Quote Originally Posted by Husar
Uhm, yeah, the catholic church may ask for a bit of money from it's followers, Scientology requires a lot of money from it's followers, often to the point of making them bankrupt. The catholic church may tell you you go to hell when you leave them, Scientology may forcefully put you into some camp when you want to leave and brainwash you to stay.

The ex-director of Scientology in Austria, Wilfried Handl was on TV once and talked about how they ruined his bank account, his life etc. and his website underlines that, note that while the website is german, he also links to and talks about the anonymous efforts, the german part also talks about the SeaOrg and their internal correction camps etc. As a person who was in the organization for 28 years, and feels very sorry about that now, I give him quite a bit of credibility, he should know what he's talking about and he doesn't say it's like any other religion at all.
mechanically, the organization may behave differently from most other religions, but that is unrelated to its validity as a belief system. interesting story though. more reasons to cheer on anon.