I’m not sure whether The Association of Raelian Scientists is taking transubstantiation too literally or not literally enough, but it never occurred to me that you could convince anyone of the truth or falsity of the doctrine by doing before-and-after DNA tests on communion wafers.
“Nobody can contest a simple DNA test like that conducted by our scientists,” Brigitte Boisselier, spokesperson for the Raelian Movement, said in a news release. “Supernatural statements of long-established organizations like the Catholic Church can be exposed for what they are, a poor sham from the Middle Ages that has no place in this new century. All scientists should educate the public.”
I’m not sure exactly how they conducted their experiment, but I think they necessarily missed a crucial element of the ritual, which is the actual consumption of the host.
The Raelian researchers collected consecrated hosts from five different Catholic churches in the United States and Canada, and then tested the samples for human DNA.
“But DNA analysis performed on five different hosts collected after the Catholic ritual of consecration showed no DNA change whatsoever in them,” Boisselier explained. “The wheat DNA remained wheat DNA, with no human DNA present other than that resulting from contamination caused by human handling of the hosts. This study clearly falsifies the claim that a religious ritual performed by a priest can actually change the substance of a bread wafer into the substance of a human body.”
The authors of the study acknowledged they used deception to obtain the consecrated hosts, but said their research was justified because Catholic indoctrination had long-lasting negative consequences.
What they should have checked is whether it is a chemical in human saliva or maybe in our stomach bile that acts as a catalyst for the genetic transformation. I thought that Raelians would have a little more imagination. Don’t they ever watch MythBusters?
It’s a stupid experiment anyway, as a wafer that still presents itself as a wafer despite having human DNA would be just as magical and unexplainable by science as one that doesn’t but somehow contains the presence of Christ.
In any case, according to the Synoptic Gospels and Saul of Tarsus, Jesus told his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine as a way of remembering him. The ritual seems to work just fine for this purpose.
