Aliens Among Us?

[00:00:10] An upcoming documentary claims the government is covering up proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. [00:00:16] What is the Catholic to think about claims of intelligent aliens either visiting us or just out in the stars? That's what I talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric Sammons, your host editor chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, to encourage people, please smash that like button like aliens have smashed into Earth. Subscribe to the channel, let other people know about what we're doing. [00:00:40] Also, I want to mention that I have a science fiction novel that's about to be published called Shard of Eden. [00:00:48] Shardofeden.com you can find out about it. I actually have an advanced copy of it right here, just got this week and I don't yet have all the copies. All the pre orders haven't shipped yet. But I, I did get one advanced copy right here and it looks great by the way. I'm very happy with how it turned out. [00:01:05] And it delves into, in a fictional way, it delves into many of the issues that we're going to be talking about on today's podcast. If this podcast interests you, I encourage you go to shardofeden.com and you can pre order the book, which will be out very, very soon. [00:01:22] Okay, so aliens among us. Are there aliens among us? There's a documentary coming out called Age of Disclosure and it's made the rounds because the trailer is coming I think November 21st on Prime, Amazon Prime Video and in some theaters. And it made the rounds because Marco Rubio is featured in the trailer that Secretary of State, former Senator Marco Rubio talking about there being unidentified flying objects over military bases, things like that. Now it's very clear that something be an unidentified flying object and not be extraterrestrial if you can't identify it, therefore it's a ufo. I mean that's just by the nature of the definition. [00:02:03] But this documentary is going to allege that the gov. This is what people think, that the government is covering up proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence that have actually visited us, either their ships or their beings or whatever the case may be. [00:02:19] And this has been getting more and more traction in recent years for a long time. [00:02:26] Ideas about aliens and UFOs for most of my lifetime at least were the, the province of like crazies, tinfoil hat people, people like that. But it's gotten a lot more mainstream in recent years. A lot more mainstream actually. We're going to see the belief in aliens historically has not been that crazy. But in my lifetime, last 50, 60 years, it has been. [00:02:50] But it's becoming more and more mainstream. I mean, obviously, Marco Rubio talking about it, kind of maybe he is implying he thinks there's extraterrestrial intelligence. I don't know. [00:02:59] And so it really does, though, raise a lot of questions for Catholics. It raises a lot of questions for any human being. Are we alone in the universe? Is there intelligent life out there somewhere? Is there life at all? And animal life, plant life out there outside of our planet? But I do think it raises some very specific questions, theological questions as well, for Catholics. Now, I know some people, they're going to say, oh, it doesn't matter. I don't really care. It's not. It doesn't affect my life any. And, you know, don't watch this podcast, then if that's the case for you. [00:03:32] I do think it matters on some level, because, first of all, it's just a good thought experiment, if nothing else. What if aliens exist? What if extraterrestrial intelligence does really exist? [00:03:45] What does that mean for us as humans? What does that mean for our Catholic beliefs? [00:03:50] And so it helps us to understand those Catholic beliefs better. It tells us more about God, which is good when we think about stuff like this. And also it helps us to be cognizant of the potential dangers that come with the UFO kind of alien movement that is growing in this country. It allows us to be more discerning when we think about these things. We can be more discerning of, okay, what is true and what is false when it comes to these claims about aliens out there or aliens visiting us. [00:04:27] So I want to. What I want to do is I want to look at this from a Catholic point of view. [00:04:33] And. And by the way, when I say from a Catholic point of view, I will say it's from my Catholic point of view. [00:04:38] And I have done a lot of research on this. And so I feel like what. I'm going to try doing this podcast. I'm going to try to lay out what Catholics have said, what different Catholics have believed, what the Church says about this. And at the end, I'll kind of give my own opinion about this stuff. [00:04:54] I mean, there's. There's a. Because there's a range of Catholics today, what they think on the one hand, on, like, probably one end of the spectrum, you have somebody like Paul Figpen, who I. I interviewed on this podcast before. He has the book Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Catholic Faith, published by TAM publisher, a very solid, like, traditional Catholic publisher, and he very much believes it's possible that there's extraterrestrial life. In fact, he believes that it has visited us. I'm pretty sure he's. He's made that claim that he thinks that aliens have visited the Earth and that some of these claims of visitations or sightings are legitimate. [00:05:30] That's kind of one end of the Catholic spectrum. On the other end, you have somebody like Daniel o' Connor who very much believes. It seems to me that the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence is just philosophically, theologically impossible. That as a Catholic, we just simply cannot believe that there is such a thing as extraterrestrial intelligence. That. That. That would undermine and invalidate the claims of Catholicism. It's contrary to the claims of Catholicism. So that's on the other end of the spectrum, so to speak. [00:06:04] And so. And I think Daniel would say, and I don't want to speak for him, he's got plenty of videos and a book and everything that. That these visitations and sightings of aliens, they're basically demonic in nature, that it's a way to. The demons are using to trick us, to bring us into their service and things of that nature. I hope I'm being both Paul Figman and Daniel o' Connor in. In kind of explain in. In basically saying what their views are. So I think, though, when we have this. And like I said, I'll give my own views at the end. I've noticed that people seem to think they know what I believe about this stuff, but I haven't really ever laid it out like I'm going to in this podcast. [00:06:40] I think the most important thing we have to do first is we have to