User:Kmarinas86/Rael articles

Rael

 * KMarinas, I know I should do it instead of asking you, but I'm somewhat busy with other things right now. I would appreciate it if you could put something in the criticism sections. The articles on Rael definitely need a series template (see the one on Scientology ) as well as a more balanced PoV. As it stands, the article does not convey the fact that this is still a sect (and by sect I define any religious/semi-religious organisation that asks you to give them x% of your income...). I feel it is unfair that the faults of other sects such as scientology (although I know the two are not comparable, to my knowledge Raelians are allowed to believe in medicine...) are brought to light, and not Raelism. I suspect you are a Raelian yourself, so if you feel you cannot do this, let me know and I will try to see what I can do. The links to critical websites will no doubt help you. If you go to the website of the Ministère de l'Intérieur, you can probably find reasons for scientology being classed as a sect in France. For the moment, I think neutrality warnings on the pages might be necessary as a temporary measure until we get both sides of the argument into the article. This is by no means a criticism of your writing: you have done some very hard work on this page, and with a bit more effort it could really be up to par. I will also post this message to your user talk page. Yandman 07:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Photos
dear Kevin, if you need some official pictures, please let me know. Some of those ones you have 'grabbed' are outdated or were never intended for public promotion. Also, have you considered attending a Raelian seminar? I'm sure it would give you a clearer understanding of the philsophy. You may even change your mind about some things you wrote in the wiki. Thanks MrPeabody 12:44, 9 September 2006 (UTC) (Raelian Bishop)


 * I have in this past spring considered going to the Raelian Seminar in Las Vegas, however I feel that I should be able to finance my own trip as well as making my own independent choice to go. I've had driving experience for 1 year so far and a paying job for 9 months, so it's as if I was 17 instead of 20, it will probably take at least 3 years before I can make it on my own.  I want to make sure I have some base before I take a trip to the capital of gambling.Kmarinas86 14:31, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool, no pressure of course. I think next year may not be in Vegas - time will tell. :)

Raëlian Church article
Nice edits in good taste, thanks! =D Kmarinas86 04:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You're welcome, thank YOU for the dotting and prior edits. Tyciol 05:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Deletions from Rael-related articles
You seem to have been on a program of deleting material from Rael-related articles. You are giving no explanation for you actions, much less discussing them. I've reverted some of your editing, please don't delete material again without explanation. -Will Beback · † · 05:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, you're peppering articles with " " tags for no apparent reason. -Will Beback · † · 05:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Please explain the purpose of User:Kmarinas86/All-Rael. Are you planning to make it an article? The Rael-related articles do not belong to you, they belong to Wikipedia. If you refuse to give a reason for deleting large amounts of material from many articles then we'll have to find a way of dealing with that. -Will Beback · † · 05:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I was fixing the articles. I was leaning them up.  The information is still there, but I deleted the redudancies.  The information is still all there.  Should I say that again?Kmarinas86 05:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * No the information was removed. For example, here's what I reverted on one article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ra%C3%ABlian_Church&diff=105510735&oldid=105510568. There had been numerous external links, when you were done there was one one. -Will Beback · † · 06:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * THE EXTERNAL LINKS ARE ON THE CATEGORY PAGE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ra%C3%ABlian). THE INFORMATION - I REPEAT - WAS NOT REMOVED.Kmarinas86 06:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * External links belong on article pages. That's how it's done around here. -Will Beback · † · 06:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok. I'll try to make sure that there on the pages they use to be. But your reversions went further back than what was necessary.Kmarinas86 06:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * If you explain why you are deleting material then other users will be more likely to understand. We're not mindreaders. Now may I ask again what the purpose is of User:Kmarinas86/All-Rael? You're welcome to host material in your user space, but it should have all the categories disabled. If you want a compilation of all material it'd be simpler to cut and paste it together rather than transcluding. -Will Beback · † · 06:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I love it when people understand me. ;) The purpose for it is for those who want to see the Raelian articles on one page to see how much has contributed to the whole subject. Thank you!Kmarinas86 06:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That may be your wish, but please don't disrupt Wikipedia as part of the effort. As soon as you can, please de-activate the categories. They don't belong in user-space pages, only on articles. -Will Beback · † · 06:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks again for commentary which makes a lot of sense!Kmarinas86 06:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for fixing the categories. -Will Beback · † · 06:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, please use edit summaries to describe your work. Undescribed deletions are likely to be reverted. -Will Beback · † · 06:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Raëlian history and beliefs
Thank you for the information on WP:COIN. I have also thanked you for providing the disclosure on the WP:COIN page. I will remove the tag on behalf of my alter ego, User:Bearian. (I'm at a non-secure internet cafe right now.) Bearian&#39;sBooties 16:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

