Do UFOs (UAPs) and Aliens Threaten Christianity
Nathan (00:01.188)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:04.47)
and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:06.488)
And today we're going to be talking about unidentified anomalous phenomena. This one's for you, Jeff, because you asked. Cameron, a number of people have been asking, and certainly it's been in the news, what an old school, would have been referred to as UFOs, unidentified flying objects. Then it moved to, UAP that used to be unidentified aerial phenomena. And now we have updated the term to unidentified anomalous phenomena, I think because
Not all of these unidentified things are airborne anymore. You could have things that are going down into the water, diving into the sea, that sort of thing. But, yeah, I think some of the news, particularly on the political level, took a back burner to the Epstein files and some, you know, war happening, but there have been pushes for the release of files and certainly a lot of different footage has popped up in the last. Yeah. I mean, over the last several years of, Hey,
Cameron (00:48.771)
Yeah.
Nathan (01:04.942)
This looks like verified military footage of observing things that we don't know what they are. And so they are now UAPs. Have you been following, tracking along any of this, watched any of this stuff?
Cameron (01:18.862)
Let me start with a personal story. my grandfather was a believer and a big believer.
Nathan (01:21.109)
Excellent
Nathan (01:26.544)
So this is a way back then, this is not recently.
Cameron (01:29.218)
This is not recently. So my grandfather died in the early, I think it was 2000 or something like that. So, but he had in his home in tin foil, tin foil is a protective measure that makes it more special in a special cabinet where, where, you he had, he had prized possessions. He had what looked like just sort of rock in there, but he maintained.
Nathan (01:43.61)
That makes it more special. Yeah, that.
Cameron (01:59.02)
This is not a joke. maintained that this was a substance that had dripped off an unidentified object in his town. This would have been the 1980s when this alleged event took place.
Nathan (02:09.54)
What year would have this been? 1960?
Okay.
No, was this something he observed and like caught the dripping or somebody gave it to him or what was the, but there's gotta be a backstory to this.
Cameron (02:23.36)
Yeah. And I'm, and I wish I knew more about it because how intriguing is this? I, I believe he was, he was an eyewitness and personally procured the sample and, or the alleged sample. And so he, he presented this to a very young me. I must've been about, I don't know, 11 years old, 12 years old, something like that. And
He was, I mean, he was utterly convinced. I mean, he was very sincere and
Nathan (02:54.2)
And he wasn't like grandfatherly trying to pull your leg as a...
Cameron (02:57.23)
No, so a couple of items about him as a person. was an intelligent man, had worked as a lawyer, did kind of archeology as a hobby, routinely dug up Native American arrowheads in Arizona and things like that. mean, he wasn't just a wacky kind of guy. mean, so it was interesting. Now, but also Nathan, I have to state, as an 11 year old,
I found everything he said completely unconvincing. And I just nodded my head with, that's interesting. And I just thought, it's just, it's just a piece of rock. And, you he had it in tin foil because, you know, what if it's radioactive or something like that? What I found fascinating was his fascination with it. His, his, the psychology behind his statements to me was, I wouldn't have put it in those terms at that age, but that's what was so interesting to me. But I didn't find anything about the story itself convincing.
Nathan (03:29.295)
Interesting.
Nathan (03:42.02)
Right, okay.
Cameron (03:55.372)
But so there is a personal side to all of this for me.
Nathan (03:57.903)
Okay, so let's, yeah, I like that. That's a great segue. I'm trying to think, I don't know that there are, yeah, I don't have any parallel stories in my life.
Cameron (04:10.328)
That's the first time I've shared that publicly. So you're welcome, everybody.
Nathan (04:12.592)
There you go. You heard it. Thank you for those of you who has asked this question of drawing out this, this new knowledge out of, you know, Cameron's. Um, no. So, but as soon as I mentioned the thing, you're like, have a story. There's the excited lean into it. What is it about us as humans? That's like, Ooh, I mean, so, so even though, you know, the vast majority of people listening to this would be like, yeah, I don't know what was going on with grandpa. was a Cameron's grandpa with a rock wrapped in.
Cameron (04:18.766)
Yeah.
Nathan (04:42.424)
It's still a fascinating story to us because it it tempts us to think beyond the bounds of what we normally and routinely see and they're well, I don't know. I see it as exciting. Some people see it as scary, I guess.