make distinctions. This is always important when we have philosophical, theological, you know, scientific discussions. [00:06:49] We have to make distinctions. [00:06:51] There are different things that we're talking about when we talk about aliens. First is like, the scientific possibility that there is extraterrestrial intelligence, that there are rational beings out there or even life out there outside of the Earth, whether it be on Mars or, you know, some other planet in the galaxy or outside the galaxy, wherever the case may be. The scientific question of that, that's one distinction. Second, is the theological possibility, like, as Catholics, is it contrary to the Catholic faith to believe that there are. That there is such a thing as other rational beings outside of humanity and the angels. [00:07:38] Then there's the distinction of if there are aliens. When I say aliens, by the way, I'm talking there about rational, you know, intelligent beings that are not human, not angels, and they have Physical. They have physical form. They. They originate on some other planet. So have those aliens visited us? Are these claims of visitations that we've heard over the past, what is it, maybe 80 years now, are they true or not? [00:08:08] And then also even within that, whether are some of them true and some of them not true? [00:08:14] So that's what I want to do, is kind of give those distinctions and talk about the whole subject of aliens. Extraterrestrial intelligence, UFOs, all that from a Catholic perspective. [00:08:26] So first, let's get into, like, just the scientific possibility. [00:08:31] What's interesting is that scientists definitely do not agree on this. This is not something where scientists are of one accord, and usually scientists aren't of one accord, but on the possibility and even probability of there being extraterrestrial intelligence, they're very divided on this. [00:08:47] On the one hand, you have the scientists, the people who say, well, there are trillions of planets in the universe. We have no idea. Trillions might not even be the right number. It might be whatever the thing is, Googleplex or whatever the highest number we can think of, that many planets. What we've discovered scientifically over the past, you know, generation or two, is that there are lots of planets. There are lots and lots of planets revolving around lots and lots of stars out there in the. In the Milky Way, but also beyond the Milky Way. And so with just that. And we know also that in our solar system, we have, well, some people say 8, some people say 9, some people say 10 planets in our solar system. And we know one of them does have life. At the very least, we know that for a fact. [00:09:38] And so there's a 1 in 10 chance that a planet has life in our solar system. So if you just do some basic math, if there are trillions of plants out there, some of them are going to have life, and some of those that have life are going to have intelligent life. [00:09:53] And so it really is almost like a mathematical equation. In fact, there is a mathematical equation. It's called the Drake Equation. [00:10:00] And this was developed, I think, around 1960 or so. And it basically. I'm not going to go through the details. There's a Jimmy Akin podcast about this you can listen to to get to learn more about it. But the Drake Equation basically just takes all the variables that we have. How many suns, how many stars are there, how many planets are there around stars, how many, you know, how many of them have life, you know, any life at all. How many of them have intelligent life, and how many of them also have. [00:10:29] Have, like, technology that we could see this, the Drake Equation actually is not how much life is out there, intelligent life out there, but how much intelligent life can we see? [00:10:39] And so the Drake equation kind of says, okay, it's like a mathematical equation now. Nobody knows the exact variables, what the numbers are. But the point is that if you just, if you just look at probability, there's got to be more intelligent life out there than just us. Based upon that way of looking at it, you also have. [00:10:58] Okay, and then you have what? Another point of view, which is a scientific point of view as well, is that if we look at everything that came together to make it so that life occurs here on Earth, all the different variables that had to be perfectly aligned in order for life to not only, you know, begin, but also thrive on this planet, the chances are astronomically small, no pun intended. [00:11:27] I mean, there's just. There's so many variables that had to come into place. Obviously, our planet had to be in the habitable zone, which is the area, further distance from a sun, a star, in which life can exist. [00:11:42] But there's also even crazy stuff like the size of our moon and the fact that we have a moon, we have one moon that's a certain size. [00:11:49] The fact of Jupiter's existence, because what Jupiter does, it's. It's this huge gravity well kind of thing in our solar system that prevents our destruction from asteroids a lot of times and things like that. There's all. I mean, there's so many. And so sometimes scientists are like, they believe the kind of the rare Earth hypothesis that is really, really unlikely that life can thrive, even begin on most planets. So if you take the astronomically high number of planets out there and the astronomically low chances that life could begin, you have this kind of conflict between those two forces to say, okay, is it possible that there's life elsewhere? In fact, another kind of the debate in scientific circles is called the Fermi Paradox. In fact, I'm going to put links to some, some of these books and different resources in the show notes here. But there's this great book by Stephen Webb that I, that my daughter bought for me for Christmas years ago. It's called if the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens, where is everybody? 