COI with Raëlism?
Welcome to Wikipedia. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
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For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Weaponbb7 (talk) 18:17, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * We have been here before. The issue has been resolved, and the facts haven't changed (except now I am 23 years of age).Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_18 '' Kmarinas86 (6sin8karma) 01:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I figured as much, but never be too careful Weaponbb7 (talk) 01:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Change of cited text at Raëlism
You changed sourced text so that it said something not in the source. Please do not do this again. Dougweller (talk) 19:15, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * According to this edit, the source is by "Giancarlo Genta". However, a book by Jason Colavito is also cited. Do they know enough about Raelians or the origin of their beliefs to justify a blanket statement such as "writers who have influenced Raëlian beliefs include Zechariah Sitchin and Erich von Däniken"? They may well just have written "Zechariah Sitchin and Erich von Däniken influenced heavily the books of the Raelian Movement". What exactly had been said in these two references? You could say something similarly vague such as "The British heavily influenced Americans."... but that doesn't say very much, leaving a lot to interpretation.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86 03:02, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why that change was made, it wasn't me and is a bit confusing as there are indeed two sources. I'm a bit surprised that someone who has been editing for five years doesn't seem to understand our policies. Colavito and Genta both give Sitchin credit for influencing Rael. That they do that is a fact, and I've given page numbers. Colavito says that both S and vD "provided an important mythological backdrop to Raelian belief". I don't have to justify the authors' claims, it just has to be verifiable that they make such claims. Dougweller (talk) 05:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * What in the world is a "mythological backdrop"?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86 10:37, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Raelism
Believe it or not, I really don't think anyone totally objects necessarily to multiple articles about Raelism existing. The problem almost all the articles about Raelism other than the bios have is that they are so seriously overweighted with self-published materials of the Raelians, in likely violation of WP:SPS and maybe WP:SOAPBOX. And, yes, at least to me, there is the very real problem that so many of the articles are, apparently, based almost solely on the word of the Raelians themselves. I actually get the impression that, at times, someone saw two independent articles which mention a given subject, considered that enough to establish notability, and then used that as a justification for presenting the Raelian view on the topic. This really isn't what we want.

Ideally, most articles about religious groups should be primarily based on what independent sources which qualify as reliable as per WP:RS say about the groups. This is, unfortunately, because the groups themselves can and sometimes do have a tendency to misrepresent things or present an extremely unbalanced favorable view of themselves. As I'm sure you know, this includes the Catholic Church and any number of other groups better-established than the Raelians.

For what it's worth, the main direct subarticles of most religious movements tend to include: "History of", "Beliefs and practices of", "Criticism of," articles about its institions and governance, and biographies of the major players in the group. Sometimes, there are articles about the given group's relation to other groups, depending on how independently notable that material is. The "Beliefs and practices of" article is sometimes split into two articles, depending on the detail in independent sources on the subject, or if there is a potential problem of excess length. Given that this is a somewhat unique movement, there might be sufficient material in independent reliable sources to justify two separate articles there. The "Criticism of" article might be a good place to discuss the controversy about the baby cloning controversy related to this group, which, like Catholic sex abuse scandal, is probably a notable enough topic in its own right to merit an article.

I think personally that there may well be sufficient independent reliably-sourced material for each of the articles above, and they would probably be the best way of starting development of this topic. Yes, I know I said elsewhere that I favor one article for each group, but realize that, in many cases, those groups are smallish Christian denominations which get very little attention in the media, and thus don't have many independent reliable sources about them.

