When we were talking to Chris Shelton on the Fair Game podcast, we covered some ground concerning the belief in God in Scientology.
And recently I saw Jim Meskimen spouting off on the STAAD League and realized it was important to lay out what L. Ron Hubbard said about the subject. Meskimen of course omits all of what is below, but plucks a single Hubbard quote about the fate of societies that do not believe in God to “prove” that scientologists really do believe in God. The quote itself proves nothing. In fact, maybe it was one of Hubbard’s cruel jokes on his followers that he was teaching them NOT to believe in God while proclaiming that societies that don’t believe are doomed. Perhaps he was right as it seems scientology is doomed to failure.
Below is the fundamental scientology belief concerning “God” — not just a random sentence from a lecture. The theory of the 8 dynamics underpins everything in scientology. One of the 8 “urges towards survival” is the final (our outermost) of the concentric circles of the dynamics that begins with you and ranges through your family, groups, mankind, all living things, the physical universe, the spiritual universe and finally to:
The eighth dynamic—is the urge toward existence as infinity. This is also identified as the Supreme Being. It is carefully observed here that the science of Scientology does not intrude into the dynamic of the Supreme Being. This is called the eighth dynamic because the symbol of infinity oo stood upright makes the numeral “8 .” This can be called the infinity or God dynamic. (Fundamentals of Thought)
This is the extent of the description. A vague statement that this is “identified” as the Supreme Being and can be “called” the infinity or God dynamic, BUT scientology does not “intrude” into the dynamic of the Supreme Being.
Whatever this means, it is the extent of reference to God in the fundamental principles of scientology (though Hubbard does mention it in other places).
THIS is what constitutes a scientologist’s “belief in God.” Ask them to explain it, and there will be numerous and widely varied answers as to what this means. Nothing vague about any of the other 7 dynamics, but this one is vague as hell.
Infamously, Nancy Cartwright was asked by Bryan Seymour if she believes in God and how she would describe it. This short video clip begins with Tommy Davis spouting off on the subject and ends with Nancy Cartwright saying she is striving to be God.
Her uncertainty in how to answer this question — someone at the top of the scientology bridge — and then ultimately what she blurts out is the real truth about the scientology belief in God. There is no belief at all. The concept is you come to your own conclusion and make up your own mind what it means for you. It may be nothing. It may be everything. And Hubbard even said that you can only gain that understanding when you have achieved full freedom on all other dynamics.
In fact, scientology claims to “believe in God” in order to seem “mainstream” and “religious.”
The same reason they hold “Sunday Services” — something enforced by the Office of Special Affairs in local orgs to “keep the religious image” in…
This is what the “Sunday Service” consists of — taken straight from the scientology.org website.
It mentions the “prayer” at the end. This, the ONLY prayer in scientology, was created by the Guardian’s Office in order to seem “religious.” If you ask a scientologist what this prayer is, most will not have a clue. It has NO importance in scientology, though when presenting itself as a “normal religion” it is trotted out as “proof” that scientology is religious. There isn’t a scientologist anywhere that prays to anyone for anything — the closest they come is worship of Hubbard and money.
This is the “prayer”:
I mentioned that Hubbard talks about the subject here and there. I pulled a few quotes that are relevant concerning God and religion in general.
This is from one of his infamous Class VIII Lecture delivered aboard the Apollo, entitled “Assists”:
They were actually … The trick was to shoot somebody, disable somebody, very often a needle into a lung, and at the same time to hit him with frozen alcohol and glycol, which preparation is guaranteed to pick up a thetan. All they had to do was pick him up and put him into a refrigerator, and they had him boy. Because if he tried to exteriorize from the body, there he was frozen. And they threw him into collection points. Boxed them up in boxes, threw them into space planes which are the exact copies?… DC8’s, the DC8 aeroplane is the exact copy of the space plane of that day. No difference. Except the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn’t.
And they threw them into refrigerated units. And so on. And in view of the fact that Einstein was absolutely right. Man can’t go faster than the speed of sound .. speed of light. Which is a bunch of balderdash. The length of time from the planet Coltus to the planet Teegeeack, which is the name of this planet, was nine weeks, and you’ll see that it is many light years. Coltus is one of the planets, and is to this day one of the planets of the North Star. Polaris. And people were ferried in here by the billions and the billions and the billions and they were ferried in here with boxes. And they were put in boxes and they were stacked around. And the people who were on this planet already just caught it in the teeth. They weren’t bothered .. no body bothered to pick them up. They just shot their administrators from guns, and shot their control points out and they took these people in boxes and so forth and they dumped them and then they set off hydrogen bombs on the top of each primary volcano there is on this particular planet and when they blew up it blew the thetans into the air and after the bomb an electronic ribbon, which also was a type of standing wave was erected over the area. The tremendous winds of the planet blew every thetan there was straight into those particular vacuum zones which had been created. These were brought down, packed up, and put in front of a projection machine which with sound and color pictures first gave them the implant which you know as Clearing Course and then a whole track implant which you know as OT II.
