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Talk:Raelism

Orphan redirects for Google: Claude Vorilhon, Raelian revolution, Rael, Raelian religion, raelite, raelites

Seems like there are a lot of "references" for so short an article on an obscure subject. Looks more like proselytizing to me. maveric149

But links are no content, they are more of a hint for discussion. Links are dealing with (web)space in a very parsimonial manner, so there could be place for displaying controversial information in it's original ocurrence in this way. With an object being "obscure" that doesn't mean it's unimportant. And, I would say, in the age of and in terms of information nothing is unimportant. But as a Raelian I would like to invite others, maybe more objective non-Raelians, to participate in the "so short an article" to make it more complete. Love and Harmony, A Raelian

I don't know if having so many external links is "proselytizing", but I think there are too many, with too little explanation of why each is important. Therefore, I'm moving all but to rael.org link here for the moment:

Raelian body values (http://www.rael.org/int/english/philosophy/values/body_values).
Sensual Meditation (http://www.rael.org/int/english/philosophy/keys/body_keys4)
The Rael Deal by Susan J. Palmer (http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol4No2/Rael.htm)
featured by Human Rights Without Frontiers (http://www.hrwf.net/English/raelians99)
by Dr. James Santucci, Professor of Comparative Religion (http://hss.fullerton.edu/comparative/raelians.htm)
critical Infos on Cults, by Rick Ross (http://www.rickross.com/groups/raelians)
rael-science-select discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rael-science-select/)
rael-science en français (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rael-science-francais/)
Clonaid (http://www.clonaid.com/)
CBC News story on cloned baby girl (http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/12/27/cloned_girl021227)
CTV story with videos incl. press conference (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1040997058972_116///)
CTV with video from interview with Rael (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1041332857478_131//)
Interview with Rael: First Dolly, then Eve. Now my aim is to use cloning to change humankind (http://www.sundayherald.com/30316)

--Ryguasu

"The group says it has about 55.000 members." ... Who says this? It is a statement made by a chosen representative, I presume... This implies that Raelians have some large-scale organization and leadership. It would be nice to have a description of this organization.

I think a redirect page should be made entitled "Raelian Movement" so that a search for it will take one to the Raelism page. Personally I don't know how to do that.

Just make a link and insert #REDIRECT [[Raelism]] in it. --mav

I was going to whip up an article on the Raelians a couple months ago, but never quite got around to it, so take note: if you want to speed up your group's entry in Wikipedia, throw a press conference and claim to have cloned a human. -- Stephen Gilbert 13:37 Dec 28, 2002 (UTC)

Do you think it's NPOV to call it a cult in the first line? - Montréalais

Read the article cult. The word isn't intended to be disparaging but descriptive. If any religious movement were a cult it would be one like this. Heck even Christianity started off as a cult (read: tight-knit minority movement centered around a given personality or idea). --mav

Removed paragraph:

Modern psychology however, finds that this is not valid, and more truthfully, human psychological development is nearly entirely based on the environment in which that person has grown up in. This is the (nature versus nurture) discussion. Hence, a clone of Napoleon Bonaparte's cells, may grow up look almost exacly like the Napoleon Bonaparte of antiquity, but in evey other way remain a unique individual, with individual rights to be respected.

In spite of not being about the topic of this article the above claim is a debatable at best since many reasonable and highly intelligent people both in and out of psychology and genetics hotly debate this very topic (ever heard of the separated-at-birth-twin studies?). We already have an article on nature vs nurture so lets just leave it at that. --mav

Ahem. ok. sure. I do agree with the off-topic part, and added some similar material to the NVN article about five mins after I did this one, with a bit more balance that only comes with detail. As for topics still hotly debated, I might suggest that debate can be a means and an end in itself. On another off topic, How do you do it mav? there must be three of you. --Sv

Yes - all clones. ;) --mav

}=~~ understood. -Sv

The Raëlians are known for their support of technological advancements like genetic manipulation in order to 'improve the usefulness and beauty of life, the Internet, and nanotechnology'. As Rael said on CNN Q&A May 16, 2002, "Science should be free".[1] (http://www.rael.org/int/english/video/body_raeltv_index)

Removed. This doesn't flow with my current revision, and it doesn't seem to add much either. --Ryguasu 08:39 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

Agreed, Raelians (ignoring the umlaut) seem to be known more for their showmanship. This could be reintroduced as an undoctored quote, however. ---Sv

