Of Space Aliens and the Catholic Faith

Ancient relief with Christian crosses and an alien-like person on wall of the fourth-century Samtavro Orthodox Church in Mtskheta, Georgia. (Radiokafka/Shutterstock)

By Sabrina Arena Ferrisi

A recent Department of Defense report about a credible UFO sighting in 2004 renews discussion about how science and faith have addressed the possibility of intelligent life on other planets.

On Dec. 16, 2017, reports were released by the U.S. Department of Defense of a possible UFO-sighting 13 years earlier. Apparently, in mid-November 2004, two American fighter pilots spotted and filmed an unidentified flying object off the coast of San Diego. The object they saw was about 40 feet long and looked like a giant Tic-Tac. It appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, then descended toward the ocean and hovered at 20,000 feet, before dropping out of radar range.

There is no explanation for what these two fighter pilots saw and filmed. But the Church has plenty to say, theologically, about the possibility of life in outer space.

“There is no official teaching,” said Father Terry Ehrman, assistant director for the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame. “But there has been speculation within the Church since the Middle Ages. In the 15th century, people began to ask if there was a plurality of worlds.”

Since 1582, the Vatican has had — with some continuity — an astronomical observatory. With regards to the subject of alien life, it held conferences on this matter in 2009, 2011 and 2014.

Pope Francis said, during a morning Mass in May 2014, “If an expedition of Martians arrives and some of them come to us and if one of them says: ‘Me, I want to be baptized!’ what would happen?”

He said that even if these hypothetical beings were “green men, with a long nose and big ears, like children draw … who are we to close doors?”

The theological questions that emerge on the subject of possible alien life are many: If there is life on other planets, is it intelligent life? If men and women were created in the image and likeness of God, what is the image of God? Would intelligent life on other planets also be in the image of God?

“But the real question is [about] redemption: What do we do with sin? Will extraterrestrials sin? Or would they always be good? We can’t presume that, just because we sinned, all intelligent life would. Have aliens fallen? Is sinfulness intrinsic to intelligent life? Is Original Sin just for terrestrials or also for aliens?” said Father Ehrman.

Finally, theologians wonder if Jesus’ incarnation was just for humans or for life throughout the universe — including aliens. Could there have been multiple Incarnations?

“Scripture is written as though we are the only species,” noted Father Ehrman. “These are questions for which we don’t have answers. But it is good to think about: What is my relationship to God? What does this have to do with me?”

Scientific Facts

The question of life on other planets brings up some harsh scientific facts: The chance of life existing on another planet is extremely remote.

According to Angelo Stagnaro, a Catholic journalist with graduate degrees in biological anthropology, the existence of life on another planet is virtually impossible.

“Now, don’t get me wrong. The Church would be happy to have alien life. And we can never limit God’s power. I would be the first booster for alien life. I love Star Trek, but when you crunch the numbers, it’s impossible.”

Scientists know that in order for life to appear on Earth, many conditions needed to exist in a precise and highly timed order. If any one of these factors did not take place, life could not have occurred.

“In order for life to take place, a planet has to be in what is called a ‘goldilocks zone,’” said Father Robert Spitzer, a Jesuit who was the president of Gonzaga University and who founded the Magis Center. “It can’t be too close to the sun or it will burn, or too far because it would be too cold. It has to be a rocky planet and not a gas planet. It must have a magnetic core, like the Earth, so that it can create a magnetosphere which protects the planet from the UV rays of the sun.”

Stagnaro has written about what he calls the “Shem Equation,” regarding 76 factors that need to occur for life to take place on a planet. The chances of these events happening are, according to Stagnaro, “astronomically impossible and intellectually untenable.”

The discovery of thousands of exoplanets in the last couple of years has, of course, reignited the question of life in outer space.

“Some say that there could be 1 trillion exoplanets. I favor the smaller number of 100 billion exoplanets. Any of these planets could have bacterial life. But we still can’t explain how the transition is made from nonlife to life on any planet, from amino acid to cell life,” said Father Spitzer.

Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, with bacterial life appearing 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago.

“But how life started on Earth, nobody knows,” said Father Spitzer.

