# Talk:Raëlian beliefs and practices

It is simply too confusing to have two different articles called Raëlianism and Raëlism. There seem to be quite sufficient articles on this subject already. I recommend user:Kmarinas86 to improve existing articles rather than creating this, excessively long fork.
Please comment at Talk:Raëlism#Do not merge Raëlianism with Raëlism, not here. -- RHaworth 17:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

The category of atheism is for movements, ideas, and articles that are specifically related to "atheist" or "atheism" and not just for anything that you think has nothing to do with no god. This article doesn't mention "atheist" or "atheism" and the only mention of god is in a quote from a primary source, "They gave us a message saying there is no god, no soul, we have been created in a laboratory ...".
Though 'a'-'theism' is about having no belief in god etc, replacing one fictional entity with another called the Elohim makes it disingenuous to tag this article as something related to Atheism unless you can show a reliable source that makes this claim. Given James R. Lewis book is called "The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds"... the references used to support this category better be robust and in the majority rather than lone voices. Ttiotsw 04:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Updating my statement - I'm happy that these people do not believe in god so in a technical sense the category is right, but we add this to Category of Intelligent Design Ttiotsw (talk) 02:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth noting that the IRM has since tried to slander and defame Abdullah Hashem, and is currently suing him under the RICO act.  Sounds very fishy...
~~A Muslim04:44, 24 May 2008 (UTC)~

It's fishy in both ways. Both the IRM and Hashem have been trying to slander and defame each other. This point and your point can't be made however, unless the media makes a new article about this. Past articles have only talked much about Hashem's "infiltration" and not so much the whole schpeel about Raelians trying to sue Hashem and all the characters involved. Recent articles on Raelians: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=raelian&btnG=Search+News (6sin8karma) 06:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there evidence to support claims that Raelians are linked with other sects, such as Kabbalah or the Universal White Brotherhood ? Another issue would be to try and explain why Raelians have such bad relations with mainstream monotheistic religions. ADM (talk) 23:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

As to whether Raelians are "linked" with other sects, that depends on how much you think that members of those movements are similar to the Raelians. Those outside the movement are likely to use a prescribed umbrella term (cult, sect, etc.) to put more emphasis on their similarities rather than their differences. Most Raelians probably do not identify with either the Kabbalah or the Universal White Brotherhood. Also, the clergy of mainstream monotheistic religions generally express dissatisfaction of liberal trends which Raelians support. Upon discovering that Raelians support developments of genetically modified food, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning, very conservative clergy will think that Raelians motives posed against their religious beliefs.  The breaching of their value systems makes it easy to be in broad disagreement against the Raelian worldview.Kmarinas86 (6sin8karma) 01:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Raëlian beliefs and practices/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.
Starting GA reassessment as part of the GA Sweeps process. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


### Checking against GA criteria
{

GA review (see here for criteria)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):  b (MoS): 
The lead does not fully summarize the artcile as per WP:LEAD.  I note that the last paragraph of the lead describes parades and baptism, but there is no expansion of this in the article. Y
The prose is reasonably well written.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR): 
I assume good faith for the off line sources
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 
Apart from the mention of denial of Swiss residency to Vorilhon and a passing mention of "his approach to children and sexuality.", there is little discussion of the beliefs from an external point of view.
Apart from a brief mention in the lead there is no mention of the practices, e.g. baptism and parades. Their belief of human cloning is mentioned, but no real expolration of whther this has been achieved.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: 

It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 
The image of the winter seminar is all very well, but it doesn't really explain anything about what these winter seminars are about.
Overall:
Pass/Fail: 
I am not sure whether this artcile does anything more than rehash the contents of Raelian books.  There is little independent sourced comment and little or nothing about the practices.  I am placing this on hold to see if anyone is prepared to expand this.  Major contributors and projects will be notified. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:23, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, the recent edits have addressed the problems that I found. Thanks for your work. GA status kept. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:58, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