Just to be picky and to get it into this talk page where it might be useful, those two dots above the e are called dieresis, not umlaut. The typography is the same, but in German, the umlaut marks a different pronunciation of the vowels a and u, while in English and French, the dieresis separates two consecutive vowels into separate syllables. Ortolan88 20:18 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

I'm removing my addition here. I thought the Raelians took cloning Jesus as requiring no more than Jesus' DNA, but the new addition to the article seems to suggest it also requires a "mind transfer" of some sort, in which case this isn't really relevant:

The third option seems not to require a mind transfer, and therefore might seem more feasible. Without a mind transfer, however, it is far from certain that, even if a clone could be constructed out of, say, Jesus' DNA, that it would actually grow up to be Jesus. This seems to be based on an assumption that each person's development is determined almost entirely by genetics, with very little influence from the environment. See nature versus nurture

--Ryguasu

On second thought, I'd like a clarification. Someone has recently added the idea that the Raelians would need to find a "recording" of the minds of Hitler or Jesus in order to be able to reincarnate either of them. Could someone please clarify where this information came from? I think it is important to clarify whether the Raelians think this "recording" lies inside or outside the DNA, and, if outside, where it lies. This matters, because it determines which scientific objections are relevant. (For example, if the claim is that the "mind recording" lies outside the DNA, then the "nature vs. nurture" objections don't really apply; they're dealt with by a sort of "mind transplant".)

Perhaps the argument is this: you need both DNA copying and a mind transfer in order to either clone or resurrect anyone.

--Ryguasu

Removed:

Outside of Raelian thought, the second and third options are currently seen as in the realm of science fiction, not science. In the philosophy of mind, there is disagreement about whether or not mind transfer is possible in principle. If this does turn out feasible, it can be questioned on moral grounds, because it seems to require "erasing" the mind or soul of the clone in order to provide a host body to extend the life of the mind or soul of the parent.

If its "outside of Raelian thought", does it belong here? no. disagreement about ideas that are unpopular is one thing. This is a supposed disagreement about an idea that is not even possible, currently, or even has a casually outlined basis for its reality, and as such is fiction, which is not within the context of a factual article about Raelians. ---Sv

ps. Rygu, doesnt some of this require a disclaimer above it at least? under the subheading of claims by raelians this might be a way to separte the factual aspects from the fictional ones. just a simple cut down the middle, reality/fantasy --Sv

Sv, I think we should distinguish between two sorts of claim:

As the Raelians have pointed out, mind transfer is just around the corner.
The Raelians believe that mind transfer is not only in principle possible but something that humans will eventually achieve.

The first, which implies that mind transfer is a generally accepted idea, is absolutely silly.

The second, however, is what I see as a NPOV statement about what Raelians believe. Furthermore, I think that, in light of it, it is quite reasonable to include a paragraph comparing this to other schools of thought's views on mind transfer. Perspectives from religion would of course be welcome, but the only perspectives I am familiar enough with come from western philosophy and science fiction. Do you object to this?

As for separating generally accepted facts from particular beliefs, I agree that this is worthwhile. But note that most of the fact vs. fiction issues arise in connection to Clonaid, and are discussed in its article. The point of this article is to explicate Raelian belief. Unless these beliefs are being presented as generally accepted facts, I don't see the problem.

Finally, even though I do not take Raelian ideas very seriously, I think you are unnecessarily insulting them by calling them "fiction". I'm sure you wouldn't get away with such behavior on the talk page for, say, Christianity.

--Ryguasu

The current article conflates "cloning" and "mind transfer" which are two completely different things. (I'm about to change that.) Is this confusion because Raelians also fail to adequately distinguish between them? (That is, when a Raelian says the goal is to "clone", does he really mean the goal is to "clone and memory/brain/body transfer"? If so, we should explicitly state that what Raelians mean when they use the word clone is not what the rest of the world means. Also, if the Raelians believe that using a cloned body will lessen the chances of "rejection" of a mind-transfer, that should stay in and we should say it's their belief: but if it's just someone's theory about why Raelians might prefer to use a cloned body, we should get rid of it. -- Someone else 22:41 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

This is a vital distinction to make, and I'm glad you're on top of this. All the same, I think your creation of two separate headings here was a little excessive. I'm rewriting it again under one heading, but with new emphasis on the distinction; let me know what you think.

