There's an interesting story in the news this week about a group that is conducting experiments in human cloning and how and why they are defending the practice. The group in question call themselves Raelians or The Raelians and to all intent and purposes they are a religious group - I'll refrain from calling them a cult - just yet. The group was founded by a French journalist by the name of Claude Vorilhon who claims to have had an experience with a UFO and the occupants whom he calls The Elohim". They supposedly decided that he was the person on Earth to contact and pass along a message to us unwashed masses. The message is that we are simply an Alien experiment floating in the Cosmos. Ahem.....

As a result of this particular belief, it appears The Raelians believe that we are to go forth and multiply - but they've taken that idea to the next extreme - we should go forth and duplicate. Now I'm not going to get into any kind of argument about whether we should be cloning human beings or not because there are far wiser people than I discussing the pros and cons of this - ad nauseum.

The problem that I have with all of this is that groups like The Raelians crop up every now and again and are convinced that they are the chosen few who are going to guide all of us to some fabled alien promised land. Now here again, I cannot say with impunity that The Raelians are some kind of bogus cult because maybe everything they're saying is... true... ahem.

However... yeah, there's always a however... I've done just a teenie bit of research into this group and there are a few things that kind of grate on me a little.

First they have created a thing called UFOland and the opening comment is that it is the LARGEST building built using - bales of hay...(Guess they never read the book about The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf) In any case, the UFOland location is in Quebec about halfway between Montreal and Quebec city - close to the U.S. border and other than it being open only between May and September, it really doesn't remotely resemble any kind of theme-park like Disneyland. You have one building with seven rooms.

The other part of the Raelian religion that bothers me is their entire religion is based on UFOs and extraterrestrial lifeforms and they embrace this in every way, in between embracing each other. Their reconstruction of the ship that contacted Claude or Rael as he calls himself now, strangely resembles the ship from the Science Fiction movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" complete with a nice little set of stairs to let the occupants exit the ship. But once again, it is not for me to say whether The Raelians are wrong in their belief because maybe we really are nothing more than some big overgrown lab rat running a maze.

The crux of the matter is this, they're supporting human cloning and financing human cloning. Because of this, they're in the news... and of course much of the coverage details their belief in UFOs and aliens. Because they're such a radical group and their ideas tend to - how shall I put this - stretch our belief systems, everyone associated with the study of the UFO phenomenon gets tarred with the same brush and that is simply unfair. There are enough sensational things involved with studying UFOs and all that relates to them without bringing groups like The Raelians into it.