50 solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. [00:12:54] And the Fermi Paradox is basically so in the 50s, it was starting to be believed by most scientists that, you know, the, the first thing I was talking about, there's so much, so many plants out there. There's got to be life out there. [00:13:07] But then a scientist, his last name is Fermi and boy, I am blanking on his first name right now. Let me see if it's on the back cover of this. [00:13:16] Why would. Oh yeah, Enrico. Enrico Fermi. [00:13:20] He kind of just asked. Well, there's all these plants and so life is just everywhere in universe. Where are they all? Why don't we see them? [00:13:28] Why don't we? Why can't we? [00:13:31] Why don't we? Why have we heard from them? Why haven't we seen evidence of that? [00:13:35] And so the Fermi paradox is this idea of if you believe there's life out there, why have we not seen any evidence for it yet? Because, for example, if a society was like ours, an alien society was like ours, but let's say it's much older, let's say it's a million years older than ours. Well, think about if they went the same trajectory we did as far as technology. [00:14:00] How advanced will we be in a million years? We'd probably be so advanced that we would be literally like controlling a huge segment of the Milky Way galaxy. [00:14:10] We might have Dyson spheres and stuff. And that's type of stuff that you see with telescopes. [00:14:15] And so, like, why would, why have we seen nothing, though? We've seen literally, and this is important to remember for all the headlines you make here, there has been literally no evidence of any life outside of Earth. Now there are hints that potentially life existed, maybe on Mars or even Venus, maybe on Europa, which is one of the moons of Jupiter. [00:14:37] But there's no hard evidence that anywhere there is life other than on planet Earth. [00:14:44] And so Fermi's like, well, where are they all? And there's, there's been lots of different answers. I mean, like I said, this book has 50 answers, you know, potential solutions for why we don't hear anybody. Like, you know, they're hiding themselves. [00:14:57] They all destroy themselves before they can, can develop technology advanced enough that we would see, you know, things like that. So, but that is another part of kind of the scientific. [00:15:07] This is more not whether or not life exists, but why we don't see it is I don't think we wrap our brains around how vast space is, how large it is. [00:15:21] I mean, the distances between just stars, you know, is just it. Well, it's astronomical, it's just humongous. And so the idea we see so little. We've gotten a lot better telescopes than the James Webb Telescope, Space Telescope recently and others. We can see a lot, but it's not even like seeing one Drop in an ocean. [00:15:45] It's not even like seeing one drop in an ocean. And so it's possible. Yeah, there's life out there, but we're so spread out. [00:15:51] Will never, ever encounter them. [00:15:53] You know, there's just no way that we'll ever encounter them, because right now we don't think it's possible. There's no. We think it's possible. There's no way you can travel at the speed of light. Faster than the speed of light. Well, that means the closest star is four years away. Over four years away, even by going, you know, near the speed of light. And other. Like the Andromeda galaxy, I think it's 25,000 light years. [00:16:17] This 25. Anyway, the point is things are really far apart, so even if there is, we might not see it. So it's not a settled issue in science of whether or not to extraterrestrial life. Of course there isn't, because there's no evidence. Without evidence, without, you know, some type of material evidence, science can't make a determination. So every scientist who tells you they think there's alien life, they think there's not alien life. They're just making it. They're just guessing as much as you are. They might have a little more information, but they're just guessing as much as anybody else. There is no actual scientific evidence. [00:16:49] Also, it must be remembered that a lot of scientists, not all, not as many as some people, Catholics think a lot of scientists, they're very materialistic, meaning they don't believe in God and the spiritual. So they're just looking at. [00:17:01] They believe that Earth, you know, life on Earth is 100% a natural occurrence, like there was no spiritual element to it, no God that directed it. And so they think that if that's the case, usually the more they think that's the case, the more likely they are to think there is alien life because of the fact that if it developed here, why wouldn't it develop somewhere? There's got to be a few more worlds that had everything come together like this one. Although, like I said, the rare Earth hypothesis posits that the unlikelihood is actually greater than the likelihood that there would be, that there'd be another planet that would. That would be support life and develop life like we did. [00:17:39] So that's kind of the scientific distinction that's about the science. So again, science has not said whether or not it can't say without evidence. Now we talk about the theological possibilities when it comes to the, you know, possibly alien life. [00:17:54] I want to make one thing clear before I kind of talk about some of the issues related to theological issues. And this is something that I've seen a growing number of Catholics deny, but they really shouldn't. [00:18:07] And that is, there is no church's position on this. The Church allows debate among Catholics whether or not it's possible there's extraterrestrial life, intelligent life. [00:18:21] In fact, this has been debated for centuries, sincerely, Church, among Christians. [00:18:29] And many, many Christians have accepted the possibility that, yes, there is. You know, there could be. It would not contradict Catholicism for there to be intelligent life outside of angels and outside of man. [00:18:45] Many, many Catholics have believe this. Now, there have also been Catholics who have denied that and said, no, it's not possible. [00:18:50] The point is, though, this is an open debate. This is very important. This is an open debate. It's not required to believe there is no such thing as aliens, and it's not required to believe teaching, to believe that we must believe in aliens. We can dispute it. In fact, I would say in my own study of the history of this issue among Catholics, it's more commonly accepted that it is possible that it's. That, you know, it's actually the minority opinion. [00:19:21] And this is something, you know, theologians know when we're talking about things like this. There's. There's. [00:19:26] There's debates, and it's not like things that are not settled. There's minority opinions, majority opinions. It doesn't mean one thing is true or not. It just kind of tells you kind of what's the sense, the lay of the land. And the reality is, I would argue the majority opinion among Catholics through the centuries has been that, yes, it is. It is possible that there's alien life. And that does not contradict Catholic teaching at all. In fact, it was very commonly held among Catholics in the 19th century. In fact, St. John Henry Newman, he actually noted that doubting the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence was viewed as blasphemy in some religious circles of his time, which reflects the common assumption among educated Catholics that align with the faith. In other words, St. John Henry Newman was kind of lamenting that, like, you couldn't. You couldn't take that minority view these. That those days, you