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Raëlian
Robert Todd Carroll
SkepDic.com
 Click to order from Amazon
Company shows
'cloned baby' 3/25/03
Raelian leader: Clone claim possible hoax
It's
the Rael thing (Australian Raelian)
Cloned baby claim
met with doubt
S Korea probes
human clone claim
Oddball Raelians take a wild swing at Catholic church
By INGRID PERITZ ,
The Globe and Mail, October 15, 2002
Prophet
sounds as if he came from another planet Dennis Roddy, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette Nov 17, 2001
Raëlian
 A
Raëlian is a follower of Raël, a Frenchman
and former motor sport journalist and race-car driver whose parents, the Vorilhons,
called him Claude when he was born in 1946.
He claims that on December 13, 1973, he was in a volcano near Clermont-Ferrand,
France, when he saw a UFO "7 meters in diameter made of a very shiny
silver metal and moving in a total silence." He says a radiant being
emerged and entrusted him with a message revealing the true origin of
mankind. They told him that henceforth he would be known as
Raël, which
means "messenger."
His followers consider him to be "the prophet of the third
millennium." Like all good religious leaders, Raël expects his
followers to support him. A 10% tithe is the norm.
He explains his mission in his book,
The True Face of
God. According to Taras Grescoe
of Salon.com,
Vorilhon claims that
he was taken to the planet of the Elohim in a flying
saucer in 1975, where he was introduced to noted earthlings such as
Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith and Confucius. The Elohim, small
human-shaped beings with pale green skin and almond eyes, were
apparently the original inspiration for the Judeo-Christian God. They
informed Vorilhon that he was the final prophet -- sent to relay a
message of peace and sensual meditation to humankind under his new name
of Raël -- before the Elohim would return to Jerusalem in 2025.
Raël claims that the Elohim have taught him that the human race was created from
the DNA of aliens some 25,000 years ago. (In fact, all life on
earth was created in alien laboratories.) Among other things, Raël has
also learned that
cloning is the way to immortality and there is no God or soul. According
to Raël, our alien creators want us to be beautiful and sexy
and enjoy a sensuous life, free from the restrictions of traditional
Judeo-Christian morality.
According to Grescoe, "Raël's success seems to
derive from providing a structured environment for decadent behavior: He
offers a no-guilt playground for hedonism and sexual
experimentation." Fortunately, the Raëlians are big on using
condoms. They won't spread as much disease that way. However, using
condoms won't suffice to deplete their numbers, Raël believes, since
he has
formed a cloning company called Clonaid
which promises to
provide assistance to would be
parents willing to have a child cloned from one of them. This service
offers a fantastic opportunity to parents with fertility problems or
homosexual couples to have a child cloned from one of them.
Scientists say that there is no possibility of Clonaid
actually working in the near future and dismiss its goals as pure fantasy (Cohen).
However, Clonaid should be a reminder of what might happen in the distant
future if controls on genetic engineering are not developed to prevent
religious fanatics and lunatics from gaining more control of the planet
than they already have.
The Raëlian headquarters are in Montreal but the cult is
international and claims to have some 50,000 members in 85 countries. They
have an "Evidence Page" on their Web site where they offer proof of their
prophet's
claims, thus relieving us of the burden of having to believe on pure faith. Unfortunately, the evidence provided
is likely to satisfy only those eager for delusion and
self-deception. For
example, the
historical
evidence is of the type Velikovsky,
von
Däniken and other mytho-historians have provided: they take ancient
legends, stories, and
religious
texts, and fit them into their preconceived theory. The Raëlians also consider
UFO
sightings as proof of their messenger's claims.
Their attempt at
"scientific"
evidence will have some appeal to the scientifically illiterate and
the logically-challenged. The scientific evidence is nothing more than speculation and
assumption in juxtaposition to facts. Their evidence consists of claiming that we are about to
create life in our laboratories and our creations will probably think we
are gods. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that we were created in laboratories
and think of our creators as gods. The rest of the "scientific"
evidence consists of a list of scientific accomplishments which, I
suppose, are imagined to have to have occurred elsewhere before the living
things on our planet could have been created in the lab. All of which begs
the question as to whether this occurred elsewhere 25,000 years ago.
Apparently, the Raëlians are not bothered by the rather
absurd image of a race of superior beings working for thousands of years
in a laboratory to create all our insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses, etc.,
not to mention all their lovelies that have gone extinct. Why would any
beings do such a thing? And why would they wait 25,000 years to reveal
their handiwork to a French race car driver who spots their UFO in a
volcano? And then tell him that the message is to clone ourselves so we
can be immortal. Then again, is this story any stranger than the ones in
the Bible?
The kicker in their argument is their proof that
evolution
could not have occurred. They claim scientists have discovered that
genes have a DNA repair mechanism (p53)
which prevents mutation, an important process in evolution. Species couldn't
have diversified if this mechanism were present. p53 was at first thought
to be an oncogene but is now thought to be
anti-oncogenic. It is of little
interest to the Raëlians, I suppose, that p53 itself mutates. And it is
pure speculation on their part that the entire genetic code of all species
always consists of genes which prevent mutation from occurring. Even if
they're right, however, it wouldn't follow that Vorilhon's preposterous
UFO tale is true. Just ask the so-called creation
scientists, the Scientologists, the Urantians,
the followers of Barbara Marciniak or UFO
Billy, the remaining members of Heaven's
Gate, or the surviving members of other UFO
religions.
Anyway, if the Raëlians are right, I am looking forward to asking
the Elohim why they created the mosquito. In the meantime, I may take up Raël's
offer of $2,000 to anyone who starts a new religion.
See also cult,
Pleiadians, and UFO.
further reading
reader comments
The Raelian Movement supports the academic debates about the Theory of
Intelligence Design VS. the Theory of Evolution
Raël
love A gorgeous group of alien spawn hones a hedonistic hankering for
sex by Taras Grescoe of Salon.com
Cult's
bizarre vision rekindles cloning debate by Philip Cohen, San
Francisco (New Scientist May 31, 1997)
The
God game no more The feds crack down on a human cloning lab by Nell
Boyce and David E. Kaplan U.S. News and World Report/July 9, 2001
©copyright 2007
Robert Todd Carroll
radionics
Last
updated 12/03/07
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