In any case, I think it is the case that Raelians fail to distinguish between biological "cloning" and science fiction-like "cloning". You can hardly say that they are alone in this, however; the general public has some crazy idea of what "human cloning" is all about. I think this is ultimately to be blamed less on the public than on the scientists who named their technique "cloning"; taking a word from science fiction to label a new science probably can't help but stir up confusion for years. (I assume that the biological term didn't come first, though I'd love to hear more about this.)

I am removing the following, because they seem confusing, in retrospect:

They believe that transfering the mind to a clone, as opposed to a random human body, will reduce the new body's chance of "rejecting" the mind.

(I don't know who inserted this.)

(The possibility for rejection is presumably seen to exist due to analogy with the way bodies sometimes reject transplated organs - the actual scientific speculations on the likelihood and limits of this technique are discussed in the article on human cloning - at best it seems like a long term goal).

(I originally inserted this. I think the analogy with organs is the only way to make sense of the Raelian program. But that's my argument, not theirs.)

I also inserted talk of "whole-body transplants" not to imply that the Raelians use this terminology, but to invoke terminology others have used for discussing the same issues. I think this particular phrase may be due to Daniel Dennett.

--Ryguasu

Your way of clarifying without new headings looks fine. I would suggest that if Raelians don't use the term "whole-body transplant" that it too should leave their article. (As far as I can tell they have never publicly stated their beliefs about exactly how one would "download" a mind from one body to another. If they say "mind transfer" we should use that - you could put a link to whole-body transplant as a "see also" or something.) BTW, the word "clone", I think, was scientific first, science fiction later: the first citation in the OED is 1903 and relates to plants. Maybe science fiction was the first to apply it to humans?? Or they went back and forth expanding the meaning... -- Someone else 01:39 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Whatever process the Raelians envision for immortality assumes that a mind must be transferred rather than copied.

Wait a minute! Someone else, are you sure this is what the Raelians think? Keep in mind that I myself (and I am most certainly not a Raelian) may have inserted the phrase "mind transfer". Now that you make the distinction, I realize that I have no idea if the Raelian view is based on copy or transfer. Does anyone? --Ryguasu

Well, making endless copies of a thing is not the same as that thing having eternal life. I think they are rather clearly aiming at the latter. If anyone can find a more explicit statement, more power to 'em! -- Someone else 05:57 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

That's an excellent point. I just hope our efforts (mine included) to reverse-engineer what the Raelians believe are not too misguided. It would be odd if the world's most coherent statement of Raelian beliefs ended up being here on Wikipedia, having been written, to a large extent, by people that do not share these beliefs at all. --Ryguasu 06:19 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

Indeed<G>. -- Someone else

A slight inconsistency: this article uses "mind transfer" to mean only non-surgical processes. The article mind transfer uses the phrase to mean non-surgical and surgical processes. I have no opinions about which is more "correct". Just seems a little odd. --Ryguasu 06:41 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

BFB, I object to your removing speculation about how the person's mind/brain could be transferred into the clone. People are very curious about how this might work, and, even if the Raelians don't advocate a particular, concrete technique (I don't think they do, although I'm not too sure), Wikipedia should provide some kind of explanation. At very least, this is necessary for the reader to assess whether or not the group is "out to lunch". Now perhaps you object to having such an explanation on this particular page. I don't find it troublesome, but perhaps you could suggest another page where we could move the explanation, and which we could link to? --Ryguasu 21:47 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Ryguasu. I reviewed my edits, and I'm not sure exactly what part you are objecting to. Reading the Raelian website makes it clear that they believe they can *somehow* transfer the mind from the old physical brain to the new physical brain, and not that they take the old physical brain and put it in the new physical body. They don't say how they plan on doing this "mind transfer", and I think speculation here is in order. What I was trying to remove is the stuff that speculated they were going to swap physical brains, because they are pretty clear that isn't what they are up to. -º¡º

I guess I didn't understand the purpose of your edit; now things make more sense. So people had got carried away misinterpreting the Raelians. To prevent further confusion, as well as for general edification purposes, it might be worthwhile leaving a link to full-body transplant[?], and indicating that this is not what the Raelians have in mind. I guess we agree that some speculation about what the Raelians actually could (or perhaps should) have in mind is in order. --Ryguasu 22:32 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. All I was trying to do was interpret what I read on their web page into the article. -º¡º

Critics of Raelism may be interested in this (http://www.startrek.com/library/tos_episodes/episodes_tos_detail_68796.asp) Star Trek episode from the late 60s. It has themes along the lines of Raelism, and has got an alien character called Rael.

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