With all the controversy regarding stem cells and cloning lately I was
fascinated to hear that Rael himself, a former Frenchman(now Canadian),
would be a guest on the show. As I think we all know, he leads a religious
group which some call a cult. They have made the headlines by saying they
will be the first to clone a human being, and to do so have established one
secret lab in the U.S. and one outside of it.
I found Rael to be quite charming with his very strong french accent and
general affability. These things must surely help when building up one's
own private church based on adoring space aliens... He had a decent but
definitely not great grasp of science and technology, but Rael had more then
enough enthusiasm for it! lol
He said he loves the American system of gov't and is working within the
system to legally clone here. He has assembled a crack team of lawyers to
take on the FDA. Rael has disclosed to the U.S. gov't where his lab is here
but he does not want the knowledge public.
Rael claims the alien "Elohim" guided human evolution to create us in their
own image. What he is planning was laid out for him by them. After a
conventional cloning(birth as a baby from a surrogate) he wants to work on
accelerating the growth of a clone so in a relatively short time an adult
clone could be ready. Finally, he wants to see perfected uploading into
adult clone bodies.
Rael claims this is how the aliens he is in contact have become immortal.
None of the callers tangled with him on the nature of identity and the
"self-circuit." lol This guy even claims the aliens have a computer which
monitors all our actions and makes clones of our finest people who are
deserving(like Buddha).
When we are evolved enough they will make themselves public. Part of his
mission is to build a pleasant "embassy" for the alien visit. They were
kind enough to give him a detailed description of what it should look like.
They had plenty of time for this while he spent two years on their planet...
Rael positively glows on matters of technological progress in a somewhat
naive way. He even discussed how biotech, nanotech and artificial
intelligence will converge into a sort of singularity! It made me wonder if
he is a lurker here...
What worried me was that people would make some sort of comparison between
the Raellians and the extropians. There are seeming similarities for those
who are not aware of the gaping differences. I would almost call the
Raellians a "counterfeit" religious version of transhumanism. If any of you
had listened to him for four hours you would have picked up on this. You
can hear the show on the Art Bell archive.
Just go to...
artbell.com and look for the show archives
This Rael has over 55,000 members who are expected to give 3% of their
yearly income to him! The power of an organization in religious trappings
must be incredibly strong. I wish the Extropy Institute had half the
members and money this man does...
What bothers me is he could create a public backlash against cloning and
biotech in general. The average american does not seem to like this man or
his organization. You should have heard the angry people calling in to heap
derision on him for having a supposedly cult-like organization doing cloning
work!! This could really turn ugly...
best wishes,
John
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