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Claude Vorilhon's Raelians
This particular False Messiah would be
considered ridiculously absurd if it were not for the sad and soul imperiling
fact that he actually has sincere followers. The gullibility of Raelian
cult members goes beyond the norm for stupidity and credulousness.
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The Raelians is an atheist religion led by Claude Vorilhon (left),
who calls himself Rael - the last four letters of "Israel".
"Raelians" believe that scientists from another planet created the human race, and that monotheism should be totally replaced by science. |
Vorilhon
claims to have started his movement after being visited by a four-foot space alien from the planet
"Elohim". In 2002, the Raelians announced to the world that they had cloned the first human baby. Rael has written a book about himself in which he insists that, in Asia, he is known as the Maitreya, the long awaited Buddha from the
West.
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Raelian Poster
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Raelians say they believe in flying saucers, that mankind was created in an alien laboratory, and that a nuclear Armageddon will destroy the world by 2035, with only 144,000 true believers to be saved by being reconstructed (with their memory and personality intact) from their DNA. When Raelians die they have a square
centimeter of bone removed from their forehead for safekeeping.
The cult was founded in 1973 by Claude Vorhilon, a French motoring journalist. From the scant biographical detail
available, he appears to have had an unhappy early life - not knowing his father, raised by relatives, bullied at school, working as a
street musician then as a motor racing writer until he realized he didn't like the noise and the smell of the fuel fumes.
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About this time he
claims to have found a flying saucer in an extinct volcano at Puy de Lassolas in central France.
Of course Claude has zero proof of this finding.
Here
Claude looks even more sily than usual standing by his replica of the
"UFO. The "vehicle" is on display at Centre UFOland, a cult theme park which has been built on
a
50 acre site near Rael's headquarters in the town of Valcourt, in the boondocks of Quebec, Canada. |
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Rael standing next to his "UFO" |
According to
Rael, a bald alien 4 feet tall with a goatee beard, almond-shaped eyes, a greenish skin and a halo, got out of the spacecraft. He introduced himself to Rael as Yahweh (God to the Hebrews) and turned out to be Rael's father.
After dictating a new version of the Old Testament over six days (Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by nuclear weapons, Noah taking DNA from all the animals into a spaceship/ark, etc) in which the race of aliens - who call themselves the Elohim - created humankind by cloning a scant 25,000 years ago, Yahweh took
Vorhilon (soon to be called Rael) at seven times the speed of light to the Elohim's home, the "planet of the wise".
Here Rael had a wonderful time flying around with the aid of gravity-defying belts, met Moses, Buddha, Muhammad and his (Rael's) long-lost brother,
who happens to be Jesus. Rael then was given the gift of healing, had sex with six perfectly formed biological robots (a brunette, a redhead, a blonde etc) who were "submissive to all my desires", saw his dead mother cloned from a photograph, was appointed the Elohim's ambassador to Earth and on his return adopted the name Rael and began
proselytizing as "the last prophet".
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Now,
believe it or not, even with all the above mentioned stupidity as his
only claim to fame, thirty years later, the Raelians now claim to have 55,000 members worldwide, though the figure - like almost everything else about the cult - has to be treated with a great deal of suspicion. In books, magazines and on videotapes, the largest gatherings appear to involve no more than 200 or so, and then only when the Raelians adopt a popular cause such as a rally in Montreal at which they invited Catholics to publicly renounce their faith in protest
of priestly pedophilia.
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The
Raelians' finances, which are not publicly available, are now held in a secret international bank account after two Swiss banks terminated their accounts following complaints from other customers. The cult claims to have raised
$12 million for its main mission on Earth, which is to build an embassy (shaped just like a convoluted "crop circle" which once appeared in a Wiltshire corn field) on land in Jerusalem.
Fortunately, successive Israeli governments have refused to hand over land for the project.
To this end, Raelians are supposed to give up to 11 per cent of their net income to the cult, and to gift their estates before death (to avoid
challenges to the will) to local Raelian leaders. However, as many local Raelians are unemployed, and one can join for a donation of as little as
$1US.
Finally;
Claude Vorilhon is obviously a false messiah and an idiot to go with it. .
His
followers should get serious about the meaning of life and their purpose
within it, and seek God in Spirit and in truth.
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