Does U.F.O. Disclosure Threaten Faith?

Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” is a movie in which characters argue about whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be a threat to religion, something that a great many people have decided to argue about since the Pentagon started releasing tranches of U.F.O.-related files.

The film’s formal perspective, not surprisingly given that Spielberg has always been both alien-obsessed and friendly to religious ideas and motifs, is that extraterrestrial encounters need not be a threat to faith in God. A nun who asks why a divinity would “make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us” seems to be speaking for the film itself.

But the story also illustrates why one of the popular conceptions of extraterrestrial encounters is a potential challenge to organized religion, with aliens stepping into the role that’s traditionally occupied by popes and prophets and mystics, angelic messengers or the Holy Spirit…

Ross Douthat 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/opinion/disclosure-day-ufo-religion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

No!: 

“…we need to take seriously the religious beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices of adherents of alternative, belittled, and discredited religious movements. It is far too easy to dismiss the members of Heaven’s Gate as either insane or victimized, and in both cases we fall into the same sort of trap of demonization that colors the dehumanizing political discourse of the twenty-first century…"*

I can take seriously the vulnerable, flawed, delusional humanity of True Believers of every sort, whether in the religious mainstream or on the alternative fringes of convention (and sanity). I cannot take their “beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices” seriously if that means suspending rational judgement and normalizing what is so clearly a derailed, destructive, perverse relation to reality.
Taking experience seriously means trying to understand why and how the events in someone’s life have led them to whatever relations they bear. It means viewing their errors, misjudgments, and mistakes with compassion and empathy, and asserting our own perspectives with humility and a recognition that we too are prone to error, misjudgment and mistake. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction.

"Applewhite attended Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where he was remembered as an extrovert with a magnetic personality that “he put to only positive uses,” in the words of a former college roommate.10 He served as a campus leader in the a cappella group, judiciary council, and association of prospective Presbyterian ministers, and graduated with a degree in philosophy…

Yet Applewhite also dabbled in astrology, and he clearly was somewhat of a religious seeker…

following their predicted martyrdom and resurrection, a UFO would descend in a technological enactment of the rapture wherein it would hover midair to pick up the Two and anyone else who believed them and accepted their message. The UFO would then return to outer space, delivering its passengers to a heavenly utopia. The bodies of the Two and their followers would transform through biological and chemical processes into perfected extraterrestrial beings, and they would live indefinitely in the “Next Level” or “Evolutionary Level Above Human,” as the Two later called it, in a state of near-perfection…”

*Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch

Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

I can take seriously the vulnerable, flawed, delusional humanity of True Believers of every sort, whether in the religious mainstream or on the alternative fringes of convention (and sanity). I cannot take their “beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices” seriously if that means suspending rational judgement and normalizing what is so clearly a derailed, destructive, perverse relation to reality. Taking experience seriously means trying to understand why and how the events in someone’s life have led them to whatever relations they bear. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction. “…we need to take seriously the religious beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices of adherents of alternative, belittled, and discredited religious movements. It is far too easy to dismiss the members of Heaven’s Gate as either insane or victimized, and in both cases we fall into the same sort of trap of demonization that colors the dehumanizing political discourse of the twenty-first century.” — Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch

In U.F.O. Files, Some Christians See Vexing Questions — and Demons

…Christians in the United States are significantly less likely than the general public to say intelligent life exists on other planets, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center. Among atheists and agnostics, 85 percent say their best guess is that intelligent life exists outside Earth. Among white evangelicals, only 40 percent say the same…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/ufo-files-pentagon.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

In U.F.O. Files, Some Christians See Vexing Questions — and Demons

Strange days, indeed.

…Christians in the United States are significantly less likely than the general public to say intelligent life exists on other planets, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center. Among atheists and agnostics, 85 percent say their best guess is that intelligent life exists outside Earth. Among white evangelicals, only 40 percent say the same.

“The U.F.O. topic in particular is a big challenge to any religious worldview,” said Jeffrey Kripal, a professor of religion at Rice University, where he has compiled an archive on paranormal subjects, including accounts from U.F.O. “experiencers.”

…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/ufo-files-pentagon.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

In U.F.O. Files, Some Christians See Vexing Questions — and Demons

Strange days, indeed.

…Christians in the United States are significantly less likely than the general public to say intelligent life exists on other planets, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center. Among atheists and agnostics, 85 percent say their best guess is that intelligent life exists outside Earth. Among white evangelicals, only 40 percent say the same.

“The U.F.O. topic in particular is a big challenge to any religious worldview,” said Jeffrey Kripal, a professor of religion at Rice University, where he has compiled an archive on paranormal subjects, including accounts from U.F.O. “experiencers.”

…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/ufo-files-pentagon.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

We Are Sliding Back Into the Middle Ages

… Demonic vexation, teleportation, increased interest in religious practice — thosephenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces. You might say it has been re-enchanted. There’s a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.

Pew found in 2024 that 30 percent of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. New age practices are even more popular among some demographics, like younger women and L.G.B.T.Q. adults. During my first pregnancy I received a reiki, or energy healing, treatment for my unborn son. It’s now offered at major hospitals across the country

What is going on? Why is the world re-enchanting itself now?

In 1917, the sociologist Max Weber argued that a long process of rationalization, culminating in modernity, was eliminating “mysterious incalculable forces” from the world. Science would explain; technology would master; and magic would disappear. For a brief stretch of modern history, he seemed right: The enduring human instinct to believe in the otherworldly declined as empiricism, common evidentiary standards and, for the shortest period of all, mass media produced a rough consensus about what was real. Now we seem to be sliding back…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/opinion/supernatural-religion-reality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share