Reason 1 of 10
God is not left undefined: he has spoken
Scientology places God, or the Supreme Being, at the far end of its "eighth dynamic" and leaves his nature to each person. The Bible says God is the personal Creator who has made himself known, finally in Jesus.
What Scientology teaches
L. Ron Hubbard organised life into eight "dynamics", urges toward survival that widen from the self to family, groups, mankind, living things, the physical universe, spirit, and finally infinity. Scientology identifies the eighth dynamic with the Supreme Being, or God.
The Church presents this as an open question: it says each Scientologist comes to his or her own understanding of God as they progress. There is no revealed account of who God is, what he is like, or what he has done.
Scientology's own words
“the urge toward existence as infinity”
The eighth dynamic, as described by the Church of Scientology (L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, 1956)
What the Bible says
The Bible does not treat God as the far horizon of human striving. It opens with God acting: he creates, speaks, calls, makes promises and keeps them. Paul told the philosophers of Athens that the God they called unknown had made himself known, and that he is not far from any one of us.
God is not a concept we reach by our own climbing. He is a person who comes down to us, and he has told us his name.
1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 (WEB) · context
14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:14 (WEB) · context
24The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. 25He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. 26He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’
Acts 17:24-28 (WEB) · context
18For Yahweh who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, who established it and didn’t create it a waste, who formed it to be inhabited says: “I am Yahweh. There is no other. 19I have not spoken in secret, in a place of the land of darkness. I didn’t say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, Yahweh, speak righteousness. I declare things that are right.
Isaiah 45:18-19 (WEB) · context
1God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.
Hebrews 1:1-2 (WEB) · context
Why it matters
If God is undefined, every path can only climb toward him and hope. If God has spoken, the question changes: not how far can I go, but have I listened to what he said? Jesus said that eternal life is knowing the only true God, and the One he sent.
3This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
John 17:3 (WEB) · context
9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
John 14:9 (WEB) · context
What Scientologists often say
Scientologists often say Scientology is not against God at all: it simply lets each person find their own way to the eighth dynamic, and many say they came to a stronger sense of the spiritual through it.
A Christian answer
A sense of the spiritual is not the same as knowing the God who is there. The Bible's claim is that God is not discovered at the end of a long climb but has revealed himself in history, in his word and in his Son. A path that leaves him undefined cannot tell you who he is, what he thinks of you, or how to be reconciled to him.
Sources
- Scientology source L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought (1956), the eight dynamics.
- Scientology source Church of Scientology, "What is Scientology?" pages on the eight dynamics and on God (scientology.org).
- The Bible, World English Bible (public domain).