Cameron (04:57.538)
I'm in the exciting category too. think, so I remember the poster of what was then called a UFO, the classic saucer like object in the sky. And this was famously in the X-Files in Agent Mulder's office and it says, I want to believe. I've always said, I'm in the, want to believe category. I think it would be tremendously exciting if there were intelligent life elsewhere.
Nathan (05:07.492)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (05:27.254)
I'm in that category as well. If you delve into some of these stories, some of them are frightening and we'll get there in a bit because there is an interesting overlap with paranormal experiences here too in some of this, but we want to keep the categories distinct as well. There's an ancient aspect to this as well, going back all the way to Egypt, believe we have accounts of.
unidentified or unexplained aerial phenomena. mean, it goes back a long way, but I think right now, Nathan, have I been following this? Yes, I have a little bit because I think it was 2016 when we got some of that newer military footage from specifically from the airplanes. And it is remarkable footage. I've watched it. know you have. And yeah, it's fascinating. So the question of whether there are.
unidentified aerial or anomalous objects is settled. Yes, definitively. are. There's a, deeper question behind it is, you know, so, and all of them, these are again, distinct instances and events. So what, what we're looking at in each of these videos, there's that question. There's a deeper question of, you know, is this, does this point to
Nathan (06:29.424)
They're there.
Cameron (06:51.2)
extraterrestrial life. mean, I think likely many people just think this is a different kind of technology with which we're not yet familiar. I'd be in that category too. mean, I think governments have all sorts of stuff that we're, you know, that's classified. We don't know about it.
Nathan (06:55.704)
Yeah, I would probably be in that category.
Yeah, I was talking to a guy who's a friend who was in the Marines and he's like, man, he's like, if most people had any clue what we were up to in the 1990s, he's like, they would have been paranoid out of their mind. And he's like, add 35 years of technology on top of that. mean, even you look at, I mean, just some crazy stuff, like even back in the original, like when we were basically fighting a proxy war with Russia and Afghanistan, like eighties,
Cameron (07:18.829)
yeah.
Cameron (07:25.88)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (07:37.048)
The CIA was photographing people's faces from 10 miles away. I mean, there are levels of technology that. Yeah, we, we that are not, we don't have access to that. I fully believe that that's there and that's not conspiracy theory. That's just.
Cameron (07:53.326)
All right, let's bring.
Nathan (07:53.412)
the way the world works.
Cameron (07:56.493)
I think, can we bring in a philosophical point here real quickly? Well, this is not, I don't think I'm going where you think I am yet, but we got to talk about the Fermi paradox real quickly. Are you familiar with this, Nathan? Yeah, no, it's actually, it's very, I think it's quite intuitively, it just makes sense right away. But this comes from, it's called Fermi because it was created by, it's named for Enrico Fermi, who was a
Nathan (08:00.027)
I think this is where this should go,
Nathan (08:10.29)
Lay it on us.
Cameron (08:25.708)
physicist, but basically his paradox is just on the one hand, given the sheer just mind boggling size of our universe, know, billions of billions of, well, mean, how beyond, you know, numbers of stars and galaxies beyond our, you can't really actually fathom exactly. We get into numbers that are so, so the vastness of our universe, which would make it exceedingly likely just, you know, this is, the universe is so big.
Nathan (08:54.64)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (08:55.264)
Somewhere in some nook and cranny of this universe, there probably is, there ought to be intelligent, or it's highly likely that there's intelligent life. But then on the other hand, a total, I mean a serious lack of real compelling evidence for intelligent life. That's the paradox, yeah.
Nathan (09:11.032)
Well, is the well, so I'm physically sitting right now as I say this like two miles from where the Drake equation is written on a wall. Yeah, so like I live inside the I can I can see the National Radio Astronomy Observatory from where I live in the SETI program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence like that's all been there since the 50s. They've been working on it right out. Like I can look out my window and see, know.
Cameron (09:21.25)
Right, that's right, yeah.
Cameron (09:31.534)
The SETI program. Yep.
Nathan (09:40.537)
So I live in the shadow of the history of some of this question too. And so we could geek out on the details of that, look up the Drake equation sometime, which is about the probability of there being, and all the variables that would need to be in order for that to be. But let's be clear is that there isn't any confirmed, and there's the whole spectrum of like, if there was an intelligent life form, it would probably most likely show up within our AI algorithms rather than in flying saucers.
