The FAQs: What Are People Saying About UFOs . . . and Aliens?

It's never been obvious to me that finding intelligent alien life would be a serious problem for Christian faith, but I haven't read this particular argument before.

Meanwhile, UFO sightings and recordings are on the rise... which may have nothing at all to do with aliens. Given where our tech is globally, especially with AI and remote communications and drones, there's a whole lot more potentially difficult to identify stuff humans can put into the air now.

What I'm waiting to see is hi rez drone photography of a UFO. That would be interesting!

I agree with the general premise that intelligent life on the surface is not a serious problem for Christians.  Where I start to have a challenge is whether meeting that life will have a serious problem for Christians.  I have many challenges that I won't fully elaborate here, but here is one.

1. They will either be fallen or they will be perfect.  If they are fallen, do they have the same redemption as us or another redemption, or no redemption at all?  If they are perfect, how does that impact us?
2. If they are fallen, we are to go into the ends of the world to spread the gospel.  If God forsaw us meeting these people, He clearly did not give us an easy theological framework within Scripture.  Is there redemption the same as ours? Is that the gospel that we share with aliens?
3. If they are perfect?  All have fallen and sinned.  I think this has serious ramifications.

Before I became a Christian I was heavily into UFOs.  One thing that all ufologists know is after just a short acquaintance with the literature one runs up against the spiritual.  Usually the evil side of the spiritual.  The two go together.  Many researchers point to overlap with Eastern mysticism and the occult.

It is my belief that "aliens" aren't aliens (which I think is preposterous for several reasons).  They are demonic.  The documentary Alien Intrusion is actually a good reflection of my own position.     

I concur with Paul it's the Demonic.  However there is another argument that these UFO's are our future selves going back in time instead of little green men from another galaxy.  Also multi demension travlers to.  

I think it's important to distinguish between a historical UFO movement and the actual observation (and interpretation) of stuff we see in the sky and don't know what it is. The videos that have gotten this conversation started again didn't come out of a movement or any literature. They came out of the U.S. Navy.  ... and they're, of course, not saying what these things are. They're unidentified.

Likewise with the possibility that we may encounter extraterrestrial life at some point. That isn't the same as a movement built on stories of personal alien encounters.

So we have an interpretive (and speculative) movement on one hand and real phenomena on the other.

It may well be that some who believe they've had encounters with UFOs and aliens have actually had encounters with demons. Likewise, people who believe they've had encounters with ghosts, etc.

That doesn't generalize out to "there can be no such thing as a real extraterrestrial life" or a flying vehicle of unknown origin.

But the latter also wouldn't generalize out to "random evolution and a godless universe are a proven fact and Christianity is proved false" either, as some have tried to claim.

There would be some theological challenges though.

Aaron,

Pitting UFO's against the movement is a false dichotomy.  Many of the top works on the phenomena take full account of government sightings, often before they are released.  One famous example is the Rendlesham Forest incident.  You poison the well with your comments here.  Are you familiar with the literature?  Jacques Vallee is a NASA scientist who is one of the world's top ufologists.  We're not talking about Bigfoot here.

As for your second comment about my belief that UFO's are demonic excluding the possibility of extraterrestrials, that is built out of the same fallacy.  The inference is that since the movement is wacky their speculations aren't scientific.  With some that is so.  But guys like Vallee do not believe in extraterrestrials for scientific reasons (e.g. the impossibility of traveling at such incomprehensible speeds; the certainty of destruction of any craft barreling through space filled with micro-meteors, etc.).

Finally, the theological fallout is more profound than many seem to realize.               

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/opinion/ufo-sightings-report.html

Let’s start with the Navy cases. Some of the pilots have told of seeing flying objects shaped like Tic Tacs or other unusual forms. The recordings from the planes’ cameras show amorphous shapes moving in surprising ways, including appearing to skim the ocean’s surface and then disappear beneath it. This might appear to be evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics as we understand them — but in reality it doesn’t amount to much.

...

Perhaps the videos offer that kind of data? Sadly, no. While some researchers have used the footage to make simple estimates of the accelerations and other flight characteristics of the U.F.O.s, the results have been mixed at best. Skeptics have already shown that some of the motions seen in the videos (like the ocean skimming) may be artifacts of the cameras’ optics and tracking systems.

There are also common-sense objections. If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves? There is a recurring narrative, perhaps best exemplified by the TV show “The X-Files,” that these creatures have some mysterious reason to remain hidden from us. But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras.

... 

There may be more prosaic explanations. For example, it’s possible that U.F.O.s are drones deployed by rivals like Russia and China to examine our defenses — luring our pilots into turning on their radar and other detectors, thus revealing our electronic intelligence capacities. (The United States once used a similar strategy to test the sensitivities of Soviet radar systems.) This hypothesis might sound far-fetched, but it is less extreme than positing a visit from extraterrestrials.

Craig Toliver wrote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/opinion/ufo-sightings-report.html

Let’s start with the Navy cases. Some of the pilots have told of seeing flying objects shaped like Tic Tacs or other unusual forms. The recordings from the planes’ cameras show amorphous shapes moving in surprising ways, including appearing to skim the ocean’s surface and then disappear beneath it. This might appear to be evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics as we understand them — but in reality it doesn’t amount to much.

...

Perhaps the videos offer that kind of data? Sadly, no. While some researchers have used the footage to make simple estimates of the accelerations and other flight characteristics of the U.F.O.s, the results have been mixed at best. Skeptics have already shown that some of the motions seen in the videos (like the ocean skimming) may be artifacts of the cameras’ optics and tracking systems.

There are also common-sense objections. If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves? There is a recurring narrative, perhaps best exemplified by the TV show “The X-Files,” that these creatures have some mysterious reason to remain hidden from us. But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras.

... 

There may be more prosaic explanations. For example, it’s possible that U.F.O.s are drones deployed by rivals like Russia and China to examine our defenses — luring our pilots into turning on their radar and other detectors, thus revealing our electronic intelligence capacities. (The United States once used a similar strategy to test the sensitivities of Soviet radar systems.) This hypothesis might sound far-fetched, but it is less extreme than positing a visit from extraterrestrials.

One thing to keep in mind about this article is some physicists are very arrogant. Humans have only been good at physics for only about 130-140 years (since development of electromagnetic theory and also statistical mechanics in the late 19th century). It is the height of hubris to say that in this small amount of time we understand the rough limits of how nature, God's creation, works. Just because we do not know how to do something does not mean it cannot be done... I certainly hope all kinds of things we cannot do now are possible (fusion energy production, easy anti-matter production and then using it for energy, some form of faster than light travel to explore the universe, on and on). Some physicists are, for lack of a better word, "fundamentalists," about modern understanding. They claim that what we know now limits what can possibly be done. It is pure nonsense.

Multiple reports by US Navy personnel, including radar and IR track locks, reveal that something is going on out there. Flying "demons" are not being locked onto by radar and IR trackers.  

I have seen all the Navy videos that are available to be seen. I think they are very interesting. The tic-tac ones being the most. I think some of the claims about them flying into water have been exaggerated if all we have is what has been shown.

Still, we should not dismiss anything right now. I  will say this. If it is Russian or Chinese drones doing this, WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE and have fallen way behind.