As a non-scientologist at a study tech (aka CoS) school, I regularly observe the ways in which the CoS operates. In the last few weeks the school has become a field day for all those charming Sea Org recruiters, and over 15% of the students in their teens have signed the Sea Org contract, some being very good friends of mine. It's interesting to see how they are attracted to joining the SO. Most are recruited in their middle teens when they're most vulnerable time when they're looking for some sort of place in the world, making their ruin easy to find. The recruiters disgust me in the way that they recruit people like this. At school I'm constantly surrounded by scientologist children and teachers, everyone is very cautious about not pushing me into it, but the utter secrecy of their organization is what really draws people into it. I constantly have other students squirreling to me, going on about Planet X and the government conspiracies. This was the kind of stuff we grew out of at 12 when we realized that science was correct and explained how life was. To most scientologists, all of science is wrong. According to scientology, matter can be created and destroyed just by thinking of an object in your mind (and believe me, I had a 2 hour argument with my physics teacher about this), and there's much more where this came from.
Also most scientologists, think the the whole government is full of SPs, and there's no one intelligent working there because they've all been suppressed. So one day I asked the teacher who said this "Why hasn't scientology taken control of the government if they know so much about it, and are able to handle SPs? L. Ron Hubbard was an intelligent man wasn't he?". The answer I got was pretty vague, but something along the lines of, "There are too many SPs there...scientology is focusing of making the whole planet clear first...LRH did write a letter to President Kenedy, but then they were raided shortly afterwords by the FBI...", you get the idea.
I must confirm that almost all the of the information I have read above and at Xenu.org is pretty true. All my scientologist friends find it very hard to talk with normal people, and they constantly try at assess and handle people, instead of just making friends with them like any normal person would do. They're also pretty arrogant most of the time, mainly because from a child they're given the view that the rest of the outside world is wrong. They all talk so much about applying scientology and how well it works, yet many of them don't even understand what their parents have told them. Scientologists always go on about how verbal data can never be trusted, yet they frequently discuss what they might learn on OT III, and try to get our OT teachers to levitate objects for them. And what about the confusion with dates through L. Ron Hubbard's life, it seems every source has some different date. So much for solid data.
Aside from all this the school does have its benefits. The study tech has been a great help for me (although it makes you very slack), and the people there are very kind and friendly. There has never been any incidents of bullying or drugs (but that also makes life pretty boring).
So maybe scientology is doing something right. But even so, LRH was a pretty 'alternative' guy. (oh and my physics teacher is on a diet of bananas).