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
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