After this, however, up about a .. the remainder of the thirty six days, which is the bulk of them is taken up with a three-D, super colossal motion picture, which has to do with God, the devil, space opera, etcetera, they go five pictures to five words. And we have the full record of what it is, and it goes on for about thirty six days and then these poor bastards were let wander out .. pardon me .. they were then boxed up again and the boxes were mixed so that .. there were two assembly areas, one was Las Palmas and the other was Hawaii. And in these two assembly area they took samples from each volcano area put it in little boxes. And they had an assembly line. And in Las Palmas it runs down the main street of Las Palmas. You get more damned accidents on that main street than you can shake a stick at. One of our captains was feeling rather queasy until I told her: “Well, the old assembly line of R6 is just twenty five feet from you as you lie here on the slipway”. That blew the charge.
The entirety of Roman Catholicism, the devil, all that sort of thing, that is all part of R6.
And here is a more general statement from 1953
In sanitariums the briefest observation demonstrates that the 8th dynamic is most prominently the aberrative dynamic, for here we have the idea that God inhabits all space, thus making it impossible for the preclear to have any space of his own. The preclear must either have no space or must be himself God. To solve the God problem, one simply rigs up large spaces in abundance…. It is interesting that in preclears whose families were connected with the Church, the problem of space is most acute. — August 1953 Viewpoint Processing
And another about religion in general from the same year (before he decided the tax benefits of being a religion outweighed the negative stigma):
I don’t believe in limited religion. If we’re going to have two gods let’s worship two gods, that’s all. If we’ve got to have worship of gods, let’s at least worship the minimum number allowable in this universe. Now, let’s not fool around with this religion, tell people what they can’t do with religion and what they can do with religion. We’ve just got religion — if we’re going to have religion, then let’s be honest with it and look and see and find this to be the case: that everybody who starts worshiping one god and one god only, and shaping his pathway straight toward one god and only one god and good, and it’s good, and that’s all we can have anything to do with is good, winds up bad. Ever know any minister’s sons? — L. Ron Hubbard, March 23, 1953
A couple of other quotes from Hubbard:
One of the prime principles you must know about any universe to keep it in a good, messy, chaotic, solid, disordered form is to take no responsibility for ever having created it. Say, ‘God did it,’ you’ve practically got it made! And the more you say, ‘God did it,’ the more solid the universe is going to get — if you made it up. Get the idea? Listen, if God made it and that was the true ownership of it, it would disappear! Because that’s assignment of proper ownership; that’s taking a full responsibility for it. That’s understanding exactly what its source was. And it would disappear, just like that.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 9, 1959
People say, ‘What you should do is listen to God and spirits.’ The second you put a person’s attention out into nowhere, the second you ask him to start searching around into nowhere in the nether-netherlands to find something that is giving him a series of hidden commands, that he can never touch, that he can do nothing about, you have run him into his engram bank. Religion, then, plays a rather important part in all aberration. The bulk of the people you’ll find in asylums, by the way, are gibbering about religion. That’s because they’ve tried to communicate with something out there which was nothing, and it just wiped them out, that’s all. And the more they try to communicate with that nothing, of course, the less response they get because there’s nothing there talking to them. But there is somewhere that something is talking to them-their own engram bank.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 9, 1954
Despite what scientology tries to convince the public, they are, according to Hubbard, doomed because they don’t believe in God.
Excellent post. What Hubbard wrote about Jesus proves the point even further and reminds me of the bible verse “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
Thanks Amy. Great to see you commenting here!
Hi Mike! I always love your posts!!
I was interested to have it spelled out clearly in the podcast whether Scientology has spiritual insights as it implies it does by calling itself a church. Sounds like it really doesn’t.
And I’m concluding that any church that enforces a practice of spending a lot of time in study is coercive. Never mind the beatings and the money (not that I would ever actually dismiss those aspects). The time you spend studying your religion should be inspired and carried out for personal reasons. One of the DSM criteria for an addiction is that you spend a lot of time in the process of feeding and recovering from it. A cult enforces an addictive mentality on its members.
