Michael Shermer reviews two new books about Scientology, one of the most blatant and obvious scams ever perpetrated on the world. Those two books are:
Two recently published books argue that there is no science in Scientology, only quasireligious doctrines wrapped in New Age flapdoodle masquerading as science. The Church of Scientology, by Hugh B. Urban, professor of religious studies at Ohio State University, is the most scholarly treatment of the organization to date, and investigative journalist Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology is an electrifying read that includes eye-popping and well-documented tales of billion-year contracts, aggressive recruitment programs and abuse of staffers.
Wonder how long it will take before the authors end up sued? On his No Refunds DVD, Doug Stanhope says, “I’ve done Christian bashing and Mormon bashing. I’ll do more Scientology bashing once I have a stronger legal team.” The Scientologists make Larry Fafarman look non-litigious. But here’s the interesting part of the review to me:
So did its founder, writer L. Ron Hubbard, just make it all up—as legend has it—to create a religion that was more lucrative than producing science fiction?
Instead of printing the legend as fact, I recently interviewed the acclaimed science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, who told me he was at the birth of Scientology. At a meeting in New York City of a sci-fi writers’ group called the Hydra Club, Hubbard was complaining to L. Sprague de Camp and the others about writing for a penny a word. “Lester del Rey then said half-jokingly, ‘What you really ought to do is create a religion because it will be tax-free,’ and at that point everyone in the room started chiming in with ideas for this new religion. So the idea was a Gestalt that Ron caught on to and assimilated the details. He then wrote it up as ‘Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind’ and sold it to John W. Campbell, Jr., who published it in Astounding Science Fiction in 1950.”
And that is where it should have stayed.
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hinschelwood
October 26, 2011 at 9:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s getting on a bit (1990), but A Piece of Blue Sky is a pretty good history of the cult. It’s basically a biography of L. Ron H. and goes into all of the insanity.
It’s available for free download. I understand the author had trouble with the cult, but can’t remember the details.
Tualha
October 26, 2011 at 9:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, unfortunately, Campbell was a perfect target for this thing. He jumped right on the bandwagon and pushed Scientology hard. Or so I recall from some of George O. Smith’s reminiscences, in a collection of his stories.
D. C. Sessions
October 26, 2011 at 9:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s one of the few issues from that period that I don’t have. I suspect that the Faithful have bought them all up.
Absolutely. That’s one thing I do have: about a decade of Campbell editorials enthusiastic about “Dianetics.” However, by the early 60s he became rather less enamored by it and you don’t hear any more.
Eamon Knight
October 26, 2011 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Irony alert: I see a Scientology ad running here, complete with volcano (I thought they kept that part under wraps until you hit the higher levels, because it’s too silly for the general public).
Scientology and Mormonism: two religions founded well within the modern era; we know exactly when and where and who; and thus we know they were both complete con-jobs contrived to get power/money/sex for their respective founders. What are the chances that Christianity, Islam, or any of the other religions whose precise origins have been obscured by the passage of centuries (and the lack of mass media at the time) are any better?
Ben P
October 26, 2011 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In recent news on the same topic.
The church of scientology “Office of Special Affairs” dug into the backgrounds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone looking for dirt
what? like being the creators of South Park isn’t enough dirt?
Dennis N
October 26, 2011 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
JK Rowling should have made Potterology, she could have improved upon her millions.
abb3w
October 26, 2011 at 10:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course, I believe there are more than a few anecdotes circulating of how Harlan Ellison has almost habitually exaggerated aspects of an account to make himself look better than he was (or others look worse, so he looks better by comparison). The imperfect reliability of eyewitness testimony should be no surprise to regular reader’s of Ed’s blog.
That said, there are several other people who have reported similar accounts, although the place and participants vary.
For the curious, there seems to be an audio of Ellison telling the anecdote to Robin Williams here, relevant part starting at about 5:40 in.
Reginald Selkirk
October 26, 2011 at 10:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
RE #5: Can you imagine trying to come up with something that would embarrass Trey Parker and Matt Stone? It would probably be easier to heal the sick and rise from the dead.
Randomfactor
October 26, 2011 at 10:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“A Piece of Blue Sky” was essentially banned in Great Britain at one point (they have different defamation laws over there) and Amazon in a craven proof of why independent booksellers are so important basically made it an “unbook” for a while. You couldn’t find it in their online search. I’ve got a copy around here somewhere, having bought multiple copies so as to put it into local libraries.
All in all, a nasty cult.
Randomfactor
October 26, 2011 at 10:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Scientology remains America’s official religion, however–they have tax breaks no other religion is allowed to claim.
had3
October 26, 2011 at 10:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
We Pastafarians & IPUians take offense to being left out of the contemporarily created religion discussion.