Unfortunately, I have to say that the idea of adding the template of number of adherents to the main Raelism article is probably not a particularly good one. All it really shows is that there has been a historical disagreement about whether the group has around 30 or around 60 thousand members. That really isn't that important. If it were a difference between 30 thousand and, maybe, 2 million, that might be, but this doesn't even come close to those levels. And, really, people join and leave all sorts of religious movements so regularly that, I think in general, placing any particular importance on the number of adherents is probably, generally, much less important than talking about the other major subjects regarding the group. John Carter (talk) 22:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks John. I would also like to see the Raelians (like all groups) get fair treatment on WP. I' sorry that I got off on the wrong foot with my comments on my AfD, although I don't think that saying they desire publicity was an unreasonable thing to say. (Or even necessarily a bad thing if true.) Steve Dufour (talk) 14:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, Susan Palmer's book itself says something to that effect, so I don't think it is necessarily something inappropriate. Nor would I consider an NRM which clearly is basically almost completely original wanting publicity to be a bad thing, if that is the best way to get word about them out. John Carter (talk) 17:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I really wish you were a bit better informed about wikipedia's policies and guidelines than you, as a self-proclaimed "expert", seem to be. The purpose of the reorganization of the articles relating to Raelism is basically to get them to conform to the first of the Five pillars of wikipedia, as per WP:FIVE. We are first, last, and foremost an encyclopedia, which means that our content should be, you guessed it, encyclopedic. Content which basically just reproduces the self-published material of any group, as opposed to comments by outsiders, who are presumably more neutral, is not encyclopedic, nor is material which has comparatively little inherent importance. The article on membership statistics was basically trivial information, and articles on basically trivial subjects are generally not considered encyclopedic. The others nominated for deletion are, basically, reproductions of self-published material. As an encyclopedia, we are supposed to rely, primarily, on independent reliable sources. The Baby Eve incident was and probably still remains the single most "notable" matter relating to the Raelians other than their existence itself. At present, there is not even a redirect from Baby Eve to that article. While there were two sections to that article, prior to your recent changes, dealing with the subject, it would honestly probably be more rational for that matter to be made one single main section of the article, perhaps broken into multiple subsections, so that a redirect could link to the relevant material more easily.
 * Also, I think it makes sense to point out that the Aliens Adored book contains a good deal of material critical of Raelism, including substantial material related to Exrael, six pages of such in the edition I have. At present, there is no clear section of the main Raelism article about criticism of Raelism, just a section about it being called a "cult", which might be a significant part of the criticism, but clearly not the only part. The "Critical reception" section seems to take a position almost in defense of Raelism, while doing comparatively little to address the issues raised by Exrael and others in Chapter 7 of Palmer's book. This would include the soliciting of funds to pay for Rael's Racing Team, the criticism of the obviously sexist nature of the all-female Order of Angels, etc. Also, at least for me personally, I would be interested in knowing how, if at all, Rael might have been influenced by the then-widely popular and discussed ideas of Riverworld, which more or less deals with the same subject matter and predates Rael's revelations by at least a few years. I acknowledge up front that such information might not be readily available, because I personally haven't seen anything clearly linking the two, but haven't done exhaustive research and so might have missed something making the to-me obvious linkage of the two. John Carter (talk) 18:10, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "The article on membership statistics was basically trivial information, and articles on basically trivial subjects are generally not considered encyclopedic." Agreed. Do you agree that they could serve as a subsection in the main article provided that only currently available sources are used? "At present, there is no clear section of the main Raelism article about criticism of Raelism, just a section about it being called a "cult", which might be a significant part of the criticism, but clearly not the only part." The sections are "# * 7.1 Fears of human cloning", "# 8 Views of sex", "# 9 Perception as a cult", and "# 10 Use of the swastika". What other criticism do you have in mind? "The 'Critical reception' section seems to take a position almost in defense of Raelism, while doing comparatively little to address the issues raised by Exrael and others in Chapter 7 of Palmer's book." "This would include the soliciting of funds to pay for Rael's Racing Team, the criticism of the obviously sexist nature of the all-female Order of Angels, etc." I can find the link to this right here, but I will have to return the university in the future in order to cooperate with this request. It will take some time before I can manage the trip, but I can do it. "Also, at least for me personally, I would be interested in knowing how, if at all, Rael might have been influenced by the then-widely popular and discussed ideas of Riverworld, which more or less deals with the same subject matter and predates Rael's revelations by at least a few years. I acknowledge up front that such information might not be readily available, because I personally haven't seen anything clearly linking the two, but haven't done exhaustive research and so might have missed something making the to-me obvious linkage of the two." I wouldn't be surprised to find like minds saying similar things, but I would be surprised to find out that all like minds did was copy from each other, so it amazes me that many apparent "ex-Raelians" actually consider "parallels" as challenging their former beliefs' authenticity.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86 18:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's kind of hard to respond to the above point-by-point given the block format, but I will try.