couldn't say there are. No, no, there's no possibility of aliens, because it was kind of considered blasphemy because so many Catholics believe that it was possible, which tells you it was the minority view. I mean, I think it's. [00:20:29] You know, that's changed a bit since then. But, like. And I was Reading a book not long ago about the Mars craze, which happened in the late 19th century, early 20th century, where people believed through some telescopic photos and observations of Mars, which were misunderstand, misinterpreted, that there were actually people, beings living on Mars. They thought there were canals and everything like that. And this was a big debate. And in fact, the New York Times was even publishing, like, proof that. That life on Mars exists. You know, mainstream newspapers were saying that because of scientists would say that, yes, I found proof of life on Mars. [00:21:08] And what was interesting is that Catholics of the time, like the priests and everything, they did not freak out and say, this undermines our faith or this is somehow contrary to the faith. Instead, they just said, yeah, if there is life on Mars, then, you know, that we'll. We'll evangelize them or we'll find out, you know what, it doesn't contradict the faith. You know, sermons were preached like this in no way contradicts what we believe as Catholics, because, again, that's just the kind of way it was. [00:21:35] In fact, this is interesting. As I was preparing for this podcast, my wife, who did not know I was preparing this, she actually sent me a photo. She was doing catechism with one of my youngest children. And we use the Baltimore Catechism. So this is from Baltimore Catechism number two. Note, this is obviously pre Vatican II. It originates in the late 1900s, late 1800s, but I'm not quite sure what this version I think was in the 50s, but I'm not sure how old this question was. But in lesson five, question 51, it says, is it possible that there are intelligent beings created by God on other planets of the universe? [00:22:10] So is it possible they're intelligent beings created by God on other planets in the universe? This is exactly what we're talking about today. What's the answer? The Baltimore Catechism, the old Baltimore Catechism gives, yes, it is possible that there are intelligent beings created by God on other planets of the universe because God's power is unlimited. So it gives a very basic answer. Obviously, this is for children, so it's not going to go into it in depth, but says, yeah, it is possible because God's power is limited. In other words, just saying, don't limit God. Don't say that it's impossible, because we don't tell God. We don't what he can and cannot do. [00:22:40] And so, like I said, this is very common. I mean, with so many people believing in extraterrestrial intelligence in the 19th century, in particular in the 20th century. What we also have to realize is the church never condemned that belief. [00:22:57] It remained silent. It did not say, oh, no, you cannot believe that. And now, if it was some fringe idea that a few people say, sure, you might say the church wouldn't comment on it, because who cares what a few fringe people think? [00:23:08] No, this was the common belief of Catholics that, yeah, it is possible. I mean, nobody knew for sure, just like they don't know for sure now. But, yeah, Catholics were just like, yeah, it's possible. I mean, the Baltimore Catechism is literally telling kids this that it's possible. [00:23:23] And the church never thought to say, you know, we need to step in here, because this is definitely contrary to the faith. So we need to make sure Catholics know you cannot believe that there is such a thing as extraterrestrial intelligence, that there are intelligent beings outside of Earth. [00:23:35] So they obviously made that. You know, the fact that they didn't condemn that is very telling. So. So that's even before I've talked about what the theological issues are. And there are theological issues. There are theological challenges to the existence of. Of intelligent beings outside the Earth. But we cannot say, as Catholics that you cannot believe that there are extra intelligent beings outside Earth, and you. And we also shouldn't say, you must believe it. So. So what are the theological issues involved with the potential existence of intelligent beings? [00:24:08] First is like kind of, what would they be like? I think this is very important to note. It's like, we know, for example, we know of two races of intelligent beings in the. In the universe. [00:24:20] Men, obviously, and angels. Angels both fallen and not fallen. So demons and angels. [00:24:26] And we know they're different. [00:24:28] They're not the same angels. For example, they had one judgment that they could not. That basically they couldn't repent of. Once, you know, once a fallen angel fell, it couldn't come back. [00:24:42] Also, there's obviously different. They don't have a physical body. So there's differences between angels and men, how they're created. So it's possible that God created other intelligent beings. [00:24:55] There are intelligent, but they're not like man and they're not like angels. [00:25:01] This, of course, is all speculation because we don't know, but that's kind of the point of this podcast. [00:25:06] What are some examples? [00:25:09] God could have created an intelligent being that doesn't have an immortal soul. So they live a certain amount of time on their planet and they die, and they cease to exist after that. [00:25:19] It's not. It's not cons. It's not required necessary for an intelligent being to have an immortal soul. In fact, in the early church, in the early days, there were beliefs about things like fairies and what were the. Some of the. These other like, you know, intelligent beings that were not humans. And the church fathers, a lot of people at that time, they believed they were real. They didn't say, oh no, they can't exist because you know, contracts can affect. They said, no, they're real. But they didn't necessarily believe they were heading immortal souls. So maybe it's possible they would create angels like that. I mean, I'm sorry, intelligent being aliens like that. [00:25:57] It's also possible that there's an intelligent race of beings that never fell. Maybe they didn't really have a possibility. Maybe they were never tempted. God just created them in some way that they never fell. Or maybe they were tempted and they didn't fall. So they're an unfallen race. [00:26:15] Maybe it's a race that fell and like the demons, there's no possibility for redemption. [00:26:24] Or maybe it's possible intelligent beings were created that like man were tempted, fell, and they do have a possibility for redemption. That's probably the most difficult one theologically. But you