Aliens Adored: RaÎ'l's UFO Religion [Paperback]

Susan J Palmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2004

Aliens Adored is the first full length, in-depth look at the Raelian movement, a fascinating new religion founded in the 1970s by the charismatic prophet, Rael. Born in France as Claude Vorilhon, the former race-car driver founded the religion after he experienced a visitation from the aliens (the "elohim") who, in his cosmology, created humans by cloning themselves. The millenarian movement awaits the return of the alien creators, and in the meantime seeks to develop the potential of its adherents through free love, sexual experimentation, opposition to nuclear proliferation and war, and the development of the science of cloning. Sociologist Susan J. Palmer has studied the Raelian movement for more than a decade, observing meetings and rituals and enjoying unprecedented access to the group's leaders as well as to its rank-and-file members. In this pioneering study she provides a thorough analysis of the movement, focusing on issues of sexuality, millenarianism, and the impact of the scientific worldview on religion and the environment. Rael's radical sexual ethics, his gnostic anthropocentrism, and shallow ecotheology offer us a mirror through which we see how our worldview has been shaped by the forces of globalization, postmodernism, and secular humanism. Susan J. Palmer teaches religious studies at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. She is the author of Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers: Women's Roles in New Religions and coeditor of Children in New Religions (Rutgers University Press).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Palmer, a professor of religious studies at Dawson College in Montreal, offers a rare full-length analysis of the Raelian movement, which made headlines in 2002 when leaders claimed to have successfully cloned a human being. Palmer is a scholar of new religious movements, and the book undertakes some serious academic questions (including a thoughtful discussion of the Raelians as a test case for Weber's thesis on the routinization of charisma), but it is also downright fun, even dishy. Palmer has spent more than 15 years observing the Raelians and their controversial leader firsthand, and she shares her own experiences and impressions within a balanced portrait of the history, organization and theology of the group. Drawing on interviews, participant-observer accounts of Raelian meetings and analyses of the movement's increasingly sophisticated public relations outreach, Palmer profiles a fascinating new religion still struggling to define itself. Her tone is sometimes admiring, sometimes critical, and always intrigued.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Palmer treats seriously a religious movement that many do not, thanks to its otherworldly philosophy that incorporates UFOs, openness toward sexuality, reliance on science over spirituality, and enthusiasm for human cloning. The International Raelian Movement was born in December 1973 in France when its founder, sports journalist Claude Vorilhon, encountered extraterrestrials who told him that life on earth was genetically manufactured (cloned) millennia ago by alien scientists from a saucerful of their own DNA. Vorilhon took the name Rael, moved to Montreal, and now claims to have 60,000 adherents in 60 countries. Palmer has researched the group since 1987, and she analyzes its organization, ethics, theology, prophecies, leaders, and followers, and compares it to other millennialist and UFO religions. A crucial chapter recounts its controversial 2002 announcement that its genetic laboratory, Clonaid, had produced the world's first cloned human. Hoax, hype, or breakthrough? Palmer has her suspicions but offers a generally objective account of the Raelians and the significance of their "bridg[ing] the cultural and cognitive gap between science and religion." George Eberhart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (September 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813534763
• ISBN-13: 978-0813534763
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #523,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Agnosticism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aliens? Don't think so!, September 17, 2005

By 

comet (Oz) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aliens Adored: RaÎ'l's UFO Religion (Paperback)

I obtained this book to understand the Raelian Movement a little better, as they've had so much bad publiciity from people who are not broad-minded enough to be able to understand that "everyone of us is different". And what a great book it was - it didn't "bad-mouth" the Movement & didn't support it either. It was written in impartial terms, for which I commend its author.

An interesting read for people who've only heard the negative press reports about this group. Go on, BUY IT & cast your own impartial opinions!!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On target for the most part, January 21, 2010

By 

Jonathan S. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aliens Adored: RaÎ'l's UFO Religion (Paperback)

Susan Palmer is right with most of her impressions. Raelians are mostly good people being duped by a con man who isn't all bad. He gives them hope and makes them feel important with a special "mission" to save the world, and he spreads a mostly positive message that makes sense but isn't very original. As another reviewer said, Palmer did point out that Jean Sendy might have been Rael's inspiration (he claimed he learned everything directly from the ET's). But Palmer only mentioned one of Sendy's books. She didn't mention Those gods who made heaven & earth; the novel of the Bible. and she also missed The Coming of the Gods. If she had read the other Sendy books, she would see more clearly that Rael's first book is not very original at all.

Palmer also calls Rael a "serial monogamist" because he has been married to the same woman for years. His past also shows long term relationships. But maybe Palmer didn't know about the inside activities of Rael's Order of Angels or the contracts some of them sign taking away their right to refuse sex with Rael whenever the "prophet" demands it. She doesn't say enough about Rael's finances and the naive members who donate their money for an embassy that will never be built. But she still gets a lot of things right. She describes some of the tactics used to recruit new members and get donations, including the last will and testaments of members leaving everything to the movement when they die. She also talks about the way Rael controls his media image and makes it seem like the world is against him. Rael's claims of "religious persecution" are perfect to keep members feeling protective of their "prophet" while they fight and manipulate the media to "help the world".

Palmer doesn't believe Rael's story for a minute. She describes him as "a great artist" and he uses his members to create a fantasy world that feels better to them than reality. Raelian seminars are fun for all and seem to be largely inspired by the teachings of Indian guru Osho Rajneesh. Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously. Rael the great artist seems to take the best of whatever he can find and adds it into his "message from the ET's." The good news is that the core values and ideas are mostly good, but truth doesn't seem to matter to Rael at all. The Raelian Movement claims to have tens of thousands of members, but this is Rael's best marketing trick of all. The truth is that the Raelian Movement is very tiny, and the big numbers are pure fiction. The "prophet" teaches his PR department to lie whenever it makes his movement look much bigger than it really is.

Palmer wrote that Rael is a "charismatic leader" and she is right. He can be very charming when it benefits him, and people are easily attracted to his personality. He is a bold leader who loves to push everyone's buttons while he constantly searches for the next big marketing angle. Members support him because they think they're helping the last prophet to save the world, and Rael benefits in the most typical ways, fame, money and women. Many people are leaving his movement now that the truth is coming out, so Palmer's book and others especially Sendy are making a difference.

8 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hardly a scholarly work, May 8, 2007

By 

Jacques F. Vallee (SAN FRANCISCO, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aliens Adored: RaÎ'l's UFO Religion (Paperback)

Researchers of alternative religion who would welcome a well-documented study of Claude Vorilhon and his Raelian religion will be disappointed by this book, which is flawed in content and methodology. For example, Ms.Palmer implies that I "concocted" a particular incident, known as the "Teesdale Inheritance," because supposedly I was motivated by a desire to discredit Vorilhon. She makes this accusation which amounts to defamation of character - essentially attributing to me the behavior of a fabricator and liar - based on innuendoes from another ufologist that she never bothered to check.
I have a full research file on the Teesdale Inheritance, complete with first-hand testimony from people who could shed light on this episode and its relationship to Raël's career, yet I was never even contacted by this supposedly "scholarly" author - or by any fact-checker from Rutgers University. If the author is so careless in this one episode, where she does not hesitate to cast doubts on the ethics and integrity of a fellow researcher, can we trust anything else in her book?
Dr. Jacques F. Vallee, Ph.D.