Aliens With Souls

Catholic theologians are not just interested in the question of intelligent life appearing on other planets, but if those intelligent beings have a soul. Some, like Father Spitzer, contend that higher intelligence is actually the sign of being ensouled.

“If there is any other intelligent life in the universe that can do the things we do, they would have to have a transphysical soul,” he said.

Father Spitzer contends that, about 70,000 years ago, human beings suddenly made huge advancements in civilization: They began burying their dead, doing math and painting in caves.

“Before that, from 300,000 to 75,000 years ago, our ancestors were basically eating bananas and cracking rocks. But, suddenly, they became civilized. My thought is that: 70,000 years ago, our ancestors got a soul. The real Adam and Eve became ensouled,” said Father Spitzer.

He explains that renowned thinkers, like Noble Prize-winning scientist Sir John Eccles, Rhodes scholar and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, and logician Kurt Godel all believed that the conceptual ideas that human beings have cannot be explained by physical processes alone and that consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain alone.

“We have a transphysical soul. It causes us to be able to do math without algorithms,” said Father Spitzer. “We have math intuitions that are free of rules. We have conceptual ideas that are not experienced in the outer world.”

If aliens did exist and were able to come here, according to Father Spitzer, that kind of higher intelligence could only take place because these aliens were themselves ensouled.

“They would know about religion. They would have a sense of infinity,” he said. “We would have to find them, catechize them and tell them about Jesus and baptize them.”

Strangers in the Sky: The UFO question

Gary Neitzel (MUFON)

By  Carley Banks

In the Pentagon's $600 billion annual budget, $22 million is spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

It tracks unidentified flying objects.

A video released by the military in December shows pilot David Fravor encountering what appears to be a UFO during a standard training mission off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

"There's a whole fleet of them!" a voice on the recording said. "Look at them, dude!" said another.

"He reported this thing as flying very erratically, making maneuvers that -- if there was a human being inside of it -- they would be liquid," said Gary Neitzel, a Texas field investigator for MUFON -- the Mutual UFO Network.

Investigating UFOs for nearly 60 years, Neitzel maintains we are being visited by someone ... or something... not of this Earth.

"I just wonder where they're from, what they're doing here, if we're in jeopardy, if they're friendly, if they're not friendly... you just don't know," Neitzel said.

And he's not the only one. MUFON says there have been UFO sightings in 13 Texoma counties: four in Texas and nine in Oklahoma. But stories of unexplained sightings pre-date the modern world.

"You could probably take them back thousands of years," Neitzel said. "They were reported in the middle ages, in ancient times, and you can see different paintings that have what looks like could be UFOs in them.

Arkle Dennis Williams is a believer. He recalled a day in the 1970s when he was standing in the front yard of his childhood home outside Sulphur, Oklahoma.

"I noticed an object hovering in the sky, and it was lit up," he said.

Williams said his brother and father -- who didn't believe that man walked on the moon  -- also observed the object in broad daylight. "He was right there along with me that we were witnessing a UFO ...  it did some zig-zag motions, came closer, got further away, hovered continually for about 15 to 17 minutes, and then just did a zip and disappeared."

It's a phenomenon that Williams said he was meant to see.

"In my opinion, there are just a chosen few on this planet that are given the opportunity to witness sightings of such. For some reason, I was one of the chosen," he said. "In years to come, I believe there's a lot more that we have to witness. And maybe not in my lifetime, but we will witness very, very strange effects from the outer space."

And Gary Neitzel keeps looking for answers.

"It's technology far advanced than ours that's flying around our skies," he said. "A lot of people think they're out there."

The Pentagon UFO from a religious stand point

By Bill Taylor

It’s the most provocative question ever about space: Are we alone in the universe?

Are there other thriving civilizations like ours out there?

A video released last December by the Pentagon clearly shows an unidentified flying object (UFO) and includes audio of two pilots trying to figure it out.

When the U.S. Department of Defense released the video, they said that they’ve conducted studies on UFO’s and the possibility of alien life.

The vastness of our galaxy and universe suggests that there’s something else out there. The question really, if ever proven, is would we be ready for that kind of reality?

