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UFO groups keep wary eye on Raelians
Florida Today, Jan. 256, 2003
http://www.floridatoday.com/
FLORIDA TODAY Staff and Wire reports
When the Raelian cloning story broke last month, Joe Jordan felt obliged to check the latest updates on the group’s Web Site. As state section director for the Mutual UFO Network‘s Brevard chapter, the Port St. John resident was already familiar with much of the sect’s dogma.
“What was really interesting were the numbers on their (Web Site) counters,” Jordan recalls. “I’d leave for a minute or two to go somewhere else, and when I’d come back, the number of visitors would increase significantly, by the thousands. Whether or not they’re buying it, I don’t know. But there’s no doubt they’re getting the attention they wanted.”
Jordan doubts the Raelian clamor will further stigmatize the already controversial field of UFOlogy, but he’s concerned about its impact on naive idealists. The alien abduction phenomenon, for instance, generally breaks down into two categories among those who claim they’ve been taken: victims who feel traumatized, and contactees professing enlightenment.
The latter, he says, often feel empowered with insights that appear similar to the Raelians’ “utopian” philosophies. “It’s very enticing, very seductive, to want to save this devastated world of ours,” he says. “But what I worry about is this turning into a dangerous cult, like Heaven’s Gate.”
Heaven’s Gate was a UFO-based sect founded by charismatic leader Marshall Applewhite. The group collapsed in 1997 with the suicides of 39 members in San Diego.
“We consider (Raelians) at the very least a nuisance,” says Don Berliner, chairman of the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), a nonprofit that since 1979 has awarded grants for UFO investigations. “There are a lot of groups on the fringes of the UFO community who are nothing but trouble and make all sorts of flashy claims.”
An aviation enthusiast who has been in the UFO game for 50 years, Berliner says he was a college student when he “first got annoyed that there were things flying through my skies that nobody seemed to be able to identify.” Although he has never seen a UFO or crossed paths with an alien, he knows of so many respected people who have that he no longer harbors any doubts.
Berliner has also been aware of the Raelians for years. “It’s people like that who give the UFO field a bad name,” he says, explaining that FUFOR’s approach is to apply conventional scientific techniques to an unscientific subject. “But with nut cases like that running around loose, it is more difficult.”
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