DangerousTalkDangerous Talk » The Raelians are Not Frauds… Apparently

The Raelians are Not Frauds… Apparently

Posted on March 10th, 2011 by Staks

Last night I was pretty surprised to get an e-mail from the executives at Examiner.com. I write for Examiner as the Philly Atheist Examiner to help fund Dangerous Talk. Apparently, they received a complaint about one of my articles and determined that a statement I made might be libelous.

The article was the one I did about the Raelian atheist billboard. The statement was that I called Rael (the leader of the Raelians) a fraud. I guess if I can’t call him a fraud that might mean that he really did met with aliens from some galactic federation.

In any case, out of fear of receiving the “Scientology” treatment of getting sued, Examiner instructed me to make it clear that Rael being a fraud is just my opinion. So fine, it is my opinion that Rael is a fraud. It is also my opinion that Scientology is a fraud and that most religious leaders are frauds too.

The thing is that I don’t like this attitude that many religious people from Raelian to Scientologist and even to those of the Abrhamic religions have. It’s an attitude that if you criticize them and call them out as frauds, they will sue you. Everyone knows that some religion (other than their religion of course) is ridiculously fake, but if you say it out loud, you might get sued.

I can’t tell you have many times some Christian has told me that they think Scientology is a ridiculous religion focused on swindling money from its members. I agree with this, but usually point out that Christianity is no different. The fact is that almost all religions are frauds (Legal Disclaimer: in my opinion).