Something is out there!
The belief that “we are not alone”, in terms of Planet Earth
as the home of sentient life, has gained considerable ground in recent years as
a result of increasingly powerful telescopes being able to detect planets in
orbit around other stars, which in turn has reduced the odds considerably of a
number of those planets being able to sustain life.
However, the assumption that such planets existed preceded
the proof by many years, and that assumption gave rise, especially during the
second half of the 20th century, to a growing conviction on the part
of many people that inhabitants from those planets are in the habit of paying
visits to Planet Earth. Not only have these ideas spawned a whole host of
supposed “sightings” of UFOs (unidentified flying objects), and many novels,
films and TV series based on such possibilities, but some people have combined
the search for extra-terrestrials in flying saucers with religious persuasions
in order to construct some extremely weird and wonderful belief systems. One
such person is Claude Vorilhon (born 1946).
Claude’s conversion to Raël
Claude Vorilhon is a Frenchman from Vichy, central France.
His early interests were singing and racing cars. He had some success as a teen
pop star and then became a sports journalist as a means of gaining access to
the world of motor racing.
His world changed in December 1973 when, according to him,
he had an encounter with the pilot of a flying saucer, whom he met in the
crater of an extinct volcano near Clermont Ferrand in central France.
Fortunately, the alien had had the good sense to learn French so that he could
tell Vorilhon that he had been chosen to spread the word that human beings had
been placed on Earth by an advanced alien race called the Elohim, but that
things had not quite worked out as planned and a few changes had been decreed
to be necessary. Vorilhon, now to be called Raël, was to have the task of
preparing mankind for the return of the Elohim who would come in peace to
install a new world government.
Raël would later claim to have been taken in a flying saucer
to the planet of the Elohim where he met Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and other
prophets who had had the same task as Raël in previous ages. Raël has written a
number of books that outline his story and his teachings, these including
“Extraterrestrials Took Me to Their Planet” in 1975 and “Yes to Human Cloning”
in 2001.
The Raëlians
It is always surprising to learn that people such as
Vorilhon can gain a following, but then so did Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and the rest.
Estimates of how many Raëlians there are vary considerably, depending on who is
doing the estimating, but a figure of at least 50,000 worldwide would not be
disputed by many of those in the know.
With any movement such as this it pays to look not only at
what its followers believe but also at the methods they are prepared to use to
achieve their aims. If those methods raise serious moral question marks, then
the basis of the movement must also be called into question. Is this a genuine
religious movement or the work of a talented con artist? Mark Twain once
remarked that religion began when the first conman met the first fool, so, if
he was right, how easy is it to tell “real” religion from “fake”?
Parallels with other religions
When examining Raëlism, many features seem to have parallels
in well-established religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moses
came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, Mohammed wrote the Koran
under dictation from Allah, and Raël got his instructions from a man in a
flying saucer in a volcanic crater. According to Moses, the Jews were God’s
chosen people to be given special blessings and the responsibility of spreading
those blessings to less fortunate peoples. In Raëlism, the leaders in the
forthcoming world government will come from a “geniocracy” composed of people
with an IQ that is 50% higher than that of the average. There are other
examples that could have been selected.
Technical solutions to world problems
The new world of peace and prosperity that is forecast is
one that makes full use of modern technology. Strangely enough, given that the
Elohim are supposed to have 25,000 years of scientific development to their
advantage, the technologies that Raëlism proposes to use to benefit mankind are
those that mankind has already managed to discover for itself, albeit with some
tweaking that seems to derive more from science fiction and wishful thinking
than the knowledge of advanced beings on a distant planet.
Raël’s idea of immortality is that humans will be cloned,
with the expectation that the personality of the individual will be transferred
into a new body that is created from cells saved from the old one. Cloning is
known to be a feasible technology, but the Raëlian version would include rapid
development of the clone in a manner that sounds remarkably like that envisaged
by Aldous Huxley in his novel “Brave New World”. Another disturbing aspect of
this aspiration is that cloning would be used selectively, the decision on who
deserves immortality being in the hands of a “Grand Council of the Eternals”.
As well cloning deserving cases, it has been suggested that suicide bombers,
for example, might be brought back from the dead so that they can be given
fitting punishments.
Raëlism has a whole panoply of levels and hierarchies, coupled
with activities that determine the level to which a follower belongs. There is
a baptism ceremony and a series of meditation exercises. Seminars are held, at
which a certain amount of sexual freedom is allowed. Raëlians have campaigned
for women to be allowed to go topless in public, and this “new age” aspect of
the religion might account for its popularity in certain quarters. It has also
caused legal difficulties for Raël and his followers in several countries that
do not tolerate the free and easy lifestyle that his religion advocates.
Follow the money
Another question that must always be asked of a religious
movement of this kind is, “Is anyone getting seriously rich out of all this?”
The answer here would appear to be “Yes”, in that there seems to be quite a lot
of money floating around. One of the aims of the Raëlians is to build an
embassy that will be a fitting home for the Elohim, complete with a landing pad
for their spacecraft and room for all the followers to camp around it. Many
millions of dollars have already been raised for this project, although a site
for the embassy has yet to be found.
In the meantime, Raël himself has been able to enjoy a
career as a racing driver, although he has now retired from this. He lives
comfortably enough, surrounded by his adoring devotees as he waits for the
Elohim to make their next move.
The question posed above remains open. It is clear to most
observers that the Raëlian Religion is nonsense and could well pose a danger to
its adherents. However, there are many parallels to be seen between it and
religions that have been established and respected for many centuries. How is
it possible to be certain that one religion is a fraud and another is not? Does
Raëlism not require all religious devotees to ask what their religion would have
looked like had it been founded as recently as 1973?
© John Welford
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