That's beside the point. And there's lots of fun science fiction about that. But the question is, does this pose a challenge to Christianity? And I think probably from the gleeful way in which you and I have both jumped into this conversation, people have guessed that our answer to this is going to be no. But let's say a little bit why we don't see this as a threat. Yeah. So let me give a couple, you know, fire a couple shots here and then you can, can swat them back to me.
Cameron (10:31.65)
Yeah, it's important.
Nathan (10:42.128)
Christianity has always been and biblical has always been very very open to there being a whole lot of reality that we don't know and understand and has already throughout its past adapted to new knowledge of the of the physical world very well And in fact, I think Gavin Ortland did a video on this where he was talking about like there are already some really really weird alien creatures in creation like
Cameron (10:58.296)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (11:11.344)
types of sea things. But even back into the Old Testament, they were very okay with thinking that there were sea monsters or what we would consider massive creatures of the ocean that without a submarine, you know some fishermen hooked some kind of squid at some point and hauled that thing up onto their ship and brought it back. And everybody's like, what in the world is going on here? And so the idea of something being alien or foreign, and then this new thing pops into the existence, and how does that get contextualized within the broader
Cameron (11:18.008)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (11:41.361)
theological vision has happened already repeatedly throughout history. Most of that has been an exploration of new territories, new wildernesses, or of the deep sea. But what we're talking about now is a category that would be more an aerial sense of this. But when we look at the biblical cosmology of everything down to the depths of the deep and the unknown creations of that,
It's always the antithesis of the fullness of God's splendor and glory being above the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars and everything that is in captured within a galaxy or a universal sense of reality. And so the biblical boundaries of the reign and the rule of God has always been expansive beyond human conceptions of the physical limits. So there is a phenomenal amount of space
within Christian theology for what's possible to exist and that not be a defeater. Like a whole lot more weird stuff could be out there that we now consider paranormal that 15 years from now we'll just consider normal because we now understand how it works. So I just want to set that up. I think that the initial framing is that even from a biblical theology, even at the times in which there were deep.
changes in the way we thought about the structures of the solar system and the orbits of planets and all. None of that, though it was a new revelation and there were times like, oh hey, maybe there's another planet here we never knew about. None of that through a wrench in the spokes or a wrench in the gears of Christian theology. So we're going to apply some of those principles as we move forward into this other category, but just want to leave it there for a second.
Cameron (13:29.955)
Yeah, paradigm shifts have happened and more will happen as we discover more.
Nathan (13:33.146)
but it's paradigm shifts in categories that are not crucial foundations to Christian theology.
Cameron (13:38.871)
No, and I think one of the routine mistakes that people make is they think, now this was a crucial foundation of Christianity. That's a conservative impulse. So whether that was a geocentric universe at one point, no, it has to be this way. And then a gradual kind of softening happens as we learn.
Nathan (13:56.507)
But, but even a geocentric, even a geocentrism was an Aristotelian leftover, not born out of theology. Yeah. Yeah. Galileo's first clash with the church was when he proved that the moon wasn't a perfect sphere as the church thought Aristotle said it was. So.
Cameron (14:04.143)
Right. Yeah, that's a fun irony of history that a lot of people lost on a lot of people.
Cameron (14:16.077)
Yeah. So he was, he was attacking pagan philosophers and the church was siding with pagan philosophers. I all right. But here's, think, let me say a few words about the defeater aspect too, Nathan. And then I want to bring in something else here that I think is interesting or I do think it's pertinent to the conversation. I think the other, the other big issue is the concerns, the uniqueness of humanity. Cause I've heard this, I've heard this directly.
Nathan (14:21.136)
Interesting history.
Nathan (14:40.88)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (14:44.879)
This challenge has been brought up to me before in conversation saying well, know if there are if there aren't is there is intelligent life I mean then that means human beings aren't special and That this is one of those moments where and I've heard it from a number of different people So this is kind of an established line of thought and I've just so I just kind of stand back and I say well Why? So let me make it clear. I am NOT categorically opposed to the possibility
that there is intelligent life out there. I think it's unlikely. I'm skeptical, but I'm not opposed to it. And if it were revealed to be the case, I'd be a little creeped out and excited, but more excited than creeped out, really excited. So, and would it, would it overthrow my belief in God? No. So human beings, the conferred specialness of human beings, to put it clumsily, is that we are made in the image of God. So the existence.
