American Cosmic: UFOs Religion, and Technology

Belief in aliens could be America’s next religion

By Clare Coffey

 "...If alien beliefs are an emerging religion, they may be an attempt to propitiate and manage anxiety around the strange new gods venture capital has created. The fact that Pasulka’s book heavily features the tech elite as prime examples of alien belief does not detract from this hypothesis; it would be surprising if Silicon Valley ever found something more worthy of worship than itself.

Whether ufology will fully morph into what we currently recognize as religion is still an open question. For one thing, the completion of the process would detract from its current appeal. Pasulka points out that the now-famous dictum “I want to believe” is a credo for agnostics: Belief is never foreclosed, but always postponed. Alien belief allows for a crowded, living cosmos filled with the wild supernatural, but the exact shape of that supernatural always remains slightly out of reach. It provides a language of longing for something — an angelic visitor, the complete fulfillment of our own technological potential, revelation about the nature of the universe — which remains elusive.

Still, there are signs that alien belief is poised to become one of the world’s ethical religions. Alien beliefs often implicate the world in wickedness and call for repentance — many accounts of alien contacts include calls for an end to war and an increase in peaceful human cooperation."