I don't even mind their big back-story about aliens and what-not. Ignoring the fact that a sci-fi writer wrote it, who's to say that's any more laughable than other stuff. And you could say that maybe he was just inspired by the spoken word or universal secrets to write his other stuff, which isn't that much more implausible than where many of the stories for the Bible came from.

I guess if you have read any of his fairly pedestrian SF (sadly I have) and his even crappier dianetics stuff you would see that it was a cynical attempt to mold some crappy SF ideas into a religion. All the cliches are there - mixed in with your mumbo jumbo you have super men, good and evil aliens, spacecraft that look exactly like dc-8's, volcanos...it only gets stupider.

A true testament to how idiotic you can be and still raise followers...

Regard to the catholic church - here in AU they are in a bit of a stink about the whole child molestation cases getting somehow shredded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sexual_abuse_cases_in_Australia

Organised religion - fuck...who would even