Astronomer Bryan Tobias has been studying the stars for 45 years and is closing in on a doctorate in astronomy. He thinks that the government is withholding at least some information about alien life.

He questions the video, but not the existence of alien civilizations.

“I have to be skeptical about [the video],” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s something cool, maybe even top secret. It’s just not enough to validate that yes, those are aliens.”

Tobias feels that the government has more truth that we Americans aren’t ready to hear.

“It’s for our own good of the wellbeing of the human race on this planet,” he said. “Could you just imagine the religious, the cultural, all of the other things, the theological influence that would have? The hysteria, the mayhem that could potentially cause?”

So how would different religions and faith be affected by the confirmation of another civilization out there? Did God create all of it? Did Jesus die for their sins too?

“What in our faith says that we’re the only people here?” asked Father Pat O’Brien of St. Pius Catholic Church.

Father O’Brien says that the Bible doesn’t have an answer to that question.

“[The Bible] would be the wrong place to look,” Father O’Brien said. “It would be like going to a cookbook to find out how to get to Houston. How do we know? And is it really that important for us to know that? We know that God loves us. If there’s another creation, any other beings, He loves them. Our God loves them.”

Father O’Brien feels if there are other civilizations out there, our faith would be fine. But could we handle ourselves?

“I don’t think it would be a challenge to our faith,” Father O’Brien said. “I think it would be a challenge to see how we see ourselves and our egos and how we think we are it.”

Weird, Wicked Weird: Maine TV-monster-hunter-turned-UFO-filmmaker

By Kathryn Skelton

Maine monster hunter Bill Brock has set his sights on UFOs.

Brock, who four years ago starred in the Discovery Channel reality series “Monsters Underground,” is helming a new independent documentary about aliens. 

Working with him on “Abducted New England” is a Bangor author whose second book full of Maine alien abductions, sightings and encounters is due out in July.

They’re holding an abduction town hall in Stratham, New Hampshire, on Saturday looking for more stories. Next week, they’ll interview a Bates College professor who has studied abduction phenomena.

“As I get into this, I’m blown away by all the people who’ve had what they feel are real experiences,” said Brock, 46, of Freeport. “I’ve been really well-accepted into the whole weird community — it’s not all cryptozoology.”

The idea for the documentary got its start while Brock was at work on the upcoming web series “Rogue Mysteries” with southern Maine filmmaker Corey Norman. 

In shooting that, the pair brought a psychic to the New Hampshire spot where Betty and Barney Hill famously claimed to be abducted in 1961.

“This psychic believed she was speaking to Betty Hill and later on that night, she had some crazy things happen to her, as far as dreams and things she experienced,” Brock said. “That kind of sparked our investigation to look at this whole alien thing more.”

He reached out to Nomar Slevik in Bangor, who came on as the documentary’s producer.

Slevik, 40, a musician and author, believes he had his first UFO sighting at age 4, outside his bedroom window.

“I’ve had quite a few sightings since then, all the way into my adult life,” he said. “My last one was last year at Loring Air Force Base (in Aroostook County). I’d gone there specifically to do an investigation for my new book, and ended up seeing a light in the sky. There’s nothing more than a light in the sky, it could be anything, but it’s truly a UFO, unidentified flying object.”

In researching his first book, “UFOs over Maine,” Slevik said he was already aware of well-known reports at Loring and in the Allagash and was quickly surprised by how many hundreds of others he found.

“Abductions and crop circles and men in black and alien beings and interactions with the military and interactions with the police — I couldn’t believe there was so much,” he said.

In writing, he sets a scene, lays out the facts and lets the reader decide, Slevik said.

“In a documentary, you get to immediately see the person. You get to see the expression on their face,” he said. You get to see if they have some nervous tics because they’re a little uncomfortable. Honestly, it’s a bit charming to see people naturally reacting as they tell their stories.”

They’re collaborating with Kenn Gonneville, whose work includes cinematography on a dozen short films and production assistant on “North Woods Law,” according to his Internet Movie Database page.

