“Did I.Q.s just drop sharply while I was away?” - Ripley

By Brian Thompson

I. The Setup

With all the polygamy in the news lately, you’d think creepy cults would be all the rage. Why go to the office every day and pretend to work while you watch people fail at ineptly planned physical stunts? If there’s anything I learned from watching American Beauty (other than the fact that plastic bags are both environmentally disastrous and utterly beautiful to the emotionally stunted) it’s that the 9 to 5 life is, like, prison, man. Better to sit in your garage all day smoking the neighbor’s pot and lusting after your teenage daughter’s freakishly bird-like friend. However, the one downside to living an Oscar-winning life of leisure (aside from being murdered by your Nazi, gun-loving, closeted homosexual, ludicrously unbelievable stereotype of a neighbor) it’s the sudden and crippling loss of income. Maybe the only respite from a long day at the office shilling for the Man is a few puffs of illegal plant life in the evenings, but it’s the Man who’s feeding your habit. This is not a sustainable cycle.

But there are a couple of options for a potential fringe dweller. You can knock over a liquor store and spend your days living off the taxpayer’s dime in your local prison yard. But that’s not really the best lifestyle choice for anyone who’s black, white, Asian, Latino, or human. Joining a crazy cult is the next best thing. Everyone can pool their resources behind the charismatic leader. You don’t have to deal with the stress of making complicated life decisions or not marrying as many people as you want. It’s kind of like being an Amway member, except… No, it’s exactly like being an Amway member.

But, like any profitable (for the guy/gal at the top) business venture, some cults are better than others. You definitely want to stay away from the doomsday ones. Aside from just sounding ominous, you’re likely to end up dead in an embarrassing track suit or shamefully exiting a remote mountain cave, squinting your eyes at the inexplicably still-burning sun. Also, you should take a note from our polygamist Mormon pals over in Texas and stay off a compound. True, there’s a fine line between a compound and a resort getaway, but that line is often shaped like assault weapons and pedophilia.

No, if you’re going to throw in with a cult, there’s really only one that makes sense. They’re kooky, they’re sexy, and they’ve got that cool sci-fi appeal you’ve been looking for. (No, Mormonism isn’t sci-fi. It’s more Robert E. Howard-esque high fantasy.) It’s time to join up with the Raelians.

II. The Findings

Let’s get the whole cloning thing out of the way first. Yes, the Raelians run a company called Clonaid, which claims to be able to create human clones on demand for just several thousands of dollars. No, they can’t really do it. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? They’re offering hope to thousands of infertile or homosexual couples that want to carry on their family names in the creepiest and most narcissistic form imaginable. Plus, actual geneticists are notoriously lazy. Hearing that a UFO cult in Montreal may have beaten them to the human cloning punch may just be the kick in the pants they need to hurry up and advance to the point where I can finally purchase a day pass to Six Flags Over The Island of Dr. Moreau.

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You want a charismatic leader? Screw you, Marshall Applewhite. So long, David Koresh. The Raelians follow the prophet conveniently known as Rael. Sure, he may have been born Claude Vorilhon in 1946 France, but do you think “Wolf Blitzer” is actually that guy’s real name? Even before he became a prophet, Rael was cool enough to garner at least a couple of hundred worshippers. The man was a Formula One race car driver, for Christ’s sakes. If the number of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. bumper stickers I see around town are any indication, the world loves nothing more than singing the praises of those brave enough to strap themselves behind the wheel of a car and drive around in circles.

Not content with courageously leaving one spot and driving back to it as quickly as possible, Rael found himself inside a volcano near Clermont-Ferrand, France (yes, he was a volcano spelunker – suck on that, Rev. Moon) when he was approached by a silvery space craft. A beautiful being emerged and told him he was the last prophet of mankind and would henceforth be known as Rael, the messenger.

The craft took him aboard and whisked him away to the planet of the galactic gods, where he mingled with previous human prophets such as Jesus, Buddha, and Joseph Smith. (Seriously, he says Joseph Smith was there. This seems unlikely, but perhaps the thrill of space travel warped Rael’s senses? I don’t know. Regardless, this is the only unbelievable details in his whole story.) There he learned the true origins of life on Earth – the genetic manipulation of alien DNA some 25,000 years ago. Give or take. There is no god and no soul, and the only way we may achieve immortality is by pursuing the science of cloning.

Okay, you’re thinking this might be a little too weird for you. You can consume a cracker and pretend it’s the body of your god’s only son, but this alien stuff is a stretch. I get that. But let’s put aside the whole giving 10% of your income to Rael thing. It’s really the least you can do to repay him for provide him with such a wonderful social network. See, being a Raelian isn’t all about laboratory experiments and consorting with imaginary little green men. The further implication of the soulless, futurist morality is that all those oppressively anti-sex laws that sprung up out of the Abrahamic tradition can be chucked out like so many failed half-clones. A life of casual sex and ultimate leisure is built right into the cult! And since science is so important to their worldview (sort of), they’re all about being safe about it. Sex cults might be a dime a dozen, but not many maintain the stringent hygiene standards of your higher budget pornography companies. And while you’re sexing up and cooling off, why not scrape a little petty cash off the top of the cloning fund and treat yourself to an Astropop at the cult’s 24-hour ice cream stand?

III. The Conclusions

I choose to live a life devoted to physical toil and the pursuit of reason, but that’s only because I’m bitter and deeply depressed. If you’re itching to turn over a new leaf on the tree of your life, you could do worse than to hop on board the Raelian train. True, there’s not much future for the cult once the leader dies. It gets progressively harder and harder to decide just who you should be giving 10% of your income to. But there’s still a couple of decades of decadence left, at the least. And unlike other cults that just hoard their money in anticipation of impending criminal litigation, the Raelians are actually trying to do some good in the world.

Rael has become infuriated by the practice of female genital mutilation across Africa and in several Muslim countries. You may have already learned this from watching this season’s “America’s Next Top Model”, where a victim of genital mutilation is the latest contestant Tyra Banks can pretend she cares about. But this is a huge problem. Some communities in Africa “circumcise” 98% of the girls born there. This misogynistic, barbaric, and inhuman practice has to be stopped, and, oddly enough, the Raelians are actually doing something about it. They’ve formed Clitoraid, a non-profit organization devoted to setting up hospitals in Africa where women can receive free genital reconstruction surgery. Lest you think this is another cloning scheme (although why would they want to clone a bunch of clitorises?), it seems like everything’s on the up and up. They’ve even hired the world’s foremost genital reconstruction surgeon, Dr. Marci Bowers. “They bought into this philosophy involving extraterrestrial beings on Earth,” she says. “I don’t have to buy into the whole concept to do the work.”

So kudos to the crazy Raelians. It’s about time an insane cult of massively delusional individuals got some decent press.

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About The Amateur Scientist: Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years.

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