In an official statement released today, Rael congratulated talk show host Bill Maher and director Larry Charles on the success of their new movie, “Religulous,” which pokes fun at major religions.
To make the film, now in nationwide release, Maher, an agnostic, traveled the world with his crew, interviewing everyone from 18-wheeler drivers at a truck-stop chapel to top-ranking clergy and scientists. Polite but insistent, he asked question after question, “roasting” interviewees (with the exception of the scientists) by exposing contradictions and fallacies in their answers. The focus was on Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Raelians, including Rael himself, were interviewed for the film, but despite early reports, that segment didn't make the final cut.
"Even if we had been roasted, I believe we would still applaud Religulous," said Dr. Brigitte Boisselier,a Raelian bishop who is spokesperson for the International Raelian Movement. "Maher's intent was to show the hypocrisy and absurdities of monotheism, and the film did exactly that. We weren't in the final cut probably because Raelians just didn't make it to the top of the 'ridiculous chart.' Being atheists, we have no room for superstition like the ones shared by most of the religions but we share with them the understanding that Prophets were contacted by those who created us and who were considered as gods by our ancestors... a fascinating way to look at our past and at our future too... ( see
www.rael.org) Along with praising Maher and Charles, Rael took the opportunity to lambaste one of his own targets, Pope Benedict XVI, who in an Oct. 5 BBC report lamented a decline of interest in the Bible and said that many people today have decided that god is dead.
“In this report, the pope, as usual, demonstrated infinite stupidity,” Rael said. “Intelligent people around the world don’t say, ‘god is dead.’ What they do say is, ‘There is no god.’ These two statements are deeply different. To be dead, you have to have been alive before. And since there never was a god, something that was never alive and never existed cannot be declared ‘dead.’ The same is true of ‘the holy spirit,’ which of course never existed, being the pure invention of primitive people.
“Thanks to science, humanity now realizes at last that all such absurdities were imposed by primitive religions, with the help of governments that used them to have greater control over the population. They were also used as a pretext for pillaging the world during the colonization era, under the guise of ‘spreading the true faith.’
Due to scientific advances, Rael said, humanity now realizes that the universe is infinite, and that we can cure all diseases – which are natural phenomena, not the punishment of some sadistic god. “Even death will be suppressed, thanks to cloning,” he said.
He said people now realize that women are equal to men and that they have the right to decide whether they want to have a baby or not.
“Thanks to contraception and abortion, they know that a baby – even the pope – is not ‘a gift from god’ but the fruit of the meeting between a sperm and an ovum,” Rael said. “And people also know that gay people are not ‘sinners,’ since homosexuality is genetic, and that there is no such thing as original sin. The concept of everyone being born guilty – even before doing anything – was used to spread guilt, in the name of ‘a god of love.’
Rael pointed out that people today know that sex is good, that it’s the most natural pleasure, and that it can be enjoyed freely without deciding to create a child.
“It’s to be expected that the new humanity, freed from superstitions, is staying far away from churches and temples and visiting sex shops and swingers clubs instead,” Rael said. “That’s why European churches are empty, and it’s why there are no new priests to replace the old ones. The purpose of life is to be happy, spread love, happiness and peace. That purpose can be achieved much more successfully without the concept of a god. The church is dead, but not god, for he was never alive in the first place. He never existed!”