Here.

I vaguely remember an atheist once joking that if you wanted to get really rich you should start a religion. While certain televangelists might seem to give that idea some credibility, I doubt that most religious founders can be explained that way. But I don’t really want to focus on that topic generally.

Instead, I think it’s interesting to narrow the topic and focus specifically on L. Ron Hubbard. If, like me, you think Scientology is a pack of lies, do you think L. Ron Hubbard himself believed the claims of Scientology? If not, what do you think he believed?

I, for one, doubt whether Hubbard was sincere. At least in Hubbard’s case, it does seem like he was a fraud who was trying to make money off his gullible followers. But if Hubbard “deep down” wasn’t actually a believing Scientologist, what was he?

What if L. Ron Hubbard were an atheist, while he claimed to be a Scientologist?