### Kmarinas86's response
Well I have remedied these concerns. My only problem is that by doing so, I have created a content fork WP:FORK. In fact, to address all concerns with the Raelian articles would require me to merge all of them into the same article, but that would be unreasonable. The nature of Raëlism, and perhaps also true of all social movements, is that neutrality requires every topic which receives criticism should do so in ample amounts. However, because such criticism can be directed at parts of an idea while ignoring the rest of it, it gives the premature sense that such criticism is founded on ignorance and misunderstanding. There is so much overlap between the articles, it was not clear to me that there was a straight up-and-down hierarchy.
From the "raelism" article, we have the "beliefs and pratices" article, and the "history of raelism" article. For the sake of analogy, I will call this the "raelian article trinity".
From the "history of raelism" article, I could conceivably connect the "embassy" and "cloning" articles.
From the "beliefs and practices" article, we have the "embassy", "cosmology", and "cloning" articles.
From the "cosmology" article, we have the "meditation" article.
It appears that "raelism", "raelian beliefs and practices", and "history of raelism" differ primarily in structure (i.e. "functional vs. thematic vs. chronological"). Apparently, a chronological structure is better for outlining a sense of time. A thematic structure apparently is better for contrasting those who hold certain views and practices tenable against those who hold them to be untenable. A functional structure seems to promote the greatest objectivity in an article, since it explicitly outlines the difference between groups (contrary to the "history of raelism" article") without assuming that ideas, actions, and controversy alone define the movement (contrary to the "raelian beliefs and practices" article). It appears that all of these structures may form by processing the raw facts. Due to their difference in structure, each would contain different implicit information, all of which must be balanced if GA status is to be maintained. The greatest objectivity would naturally result in duplicate information rearranged different presentation forms (among all of the articles). To rewrite it differently in separate articles forces the editor to reinterpret information, which ultimately leads to loss of objectivity. Such duplication is frowned at however. The immense flexibility of hypertext wiki has not yet been developed to adapt to needs of looking at the same raw facts organized in different ways, on the fly, that is, without laborious rearranging of the material.
There is no way to avoid the emergence of implicit information, especially when the prose is made to be coherent. As for this subject, I believe that if forked content must be excised, doing so in this article would render it as a non-GA, but excising the material in other articles such as the "embassy" article would render at least one of them a stub, making it little more than a definition.
Only the articles "Claude Vorilhon", "Brigitte Bosselier", and "Honorary Guides of the Raelian Movement" are sufficiently distinct from the main trinity of articles.
How are such concerns rectified?Kmarinas86 (6sin8karma) 03:42, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The article on Raëlian cosmology is up for deletion.  Since it is broken out from this article, I would say it is relevant to discuss whether to keep or merge it.  If the article is deleted, the content will be lost.  If it is merged, this article will end up being bigger.  Rifter0x0000 (talk) 01:25, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

As a consensus been reashed for the merge of the article Raëlian cosmology with this article, this is a request to the admin group to kindly complete the merge and delist the origin page. Regards Wikishagnik (talk) 15:36, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Raëlian beliefs and practices/CommentsTalk:Raëlian beliefs and practices/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Last edited at 21:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC).
Substituted at 04:00, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 11 external links on Raëlian beliefs and practices. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.rael.org/english/pages/embassy/emb_overview.html
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0%2C3604%2C865915%2C00.html
Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100823183148/http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/men-wear-bras-so-women-can-go-topless/19590056 to http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/men-wear-bras-so-women-can-go-topless/19590056
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.rael.org/english/pages/embassy/emb_plan.html
Corrected formatting/usage for http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/rael.html
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.rael.org/english/pages/embassy/emb_requirements.html
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=19567&sec=42&cont=all
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=24268&sec=42&cont=all
Corrected formatting/usage for http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/rael.html
Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071105142009/http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/12/30/cnna.cloning.rael/ to http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/12/30/cnna.cloning.rael/
Corrected formatting/usage for http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/12/28/cloning.vatican/index.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:33, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Raëlian beliefs and practices. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070223102539/http://www.rael.free.fr/75/autopop.htm to http://www.rael.free.fr/75/autopop.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:19, 26 January 2018 (UTC)