FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Members of the Aloha Raelian Movement met Friday at the Kailua District Park. Movement leaders, called guides or priests, are Kai Kalama, left, and Chris Tiger.
For the past seven years, Kailua resident Kai Kalama has been searching for land to build a platform on which extraterrestrials can land. Isle Raelian is
waiting for aliensThe group believes humans
Clonaid claims 2 more
were created from DNA by
extraterrestrials who will returnBy Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com"All my mission was to find land to build the ahu, the embassy ... a place where they'll land and be with us," said Kalama, a "guide," or priest, with the Raelian Movement, an atheist spiritual group. "Now's the time to find more people who are interested throughout Polynesia."
Raelians believe aliens from another planet, called Elohim (the Hebrew word for God), created mankind using DNA and plan to return to Earth once an embassy is prepared to welcome them back.
The 42-year-old Hawaiian is one of four Hawaii members of the sect, which gained the world's attention last month after Clonaid, a Raelian company, announced it had cloned a human baby.
Kalama said cloning is a way to live forever. "We're at the stage of creating a baby," he said. The ultimate goal would be to clone the cell of an 80-year-old into a full-grown body of an 18-year-old, "then downloading your person into this body," he said.
"It's not only for the Raelians, it's where science is heading."
To show there is more to their beliefs than cloning, Kalama and a fellow guide held a meeting Friday in Kailua, which drew three people.
Kalama, a tree-trimmer for the state, became a believer after meeting Rael, also known as Claude Vorihon, the group's spiritual leader, when he lectured in 1995 in Honolulu.
"He erased the mysticism of God," Kalama said.
But Kalama was skeptical at first.
"The first thing I told him was, 'Are you on drugs?' because he told me about the ship picking him up," Kalama said.
Rael met an olive-skinned space alien in 1973 who told him that since humans could now scientifically understand how they created human life, they would like to return to Earth, says the Raelian Web site.
Kalama embraced Rael's teachings after discovering remarkable similarities with the Hawaiian beliefs handed down from his grandfather.
He found a parallel between the legend of Lele o Wakanui, a great flying canoe, which would return to Iao Valley on Maui carrying ancient ancestors from a star system, and the Raelian belief that the aliens who created humans will return to Earth.
Kalama claims he has performed 35 transmissions, similar to baptisms, on Oahu, Kauai and Maui. Although he has laid off performing them for the last three to five years, he did two in December and plans more in April.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. >> Clonaid, the company that claims to have produced the first human clone, said yesterday that a third cloned child had been born to a Japanese couple. Firm claims 2 more
human clones were
born in Japan and EuropeStaff and news services
The announcement came during a hearing on whether the first baby -- whose existence has not been verified by independent scientists -- should have a court-appointed guardian.
Clonaid spokeswoman Nadine Gary later said the group's president, Brigitte Boisselier, would hold a news conference today in Toronto to talk about the latest births, that of the Japanese boy and a girl born Jan. 3 to a Dutch lesbian.
Gary told the Star-Bulletin that the boy is a clone of a 2-year-old boy who died in an accident. She also said Clonaid is planning to do 20 more implantations by the end of the month.
The company has not provided any proof that the babies are clones. Clonaid was founded by the leader of the Raelians, a sect that believes aliens created life on Earth.
Clonaid has said five clones are expected to be born by Feb. 5. In late December, Clonaid said the first clone, a girl named Eve, had been born to U.S. parents on Dec. 26.
