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Religie i sekty » UFO
Raelianism: a Research Lab Posing as a Cult? Autor tekstu: William Harwood
"The name I propose is Liberal Humanist Scientists
for an Intergalactic Philamity."
"Are
you serious?" the delegate from the American Humanist Association spluttered.
„A name like that will make us a laughing stock.
Philamity, indeed! Quite
apart from sounding like a religion, the word is a tautology… You're making
us sound like some kind of fruitcake occultists without the common sense…"
He saw the triumphant gleam in Plato's eyes, and realized what the
propaganda specialist was really doing.
"I
certainly hope so," Plato agreed."I
don't need to tell you that god worship is a form of insanity, since most of
you at some time in your lives had the disease and recovered.
And one of the symptoms of insanity is the dog-in-the-manger attitude
exemplified by the myth of Jesus cursing a fig tree.
If Jesus couldn't have what he wanted when he wanted it, then nobody
else could have it, ever. But what
reason would even the most chronic dog-in-the-manger god worshipper have for
trying to sabotage our efforts, if he was preconditioned to believe we're a bunch of science-fiction freaks who think we can travel to another galaxy?"
"We
take an anti-religious attitude," Plato continued, „but a laughable one.
We say we're going to have portholes in our spaceships so when we get
out into the sky we can look for that fellow, God.
We offer three to one odds that he won't be there...
But even though we come across as too anti-theistic for any god
worshipper to join us or stay with us, we adopt just enough of the external
trappings of religion ourselves to satisfy the ignoranti that a kind of religion
is surviving with us...And to
emphasize the religious nature of the Philamity, we elect ourselves a kind of
pope. We can't be blatant.
We have to give him a title that merely hints at religiosity, but
simultaneously denotes a philosophy that is nontheistic."
Does
the foregoing sound familiar? Anyone
who has read There Be No Sun But Yahweh,
And Jesus Be Him's Planet, will recognize it as an excerpt from that
book's concluding novella, „On His Amity's Philocratic Service."
But does it not also suggest a possible explanation for the recent claim
of an observably fruitcake religious cult to have cloned a human being?
A
claim to have successfully cloned a human being, regardless of its source, would
be greeted by the scientific community with a cautious skepticism and a demand
that the claim be proven to the satisfaction of outside investigators.
But when such a claim comes from what is observably a lunatic fringe
religious cult, with a leader whose costume identifies him as a pope-equivalent,
the cult itself is bound to become on object of scrutiny-and priceless free
publicity.
Raelians
claim that their founder, now known as Rael, encountered extraterrestrials in
1973, and they revealed to him that they had been on earth for 25,000 years, and
that they had created the human race by cloning. In other words, humans have existed for only 25,000 years and
are not genetically related to other terrestrial life-forms.
But human DNA is 98 percent identical with that of a common ancestor of
humans and chimpanzees that flourished on this planet between four and eight
million years ago. Add to that, that travel to earth from another star system
could not be accomplished faster than the speed of light, which takes over four
years to get here even from our next-door neighbor, Alpha Centauri, and the
scientific impossibility of Raelian claims becomes manifest.
Raelians
have all the appearance of a religious cult, including a Leader who dresses like
Mother but, unlike his Roman equivalent, does not demand to be called Father.
And to complete the parallel with the above-mentioned Philamity, Rael
specifically denies any belief in the entity called God, and goes so far as to
deny the existence of immortality and souls.
And
that raises a further analogy. Of
the various humbugs who introduced a new religion into the United States in the
twentieth century, only one was deported with immoderate haste.
Sun Myung Moon, after a short prison sentence that did not destroy his
cult, is still flourishing, as are the Hare Krishnas.
The only guru deported was the one known as Baghwan.
And in what way did Baghwan differ from other cultists and resemble the Raelians?
He taught that there are
no gods, and that „prayer" is a form of talking to oneself.
In other words he adopted, in effect, the trappings of religion to
repudiate religion-as Rael is doing. And
did that ever upset organized religion!
But
while no person with a functioning human brain accepts Rael's claim that the
cloning of a human being constitutes scientific evidence for the nonexistence of
immortal souls, the god worshippers are so terrified that it proves exactly that,
that governments in Canada and the United States are instituting laws to make
human cloning illegal. Apparently
they are so determined to go on believing that only their sky-Führer can create
life that they see no option but to prohibit research that renders their
imaginary playmate superfluous. In a world that is already dangerously overpopulated, all extreme measures to enable the infertile to breed should be
prohibited. But the same
governments that self-righteously denounce cloning as unacceptable are not only
doing nothing to combat simple overbreeding; the moron in the White House is
actively forcing third-world countries to obey the mentally impoverished
pope's insane ban on birth control by denying foreign aid to countries that
recognize the overpopulation problem and are willing to take steps to alleviate
it.
Raelianism
claims to have 55,000 members worldwide. But
to be a Raelian, one would have to be unaware of facts known to the average high
school student. In other words, a Raelian must be scientifically illiterate, incredibly gullible, abysmally
ignorant, and for all practical purposes brain-dead.
Is it credible that there are 55,000 human beings on this planet who fit
that description?Guess what?A
cult not much older than Raelianism, and every bit as dependent on anti-science
as Twilight Zone as that of the
Raelians has as many as a quarter-million such mind-zombies.
In
1950 science fiction writer Lafayette Ronald Hubbard invented a medical scam
called Dianetics. When it went
belly up four years later, Hubbard concluded that the survival of humbuggery
depended very much on obtaining the tax-free status granted only to designated
religions. So he bet a friend ($1?)
that he could invent a new religion and have it showing a profit within a year.
And he won the bet, even though the sought-after tax-exempt status was
not granted until 1993.The hoax
religion that Hubbard invented was Scientology.
Scientology
claims that human ancestors were brought to earth by extraterrestrials from a star system far, far away. In other
words, a quarter-million Scientologists currently believe scientifically
illiterate drivel that is qualitatively equal to the verbal diarrhea being
promulgated by the Raelians.
But
is the parallel absolute?
Certainly
Raelianism's 55,000 adherents, in the unlikely event that they actually exist,
are the same kind of self-inflicted brain amputees as the rank-and-file
Scientologists. But are the
specific Raelians claiming to have cloned a human being the same kind of
conscious liars as L. Ron Hubbard?Given
how thoroughly their cult will be discredited if the cloning claim is falsified,
as is likely to happen in a matter of days if it is indeed a hoax or
self-delusion, that seems improbable.
But
could it not be that Rael is setting himself up as a nutcase in order to free
his research laboratory from media scrutiny by preconditioning investigators to
believe it is not worthy of serious attention?
If the cloning claim is in fact authenticated, the same situation applies.
The cloning will create the impression that Raelianism is a lunatic cult
that had one piece of incredible luck and need not be watched for possible
further successes.
That
may well be Rael's ultimate purpose.
(Originally published in the American
Rationalist © 2003. Dr. William Harwood is Contributing Editor of the American
Rationalist.)
« UFO (Publikacja: 21-05-2003 Ostatnia zmiana: 21-09-2003)
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