Religion Watch Archives

Monitoring Trends in Religion - From February 1990 to January 2016

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Archives
    • By Issue
    • By Article
    • By PDF (2008-14)
    • By PDF (1985-97)
    • All Articles
  • Sections
    • Current Research
    • Findings & Footnotes
    • On/File
  • Google Search
You are here: Home / Archive / Raelians pioneering in cloning?

Raelians pioneering in cloning?

December 1, 1999 by Richard Cimino

Print-friendly

While many religious groups are debating the ethics of cloning, one new religious movement is taking action, pioneering in the technology.

Nova Religio (October), the journal of new religious movements, reports that the Ralians, a group mixing UFO teachings with genetic engineering concepts, founded the first biotechnology firm dedicated to the goal of human cloning. The 35,000-member group holds that space aliens visited the earth some 25,000 years ago and created life using advanced DNA technology.

Through the guidance of world religions and a final prophet Rael (born Claude Vorilhon), humans gain enlightenment and will eventually achieve immortality through cloning. Clonaid, the new cloning firm the group started in Switzerland in 1997, is currently offering a service where for $50,000 a person can preserve their cells cryogenically (deep freezing). The company plans to offer human cloning services (at about $200,000) to homosexual and sterile heterosexual couples.

The most well known figure to support Clonaid has been Richard Seed, a retired Harvard physicist and self-taught reproductive scientist who gained fame for his promise to create the first human clone. The Raelians’ attempt to fuse”anti-evolutionism and biblical literalism with progressive morals,” has put them far outside the religious mainstream. Writer John Bozeman concludes that they have now set themselves further on the fringe by becoming the first religion to make cloning a religious imperative.

(Nova Religio, Seven Bridges Press, LLC, 135 Fifth Ave., 9th Fl., New York, NY 10010-7101)

Print-friendly

Filed Under: Archive

Also in this issue

  • On/File: December 1999
  • Findings & Footnotes: December 1999
  • Current Research: December 1999
  • NCC’s problems intensify
  • Conservative Christians corner internet filter market
  • Brighter side of the millennium found in popular magazines
  • A review of millennial violence thwarted
  • Millenial fervor downshifting?

Search the Site

Download the first issue of RELIGION WATCH (1980)

Download the first issue of RELIGION WATCH (1980)

Click on the image for downloading

© 2016-2020 Richard Cimino / Religioscope
·News Pro Theme · Genesis Framework by StudioPress · WordPress