Cynthia, Scientology does believe in spirits. Spiritual insights as most people would understand the term, are another matter.
Hubbard’s worldview and philosphy are ego-centered, might-makes-right and end-justifies-the-means. “Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves.” was literally his Affirmation.
Interesting. That is a philosophical viewpoint the world has heard before Scientology. But instead of honestly promoting his philosophy of life, LRH invented a system for enticing lambs with benign self-help concepts and then feeding them to his might-makes-right machine. (I apologize to any Scientologists who might never have experienced abuse, if there are any, in that they are simply accessing a self-help regime.)
I appreciate that Mike and Leah are careful to compare Scientology to other religions, which have their own faults, but aren’t created as systems of exploitation. They go wrong when corrupt people rise to power and when they fail to evolve more acceptance of gays and others, but they weren’t invented as means of exploitation.
What Meskimen is NOT telling in his rant about “corrupt IRS agents who abused their power and squandered taxpayer funds in a wasterful, years-long, bigoted attack on the scientology religion” is that religion had NOTHING to do with the IRS revoking scientology’s tax exemption and not ever restoring it during Hubbard’s lifetime. (Incidentally, he fails to “remember” that part too: scientology once HAD tax exemption but lost it).
The issue the IRS had with scientology–and both the IRS as well as taxpayers should be DEEPLY concerned about this–was not “religious” at all. It had nothing to do with a set of “beliefs” that they disapproved of. It was inurement, plain and simple! Hubbard was using what he cynically called “the religion angle” to make the scientology organization his personal ATM. And to this day, scientology is engaging in the SALE of products and services to “parishioners” a practice that no other religion, should it even attempt this, gets away with. Not one!
Characterizing this as religious persecution is as absurd as calling the punishment of sexually abusive priests a bigoted, anti-Catholic vendetta.
Meskimen is equally (intentionally) sloppy when he apes the worn out talking point that scientology was granted “full religious recognition” by the IRS. The IRS did NOT recognize scientology as a religion. They are Constitutionally prohibited from doing so. They recognized the scientology “church” as an ORGANIZATION that’s in the religion business. Saying otherwise is like claiming that for example, the IRS endorses a non-profit’s cause or that said non-profit is not gouging its clientele and the public at large.
@ToddCray Thank you. Precisely. I was thinking similarly reading the misguided, strident and confident remarks of Jim Meskimen. Ugh. He is (as many of us Former-Ins also fell victim to) parroting what he has been told—not seen, observed, or experienced, as the “Integrity” reference and “Obnosis (Observing the Obvious) Drill” tells us we must do. No doubt, Jim and his equally kind and patient wife, Tamra, have many times been told these mischaracterizing things about the IRS and C of S history, including in ongoing Int’l Assoc of Scientologists (IAS) fundraising thrashings and extortions. I think I read in a Celebrity magazine from CC Int that he and his wife are some super high-level of IAS “status,” “silver patron meritorious” or some such. How do people do it? I know he and his wife are working actors in Los Angeles, but still, they do not seem like individuals who can easily afford giving a couple of million dollars to the insatiable I.A.S.
When I see a situation like this, a Jim Meskimen and it is so typical, I ponder: How can he and his family ever see on their way to break free? They have literally dedicated so much (as have so many others); then you don’t want to make yourself wrong for all this. And what a wrong-headed move, warm and playful (he is a humorist) Jim Meskimen broadcasting himself out on the STAND website. Scientology does not own the term or concept “blind spot,” and this is one.
Maybe we can inspire the adept Hollywood storyteller, Jordan Peele to do an “escape Scientology” version of his successful 2017 horror film, “Get Out.” The original 1999 film, “The Matrix” was one a lot of Scientologists identified with and “claimed” as, “Yeah, look at us, we are so much better than anyone else because we know about and are getting out of ‘the Matrix’.” It takes, as those of us in this blog community know, a whole ‘nother level of bright thinking to recognize: “You may have been taken out of ONE matrix but…it was merely to put you into a DIFFERENT matrix where you could be further and better CONTROLLED and made to stay put.”
To work with the truth is more powerful than to work with the power.
The power poison and deprive the truth of liberty.
Is the power greater than the truth?
Scientology Inc is very deceptive about GOD and their doctrines.
When people walk in the door, they are evasive.
*God* will be understood at “Upper Levels”
Its Confidential.
Nonsense.
I explain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u5bAfcq5kA
I know this will not be very popular
But
A person can be very spiritual without believing in a God.