They plan to film the two-hour abduction town hall Saturday night at The KRI Center for Consciousness Studies.

“I’ve spoken with a lot of people and sometimes you have to take it with a grain of salt,” Slevik said. “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, my god, this is like talking to my father,’ and I believe them wholeheartedly. Other people, I believe that they believe it. And then some other people, I’m like, ehhhh, I don’t know.”

Brock said they want to include Bates College’s Stephanie Kelley-Romano, an associate professor of rhetoric, to “bring a little bit of science” to the subject.

He’s hoping to release “Abducted New England” in six weeks on DVD and sites such as Amazon. They’re trying to crowd-fund filming expenses. (A $10 donation on Indiegogo snags an assistant producer credit.)

Next up: shooting “Sasquatch in New England,” a documentary based on interviews with people who’ve heard, seen or encountered Bigfoot, set for release this fall.

“In order to make money at this, you have to have a library out there,” Brock said. “You have to have a lot of really awesome product out there for people who want to see the next thing.”

He added, “My goal is to get two out a summer and hopefully at that point, I can do this for a living and travel the country telling people’s stories and research it at the same time. I have a genuine curiosity about, is this stuff real? Or is this something else?” 

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Send photos and ideas to kskelton@sunjournal.com.

MVCC continues cultural series with UFO expert

Ufologist Bill Birnes spoke at Schafer Theater Friday about his experiences investigating UFOs.

UTICA -- Ufologist Bill Birnes spoke at Schafer Theater Friday about his experiences investigating UFOs.

The packed event was apart of Mohawk Valley Community College's cultural series.

Birnes answered questions the audience had about UFOs.

Organizers say the cultural series is a way to bring diverse entertainment to the community.

"Whether it's seeing a dance troupe on stage or step dancers which we just had a few weeks ago," Director of Events Bill Dustin said. "Or we're bringing the movie 'COCO' to campus tomorrow which is a family fun series event. Families can bring their kids to campus to do crafts with their families. We try to bring something for not just our students, but something for the community at large."

The cultural series at MVCC is open to the public. You can find a list of community events at MVCC here.

People Keep Thinking These Eerie Atmospheric Light Beams Are UFOs

By MELIA ROBINSON

Imagine stepping into the night and seeing beams of light that shoot from the earth straight into the atmosphere. You might suspect alien spaceships, but light pillars are of this world.

When a blast of cold weather comes down from the Arctic, flat ice crystals form in the air and hang there like pixie dust. Any source of light reflects off the crystals, creating a dazzling display of brightly colored rods of light known as light pillars.

The appearance of these pillars south of polar regions is so rare that people have reported them as UFO sightings in the past - as some did with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch in December.

Photographer Ray Majoran captured the otherworldly display outside his home in Ontario, Canada. He shared some photos with us. Follow him on Instagram for more.

On a late night in January, Ray Majoran was sitting on his couch when he got a text from his friend with a photo of the sky. "My phone does not come close to doing it justice," he said.

Majoran didn't hesitate. He grabbed his camera and took off down the main highway in search of light pillars. He turned his eyes to the sky and at first saw darkness.

"Then it happened," Majoran said.

"The sky became littered with light pillars. There were stars above me, yet there were little crystals of ice falling like manna from heaven," he said.

He turned off the highway, set up a tripod, and photographed the sky for the next two hours.

"It was like something you imagine in the movies or a science-fiction show," Majoran said.

He covered about six miles over the next two hours, pulling over wherever he found stunning views. As cars passed by, light pillars shot from the headlights to the sky.

The crystals reflect natural and artificial light, and the light pillars take on the color of whatever is being reflected. Street lamps produced rays in yellow and orange hues.

Majoran said the light pillars were bright enough to shoot with a phone. But he used a Nikon D850 on a tripod and optimised the settings for a long exposure to create sharper images.

Majoran said many people who saw his photos asked if they were Photoshopped. When they realised that's how the pillars really look, he said, "the common response was, 'You've got to be kidding me right now.'"

"To see something so rarely seen anywhere in the world ... is unreal," Majoran said.

Majoran wrote a blog post about his experience capturing light pillars. Click here to read.