OUT-OF-WORK SCI-FI WRITER, WILL WORK FOR STORY IDEAS: TECHNOLOGY MAY BE OUTPACING LIMITS OF IMAGINATION & ETHICS
By Frederick Meekins
March 5, 2001

If technological progress continues at its current pace, most authors of science fiction may soon find themselves out of work as science seems ready to surpass the ingenuity of speculative fantasy literature.

From a plot straight out of a movie or novel, a cult that worships extraterrestrials hopes to be the first to produce a cloned baby.

According to the Sunday Times of London, the Raelian movement through the auspices of its Clonaid corporation plans to produce a duplicate of a ten months old baby boy who died during an operation. So from a certain naturalistic perspective, one might say these scientists hope to bring about the child's "resurrection", if you will.

This story is quite newsworthy in itself. However, a closer examination of those behind this effort provides pivotal insight into the forces at work in the world today and their possible implications upon the future.

Clonaid's attempt at human cloning will be as much a religious sacrament for the group as a scientific accomplishment. According to the Sunday Times, the Raelian movement believes human beings were themselves originally genetically engineered by extraterrestrials.

The movement's webpage claims that in 1973 Claude Vorilhon met an extraterrestrial who revealed to him that life on earth was, in the words of the group's official statement, "not the work of an immaterial God, nor the result of random evolution."

Rather terrestrial life is the work of the "Elohim". Bible scholars will note this Hebrew word for God. Vorilhon contends the word has been mistranslated and more accurately means "those who came from the sky." Upon receiving this revelation, Vorilhon changed his name to "Rael", meaning "messenger of the Elohim".

Raelians also hope to establish an official embassy welcoming extraterrestrials to earth. They also reject the Book of Revelation, and for good reason as we shall discover later.

However, one does not necessarily have to turn to Bible prophecy to see where the implications of this story are possibly leading.

Viewers of the science fiction drama "Earth: Final Conflict" will note the similarity of the name adopted by the movement's chief seer, "Rael", with an alien character on the show named "Mael" who played a similar role in bringing extraterrestrial wisdom to mankind.

But from here, "Earth: Final Conflict" becomes more of an indictment against the Raelian movement than an advertisement for it. In a move paralleling Raelian teaching, the Talons, or "Companions" as they prefer to be called, arrive on earth in a spirit of peace and goodwill.

Such beneficence turns out to be merely a ruse since the true intentions of the Talons are to subjugate the earth and experiment on mankind, manipulating humanity into the Talons' ongoing conflict with another alien species known as the Jaridians.

In pursuit of this end, over the course of the program's four season run thus far, the Talons have placed cyber-viral implants into the minds of humans for purposes of control and genetically engineered clones referred to as "bio-surrogates" into which personalities could be downloaded from other bodies as well as attempted to produce human/alien hybrids in an attempt to solve the problem of their own infertility. There was even an early episode dealing with a "Church of the Companions" that worshipped the aliens, but little ever came of this potentially fruitful plot; one almost wonders now if it might have stepped on one to many toes.

Most would dismiss the Raelians as silly and any insight available through "Earth: Final Conflict" as escapist entertainment. It would seem, however, that extraterrestrial theologies and UFO religions are on the rise and increasing in influence.

Several years ago, the Heaven's Gate Cult committed mass suicide, thinking that leaving their earthly "containers" would beam them up to a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet. Scientology, the religion founded by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, believes human beings are reincarnated space aliens. This particular sect is prominent among the Hollywood elite, with John Travolta and Tom Cruise perhaps being the most prominent adherents.

Yet this worldview placing extraterrestrials on the throne of heaven once occupied by God is not confined to the less educated fringe of society. It is becoming increasingly popular among society's so-called "sophistictaed" who cannot stomach submitting to an omnipotent God as the source of all morals and creation.

The director of the Raelian movement's Clonaid project, Brigette Boisselier, holds two doctorates and teaches college level chemistry. Others just as educated but perhaps not as quick to embrace the mystical ramifications of New Age theology are coming to accept the idea that life on earth is the product of intelligence beyond this planet. This is because naturalistic science needs a new alternative in light of probability declaring evolution an impossibility.

In scientific circles, the idea that life on earth developed in outer space is referred to as "panspermia" and is advocated by no less a scientific luminary as Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA.

But despite such stellar credentials, panspermia still doesn't cut it. For even if it were true, it only moves the need for God back one step. Even if man was manufactured aboard a flying saucer, it does not explain where the little green Martians came from. Eventually you're going to run up against the need for an unmoved mover originally discussed by Aristotle and given a more Christian form by Thomas Aquinas.

Unfortunately, history teaches that those unwilling to admit their sin and need for salvation through Jesus Christ are impervious to sound theological logic regardless of the consequences. And it might not be too far fetched that cloning and UFO theology might have a role to play in end times prophecy.

In a blasphemous attempt to imitate Jesus, the Anti-Christ might be brought about by a false virgin birth by being engineered in a laboratory as the perfect human specimen. Or upon receiving the head wound mentioned in Revelation 13, the Anti-Christ could be "resurrected" by being cloned or having his spirit "downloaded" into an additional body kept in cryogenic storage for just such an emergency.

Demons masquerading as extraterrestrials promoting New Age religion and philosophy could come forward to take responsibility for the Rapture, claiming that Christians upon the earth at the time had to be removed for the sake of mankind's evolutionary development.

Such scenarios are merely a possibility of how certain eschatological events might unfold in light of current philosophical, theological, and technological developments. To many, such a course of events seems highly unlikely. But then again, who among us as little as five years ago would have thought clones and UFO cults would come to the forefront as legitimate news items in reputable journalistic sources?

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