know, it's, it's definitely though we don't. That's the important thing here is we should not restrict what God can do. We might say this is fitting for God and something that, but that gets a little dangerous. We should definitely not say, okay, God, we know God cannot act against his nature. That's what God cannot do. [00:26:56] Everything else is on the table. And so we shouldn't be too quick to say, well, this would go against his nature to create, for example, intelligent beings that don't have immortal souls that die. And once they die, they don't exist anymore. Anymore. [00:27:10] You know, so I think it's. [00:27:12] We just simply can't say what God can and cannot do when it comes to. Only thing we say he cannot do, like I said, is he cannot go against his own nature. [00:27:22] Another challenge. Well, one of the first challenges of the existence of intelligent being is does it undermine the specialness, the uniqueness of man? After all, as Catholics, we do believe humankind has a certain specialness, mostly because God became one of us. That's what makes us so special now. [00:27:43] You know, there was this idea for a long time, you know, dating back to Aristotle, that the earth was the center of the universe and that was fitting. Many, many Catholics believe that was fitting because man was created as basically the center of creation, obviously not the center of of existence because that's God. But like, we were created as the center of, of creation. [00:28:08] And so when all of a sudden scientific discoveries found that, oh, the Earth is actually not physically the center of the universe, we're not even the center of our own solar system. [00:28:19] A lot of non, you know, non Christians jumped at this, like atheists jumped at this and say, ah, I see proof that your God doesn't really exist. [00:28:27] And some Catholics and Protestants, mostly Protestants though, did respond by saying, no, no, no, we're, we're definitely still, we reject your scientific findings. And of course, over time, more and more people realize the scientific findings are valid. We're, you know, we're not geocentrists. We know that the Earth is not the center of the solar system or the universe. And so, but that doesn't, that didn't change our uniqueness. I mean, I think, I think C.S. lewis, he, he wrote actually a great article called Religion Rocketry about this. Very short. I'll post a link to it in the show Notes that kind of talks about some of these issues. [00:29:00] But I think it was him who, he who said the idea that somehow God doesn't exist or that man isn't special because we're not the physical center of the universe doesn't understand God or man. [00:29:13] Think about the incarnation itself. Did God go to Rome and was born and be born in the center of the kind of the known world of Rome to a, to a empress or something like that, or a queen? [00:29:25] No. [00:29:26] He came to a backwater area, a nothing town called Bethlehem that had no worldly importance. He was born to a peasant girl who nobody knew. [00:29:36] So the idea that Earth is like Beth, the Bethlehem of the universe, obviously doesn't change our thinking about God in any way, because that's how God works. He likes the small and the lowly and the Earth. If you look, if you understand the universe and what it is, the Earth is small and lowly. There's no question about that. I always think it's weird when atheists will be like, oh, we're just a pale blue dot. If you look at like a picture of Earth from millions of miles away, we're just so insignificant. And somehow this means God doesn't exist. I mean, that's just ridiculous. That just tells me how great God is, that even this small pale blue dot, which is a nothing area of the universe has such wonder in it, has such great creation in it. [00:30:21] You know, God decided to take us and make us, you know, so great. So, you know, it really doesn't undermine Catholicism in any way. [00:30:29] And so likewise, just like we don't have to be the physical sin in the universe in order to be special in God's eyes, we don't have to be the only rational beings. I mean, obviously there's, there's angels. That doesn't. The existence of angels does not diminish man in any way, shape or form. And the existence of another rational being does not automatically diminish us. It's like saying, you know, if a father has multiple kids, are you saying, like, okay, they have their first kid, a family, and they have their second kid? Are you saying this existence of the second kid somehow diminishes the love of the father for that first child? [00:31:06] Or that somehow he doesn't think that first child is unique and special because he has other kids? I mean, anybody who's a father, a parent, a mother father knows this is a ludicrous. When my second daughter was born, I didn't think my first daughter was somehow no longer unique and special. [00:31:22] I loved her just as much, but I was able to love my second daughter, my future children, you know, just as much. I mean, but each in a unique way. [00:31:34] So I don't think that, you know, in any way. If the, if there is the existence of other rational beings, intelligent beings out there in the universe, I don't think that undermines the specialness, uniqueness of man. Now I think the bigger questions revolve around salvation, the incarnation and salvation. How does this happen? Obviously this only applies in kind of the last case of what they would be like, you know, if they don't have immoral souls that matter if they're unfallen, it doesn't really apply. If they are fallen, but. And they can't get up, so to speak, they can't be, then can't be redeemed and doesn't matter. [00:32:06] But if they're fallen and they can be redeemed, we do have some real serious theological questions, and I'm not going to answer them here because I don't think they're. I don't think we can answer them at this point because I think there can be some. I mean, there is mysteries in God. I hope so. If you can understand your God, he's not really God. If you can understand fully, obviously we understand certain things about him, but if you can say, oh, God can't do this. He can't do this. And you know, he. He absolutely is, you know, that's not God. That's your conception. That's your, your idol. That you've created. [00:32:37] And so what if there is a race of intelligent beings out there that fell and can be redeemed? This is something that C.S. lewis focuses on in his short article Religion and Rockadry. So I recommend that to you. [00:32:50] But there's a couple. But there is a couple different possibilities. [00:32:54] One is the possibility that Christ's incarnation, sacrifice, you know, death and resurrection here on earth applies to them somehow in some way we don't understand right now. That might seem a little bit odd, but