Nathan (15:25.36)
Yeah
Cameron (15:42.435)
So if you equate intelligence or rationality with being made in God's image, maybe that might pose somewhat of a problem, but the image of God status of human beings is conferred on human beings and it's not predicated on your own capabilities or abilities. If that were the case, there would be many people who simply don't reflect the image of God enough because they're not rational enough, they're not intelligent enough, they're not
Nathan (16:09.484)
Or your artificial intelligences would be more human than we are if intelligence is the litmus test.
Cameron (16:13.069)
Right. yeah, so this is conferred by divinity. So that does not categorically rule out the possibility of other intelligent life elsewhere. And in fact, many Christians have explored this possibility. most pertinent example here would be C.S. Lewis in the Ransom Trilogy, which begins with Out of the Silent Planet. The next one is Paralandra and then That Hideous Strength.
The one that really looks at that is out of the silent planet, which considers the possibility of an unfallen race of beings. So Christian, all that to say, I think it was interesting when Larry Sanger, know, the co-creator of Wikipedia, when he became a Christian recently, one of the things he said that really has stuck with me is I had tons and tons and tons of questions. And he, the guy is very intelligent. He does have a lot of questions.
Nathan (17:00.666)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (17:11.555)
But then he said, realized as I dug into the Christian tradition, I looked at scripture and then dug into the Christian tradition, all of my questions and more had already been asked and wrestled into the ground by this tradition. And same with this question. There's nothing that's going to be so novel that the church hasn't already vigorously
Nathan (17:26.33)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (17:37.347)
wrestled with it and dealt with it. that's here too. I just want to, I just want to stay for the record.
Cameron (17:53.241)
Sure, yeah. Sure.
Cameron (17:59.127)
Yeah. Eyes on it. Yeah.
Nathan (18:00.59)
Eyeballs under the wings. Yeah, and you're like what in the world is going on? So It's kind of funny to me that Christian theology has always had this complex cosmology that contained multiple levels of intelligent life and creatures and that's looked at as Ridiculous nonsense and they're like, but we saw this blip on the radar therefore There's a there's a little bit of a sense that I
that I get being a Christian that people get excited about something that's a brand new idea to them. And I'm kind of in the posture of like, welcome, come on in, the water's fine. So I don't know.
Cameron (18:38.191)
Yeah. Okay. So let me say a few words for the believers out there now. So I, last year, believe it or not, Nathan, this was just on a lark, but apparently the Lord had other things in store for why I read this book. But I read a book called Abduction by John E. Mack, MD, who was a celebrated psychologist, obviously a controversial figure.
because he wrote this book, but he had a number of different people who claimed to be victims of abduction. And so he works through their stories in this book. It's a book of eyewitness accounts. Each chapter is a different account from one of the abductees. And once again, the book is just called Abduction and the subtitle is Human Encounters with Aliens. His conclusion upon writing this was that
Not necessarily that aliens exist, but that he noted there were some remarkable similarities. was, there consistency in the stories being recounted by these very, very different patients he had. And he was pretty rigorous in the, in, in his interview process with them. I mean, he, was really good at, he was a good skeptic. He was good at ruling out people who were just, you know, kind of wacky. These were, these were credible people. He was a credible guy with a very good education, you know,
A sterling reputation is in his field until he wrote this book. You write a book like this and this can be seen as a career suicide in some ways. But he said their stories were remarkably consistent. He concluded something has happened to these people. Now he has some theories, doesn't go all the way in saying that they necessarily had encounters with extraterrestrials or anything like that. These people were all convinced that they had. And of course this event.
Nathan (20:08.647)
Yeah
Cameron (20:34.445)
completely changed these people's lives. And for the most part, for the worse, severely traumatized them. They were very inhibited as people. So this is where I want to make sure we keep our categories straight. I know some people, Nathan, who claim to have had experiences with what they believe to be extraterrestrials. And do I believe they had an experience with extraterrestrials? I'll be honest.
Cards on the table? No, but I do think they had some kind of an experience. So this is where there is sometimes overlap with, think some people, I'll just be honest. I think some people have what we as Christians would deem to be paranormal experiences or demonic experiences. And then sometimes they are interpreted in this light. So people do experience.
People do have experiences that don't fit into our comfortable Western categories. And that is a real phenomenon. And it's actually way more common than many of us would like to believe or care to believe. So that does happen. But I just want to note, there is a point of overlap there. I don't want listeners to hear me or Nathan as sounding like we're dismissive. There are people who have very, very serious and very strange and
indeed very frightening experiences, and sometimes people will interpret it along these lines.