A person can have faith without a higher being
Taoism does not believe in one God. The basic premise is that for every person on the Earth, there are that many Gods. The idea is individuals create their own God through there own perceptions.
There are many belief systems in the world that adhere to the idea that if we are the director of our own life then we are our own Gods.
Kindness along with stepping away from ‘your’ ego are part of those systems
So that alone removes scientology from any of those ideas since scientology is completely ego driven
Non of the ‘non-God’ belief systems have doctrines that promote harming others or policies for an ‘acceptable lie’ over truth or a disconnection policy.
Scientology is a cruel system designed to make you not think because it gives you all the answers to life. If a person doesn’t have to think about life, then they never have to see what cruel things scientology does. Additionally, no thinking leads to no learning.
No! Scientology is not a religion.
Excellent point. The thing that sets scientology apart is that they pretend to believe in God for PR purposes…
Scientology pretends to encourage its practitioner to think too
And, 90% of what scientology does is for PR reasons
Pretending to believe in a God is one of the cruelest PR stunts cos does
It able to cloaks itself under the 1st Amendment because of this lie.
As an ex-SeaOrg who’s nominally Taoist these days thank you for bringing this up succinctly ✌️
Excellent post again Mike Rinder. I love how you and Leah are dissecting Hubbards contradictions. It’s so crazy. Thank you for shining the huge flood light on the Scientology Swindle. You and Leah are powerful. Scientology does not have a chance to survive. Those big new expensive Ideal Orgs are all empty and devoid of people and you helped!!
Very well done. Please continue.
L Ron Coo-Coo… (enough said)
Here is a link to the affirmations of Ronald Hubbard with psychiatric commentary. This gives us the Rosetta Stone of Scientology.
We get to look into the warped mind of Ronald Hubbard and see how he sought to use his psychology to hypnotize men and make slaves of them, and his desire to “pour it into” women, as he said.
But we also see his conflicted and contradictory thoughts on God.
My highest recommendation.
http://mbnest.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-psychiatric-view-with-comments-on.html
Here are excerpts from the gamesmaker tape, number 39 from the 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures.
“The MEST universe would have you believe this is the only game there is anyplace in the whole of anything. That’s not true! Not even vaguely true.
Games are going on with all kinds of rules, terrific interest levels and so forth. All right, I’m going to read off for you this paper just so we’ve got it on the tape. How many minutes we got? – five minutes. That’s plenty.
“The aberration above time is ‘there must be a game’. Now there’s a postulate up there, ‘there must be a game’ and there’s an interest level and therefore it enters into a flow. And ‘there must be a game’ and ‘there must not be a game’. So you have the Un-maker of Games quite as important as the Maker of Games.”
Now we get “The rules of games are as follows: Limitations on self and others, obedience to rules, unconsciousness of rules to add reality” – we pretend the rules are real.
“ARC with others to play. Pain as a penalty which will be obeyed” – you have to have a penalty that will be obeyed. Otherwise, nobody will stick with the rules.
“Agreement to rules and penalties is necessary to continue a game.” And boy, are they! “Deterioration of a game until no game” – cycle of action shows you the whole game is an object with no action.
You know, the… the… the wienie finally becomes everything there is, and there is no action even to get the wienie.
“Work is admission of inability to play” – if you have to work, you can’t play, obvious. They really yap about that here.
“A game of complexity and levels” – the Tone Scale is such a game. It’s just a map of MEST universe games.
“Peculiarity or liability of a maker of game, people attempting to play the game of Maker of Games” – it’s a game itself. Your big capitalista or commissar will do that.
“The game called Maker of Games results in No Game. And the game called Unmaking Games results in a game. 8008.”
“There’s a game called freedom,” which is what you’re playing right at this minute. ”
And Games contain trickery and misdirection to win” – your 180 degree vector of Have and Agree. ”
The prize of winning is making a new game” – what do you know? “Or permitting a new game to be made or making it possible for a new game to be played.” Those are all prizes, and that’s all the prizes there are. ”
“The necessity” – oh, of course, there’s these gimmicks, these wienies and so forth. But everybody just knows that they’re spurious as hell. Uh… „The necessity to have a new game coded before one ends the old game.” Otherwise, everyone becomes a maker of games with no game.
Now, “The value of pieces. Ownership of pieces may be also the ownership of players. And the difference between players and pieces, and the difficulty of pieces becoming players”
boy, when a piece becomes a player, there’s really a hell of an upset in the game; it’ll just blow. Oh, the quarterback walks out of the football game and all of a sudden starts to run the whole football game, and nobody can tell him “No.” That football game’s dead.