think about, for example, Native Americans. They existed long before the time of Christ and they lived for 1500 years after the time of Christ with no knowledge whatsoever of Christ. Sorry Mormons, but your Jesus is fake who came over here and preached the gospel over here. [00:33:23] But the idea though is these people lived for thousands of years and never knew Christ, but the Incarnation did apply to them. [00:33:33] So isn't it possible, at least possible that there's some race of alien beings of which Christ's incarnation here on earth applies to them somehow in ways we don't know and maybe only in the future they'll find out about it? You know, that I guess you could say that's possible. [00:33:48] I think that I don't really like that answer because one of the biggest things about the Incarnation is the fact that God became us and we identify with Him. Like, I have a hard time seeing how an alien race would be able to worship Jesus as we do in his incarnation here because he's not their, you know, even their species or whatever. But you know, like I said, I'm not going to say I think we have the key virtue here is humility. We can't just say we know, we just say here's what I think. Here's some speculation. So that's one possibility. [00:34:22] Are there way. Another possibility is maybe they are saved in a way other than an incarnation. This has been a debatable topic among Catholics of whether or not God could have saved us in a means other than the Incarnation. Saint Anselm basically said no, that the Incarnation was the only way. By the way, I love why the God Man Cordeus Homo. It's one of the most beautiful books ever written. [00:34:45] I highly recommend it. But his basically his idea was that God could not save us except for through the incarnation. St. Thomas Aquinas disagreed, though. St. Thomas Aquinas did argue that there are God could have used other ways. I mean, he. I think Saint Anselm was wrong in this. I think Saint Anselm's right to recognize the beauty and the awesomeness of how God saved us. [00:35:09] But I don't think it's right to just say it's impossible. God couldn't have saved us any other way. I mean, God is all powerful. He could have saved us through a way other than incarnation. So it's possible another alien race is redeemed in a means other than God becoming incarnate as their species, as their race of beings. [00:35:31] And then another possibility is multiple incarnations. [00:35:36] Could God, let's say God the Son, I guess you could say the Father, the Holy Spirit as well. But let's say God the Son, we know he took on human nature. That's the hypostatic union. That's the mystery of the incarnation. [00:35:48] Is it possible God to son has also taken on other natures, alien natures? [00:35:55] Now, one thing to note here, very important is it's not saying there are different saviors for different races, because in every case it's one divine person. We're talking about God the Son. [00:36:08] And this is if people have some heretical views of kind of like the incarnation and the hypostatic union, stuff like that. [00:36:14] And if you kind of think that if your automatic thought of Jesus becoming another, you know, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say it like that. I was about to say heresy of God the Son taking on another nature, an alien nature somehow creates like two saviors. You really need to understand your, your theology a little better. Catholic theology, it's. It's one divine person who take, who has two natures. And so in this instance, if there was an alien race, God the Son would take on an alien nature. [00:36:42] And so this one I know is a, this one's a tough one. Like, I think we recoil from it just almost like, just psychologically or something like that. Just like emotionally, I guess you'd say we recoil from that idea. There's something just weird about it, maybe. [00:37:00] But if you think about it, think put yourself in the, the shoes of a Jew living maybe in 100 BC, and you told him, God, the God, the one God is going to become man is going to take on human nature and he's going to be born of a woman, he's going to live as a man, and he's going to die. [00:37:24] I think they would, they would emotionally recoil from that. And I think that's exactly what happened. And that's the reason why so many of the Jews of the time rejected Christ. [00:37:33] And so I don't think we should just use our kind of emotional recoiling from that to immediately reject that possibility, some of my friends, we joke about, they kind of make fun of me for saying, oh, you believe there's an alien Jesus. And like it's in good fun. But like, I don't necessarily believe in the alien Jesus, by the way, but I do think that it's something that we should, you know, I don't think is an insurmountable challenge to Catholic theology if that were the case. [00:37:59] And so there. So the, the point of all this is. Yes, it is. [00:38:03] If there is an alien race, we shouldn't be restricted in our thinking that God would create them and their story of salvation history would be identical to ours or at least parallel to ours. It could be very different in the, in the mysteries of God. I mean, God is infinite. He's all powerful, he's everything. And so we can't restrict his imagination the ways in which he could create beings and ways in which he could save them. I think that's, you know, we just have to understand that we don't understand all those many ways. So again, so I would say, you know, those are kind of some of the theological issues associated with the idea of an intelligent alien race. [00:38:46] Now the last distinction I want to make is this is the possibility of aliens have come to us, have, have visited Earth starting around the 1940s. I know there's some before that, but really in the 1940s with maybe Quincy, maybe not the advent of rockets, human made rockets in the, in the space age, there were many claims started to be made of people who said they saw ships, UFOs, you know, identified flying objects that basically performed in ways that were not humanly possible, at least thought to be humanly possible. [00:39:22] Others claim to actually have been visited by aliens, seen non human alien beings. Some, you know, claim to be abducted by them or you know, visited their ships. There have been claims of recovered crash sites of alien ships, of, of recovered bodies of aliens. I mean, one of the, my favorite movies, and I will say it proudly, is Independence Day. Not the stupid sequel, but the Independence day from the 1990s. My son and I, we love that movie. I just love that movie. I know it's a tall popcorn flick. I know it's not like some deep theological or philosophical look, but I just think it's, it's entertaining. [00:39:58] But in that movie they actually, at Roswell they'd actually