Nathan (22:07.666)
Yeah, our ability to read a meaning back into something that we can't explain is very high. mean, even think you're sitting, we're sitting having dinner, the power goes out, and then the door slowly creaks open.
Cameron (22:17.273)
Absolutely.
Nathan (22:27.528)
What probably happened a tree like a high wind blew a tree on the power line the power went out and because of the high wind the door wasn't latched because one of the kids didn't latch it all the way when they came in like in the door blew of it, you know, that's 100 % what happened in that scenario, but there would be other ways in which you could Attribute something paranormal to something that no, this is definitely within the realm of how physics actually works. So both of those Yeah, give me another
Cameron (22:51.545)
Can I give you another, can I give you another example here? So I was just watching a documentary called room 237. The documentary room 237 for those of you who are in the know is a book is a, it's a documentary that was not in any way endorsed or sanctioned by Stanley Kubrick or any people associated with him. He's Stanley Kubrick, the famous director of 2001, a space Odyssey and the shining and full metal jacket on it.
Well, Room Truth 237 is about the shining and it interviews a bunch of different people. So this is, I'm just, I'm, maybe this is a distraction, but I think it helps. It's, it's the human penchant for reading meaning into everything. Isn't it funny here, here, Nathan and I both sound like, if you just tuned in at this point in the podcast, you might think Nathan and I are both atheists because they often use this. We're very skeptical people, but atheists often use this line of thinking and it's.
Nathan (23:41.96)
Yeah, we are highly skeptical of many things.
Cameron (23:50.081)
It's because it's, it's our, there's a word for it and it's not, it's escaping me right now. I bet Nathan knows it maybe, but there's, there's a inherent susceptibility that we have to seeing patterns in things, reading patterns in this stuff. Yes. Give it, give it real quickly.
Nathan (24:01.852)
yeah, you mean you let me give you this so the so had HADD hyperactive No, HAAD hyperactive agency detection so so so this comes this comes from an idea of imagine you're walking down a jungle path and you hear a rustling in the leaves and Half of the people in the tribe jump sideways and half don't
Cameron (24:12.759)
Okay, I knew you would have that, yeah.
Nathan (24:31.598)
If there was a venomous snake or a predator, the people who associated that noise with an agent are the ones who survived. Because, by and large, the things that we don't know are more dangerous to us than they are good for us. Does that make sense? So the probability of an unknown noise being bad for you is higher than the probability of an unknown noise being good for you.
Cameron (24:48.885)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Cameron (24:55.215)
Threatening.
Nathan (25:01.37)
And so the story here is that the naturalistic development from everything to the flightiness of animals to the jumpiness of humans is a naturally developed mechanism that if we overemphasize agency to phenomena that we're not quite sure what it is, that we have a better survival rate because the energy expenditure of reacting, having this big reaction to the unknown isn't that big.
Cameron (25:28.015)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (25:29.722)
if there actually isn't a problem there, but if there actually was a problem there, then we're the ones who survived. So there is a naturalistic story that you could tell yourselves of how we developed this idea to look for agency behind all unknowns as a survival mechanism.
Cameron (25:34.691)
All right. Yeah.
Cameron (25:43.661)
Okay. So the reason, so perfect, hyperactive agency detection. the whole, have that in mind. So the whole reason I picked this documentary is because it's about Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick is a filmmaker of genius, the supremely gifted filmmaker, and also a man who was obsessed with details. But all of the people being interviewed in this documentary pay him the outsized compliment of thinking that every single random shot
every single or even indeed mistakes, continuity errors in the movie is in fact intentional and a further sign of his agency. So one example is in the opening credits, it begins with a famous kind of these aerial shots from a helicopter, epic landscapes, these amazing shots. there's one part, I mean, it's just landscapes in Colorado, it's around the mountains. And there's one part where you see the clouds.
One of the people interviewed on the documentary insists that if you look very carefully, goes on, and it's all gonna be in my book when it comes out. But if you look very carefully in those clouds, you will see superimposed a portrait of Stanley Kubrick himself at that time. You have to know what he looked like when he made the, friends, you can look in those clouds and tell the cows come home. Stanley Kubrick is not in those clouds. there are so many other examples where the,
They're just everything, every fade out shot, know, this fade out, this triangular shape aligns perfectly with the hotel. And that was all by intention because you have the supreme agency of Stanley Kubrick, who is the kind of the god of this film. Yeah, not so much, sorry.
