Related articles and links |  1 of 2

For adherents of the Raëlian Movement, the religious sect that claims it cloned two baby girls, human cloning means more than a scientific achievement.

Of course, there are plenty of skeptics to the group's claim that it has succeeded in cloning. One is journalist Michael Guillen, assigned by the group to oversee proof of the cloning. He dropped out of the project yesterday, saying it may be an "elaborate hoax."

If it is, the group has still accomplished a major coup: its name is headline material now. In 1998 the group claimed it would open a cloning lab in the Bahamas. They later admitted it was a hoax. Their founder wrote, "For a minimal investment, it got us media coverage worth more than $15 million."

However, if the Raëlians have cloned a human, it is for them a step toward eternal life.

"Once we can clone exact replicas of ourselves, the next step will be to transfer our memory and personality into our newly cloned brains," reads the website of the movement's scientific arm. "Thus, man's ultimate dream of eternal life, which past religions only promised after death in mythical paradise, [is now] a scientific reality."

Cloning is not only important to Raëlians as a means of immortality. They also believe that an extraterrestrial race called the Elohim created humans by using cloning.

Raëlians do not believe in God, the soul, or salvation. Their founder, Raël, is antagonistic toward established religions. However, their teachings do have a religious overtone. Movement leaders call their philosophy a crossroads of spirituality and science.

In Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, coauthor Kenneth Samples writes that the Raëlian Movement is the largest UFO religion in the world. He estimates the group has 20,000 to 30,000 members.  (In comparison, the next largest UFO sect, The Aetherius Society, has 5,000 to 10,000 members.)

The Raëlians have headquarters in France, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Africa, and the United States. Raël now lives in Quebec, which has become a default home for the sect. In the 1990s, the province gave the group religious status. Near Montreal, the Raëlians operate UFOland, a space alien museum housed in what it advertises as the "largest building using bales of hay in the world."

French journalist Claude Vorilhon established the Raëlian sect in 1973 after claiming he spent six days in a spaceship with an Elohim visitor. The alien said that Vorilhon, whom he renamed Raël, was the last of 40 half-human, half-alien prophets. The others—who live together on a distant planet—include Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Joseph Smith, and Mohammed.

This is far from the only instance of religious figures appearing in Raëlian myth. The group is untraditional among UFO religions in directly rejecting monotheistic realities. In fact, Newsweek reports that "Raël's self-proclaimed mission is to tear down the myth of God." Therefore, Raëlians offer new explanations for dozens of religious claims. Examples include:

• Raël argues that Elohim, the Hebrew word for God, was mistranslated in the Bible and actually means "those who came from the sky."
  
  
• The star of Bethlehem is explained to be a spaceship hovering in the air.
  
  
• The Garden of Eden, Raël says, was actually an Elohim lab from which humans were ejected for fighting.

Raël claims the Elohim commissioned him to inform humans how they were created and to warn society about nuclear dangers. Adherents also prepare for the return of the alien creators.

Raël says that when the extraterrestrials come back to Earth, they will solve "all the problems of today." However, they cannot return until there is world peace and humans are scientifically sophisticated enough not to "foolishly adore them as gods." They also require an embassy in Jerusalem. Raël's negotiations with Israel haven't been successful.

next page... |  1 of 2

share this page

January (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47