[Faith] Planetary Alignment

I confess I've completely lost track of the Raelians, those cloning hobbyists who have the intergalactic timeshares. Wow! Have they been busy! They endorsed John Kerry for President, offered him baptism if he were excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and are now advocating for the seccession of the pro-Kerry States. They're also reporting an 85% chance humans will destroy themselves now that Bush has been re-elected, but we knew that already.

But it wasn't the Raelians' commingling of Church and State that caught my eye, nor the fact that Raelians recently appeared in Vogue Men International. No, what caught my attention was the fact that His Holiness RAEL has endorsed the intelligent design theory of creation.

One of the major arguments against The Theory of Intelligent Design has been that it went against the 'naturalism philosophy' of science (nothing supernatural should be involved in explaining the world). The Raelian Movement would like to underscore that The Theory of Intelligent Design does not lead to a supernatural designer but to an extraterrestrial human civilization designer, which is in line with 'naturalism philosophy'. One day, maybe sooner that you might imagine possible, we will go to other planets and scientifically engineer life on them. Then, probably, these worlds will create deistic religions from the interactions we will have with them. After this, they will develop an evolutionary theory to escape from the super naturalistic view of their ancestors, and finally, they will discover that life on their planet was indeed designed - but by us, human beings who came from another world, the Earth…

Also, the Raelian website has a nifty page for helping you meet other Raelians — sort of a Raelian orkut. I've not cross-referenced these people with the Meet the Trepanners page, but I'll bet there are some matches there.