Now… so you’ve got to hide the rules from the pieces, otherwise this is going to happen.
“Now the caste system of game consist of this: The Maker of Games, he has no rules, he runs by no rules.
The player of the games, rules known but he obeys them. And the assistant players merely obey the players. And the pieces obey rules as dictated by players, but they don’t know the rules.”
And then, what do you know. There’s broken pieces, and they aren’t even in the game, but they’re still in the game.
And they’re in a terrible maybe: “Am I in the game or am I not in the game?” Now, “How to make a piece. This is how to make a piece: First, deny there is a game. Second, hide the rules from them. Three, give them all penalties and no wins. Four, remove all goals” –
all goals. “Enforce them… their playing. Inhibit their enjoying. Make them look like but forbid their being like players”
– look like God but uh… you can’t be God.
“To make a piece continue to be a piece, permit it to associate only with pieces and deny the existence of players.”
Never let the pieces find out that there are players. Now out of these you’re going to get games.
Now here’s a process that has to do with the making of games, and all this process adds up to, is you just address to those factors which I just gave you, oh, run and change postulates and any creative process that you can think of and shift postulates around, you get a whole process.
But remember, that up at the top of it there is a big postulate, “There must be a game.
“ Therefore if you want to regain the Spirit of Play, people have got to unmake postulates they’ve made all along, saying, “There mustn’t be a game. There mustn’t be a game. It can’t be a game. Don’t play with me. I mustn’t be played with. Life is serious. This isn’t a game. We’re playing for keeps. I’ll never get out of this,”
and so forth. In other words, the postulates which they’ve made to convince themselves that these are the rules and the only rules that can be played, and these that I’ve just read off to you.
I’m going to have this typed and you can figure it out more or less as you want to. I could, of course, give you even further rundown on this, if you wanted me to, but it takes… takes a little while to do so. It’s actually the backbone of what we are doing. But let’s take a break. (TAPE ENDS)” Ronald Hubbard 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures tape 39
From
http://mbnest.blogspot.com/2016/12/scientology-was-ron-hubbards-private.html?m=1
Mockingbird – I was only able to understand this in a very general way. I followed up on your website and your commentary and explanations were very helpful. Thanks!!
It is a series of excerpts from the tape and so is hard to follow. Hubbard stuck to the main point but did ramble a bit, as he did. I tried to highlight the way I interpreted it as a blueprint for setting up Scientology.
I am glad you understood it. As I said, I think adding the skipper letter and affirmations with this tape gives a good outline of Hubbard’s intentions.
I was worried that I might need to pull out my demo kit and clay table to understand exactly wtf he was saying.
(joke)
Just take lots of pinks and greys!
OTIII is often referred to by the msm as scientology’s “origin story” when its actual creation doctrine is rarely ever mentioned.
1. There is an eternal “life force” (theta)
2. Pure, infinite potential
3. With creation comes individuation
4. Theta is not one (supreme) being but a “multiplicity of infinite minds”
5. One is all but all are not one.
6. “Fellow peels off from what you call the main body of theta. You say, ‘What were you just before you did that?’ Me. Of course, the whole body is me.” — SOP 8: Steps IV & V, Intl Congress of Dns & Scns, 1 October 1953
7. “Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error.” — Data (I), OTIII
8. Thetan creates
9. Thetans co-create
10. Aesthetics, Thought, Emotion and Effort
11. Games, Dimensions, Universes, MEST
12. Cooperation, dominion and submission
13. Theta traps, implants and enslavement
14. Incident 1 (this universe)
Everything that follows (including Incident 2) is actually kinda dull in comparison.
No mention of a “supreme being”, of course. Hub’s notion is that thetans have always existed and are the sole creators of all life. And those who don’t believe this are mentally/spiritually ill.
“The preclear will be found to be intensely aberrated who has sworn allegiance to some infinite beingness and has then agreed that all space belonged to that beingess, and that the rights of creation and energy belonged to that beingness and did not belong to self.” — 8-8008
Reading that shit makes me ill.
Incident One. I recall a Freewinds Sea Org goon at an event. The space heater went off and he was attempting to get everyone into a state of fear (easier to control them so he could suck money out of their bank accounts and manipulate them to sign up to go on the ship) so he starts going on and on about “Fac One”… and “Incident One”.
He called me and wanted $100,000 for “renos” for the Ship.
I told him to fuck off with a “no, that is not in the best interest of my eight dynamics” line.
