Claude Vorhilhorn's Fraud

I recently discovered a really fantastic atheistic cult called the Raelian Movement, started by Claude Vorhilhorn in the 1970's.  He wrote a book in which he describes an encounter with an alien (Mr. President) who revealed to him the true origins of life on our planet and human civilization. Here are some of his claims (not in any particular order):

1. the same alien (Mr. President) is a scientist who has lived for over 25,000 years and together with a team of similarly long-lived scientists created all the forms of plant and animal life on this planet, and that the diversity of human races and of all life reflects the creativity of different teams of scientists and artists who were the creators.

2. the team of alien scientists created the single continent that existed before breaking up and becoming the separate continents we know today

3. the aliens are waiting to see how humanity turns out, to see if we're intelligent and peaceful enough to deserve receiving our inheritance - the sum of all knowledge acquired by our alien creators

4. the aliens have intervened in human affairs throughout our early history and some of these incidents are documented in the Bible, and have been misinterpreted by subsequent generations

5. the aliens are afraid that humans will be dangerous to them when we catch up to their technological achievements, which is why they're watching us, but also they want to hurry things along so that's why they've allowed themselves to be seen (UFO sightings)

6. the aliens achieved immortality through cloning, and it's possible to clone a person and all his personality and knowledge from a single cell of any part of the body. Also, that it's possible to transfer knowledge from one person to another by extracting brain fluid from the brain of one and injecting it into the brain of the other - and that's how the aliens teach their young.

7. the resurrection of the righteous that is predicted in the Bible will be done by the aliens using their cloning techniques

What's really interesting to me is that, when I was reading his book this week, I found myself really unsurprised by many of his alien biblical interpretations because I have seen some of the episodes of Ancient Aliens and I believe that the artifacts we have from ancient civilizations combined with religious histories from around the world certainly make a pretty good case that it's possible that aliens have visited our planet in the past.

However, I was disappointed that Claude didn't research the science better before writing his book, because some of what we know today about the world is seated very strongly in physical evidence that doesn't match the story Claude tells.

For example, the theory of continental drift is based on pretty good evidence that the continents drift a tiny amount every year and that over the 4.5 billion years that the earth has existed they have drifted together and and part several times, and the last time they were together was from approximately 300 million years ago to 200 million years ago when they started their drift from the last single continent into their current positions.  This contrasts greatly with Claude's story that the aliens found our planet covered completely by water 25,000 years ago and created a single continent by setting explosions everywhere and piling the earth into a single mass... which then drifted apart into our current continents sometime between 22,000 years ago and now.  That's enough time for the sea levels to change in many places but not for the continental drift.

Another problem with Claude's story is that we know quite a lot about how the body works and there isn't any evidence at all that any part of a person's knowledge lies outside of their brain. Even "muscle memory" is stored in the brain.  The genetic material in our cells is a blueprint for the body, it's not a copy of our memory. Furthermore, what we know of how the brain works also doesn't include any evidence that brain fluid stores any of a person's knowledge. So even if Claude's aliens can clone themselves and transfer their own memory to their clones using such a pair of techniques, which I'll assume is possible although not in the way Claude describes, they still wouldn't be able to resurrect righteous people who died generations ago because first, it's not possible to know by looking at a grave who was righteous and who wasn't (unless the aliens have tracked every single person's life and their burial site); and second, even if aliens recover genetic material from a person's grave they are not likely to find any brain fluid remaining from which to recover the personality. So this seems like quite a bit of fiction.

Finally, Claude claims that the alien intentionally didn't give him any evidence to show the world as a test of our intelligence - if we are intelligent enough then we will know Claude's story is true without any evidence. Well... that's absurd. An intelligent person who seeks the truth prefers to find it from evidence and observations.  And if we arrive at the conclusion that aliens have already visited our planet in the past independently of Claude, it will be using evidence that we find in our environment.

We'll be forced to conclude that although Claude is one of many authors who have postulated the existence of aliens, Claude is also one of the many phonies who invented incredible stories, and a creator of yet another cult.

I think that a beautiful idea isn't a good enough reason to lie to people.  Assuming Claude's story of alien encounter is a hoax, I would say to Claude that he had a fantastic idea and that if he had simply published it as a "what if", then if evidence is later discovered that shows he was in the ballpark of the truth he could have been honored as a visionary.