Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the integration of science, new technologies and spirituality in the Raëlian movement and contextualizes followers’ cosmology within various influential religious currents.

Paper long abstract:

Technologies of various kinds have been central to the outlook and discourses of members of the Raëlian movement. Established in France in the mid-1970s, and categorized as a UFO religion, followers of Raëlism interpret the biblical Elohim as an extraterrestrial group of advanced beings that created humanity and will return to humankind. The founder of Raëlism, Claude Vorilhon, averred he had been brought to the Elohim's home planet, which he described as a technological utopia where robots carried out the work leaving the people to live a carefree life. Advanced machinery was from the outset married to the conceptualization of a spiritual idyll. Their interest in science and technology has often been the media talking point, particularly in the 1990s when the biotechnology company Clonaid, part of the International Raelian Movement, made controversial claims about cloning a baby they named Eve. Cloning is significant as part of the cosmology in that the afterlife may involve the “recreation” of individual human beings by the Elohim by way of “transmission of their cellular data”. This paper explores the reconciliation of science and religion – often presented as dichotomous – in the Raëlian cosmology as well as the influence of New Age and various esoteric currents on the integration of science and spirituality in this new religious movement.