Cringe.
I hate Scientology and hope it is destroyed utterly strictly using the truth – until it is nothing but a bad memory in the history books.
Mike, I do believe you and Leah are going to make that happen.
You guys are everywhere and so many people’s lives are saved because you do what you do. And, you do it very well.
Soon the headlines will read –
The cult that conned the World – Scientology. Taken down by Mike Rinder and Leah Remini along with a ton of other brave souls.
In a nutshell Hubbard said that there is no “God” but every person can have god like powers if they do his Bridge to total bankruptcy.
Rolling on the floor laughing
God is the sweetest, all fulfilling, compassionate, understanding and all forgiving love I have ever experienced. It fills my heart, body, mind and soul.
Prayer is a faith based communication with God. If one does not take anything on faith, does not believe in God and insists Man can save himself then there is no prayer taking place no matter what Scientology may want to call it.
I was interested in the statement:
“In sanitariums the briefest observation demonstrates that the 8th dynamic is most prominently the aberrative dynamic, for here we have the idea that God inhabits all space, thus making it impossible for the preclear to have any space of his own.”
I dated a Fundamentalist Christian girl for a short time.
She considered a Human Being as an arena where God and the Devil slug it out.
This is a philosophy that denies space or even Beingness to anyone.
Before she spoke she would sometimes pray to God for guidance over what she should say and often questioned whether what another said was from God or from the Devil.
She did not seem to think that a person could originate anything.
This was crazier than anything I had ever come across, which is saying quite a lot for someone who has been in Scientology.
Cavalier – That statement also caught my interest. Unlike much of Elron’s stuff there is a possibility there for a legitimate discussion.
For example, in current technology I can ask a computer a question and get an answer. So in a sense the “brain or intelligence” of the computer is in my space and conversely I am in the space of that intelligence. Might it be possible that there is a Universal Intelligence which permeates the cosmos and it is in my space as well as I am in its? There’s no fixed answer for everyone but it’s a point of discussion.
From Hubbard’s statement he obviously had no interest in sharing his space or having it invaded with any “other intelligence”. The girl you dated would obviously have her opinion in that type of discussion, obviously in the affirmative. Others would have more moderate or contradictory opinions.
Years ago Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction story where everyone had instantaneous access to a “Universal Computer”. When asked the question, “When will the universe end?” UC would reply, “There is insufficient data at this time.” When the last star flickered and died there was a timeless moment and then UC said, “Let there be light.” . . . and there was light.
End of college dorm discussion.
The following is relevant to yesterday’s story.
Brisbane Times: Benefit to ‘open and transparent’ Scientology probe
By Ben Schneiders
April 8, 2021 — 3.39pm
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/benefit-to-open-and-transparent-scientology-probe-20210408-p57hhs.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
A key figure in the creation of Australia’s charities regulator says the benefit of a parliamentary inquiry into Scientology’s significant wealth in Australia would be public transparency.
Swinburne University’s Krystian Seibert, a senior adviser to the Gillard government on the setting up of Australia’s Charities Act and charities regulator, said a parliamentary probe would be “public and open and transparent” with the ability to “compel witnesses and information”.
* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
/
Those who have been in the staff and specifically in the sea org know very well that no one has NEVER mentioned or believed in the word god.
And not even in the word love.
What all prayers and hopes go to are statistics and money.
These ARE the deities that are prayed to (and hoped for benevolence from) every single given day in $cientology.
Money and stats.
Stats and money.
There a couple of very brief mentions in lectures where Hubbard states that “YOU are God”.
$ci is poison in the US. What percent of the SO are from foreign countries? 70%+-. Hubbard was clearly a despicable human being with low self esteem who betrayed all that believed in him. His wives and followers. There was no lie that was too outrages from him to tell. $ci is hanging on by a thread.
Any time you try to figure out what exactly what Hubbard is saying and thinking you’re in trouble! The Mind of Hubbard – lol
The last sentence in the topic states:
“Despite what scientology tries to convince the public, they are, according to Hubbard, doomed because they don’t believe in God.”
I don’t understand how the rest of the topic leads to that conclusion. Maybe I missed the logic and maybe I’ll try again later. Or maybe someone else will simplify and summarize? haha
As a philosophy., $cientology does qualify as a ‘religion’. A religion based on the value of a dollar and pulling the wool over the minions eyes.
Cue up Dusty Springfields’s ‘Son of a Preacher man’.
I think Hubbard meant belief in A god – himself, or his followers themselves as gods as Nancy Cartwright lets on. He critiques both traditional religion, and lack of belief in man as a spiritual being (as in materialist Communism).