Nathan (27:24.966)
Yes, but we can do that with the Bible too. Have you heard this one? In John 10-16, Jesus says, have other sheep that are not of this fold, and I must bring them also. Have heard this one? People are like, look, he's talking about aliens. This is a whole class of beings that Jesus is also shepherding. And everybody's like, well, he might have been talking about the Jews and the Gentiles, but maybe he was talking about aliens.
Cameron (27:38.399)
boy. Okay. boy. Okay.
Right. Okay, I've got to stop yet. Okay. Yeah.
Nathan (27:54.342)
So I'm saying we do this with the Bible. We do this with number patterns. We do this with, so that,
Cameron (28:00.343)
Yeah, this is this is the hallmark of conspiracy theories too, by the way. This is where a restless mind begins to attack every detail.
Nathan (28:06.928)
But, okay, so there's that, but I think some people might feel like they're having their toes stepped on here because there are other things that we're not looking for in life that just show up and we have to deal with it. I remember very clearly as a little boy kneeling beside a pond and all of sudden this little head popped up beside me and it wasn't a fish and it wasn't a snake and I had no clue what it was and I took off running back into the house saying I just saw the weirdest creature ever.
It turned out as a spotted salamander. I'd never seen one in life. It's a pretty big salamander for where we live and the way that it's head kick. I had no category for that creature. And I just ran in the house like something amazing is in the, you know, the pond out there. and it was, it was a shock, but there's delight to it of I wasn't looking for a weird creature. It just happened upon me. And so I think, you know, when you have people who say I wasn't looking for, I was just driving down the road and this is what I saw where I was just flying my plane.
Cameron (28:37.187)
Yeah, you had no category for the creature. Yeah.
Cameron (29:00.845)
And it ruined my life, by the way. A lot of people will say that too. And it cost me my reputation. Yeah, everybody thinks I'm crazy now.
Nathan (29:04.422)
Yeah, so.
Nathan (29:10.034)
But I think Cameron, the...
You and I are just much more comfortable with the unknown.
Because we all live with way more unknown in our lives than we would like to admit. Like this is not the only category where I think there might be some fascinating developments and trends and things that could very well be true or that I even would want to be true that are just beyond. I don't have such a neat tidy vision of like human knowledge has fully encircled all of the mystery of the universe. And there's a little bit in the
Cameron (29:32.596)
yeah.
Cameron (29:47.812)
no.
Nathan (29:51.868)
some of the paranoia that comes around this that tends to operate with that as a subconscious platform of saying we've got it all figured out and then there's this one thing outside of it that shocks us and I'm like no I think there's a good bit that's
Cameron (30:07.695)
No, we don't have our, no, reality is for us humans, inexhaustible. We are always learning more. mean, just think about, I mean, if you want to have your mind blown, you know this, look at quantum physics. mean, and just even, you don't have to understand that much of it to know this is absolutely weird and bizarre. We have, we're learning so much more and yeah, I mean, 20, 50 years from now.
There are plenty of assumptions we have right now that are going to look positively primitive. That's just the way... Yeah.
Nathan (30:41.896)
Except for the fact that you and Galileo believe the same thing about the nature of Christ and his work.
Cameron (30:51.8)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Nathan (30:53.256)
So we're putting things back into their proper categories. I am thrilled with a lot of mystery in the world. And I want to have clarity on what the categories of where mystery is appropriate. Actually, like I do, I want to have clarity on many important things in life. And then I just want to have the sheer delight of saying, here's some categories that if it turns out to be true, great. And if it turns out not to be great, I think the Lord is on his throne either way. One of the, this used to come up all the time when I was doing more
speaking with some student groups at MIT, of people would ask the question, if an alien showed up and could speak to you, would that shake your Christianity? And I said, well, if an alien showed up and asked you about Jesus Christ, would that shake your atheism? Like if you want to start playing the hypothetical game of what could or couldn't be, and that's where this question goes, well, what then would be the redemption narrative for
Cameron (31:36.495)
at all.
Cameron (31:44.163)
Pouche. Yeah. Sure.
