Interview With L. Ron Hubbard Jr.

I won't waste your time bashing Scientology. We all know it's a crazy cult based on a pyramid scheme with an extraterrestrial creation myth invented by a dead sci fi writer that causes celebrity twats like Tom Cruise to jump up and down on talk show couches and play grabass with Oprah Winfrey.

That being said, I came across an awesome interview with L. Ron's son from a 1983 article in Penthouse. Here's a telling excerpt from it:

Penthouse: Didn't your father have any interest in helping people?

Hubbard: No.

Penthouse: Never?

Hubbard: My father started out as a broke science-fiction writer. He was always broke in the late 1940s. He told me and a lot of other people that the way to make a million was to start a religion. Then he wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health while he was in Bayhead, New Jersey. When we later visited Bayhead, in about 1953, we were walking around and reminiscing --he told me that he had written the book in one month.

Penthouse: There was no church when he wrote the book?

Hubbard: Oh, no, no. You see, his goal was basically to write the book, take the money and run. But in 1950, this was the first major book of do-it-yourself psychotherapy, and it became a runaway best-seller. He kept getting, literally, mail trucks full of mail. And so he and some other people, including J. W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction , started the Dianetics Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the post office kept backing up and just dumping mail sacks into the building. The foundation had a staff that just ran through the envelopes and threw away anything that didn't have any money in it.

(Check out the whole article Here..)

And for those of you allergic to reading, here are some snaps from an old Scientology pamphlet, and one pic from the newest version..

Peep the Andre 3000 poster on the wall. Outkast are so hip they were even cool during olden times.

Worst Mini mart ever. Any kid shopping there deserves a black eye.

No patrons, eh? The problem might be the fact that that color of orange is even more horrifying than the one I use as a background on this site. I wouldn't paint a vomitorium with it.

I'm not going to lie. This one almost had me sign up.

and finally...

POW!!! Right in the Thetans!!!

(Article via Metafilter)