Lecture: Universes
Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1954, 6 April
Document title: Universes
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: Fifth American Advanced Clinical Course
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Document ID: 5404C06
Description: Hubbard discusses miracles, faith and his ability to make people believe in kangaroos.
Now, somebody came along not too long ago and invented something called clinical psychology, and this was supposed to be a practice on people. But again, this is not a process and it does not have a goal. It’s “Let’s treat people.” Now, that is just a gesture – f an empty gesture, it’s still a gesture in the direction of psychosomatic medicine. But here’s nobody gotten there yet. Now, we’ve taken all available branches of existence nd we aren’t there yet, except one, religion.
Two thousand years ago they had a few miracles. They didn’t keep good case histories and so we don’t know quite how they were produced. Everybody has been trying since to try to change people’s minds that fast. We don’t even know that it was done swiftly because as I say we have no case history. The experimental record was not maintained. If we knew how many minutes Christ held his hands over somebody’s head we might have some kind of a vague idea of how to go about it. Furthermore, did he hold the right hand or the left hand? And was he standing up or sitting down.
Furthermore, how many ohms or amperes came out of his fingers. I mean, experimental record.
Everybody goes around and says, “Well, now, you just have faith in it.” And I won’t have any faith in an experimental record unless I can read it. I’m just instructed funny. I’m a perverse sort of a fellow in this respect. If everybody keeps telling me, “Now, you’ve got to believe. You got to believe it and you got to have faith in it. You got to have faith in it,” I’m apt to say about that time, “In what?”
“Well, it!”
“What?”
“Well, in God.”
“Where? I’ll have faith in him, where is he?” And people look at me and say I’m an atheist.
I say, “Oh, no. You’re the atheist. You think you have to produce evidence of God simply by bludgeoning people around until they believe in him. Well, I can make you believe in kangaroos – that kangaroos are following you up and down the street at all times of the day simply by hounding you and telling you to believe in the kangaroos.” So it doesn’t look to me like we’ve proven anything about God. It looks to me like we’ve proven that people can convince other people of things with duress.
Hubbard, L. R. (1954, 6 April). Universes. Fifth American Advanced Clinical Course, (5404C06). Lecture conducted from Phoenix, Arizona.