He coyly laid out the path for adepts like himself, or followers who understood the message, to be the deity-like cosmic ‘players’. He knew better than to openly talk about making men into gods in 1950s America, even if that was really his point.
Hubbard’s statement about the fate of societies that do not believe in God was Hubbard cribbing from a much better (indeed, an actual) philosopher, in this case William James, his pragmatic criterion of truth, and his philosophy of Pragmatism. See:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-pragmatic/#JamePragTheoTrut
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_theory_of_truth
As applied to religion, James’s philosophy is perhaps best expressed in his essays “The Will to Believe” and “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature ” See:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26659
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621
The problem is that Hubbard wanted the societal benefits arising from a belief in God while at the same time (surprise, surprise) redefining the concept of God to deprive Him of all that makes God God. The Philosophy 101 definition of God is traditionally: (1) all powerful; (2) all knowing; and (3) just, loving and/or merciful. Hubbard could not countenance a God who was all powerful and all knowing because that would mean that he, Hubbard, could not forever be cause, that he could not himself be God, that he, perish the thought, would sometimes be effect.
Scientologists such as Jim Meskimen and Joy Villa who assert that the Eighth Dynamic represents the Scientology concept of God either don’t understand any of this or don’t care. The point is that, to the extent it is defined at all in Scientology, the Eighth Dynamic has no independent power or efficacy; the Eighth Dynamic is not cause, it is something that the individual chooses to survive through.
The Eighth Dynamic is not and cannot be God as traditionally defined. Thus, any societal benefits that may arise from a belief in God do not, will not, and cannot arise from belief in the Eighth Dynamic, something that has no independent power or efficacy.
As Mike notes, Nancy Cartwright blurted out the truth when she said that she was striving to be God. The truth is also hinted at, if perhaps not completely revealed, in the following sentence in the Scientology Prayer for Total Freedom:
“Freedom to use and understand Man’s potential—a potential that is God-given and Godlike.”
No Christian, Jew or Muslim would pray for “a potential that is… Godlike.” (Any Muslim who did so would be guilty of the sin of Shirk, the one unforgivable sin in Islam.) To pray for Godlike power is do deny the supremacy of God.
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Religious Image. Boy Mike, that sure brought back memories.
I recall when that Guardian Order came out and all orgs were required to make themselves look “religious”. The auditors were required to wear ministerial white colors, crosses had to be created and hung on the walls in “public areas”, and yep, even Sunday services were to be initiated. The Orlando Mission was the only one in Florida that complied. Atlanta came in 2nd but Flag, the “mecca of technical perfection” in Clearwater could NEVER get on track with these requirements. All this told me that no one there believed it is a religion. And I can say this as I had direct with all the execs and crew there. Never did any of the auditors wear collars. Never was there a Sunday Service. The ONLY thing that was done; a cross was hung on a wall in the lobby of the auditorium.
I never, ever had the notion scientology was a religion in all my years leading up to this event. And the fact that Flag refused to create the “religious image” ordered affirmed my knowledge. I mean, if Flag (where the tech is perfect and totally on source) wouldn’t mock up a religious image, then the truth must be that it ISN’T.
Just like all the lies and shore stories given to governments around the world solely and only in the cult’s best interests.
Doomed to failure? Doomed to failure?
Well, with people like Mike Rinder, Leah Remini, Yashar Ali, Paulette Cooper, Lawrence Wright, Russell Miller, Jeff Hawkins, Marc and Claire Headley, Valerie Haney and so many others who are actively opposing these monsters, …
It seems real clear they are absolutely doomed to failure and to having their Tax Exempt Status revoked and then doomed to the trash heap of history.
Well, you have gotten into some pretty well traveled territory.
We with Scientology always seem to end up asking about what Scientology doctrine says and what Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard actually believed and did. Two very different topics.
Mike Rinder quoted the propaganda that Scientology puts out routinely.
In her book Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Alexandra Stein described propaganda as information aimed at people outside a cult and new recruits and indoctrination as information for veteran members or people further along in their indoctrination.
Hubbard had lots of acceptable truths in his propaganda.
If you dig deeper he said various unflattering things about God in his lectures and if he acknowledged God it was sort of as an absentee slumlord. He portrayed God as a big being who created various things then abandoned them. And he portrayed ancient thetans as doing the same thing.
I recall a reference in which Hubbard said the closest he came to quitting Scientology was “admitting” that God himself couldn’t pull off the job that Hubbard had!