Nathan (31:51.972)
Intelligent beings how does the work of Christ apply to? And on and on you could go but the hypotheticals get I think fun but kind of ridiculous pretty quickly except for here's one that we should we should twist this around here in the end is that both for the multiverse theory and for Let's call them aliens William Lincoln has argued that the best case for their existence is an infinitely creative God
And those it's an interesting line of philosophy where he's turning it around and saying not only is it not a defeater, but the best chance that we have of it actually being real comes through our theology, not from where we're at currently scientifically right now, because we don't have proof of a multiverse. We don't have definitive understanding of extraterrestrial intelligences that are maybe non carbon based life forms or
Whatever they are, but he says given given the biblical vision of the character and nature of God Who is infinitely creative expansive delights and creating and revealing and structuring and building? That out of his nature it would make sense if there were Other complex and beautiful things in the world that we haven't seen yet that actually The better argument for these categories to be real comes out of Orthodox Christianity rather than out of our
Cameron (33:11.108)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (33:20.082)
Paranormal speculation right now and so do with that argument what you want, but I think that is a helpful way to Where he's shifting around and saying not only is it a defeater? But if what I already believe to be true about God is real Then we should expect some of these things to be there that we don't yet understand
Cameron (33:20.78)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (33:37.367)
All right, let me lay out some just some conclusions. You can add some if you want Nathan just to sum up our episode here is I think this might be helpful. in some, Nathan and I are both open. We're skeptical, but open to the possibility of
Nathan (33:51.195)
We're skeptical because we understand ourselves in human nature.
Cameron (33:54.573)
Yeah, but we're skeptical and open to the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere. That's one. Two, unidentified anomalous objects absolutely are real. I think there's a high degree of possibility that we're looking at technologies to which the public have not yet been introduced, but those anomalous objects are real. And I think conceivably we're going to see a lot more of them, more footage, more, because I mean, our surveillance technologies these days, our ability to capture stuff is huge.
So that's true as well. Those things do exist. Absolutely. Three, have people had experiences that are not explainable and are comfortable, or certainly in our secular terminology? Yes, absolutely. I think there's a high degree of possibility that many of those experiences, especially the more intense, the more sinister, are likely demonic in nature. Four, we believe in angels and demons.
and the supernatural world as well. So that goes along with that third one. So there are category-defying aspects of existence. And suppose five, it's a mysterious, the world is mysterious in the sense that we don't have our head wrapped around it comprehensively. The creator does, it's his creation. But we are creatures in that created order. And also, this might be bit of an abstract point, we are part of the created order.
Nathan (34:55.688)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (35:19.021)
Because of that, we're implicated in it and we don't have a God's eye view of it. We're persons.
Nathan (35:24.296)
You're saying there that you you believe though that any any any other intelligence would also be a creature
Cameron (35:31.971)
Yes, absolutely. Yes. No matter how supposedly advanced, no matter how, yeah, or simple. Exactly. It doesn't have to be right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. We, our imagination likes to immediate. like, again, we like agency, so we want something really, really advanced and we want close encounters of the third kind.
Nathan (35:38.598)
or simple.
And amoeba on Mars would be a
Cameron (35:56.505)
But yeah, whatever, whatever, if there is such a thing, it would still be numbered in creation's inventory. It would be something made by God. Yeah.
Nathan (36:06.696)
Yeah. So I, the, the, me, Cameron, this is the, this is a, this is a type of a thing. It's a great question and more like it will arise. Also, do you remember the whole thing with like the drone swarms coming over New Jersey or something a year or two ago and how that all played out in the news? And we're just going to have to be mindful of how that kind of stuff pans out. So word of caution when we look even at recent kind of things that are really captive imagination, but here's the thing.
Cameron (36:21.357)
Yes. Yes.
Cameron (36:30.159)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (36:36.602)
is that being a Christian, people always think that it's a narrower way of seeing the world, which I can never quite wrap my head around. It's like sitting on the edge of something and leaning into the unknown with a grin. If you're confident in the place in which you're seated, the unknown can be exciting. It doesn't have to be terrifying. There's a deep adventure here that Christ calls us into in exploring his world that you're missing some of the thrill if you don't have a deep confidence in the sovereignty and the goodness of God. It's a children's song. He's got the whole world and all the little aliens in his hand. But it's a fun way to live.
Cameron (37:22.955)
Absolutely, very well said. If Christ is your anchor, you're safe. And mystery isn't, mystery's not gonna hurt you. It's a good thing. And you can welcome it and be creeped out, but you can also get excited. It's pretty exciting. It's an exciting world.
Nathan (37:39.122)
Dream big.
Cameron (37:40.089)
Dream big. Thanks for hanging with us. This was a really fun question. Keep them coming. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.