recovered a ship and some alien bodies. So there's, there's plenty of different claims being made about visitations, UFO sightings, things like that. Now when it comes to these claims, there Are different possibilities, different possible explanations. [00:40:20] The first is it could just be a misunderstanding. For example, maybe the vessel you saw, the ship you saw was just a human made ship that you saw in a weird light, or you didn't quite see totally, or you didn't understand already existed, or whatever the case may be. Maybe the person who's saying this was drunk at the time and they didn't have full capacity and they saw things they shouldn't have seen. Maybe it's just a, you know, just a, the way lights happen to flicker in, in the, in the atmosphere, something like that. You know, whatever the case may be, it could just be a simple misunderstanding that, you know, unidentified after all just means unidentified. It might be that an expert could identify it, but the person who saw it could not. [00:41:03] Another possibility is, and this kind of falls under misunderstanding, but like it's a cover up for advanced human technology. So for example, maybe a government has developed very advanced like flying technology, but they don't want their enemies, they only want their own people to know about it. [00:41:21] So maybe when somebody spots it, they actually help in a cover up. And kind of, they're the ones who suggest maybe it's aliens because they know then it'll be dismissed. Whereas if it wasn't dismissed as aliens, people might be like, wait a minute, is our government or another government creating these things that can do these things and they're not telling us about it? That's another possibility. [00:41:39] Another possibility is it's a hoax, it's a fraud. It's simply a matter of, you know, people making it up to get, to get famous, to get attention, whatever the case may be. [00:41:52] Another possibility is yes, it's demonic activity or even angelic activity. Maybe it's angelic activity that a person, you know, good angel, did something and a person misunderstood interpreted as an alien activity. But more likely it's demonic activity that demons are. Because demons do have a certain level of control over the physical world. They're able to manipulate physical things on some level. [00:42:17] Maybe they're doing things in order, you know, and making it kind of hiding behind the alien guys in order to, to advance their purposes, which is to lead people away from God. So definitely maybe it's demonic. And then the last possibility really is maybe it's an actual alien, maybe it's an actual extraterrestrial that, you know, is visiting Earth. It's, it's a spaceship, all, everything, you know, and, and that's true. [00:42:42] Now it's important to note that of all the hundreds and thousands of claims it's not that all of them will fall under one of these categories. [00:42:53] Some might be misunderstanding, some might be cover us, some might be hoaxes, some might be demonic, and maybe theoretically some might be alien. [00:43:01] And so it's like we have to recognize that there are, we can't just lump them all together. That's, that's intellectually just lazy to do that because it's just not, you know, that's not the way we should use our reason to do that. We, I would, I think it's pretty, pretty obvious that most of them probably would fall under the first four categories of misunderstanding, cover up, hoax, or demonic. And I do think as Catholics, we cannot underestimate the possibility of demonic influence. And in fact, I had a guest, I think it was last January, Teresa. [00:43:37] I always, I'm sorry, Teresa, I forget how to pronounce your last name, but Yannaros, Yannaros, she was very involved in the New age movement and she was actually very involved in the UFO kind of movement. [00:43:47] And she's since converted, now is a practicing Catholic. And she talked of stories of actually being at what are basically the equivalent of seances where people would get together to call aliens, to, to manifest aliens, to basically visit them and even, maybe even control them. And if she says now she knows, she knows that was demonic, that was calling demons. [00:44:14] And so let's not pretend that some of these are not demonic activities. They're absolutely, that's the one. I know for sure. I know for sure there's some misunderstandings. I know for sure that there's some hoaxes and frauds because some have been exposed. I know, I guess there might be some cover ups. I don't know that one for sure. [00:44:33] I know for sure that some of them are demonic. [00:44:36] And so as Catholics, we need to be very discerning and we do this. In fact, I would just say, and I would say there's been very little hard evidence. Like for example, there's not been an alien body that's been put out on display at like the Halls of Congress or something like the Smithsonian or something like that. There's not been an alien ship for the whole world to be able to see. [00:44:58] There is no hard evidence. I know that there's lots of second hand claims, there's lots of, you know, claims of seeing physical evidence. But there, there's nothing that you can say this is the smoking gun, not even the smoking gun. This is the gun itself. [00:45:13] So we can't say that any of them are definitely actual alien, you know, alien beings. Or alien ships. [00:45:23] I think though, when we, we evaluate these different sightings and visitations, whatever claims, I think we need to be like the churches when it makes it like is investigating the supernatural, the beyond the natural. And by this I'm even going to talk about beyond the natural, what we understand to be natural. So you know, what aliens, if they exist, could do might be beyond our understanding of physics and things like that. [00:45:50] Look at, for example, how the church treats a miracle, a claimed miracle for a saint, a potential saint. [00:45:57] They do not just say, oh, yep, that's a miracle. You said you were healed because through the intercession of Blessed Carl, okay, you're healed. That Blessed Carl did it. No, they do a serious and scientific investigation before they will even consider classifying a miracle. [00:46:12] Likewise, when somebody comes to the church and says they need a potential exorcism, potential demonic possession, they don't just send the exorcist and say, okay, do it. Do a, you know, do an exorcism. No, they do a serious and scientific analysis. Is this person just maybe emotionally distraught? Maybe they have psychological problems, you know, maybe, are they insane? Maybe are they making it up? They really do all that and do a lot of that before they say, okay, I, we think there's demonic here. We're going to do an exorcism. Likewise, when Catholics see these claims of extraterrestrial