Scientology and Faith

The death of John Travolta's son Jett has somewhat renewed the public's interest in Scientology, the religion created by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1960's. John Travolta is a well known practitioner.

Scientology, and the practitioners of Scientology, have always interested me. For one thing, I've always admired L. Ron Hubbard for the same reason I admired Gene Roddenberry - both men took their degrees in philosophy and made a boatload of money. That was something I was never able to do.

Additionally, in creating Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard accomplished something that even Plato thought impossible. In Plato's Republic, Socrates was challenged to prove that justice is better than injustice. To this end, Socrates engaged in a prolonged thought experiment in which he and his interlocutors (mostly Socrates) designed an "ideal city." Their city featured a strict merit based qualification system for joining the guardian and ruler classes. When his interlocutors pointed out that the excluded citizens might resent their exclusion with an intensity that could destabilize the city, Socrates proposed propagating an elaborate myth (the "Myth of the Metals") in which each person's status and membership in their respective class was explained and grounded in the historic will of the divine.

When asked if it would be possible to convince the City's citizens that this myth was true, Socrates conceded the impossibility of convincing the first generation of citizens. But he expressed confidence that successive generations - further removed in time from the city's founding -would readily accept the myth, and that it would stabilize the city's class structure.

L. Ron Hubbard, having a slightly lower regard for the masses, created an elaborate science-fiction based myth regarding the origins and nature of our world, nearly out of whole cloth, and sold it to millions of first generation believers as a credible cosmology. That's a truly impressive feat. Hubbard's closest rival in this field of work would seem to be Joseph Smith. But Smith's work, however impressive in terms of his success with first generation believers, relied upon the pre-existing Christian narrative, which Smith simply extended to the Americas (while introducing several interesting theological innovations along the way).

This shortcoming in Smiths' cosmology leaves L. Ron Hubbard in a class by himself. However, I suspect that Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" may eventually supplant Scientology as America's most beloved ex-nihlo cosmology - it is far more simple and seductive than Scientology and requires far less effort of its practitioners.

Americans' acceptance of Scientology and "the Secret" both remind me of why being a person of faith is a bit unnerving. The worldview of "the Secret" is particularly infantile and narcissistic - why, after all, would the universe be arranged so as to cater to my thoughts and bring me blessings on demand (the so called "law of attraction")? Yet millions of people bought the book and CD because they (like me) wanted desperately to believe in such a reality.

Okay, Ophra helped. But still!

I, too, want to believe in the "law of attraction," just like I've long wanted to believe that the tremendous bio-diversity existing on our planet is the product of 8 people and male and female pairs of each kind of animal exiting a very large boat approximately 5000 years ago. Both beliefs would make my life easier. But I've lost the capacity for the kind of faith that makes such beliefs possible.

The best I can do is exercise what I call "informed faith." Pure faith is no longer an option.

Joe H.