Origins
The Church of the SubGenius was founded by Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond as the SubGenius Foundation. The organization's first recorded activity was the publication of a photocopied document, known as the Sub Genius Pamphlet #1, disseminated in Dallas, Texas, in 1979. The document announced the impending end of the world and the possible deaths of its readers. It criticized Christian conceptions of God and New Age perceptions of spirituality.
Church leaders maintain that a man named J.R. "Bob" Dobbs founded the group in 1953. SubGenius members constructed an elaborate account of the life of Dobbs, which is described by commentators as fictional. They assert that he telepathically contacted Drummond in 1972, before meeting him in person the next year, and that Drummond persuaded Ivan Stang to join shortly afterwards. Stang describes himself as the "sacred scribe" of Dobbs and a "professional maven of weirdness".
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