sightings or visitation, whatever, we should be just as skeptical and as methodical as the Church is on any extraordinary claims. It needs extraordinary evidence. And so that means that both, that we don't immediately, especially for the last two categories I talked about, we don't automatically assume it's an alien. We also don't automatically assume it's aliens. I mean, I'm sorry it's demonic. [00:47:17] We, we just, we need to see more evidence than just like, oh, I think all aliens are demons. [00:47:21] It might just be a hoax, might be a cover up, might be a misunderstanding. So, okay, so all that being said, and I know I've been talking for a while, this is an interesting topic that I've always been interested in. Of course, what is my own view about this? [00:47:35] The first one is let me talk about the scientific possibilities. I actually think I agree that the author of this book, who I don't think is Catholic or maybe not even Christian or anything, Stephen Web of the Fermi Paradox on Where is Everybody? He goes through all these 50 different possibilities and a lot of these possibilities are just the aliens exist but we haven't seen them. Is he, he concludes with he thinks we're alone in the universe. He thinks there is no other intelligent life in the universe. And I tend to agree with him. Obviously I don't make that as a definitive statement, but just from a scientific standpoint, I think if there was other intelligent life out there, there'd be some evidence of it that we could see. [00:48:13] I just, I don't think, I don't think it exists. I am totally open to the possibility it would not rock my world. I think it would actually be kind of exciting if all of a sudden we did have a discovery of an intelligent race. I just don't think, you know, if you ask, put it this way, you said you got to put money down or I'll put a gun to your head or whatever. Tell me what you think. I'd say I don't think they intelligent beings exist outside of Earth, but I would not put the odds at like 100% of that. I might put the odds at just barely over 50, like 55 or 60, something like that. I definitely think it's possible, but I don't think it's likely theologically as well. [00:48:50] Also I do think it's very possible that there is plant life on other, other planets and potentially even animal, non rational animal life in the sense of God kind of creating the whole universe for all us to expand to and live in. And so like there might be plants out there that, that humans can live on without being such a pain like Mars would be. [00:49:10] And so I think that's. That I think is more possible. I see that over 50% chance that there is life out there, but not necessarily intelligent life out there. [00:49:20] So theologically though, I do think it's possible. [00:49:23] I don't think it contradicts in any way, shape or form the Catholic faith. [00:49:28] If intelligent beings existed outside of humans and outside of angels. I definitely understand there's challenges. It would challenge the way we think about some of our theology, but it would not contradict any of our theology. [00:49:40] Now when, and in fact, I think that this is an area where we need more humility that we, you know, I don't like it when people are absolute about things the church is not absolute about. It's okay to have opinions, but don't be absolute in the sense that this is only possible this when the church doesn't say that. And I think that's in this, in this topic. I think that's very true. [00:50:02] I think we need a little more humility now on the final kind of area of visitations, UFO sightings. [00:50:10] I don't believe any of them are aliens. I do not believe aliens have visited this Earth. [00:50:15] I just think the, the travel, the difficulty of travel in interstellar space, you know, is just too incredible that if it was possible alien race created the ability to do that, I just think it would not, they would not come here and like act the way that people claim they act and, and you know, do things like the way they hide but they're not very good at times and things like that. I just don't think, I think if they visited it would be obvious and we would have proof. [00:50:41] There's just too many other ways to explain these. I, I do not claim to have studied every single visitation or anything like that or citing. But every time I do study them it always seems to me like, yeah, but that could be explained in other ways, that that doesn't have to be aliens. And, and like I often think like that evidence is not very clear. I mean it's often secondhand, it's grainy photos, it's all these, there's only problems, there's just not real proof. So I think that even if we can explain certain things, I still think aliens, the idea of aliens is far, far fetched. And actually I think that this documentary coming up, the the Age of Disclosure documentary coming up, I think it's gonna be a big nothing burger. It's getting a lot of press and it will, it'll drop big and people will talk about a little bit, but I don't think it's going to reveal anything that hasn't already been talked about over the years of like oh yeah, this guy said this, he, this guy was a government official and he saw this and this guy. [00:51:36] But there's got, you need proof. I want to see an alien body lying or either lying down because it's dead or walking and talking at the halls of congress or somewhere like that or I want to see the alien spaceship that we can video, we can all look at, we can touch until that happens. I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm very skeptical of all those claims. So I do not think that aliens have visited our planet. I think all those are either hoaxes, misunderstandings, you know, cover ups or demonic activity. So again, I don't think, I think it's more likely than not that we're the only intelligent, you know, beings in the universe with, with bodies. [00:52:17] I think it is possible though it wouldn't contradict my faith if it did exist. I just don't think it's likely. [00:52:22] Okay, lastly, before I cut out again. Just wanted to encourage you to pick up my book, Shard of Eden. It's a it will is on pre order right now. Will come out probably in the next week or two. Here's my one copy of it. I have go to Shardofeden.com it's a fun book, I think. I think it's a good story. It's very readable. People I had people read it before we published it, you know, to say, is this any good? They all said one of the things every single one said it was very readable, you know, enjoyed. They enjoyed reading it. And it does kind of talk about some of these issues from a fictional standpoint. It's not like a theological treatise or anything like that, but it kind of talks this in about these issues in a fun fictional way. So okay, everybody, until next time, God love you.