Didaktylos
October 26, 2011 at 10:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Campbell was an all-round purveyor of woo. As well as supporting Dianetics/Scientology he was also a cheerleader for the Dean Device and the Hieronymous Machine and also (I think, though I open to correction on this) William Reich.
Tualha
October 26, 2011 at 10:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t forget the Jedi.
abb3w
October 26, 2011 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In Campbell’s case, “fringe science” might be a better term. A heck of a lot of what he pushed was woo (or worse); a few bits of it, however, panned out.
It might be interesting to do a systematic study of all the topics that got pushed in Analog Editorials, “Alternate View” columns, and other non-fiction, to see what the fraction of blue-sky speculation got lucky.
Area Man
October 26, 2011 at 12:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m mostly of the opinion that it doesn’t matter. Let’s say that Hubbard sincerely and truly believed in what he was peddling. Would that make it any less bullshit? Would that make the church any less corrupt?
tommykey
October 26, 2011 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Interestingly, there is a Scientology office near the train station where I commute to work in the morning. It’s in a small office building and the front is mostly all glass so you can see into it. It looks almost like a bookstore. On the glass, there is a sign that reads Church of Scientology with a cross design. I find that rather odd and I wonder if it is a deliberate ploy to attract Christians by making them think they can be both Christians and Scientologists.
Randomfactor
October 26, 2011 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s exactly what it was, tommykey. Dianetics started out secular (ironically, as a mental-health racket). One day it seemed to L. Ron that turning the whole thing into a scam church would work better. Insiders say that literally overnight they were told to turn their collars around backwards, as it were.
sosw
October 26, 2011 at 2:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Indeed it doesn’t matter considering the result, but it also seems like a mixed bag in terms of history.
Many of the organizations positions and policies (and their official “biography” of Hubbard) are based on his personal paranoia and denial of his own mental health issues. So to whatever extent he may or may not have believed all of the things he taught, the entire thing certainly isn’t entirely a deliberate ploy, but in at least some ways a reflection of his personal hangups. There is some anecdotal evidence that some of the church teachings were written heavily drugged.
In founding, Dianetics was only turned into a religion after being rejected by psychiatrists, so it wasn’t entirely for tax reasons. To this day, psychiatrists are considered by Scientology as evil manipulators of the world. The only Scientology leaflet I’ve ever received was quite ridiculous; it blamed psychiatry for pretty much everything wrong with the world, explicitly including terrorism.
Now I can see how anyone could be skeptical of psychiatry as a science; it’s a fairly hard discipline to quite pin down, and the quality of work varies immensely. But blaming it for terrorism of all things?
I can see them selling that to their members already deep into the systematic brainwashing involved in cult initiation (that’s one thing where Scientology is far beyond other cults in effectiveness; they even have their own terminology, both separating insiders from outsiders and working as doublespeak), but I have no idea how anyone not pretty deep into their
delusions could expect such outlandish claims to attract anyone into the cult.
So to me, it’s quite clear that both Hubbard originally and the church these days as an organization may be deliberately manipulative in some ways but is also genuinely delusional in others. So it certainly isn’t the ultimate scam; the ultimate scam would involve the original scammer being lucid enough not to get caught up in their own mess.
helenaconstantine
October 26, 2011 at 10:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As so often Ellison is lying though his teeth. In 1950, he was 16 years old, lived with his parents in Ohio, and had never published a thing. How could anyone believe he was hanging around in a bar in NY with science Fiction writers? He didn’t move to NY until 1955.
There are good sources for that meeting (Heinlein’s letters for instance), and I’m sure Ellison has read some of them, just like me, but neither of us was there.
lpetrich
October 31, 2011 at 8:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Responding to Eamon Knight, the closest premodern account I can think of to modern accounts is Lucian of Samosata’s account of religious charlatan Alexander of Abonutichus.
He was a self-styled prophet, and many people went to him to ask for advice. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once asked what to do about the Marcomanni and the Quadi, some Germanic tribes on the opposite side of the Danube:
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To rolling Ister, swoln with Heaven’s rain,
Of Cybelean thralls, those mountain beasts,
Fling ye a pair; therewith all flowers and herbs
Of savour sweet that Indian air doth breed.
Hence victory, and fame, and lovely peace.
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Or in less flowery language, throw two lions into the Danube, and a great victory would result. But it was the Marcomanni and the Quadi who had the great victory, and A of A said about it that he didn’t say who would have the great victory.
A of A had no love of atheists or Epicureans or Xians, demanding that they be expelled from his ceremonies. Someone once asked him what happened to Epicurus in Hades, and he responded
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Of slime is his bed,
And his fetters of lead.
Beli
November 5, 2011 at 5:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Beli…
[...]The Birth of the Scientology Scam | Dispatches from the Culture Wars[...]…