 * I really have to question the importance of the number of adherents/followers per se. Certainly, there may well be cause to say that the group has grown in numbers since its inception, and to state the range of the more recent reported figures, both internally and externally reported, but I wouldn't myself go much beyond that.
 * "Fears of human cloning" as a section title doesn't make it clear whose fears are being discussed, Raelians or non-Raelians, and so isn't really clearly about "criticism" or outside critical opinion. "Views on sex" as a title is also neutral. "Use of the swastika" is also a neutral title. While some might see having the (internal) positive views of the topics and the (generally external) negative views of the topic most neutrally expressed in a single section, that isn't really the format most religion articles have here. What we generally have is sections about "beliefs and practices" discussing the beliefs and practices and the reasoning behind them, and a separate "criticism" section discussing the reasons and justifications for questioning or arguing against those beliefs and practices. Something along those lines here would probably make the article more clearly adhere to the effective, if clearly unofficial, standard of content separation.
 * My reason for mentioning Riverworld, is that the first novel, which came out in 1971, received both of the major awards for best novel, Hugo and Nebula, as did the second novel of the series. This is, I believe, unprecented within the field of science fiction and has not since duplicated by any other works, at least that I know of right off. (Maybe Ringworld came close - I dunno?) It also, rather clearly I think, demonstrates that the ideas were being comparatively widely discussed at the time of Rael's alleged contact with the Elohim, and in general, if one were to think that perhaps the contact was not genuine, it would make sense to think that perhaps the beliefs in the matter might have been influenced by things which Rael might have been exposed to through other means. Honestly, I myself had not known that former Raelians challenge the beliefs hased on similar discussion elsewhere, but it doesn't surprise me that they would. If it hasn't been mentioned in the sources, though, then it would be OR to discuss it in the article, but the idea of everybody who ever existed being replicated based on DNA is a somewhat novel one, and Farmer, the author, was known for writing SF which dealt with religious type ideas (his World of Tiers being very similar to the Mormon cosmology, for instance). Although that was a bit before my own time, being born in the early 60s, and such something I can't remember myself directly very well. John Carter (talk) 19:33, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, yeah, you might want to consider archiving this page as per WP:ARCHIVE at some point as well. It is getting kind of long. John Carter (talk) 19:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Just because it struck me the above might not be completely clear, it is, more or less, a violation of WP:UNDUE to present independent negative material in equal weight to the internal "positive" material on a group in the article on the group itself. The first obligation of an article on a group is to present the information on the group itself, and that is best done by presenting all that material first. Then, the material critical on that group, for whatever reason, is generally best presented in a separate "Criticism of" section or article. Generally, the only real reason to not follow this is if the material being criticized is of comparatively limited importance to the group. In this case, the use of the swastika may be (I don't know) a compartiavely minor matter not often discussed by Raelians and Raelian sources. In cases like that, if the subject itself is of no particular importance, then it might make sense to use the point/counterpoint format. I am not however myself saying that the example cited is clearly necessarily one in which that applies, not knowing how significant the swastika is to Raelians internally. John Carter (talk) 21:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Raëlism
Hi Kmarinas86, sometime back in early 2011 or late 2010 (I guess ?), I used to study about Raëlism. I also initiated the WP Article "Korindo (Raëlian temple)" in August 2011. But, now a days, I try to spend little free time learning about Alex Collier, and Tolec. However, based on what I learnt about Raëlism, I suggested some some improvements to the WP Article "Raëlism" at Talk:Raëlism in August 2011. But, I have seen that the suggestions still do not appear in the Article. I do not want to add them Myself as My Edits on that page may end up screwing things. May I respectfully suggest You to please update the Article with the suggested links ?! ← Abstruce  11:49, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I AM requesting You because I AM sure that You can add the content to Raëlism from the References in a more appropriate way, balancing different view points. And, I have no intention of doing Edit(s) Myself as I think that My Edits on that page may end up screwing things on the Article (and may trigger some partial reverting). Anyways, if You would not want to do that, I would not mind that in the very least degree ←  Abstruce  16:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)