t, living out every spy novel, science fiction, and political drama narrative. Additionally, it was all about Hubbard. Hubbard was the genius that discovered Scientological principles that was going to solve war, cure cancer, and resolve racism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJoseph Smith, on the other hand, keeps getting harshly rebuked for his weaknesses by the Lord in canonized scripture again and again (e.g. D&C 3, D&C 93, D&C 5, D&C 64). This isn\u2019t exactly the hallmark of a narcissist who thinks he\u2019s the chosen messiah.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJoseph Smith involves others in the revelatory experience (e.g. Oliver Cowdery in D&C 110 and Sidney Ridgdon in D&C 76), given his personality there\u2019s no way Hubbard would ever share his revelatory (he would call it research) process with others. It was all about his genius. While Smith respected his prophetic office and saw it as important, there isn\u2019t a lot of self-laudatory material outlining all of his virtues that led to him being chosen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAgain, doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that he was what he claimed to be, but if he was a fraud it does mean that he was much more subtle and nuanced about it than Hubbard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNew Worlds<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nWith Joseph Smith we have the Book of Mormon world, and then some derivatives from that like Zelph and Adam\u2019s Adam-Ondhi-Ahman altar. Then there is Lucy Mack Smith\u2019s (very long-after-the-fact) account about him as a child telling them stories about the ancient American continent that arguably sounds Hubbard-esque. If Joseph Smith did make it all up he wasn\u2019t nearly as creative as Hubbard. He would have had one developed Tolkien-esque world his whole life, but again Hubbard passed all that up before breakfast.<\/span><\/p>\nPlus, in the restored gospel\u2019s new cosmology there was a subtlety that is missing in Hubbard\u2019s grand cosmic operas. There are little hints at a greater universe beyond that you easily miss if you nod off in the temple ceremony or while reading D&C (\u201cThat which had been done on other worlds.\u201d Wait stop, what other worlds!), but for which details are withheld. Hubbard would not have been able to resist filling in those details with all sorts of stories, plots, and characters. Again, not proof of anything, but if it was a con Joseph showed much more self-control and subtlety in his theological constructions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis is similar to how the fact that the gospels are almost completely, reverently silent about Christ\u2019s early life is a point in favor of their authenticity (I think Talmage made that point?), when there would be a huge temptation for a writer to fill in the details with fantastical accounts (like, in the case of Jesus, bringing clay birds to life). The lack of details and reverent silence makes both Jesus\u2019 life and the speculative Latter-day Saint temple theology feel more authentic than Hubbard\u2019s worlds that have just a little too much detail.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nClosing Notes<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nScientology is one of those organizations that it\u2019s become so easy to criticize that it\u2019s not brave and almost not even interesting to do so, so to be contrarian I\u2019ll end on a few positive notes about Hubbard and Scientology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Hubbard was sincere in his beliefs. He would take his vessels on treasure hunts around the Caribbean to try to find treasures he had buried in past lives, and by all accounts he thought he was going to find something. When he wrote to NASA telling them that they could not make it to the moon without the conditioning provided by Scientological principles, he had prepped Scientology centers for the influx of astronauts he thought was going to come. When he sent out letters out to invite prestigious scientists to form a global organization under the auspices of Scientology that would help prevent nuclear war (or something, I forget the details), for the next several months he made arrangements as if he was going to actually be managing the organization. He requested that the Navy send him copies of medals that he never earned but which he thought was in their records. At some point I wonder if fabulists go so far off the deep end that they start to convince themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, in a sense both us and the Scientologists experienced early unwarranted persecution (although the later persecution of Scientology was very warranted). In the early stages of Scientology the FBI and international law enforcement organizations clearly overreacted. At that point in terms of actual illegal behavior Scientology was essentially guilty of making unfounded medical claims (which, thanks to Orrin Hatch, is now no longer a crime as long as you put a disclaimer on it!), although it\u2019s true that their response to that persecution (Wikipedia Operation Snow White) didn\u2019t help them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n********************************************************<\/span><\/p>\n* Very snootily, my opinion on Mitt Romney took a huge hit for me when I found out that, even though he was an English major, his favorite book was <\/span>Battlefield Earth<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n**To keep things at an even-keel with his friend Tom Cruise, Anderson denied that it was based on Scientology, but the similarities are way too patent for that to be true. Besides the obvious points (the sea organization, the quasi-psychological angle, the past-lives going back trillions of years, etc)., there are other points presumably drawn from the book that you could miss if you\u2019re not paying attention: the book talks about a game called point-to-point that Hubbard would play that is also played in the movie, and the episode where the Joacquien Phoenix character gets the random call from the Hubbard character that he misses him and wants him to come back is also in the book almost word for word.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAlso, standard disclaimer that there are parts that Latter-day Saints might want to \u201cVidAngel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Internet discourse often compares Joseph Smith\u00a0 to L. Ron Hubbard, and there are some superficial similarities: they both engaged in magic practices, they were both charismatic, they both enjoyed military uniforms and titles, and for non-believers in either they both (depending on your view) came up with fantastical new worlds. L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s teachings are even inscribed on metal plates and buried in a repository (although they probably got that idea from us).*\u00a0 I just finished reading the definitive biography of L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah and, superficial similarities notwithstanding, there are some pretty fundamental differences, even if you were to take a naturalist perspective on Joseph Smith. (If you don\u2019t want to read the book, one of the best anti-religious movies of all time IMHO, Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s The Master, clearly heavily drew on the book,** and gives you a sense of the man Hubbard, although it doesn\u2019t quite capture his self-centeredness and temper, Philip Seymour Hoffman\u2019s brilliant performance notwithstanding).\u00a0 Family It\u2019s a major point to Joseph Smith\u2019s credit that his entire immediate family were true believers; by all appearances his love for his family was sincere. When his family was hurt he was hurt, and he was deeply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":54524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-comparative-religion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/ca0493d1-15ad-4370-a49a-fe220a43808e.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54521"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54614,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54521\/revisions\/54614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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