With all the recent programs on Scientology I thought you might want to check out this web page that includes an excerpt from an interview with the science fiction author Harlan Ellison (in characteristic colorful language) many years ago, who knew L. Ron Hubbard and was there the night Hubbard announced he was going to start his own religion in order to make money. Below I include the web page address and a short excerpt.

Of course, I should point out that MOST religions have rather profane origins to them, but that the longer the time between origin and us the more clouded in mystery it seems, adding considerable "sacredness" to it. I am fond of saying that the difference between a cult and a religion is about a hundred years. A hundred years ago the Mormons were about as cultish as they come, but now are considered a mainstream religion (see http://www.adherents.com/ for an amazing statistical database on adherents to over 1200 religions around the world). Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and others are old enough that most people know next to nothing about how very human their creators were. Recent programs on the origins of Christianity, for example, showed fairly clearly how Paul, (and especially Constantine) converted an ordinary 1st century cult of Jesus into a mainstream religion. Jonathan Kirsch's recent biography of Moses also shows how a literary mythology figure became a religious founder. The Scientologists appear to be trying to go mainstream. They have gotten a street named after L. Ron Hubbard in Hollywood, their celebrity center attracts mainstream celebrities like John Travolta and Kirsti Alley, and they actually seem to be toning down the attacks on perceived enemies. Give them another 50 years and they will probably be a mainstream world religion alongside the other biggies.

After you read the excerpt below, give me your opinion on this question: "Was L. Ron Hubbard deceiving or self-deceiving (or both)?" That is, it appears he started Scientology as a money-making scheme. But from Harlan's final comment it appears Hubbard became a True Believer in his own doctrines. Your thoughts?

Here is the web page address and clipping:
http://www.users.wineasy.se/noname/harlan.htm
From there you can go to other web pages on Scientology.

Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes!

I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers. L. Ron Hubbard was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.

...

We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

Wings: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: "The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it."

Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stole a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior. I mean he really believed that. He was also very nervous when I was in his office because I was a Jew. You know, he was afraid maybe I would spring horns or something.

Anyhow, the way he conned John was that he had J. A. Winter, who was a doctor, who was a close friend of John's, and he got him to run this article on Dianetics, the new science of mental health.

Wings: Dianometry was the first article, I believe.

Ellison: Right. And science fiction fans will go for any goddamm thing. They'll believe anything, man, they will believe in the abominable snowman and the Bermuda Triangle, in Pyramid Power, in EST, in Scientology, in the Second Coming, they'll believe in any goddamm thing, they don't give a shit. They go to see Star Wars; they think it is for real!

So science fiction fans picked it up, they began proselytizing, he started making money, when he had made enough money he was able to spread out a little more, then he got more cuckoos, you know, pre-Charlie Manson assholes that had no place else to go, and he began talking to these loons as if Dianetics really meant something. Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".

Now, they've gotten so big that they own property all over the country, and it is impossible to stop it. They infiltrated the FBI, they infiltrated the tax department... , the funny thing is, Ron Hubbard and I still occasionally communicate with each other. Every once in a while, a couple or three times a year, we exchange letters. And I write to him, you know, and I say, "Hey Ron, when is this bullshit going to cease? These cuckoos are really driving me crazy! They come around the house with pamphlets!" And he writes me back, and he says, "It's the good work, it's the good work."