How modest, to admit your superiority to God.
If we look at what I thunk are some of the most telling references regarding Hubbard’s relationship with God we have the Skipper letter in which God is portrayed as, well, a bastard frankly. We have the gamesmaker tape (number 39 in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures), in which Hubbard said to have a game you have to be like God but you can’t say you are God.
This presumably means to convince people you are God but not openly say it. People tend to think that you are crazy if you say it openly.
And finally we have two references most people never see in Scientology. The OT VIII Antichrist version in which Hubbard takes on the role of Lucifer. And the affirmations.
In the affirmations we get Hubbard talking to Hubbard with self hypnosis commands.
Here we finally see that in alternate turns Hubbard tried to be on good terms with God and he hated and feared and even denied God.
Hubbard in his affirmations was extremely concerned with resolving his seeming submission and rejection of God. I don’t think he ever resolved it.
Thank you for all of this.
My pleasure, I have numerous posts at Mockingbird’s Nest blog on Scientology that elaborate on this in fine detail if you are ever interested.
In the end, I personally believe that Hubbard followed Crowley’s version of Egyptian religion. The idea is that one can achieve greater and greater character through a series of past lives. Hubbard probably thought that he was almost God in the sense that he could create a universe. Hubbard certainly in OT VIII placed himself superior to the “dumb beings running the universe by telepathy.” As a supreme Pantheist, Hubbard had no room for the traditional God which he probably considered myth. What ever conclusion is reached, Hubbard was a fascist follower of King Solomon with intimate contact to the demon world and hell. In Paradise Lost Milton makes it very, very clear that God can only be understood by subservience. This is why Hubbard identified himself with Lucifer and later Satan. This is also how he twisted the Occult from the tradition of Pythagoras. Pride killed Hubbard.
George, I sometimes think Hubbard intended Scientology as a sort of grand occult spell to try to harness the energy (and maybe even souls) of his followers in an attempt to propel himself into a powerful new incarnation. That’s in line with the infamous Affirmations, such as “Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light
in the darkness, beauty in all.”
Wouldn’t Crowley have admired such naked ambition?
Great point.
It certainly crossed Hubbard’s mind, I bet. Hubbard made a point of saying that L Ron Hubbard was only a name. Hubbard said in one of his tapes. “No one knows who I am.”
And let’s not forget the quote from LRH where he says Jesus was a pedophile. I’d like to see Jim Meskimen counter that.
Scn denies he ever said that and claims it was written by an imposter.
Richard, the Jesus as a pedophile reference could only have been written by someone with Hubbard’s sort of occult background, and it fits with his smarmy way of putting down conventional authorities. I can’t think of anyone around him who would have even had a basis for concocting such a thing.
I’m also pretty sure that I’ve seen Scientology’s claim debunked, and Hubbard’s authorship established. At a minimum, George and others have verified the OTVIII version that contains it, that Scientology denies even existed, which sort of shoots their credibility in the matter.
And yes, I have enough of an eclectic esoteric background myself, being familiar with things like Morton Smith’s work (I’ve have a copy of his book about the manuscript since graduate school) and Aleister Crowley (mostly through old friends and references to his work, I had little taste for reading him).
PeaceMaker – I agree. I was pointing out the C of S denial of which some people might not be aware.
Good point. I had heard that Scientology changed the date on the “STUDENT BRIEFING” which contains that statement and then accepted it back as Hubbard doctrine. In that case, Hubbard calling Jesus a pedophile is a fact.
Cindy Hubbard only said that because he wanted to get away with being a pedophile. Which is why later on he surrounded himself NOT with adults but with young girls clad in short shorts and tight tops.
Because after all; Hubbard stated, “The seven-year-old girl who shudders because a man kisses her is not computing; she is reacting to an engram since at seven she should see nothing wrong in a kiss, not even a PASSIONATE one.”
I think the “pedophile” reference is a twisting of the scholarship of Morton Smith, the sort of thing that Hubbard would have picked up over cocktails and conversation with his more erudite friends and followers, and then spun as an insightful, sagacious anecdote to audiences unlikely to recognize it as plagiarized and doctored.
Briefly, Smith discovered what might be referred to as a controversial, apparently gnostic version of the Gospel of Mark, in which there is a curious reference to the resurrection of a “young man” similar to Lazarus, and the use of “love” in a context that could be interpreted as intimate. It is also known that some early gnostic Christians promoted the homosexuality and pederasty of Roman society, and so possible that he got something similar through someone like Jack Parsons.