What are we to make of people like Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard?

Smith had a history of arrests for fraud. His wife left him over the “golden tablet” nonsense, if I remember correctly. I believe she also threw the first copy of his book in the fire, so he had to make it all up all over again, to a different scribe (Smith was illiterate).

Hubbard was openly quoted as stating he was starting a religion for the money racket.

Frauds, both of them.

Joseph Smith was known as a conman even before he started making his religious claims. And Hubbard was a failed sci-fi writer who once said he’s start a religion to make money.

Smith was a genuine huckster, Hubbard was a lunatic and a fraud

They were plainly both con artists. We don’t need to wonder what was going through their minds, for the reasons @Seek gave. The genuine mystery is why any sane person would choose to follow either religion, knowing this about their founders.

You’re looking for profound reasons for the success of Smith & Lron. But if you add Barnum to the duet, as he surely deserves, it’s clear
we can dismiss the mystical hokum. In other words, the product is irrelevant.

There is a market out there for anything. Why? Because people are gullible and even more importantly, they’re irrational. And some people are born salesmen. These truths are not only bedrock to religions and other superstitions, they are fundamental to commerce itself.

I think 2 & 3 both apply to both. That is, they were disturbed con artists. Not so much 1, unless you define religion as a power scheme.

Did they believe what they preached…?
No

did they make it all up to get attention or to make money?
Yes

Smith claimed to have unearthed a great document which he painstakingly translated. This goes beyond hearing voices. Is this something that a person can hallucinate? If not, what are we to conclude?
Let’s see. He had golden tablets but wasn’t allowed to show them to anyone. Oh, and they were supposedly in Egyptian hieroglyphics which no one at the time could translate, but later when people could, they had nothing to do with what he said they meant. Certainly crazy people can hallucinate all sorts of things. And genuine spiritual people can and do have visions. Hey, I have some pretty awesome detailed dreams that I can record and that I am not making up. I’m pretty clear it’s not my imagination per se. However, in these cases, close study indicates that they were frauds. And they created some pretty nasty organizations, which may have a few positive aspects, but also have caused a whole lot of suffering, in their own ways.

Total religious nut-cases! And they like(d) the power, prestige, and money it brought/brings in.

L Ron Hubbard developed Scientology out of psychological experimentation and analytical thought. The validity of it is highly disputed.

Joseph Smith was simply a charismatic liar and a fraud. There is no evidence that the events written about in the Book of Mormon ever took place (according to the Smithsonian, National Geographic and scientists around the world). Except that is for a few references to the King James version of the Holy Bible.

There is no reason that all three can’t be correct. None of them precludes the other two.

They, like Jesus, for some reason were followed by the masses. People accepted them as telling the truth about God, life, and the afterlife.

I don’t really care if people follow a religion as long as it doesn’t ask them to shun their family if they leave the religion, and that there is no great harm to the people in the religion or others around them because of the religion.

We certainly could argue there has been some harm in all of them though. I don’t get into criticizing how people identify themselves religiously, or some of their far fetched beliefs, nor how the religion was created. All I care about is the here and now and how are the followers behaving and believing at present.

I have Mormon friends who love their religious community and interact with people outside of the community, are smart, educated, nice people. A sect of that religion are fanatics and the people are controlled and harmed. That sect should be destroyed, but we don’t have to destroy the whole religion.

Scientology seems very clannish, and has some very strange practices. It’s a newer religion, and maybe it will go through changes like most religions where a group will break away a little and be less fanatical. Like what has happened in Judaism, Christianity, and the Muslims.

as genuine as any other religious leader, past and present.

They couldn’t have been successful without idiots to follow them.

So what makes them different – both of them – is that they were such good salesmen (or liars) that they put together a belief systems that other people bought into – by the millions.

And now, it doesn’t matter if they were scoundrels or not. The religions have taken on lives of themselves, and people believe it – no matter what the antecedents were.