Field Notes: The Raelian Religion—Achieving Human Immortality Through Cloning

Abstract

William Sims Bainbridge, in his provocative essay “New Religions, Science, and Secularization,” points out that progress in science and technology has tended to weaken traditional faiths in two ways. First, scientific developments have yielded new discoveries that threaten traditional ways of understanding the world. Darwinism, for example, could undercut the intellectual credibility of belief in a personal God who would intervene in the course of nature on a regular basis. Secondly, rational secular institutions have taken over many basic social services, such as education and charitable work, traditionally dominated by religious organizations; as a result, religious institutions are less prevalent in the day-to-day lives of many people. Yet these intellectual and social developments have not changed the fundamental human need for meaning, belonging, and purpose. Bainbridge thus suggests that at some point in the future, a new religion might emerge which could exist in a mutually supportive, rather than antagonistic, relationship with science. Such a new faith may now exist. The Raelian religion is based on the belief that some 25,000 years ago the earth, then without life, was visited by a race of benevolent space aliens, the Elohim. These aliens began a vast terraforming project in which all life on earth, from bacteria to humans, was created using highly advanced DNA technology. The scriptures of the world’s religions are believed by Raelians to document the aliens’ ongoing activities. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden, for example, records humanity’s transfer from the comfort of the alien laboratories to the harsh existence of self-sufficient agrarian life, while the resurrection of Jesus is thought to have been accomplished through his being cloned by the Elohim. From time to time the aliens have revisited the earth to provide more direct moral guidance by inspiring (and perhaps genetically enhancing) prophets such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Joseph Smith. The group’s founder, French-born