Raelism vs. Science: Pangaea

Raelism holds that about 25,000 years ago the Earth was fully submerged in water and that the Elohim, an advanced extraterrestrial race raised the sea bed to create a supercontinent, citing Genesis 1:2-9. Rael writes that originally there was on Earth only one continent which have drifted apart over many years (Intelligent Design, p. 11-13, 57, 61). The reason for the break up of this supercontinent to what we now see at present was not clearly given in Rael's first book.

Asked about how the continents could have drifted apart so much in just 25,000 years, Rael alludes in a FAQ that the break up was from:

"the side effects of 'the storm' of the creation of the original continent by our Fathers [which] have had time to calm down in 25 millennia". He explains that while, "the continents separate only a few centimeters each year perhaps, but in the beginning, they separated by many hundreds of kilometers a year" (p. 236).

But Rael's forth book (i.e. the third book in the volume Intelligent Design) contradicts the above and finally reveals that the break up of the continents was actually caused by nuclear explosions (p. 304). According to Rael, the Elohim's geniocratic government had decided to drop bombs on the supercontinent in order to annihilate all life on Earth because things were getting out of hand, such as in the team of creator Elohim scientists not obeying the government's decree of never to create beings similar to themselves, giving their creations all of their scientific knowledge, or having sex with their creations (p. 18-20). This is the Raelian interpretation of the biblical Flood.

According to Rael, this supercontinent is the same land mass which scientists have named Pangaea which existed approximately between 335 to 175 million years ago.

All this shows how little to nothing was known about plate tectonics by Rael when he wrote his books decades ago but which was already proposed in 1953. The fact is, there were other supercontinents before Pangaea was formed and possibly there'll be more in the future. So, no, the Earth was not covered in water between the break up-formation-break up cycle of supercontinents. In other words, 25,000 years ago there was dry land.

Rael based his story on continental drift, developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, which is an outdated theory, putting the Elohim's supposed intervention on the Earth's crust as its cause and driving force. Plate tectonics explains the forces under the crust that changes it's shape constantly.

Now what's also damaging about holding such Raelian beliefs as the Earth being covered with water 25,000 years ago is when Rael is asked to reconcile the fact that we find fossils of land animals older than 25,000 years. He claims that:

"there has been an infinity of creations on our planet, but also an infinity of destructions, due for the most part to a lack of wisdom by those who were the equivalent to our humanity" (p. 231).

We are left to assume that the last destruction of all life on Earth (natural or artificial) resulted in everything going under water; the dry ground with fossils we find today were raised by the Elohim from under the ocean.

Yeah, right. Funny how the Elohim couldn't put Pangaea under water permanently with nukes, just as it is claimed they raised it above sea-level. And, didn't Rael write that the Elohim also created the dinosaurs (p. 14) in his first book? Is this the Flintstones?

Long-time Raelian Bishop Guide, Marcel Terusse proposed a "new hypothesis for the history of humanity" that was published in Rael's e-book Intelligent Design (pp. 130-132) by mentioning Richard Nehring's (p.40, June 1978) discovery of the "ring of oil" that plots major oil reserves on Laurasia and Gondwanaland (two supercontinents that formed before the breakup of Pangaea around 175 million years ago) and explaining it in light of the Raelian interpretation of the biblical Flood, i.e. Elohim nuking Earth.

Terusse contends that there was a "central explosion" around which this "ring of oil" formed and that the Elohim's bombs broke up the "original supercontinent".

Yeah, right. X P

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First, the "ring of oil" is not exactly a circle as one would expect around an explosion. Also, according to Rael, the "Garden of Eden" was located near Greece and Turkey (p. 15)... that's hardly at the epicenter of the explosion.

Second, Nehring's map ignores other major reserves that don't fit in his weird oval or whatever... Behrendt (1983) critiqued Nehring's image and produced a more comprehensive map of world oil reserves based on older data. A 2000 USGS survey shows more detail.

Third, Terusse and Rael assume a sci-fi variant of the outdated "continental drift" model and have no idea about "plate tectonics" which postulates how the stuff below Earth's thin crust is always changing it as explained above.

Fourth, Terusse misspells Nehring's name as "Nebring" and erroneously indicates the Hudson Institute (based in Washington DC) instead of the Rand Corporation (based in Santa Monica) as his employer. True, the origin of the Hudson Institute is tied to the Rand Corporation, but Nehring's report was published by the Rand Corporation. Of course, as with Rael, Terusse does not give any references. LOL

Fifth, fossil fuels take "geological time" to form... certainly not in a few thousands of years.

Raelians can be branded Young Earth Creationists who like tie-dye.

Advocatus Diaboli