For this Monday's bit of New Yorkana, I present this man, almost as permanent a fixture to Union Square as the statue of George Washington. This man is a Raëlian, one of the more interesting and less frightening of the science/religion cults. On most days, you can find him marching up and down the sidewalks of Union Square.Like the Scientologists, the Raëlians believe that the Earth was terraformed by aliens. But unlike the Scientologists, the Raëlians do not believe that we have billions of aliens souls living in our body, forcing us to make bad decisions like remaking the same tired movie over and over.
The most fascinating aspect of the Raëlian religion is that they believe in punitive reincarnation, through cloning. That way suicide bombers can be cloned from their bits of DNA and then we can throw their regrown asses in prison. Pretty sweet, huh?
Their scientists are actively working on the cloning part, but they admit they are having trouble getting the old mind transferred into the new body. A couple of years ago, their company Clonaid falsely claimed to have successfully cloned a human baby. I've always thought that Clonaid sounded like a charity concert for homeless clones. We are the world, we are the fake children....
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