick with a touch, and then flying away? Or people living 900 years, more water than you can imagine appearing then disappearing without a trace, magic, talking bushes, people surviving being eaten by whales, etc?

But yeah, Scientology is a crock of shit. http://www.xenu.net/ Operation clambake is a good site if you want to get really pissed about Scientology.

2/8/2011 12:45:34 AM

My point was not that my religion (or any other) is credible, only that scientology's is, if anything, even less credible -- we've witnessed that process go from nascent idea to money-grabbing treason-factory with near perfect clarity. Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Buddhism may be the same way, but we don't have nearly as clear a picture of their "progress." Each group may be founded by lying bastards, but for none of them do we have as clear a record of the founder admitting as much.

disco, I know for a fact you can do better to show my religion as being a pack of bastards than comparing it to Scientology of all fucking things.

2/8/2011 12:54:11 AM

I was just pointing out that LRH didn't write the book on deluding the masses for profit with a story of how you are broken and need his system to be made whole.

2/8/2011 1:02:42 AM

Quote :

"We do not have the same claims from Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or Siddharta Guatama."

what part of 'it's newer so it's easier to call bullshit' did you miss? Scientology has only been around 60 years, if Christianity/Judiasm/Islam etc etc were founded in the 1950s I think there would be a lot more skeptics.

2/8/2011 7:40:09 AM

I'm not sure what being recent has to do with my comment, which had to do with something the man said -- and which he could have said as easily a thousand years ago as sixty.

2/8/2011 10:21:04 AM

I think the difference is if he had said it 2000 years ago, that statement (and ones like it) would have either been lost or intentionally destroyed by now.

We also wouldn't have such detailed records to prove that the shit he has said about his personal life is a lie.

Also, bringing up the age of the bible as proof of its authority is a common first response from christians (pretty easily debunked by bringing up something like the Odyssey). 2000 years from now, Hubbard's mediocre sci-fi religion is going to read like poetry.

[Edited on February 8, 2011 at 10:40 AM. Reason : asdfasdf]

2/8/2011 10:38:02 AM

yes, I'm sure we have an accurate and complete record of things Jesus actually said and not just second hand accounts written years after they were said. And I'm sure there would be no difference if he was walkin around doin Jesusy stuff in the 50s and 60s, we'd just let his buddies come out with some recollections years after he died and call it gospel. You're right, the time periods in question have nothing to do with anything, silly me.

2/8/2011 10:40:26 AM

2/8/2011 10:46:42 AM

Quote :

"yes, I'm sure we have an accurate and complete record of things Jesus actually said"

Maybe we do and maybe we don't, but we have -zero- evidence that he, the apostles, Muhammad, Moses, or the Buddha were ever stupid enough to say the shit L. Ron Hubbard has said that undermines his religion. You seem to be operating under the assumption that they would do equally stupid things if they had been working in the 1950s, which seems pretty impossible to substantiate.

2/8/2011 11:23:38 AM

I never said anything about assuming other religious figures would say stupid shit in a modern time period, only that they would be open to a lot more scrutiny and the accounts would be a lot more accurate in today's world. And of course we don't have records of Jesus (or others) saying that shit, the accounts we have from Jesus are ALL second hand and picked through and written by devout followers with an interest in spreading the religion, why would anyone trying to glorify Jesus include the quotes from where he said 'hey y'all, this is all a bunch of bullshit but we're all gettin laid tonight! awwwww yeeeeeeeah"?

The point is that your argument is 'well we don't have any account of it' and the obvious answer is 'well no shit we don't'. If all we knew about Hubbard came directly from the mouth of his most loving fans we'd only hear what a saint and prophet the guy was.

2/8/2011 11:44:46 AM

Of course it's the case that a religion founded in the 20th century would undergo more scrutiny; I never argued with that.

But you can't claim, as you did, that other religions are "right on par" with scientology unless you assume that their founders also out and out said that the whole thing was a scam to get paid.

2/8/2011 2:05:57 PM

Quote :

"But you can't claim, as you did, that other religions are "right on par" with scientology unless you assume that their founders also out and out said that the whole thing was a scam to get paid."

They were obviously smart enough not to have these musings recorded.

It WAS easier to have people executed back in the days.

2/8/2011 2:11:37 PM

It's possible that that wasn't their founders (3 out of 4 of the people in the list aren't even 100% verified to have existed at all but for the sake of argument) intention to create a scam. The fact remains that they are now scams and L Ron Hubbard just took a play from their books.

2/8/2011 2:12:23 PM