by John Ellis
(Note: for the sake of not having to type out “rational, sentient” repeatedly throughout this article, when I reference aliens, that’s the type I’m referring to.)
Of late, between Uber passengers in my car and friends from church, I have had more conversations about the possibility that aliens exist than at any time in my life. The increased interest in aliens is understandable. On top of the usual online presence of the discussion, replete with cockpit footage, hushed testimonies, and extravagant, fantastical explanations for the Fermi paradox, politicians have jumped into the debate. President Trump has been promising to declassify information for a while now. After President Obama’s recent foray into the discussion, Trump has doubled down on that promise. Cynically, I suspect that when/if Trump does declassify information about aliens, it will correspond with another dump of the Epstein files (hey everyone, let’s talk about aliens and not about how often Trump’s name and picture appear in the Epstein files). I also suspect that whatever is released will only serve to confirm whatever people, including myself, have already decided about the question of the existence of aliens. For me, my belief can be summed up by this example: if someone were to show me a Powerball lottery ticket they had purchased, asking me if I thought they were going to win, I’d reply “nope.” Theoretically, they could win. But I know they won’t. And even if they did somehow magically defy the odds and win, I’d never see any of the money anyway. So, why should I care?
I suspect that my lottery ticket analogy prompts sputtering rebuttals. For most people who choose to believe that aliens exist, the difference between their belief and a lottery ticket is one of statistical chance in their minds. The probability of winning the lottery is almost nil; considering the vastness and continued expansion of the universe, the probability of alien life is high, is the belief. Except it’s a belief that’s wrong. Mathematically wrong, in fact.
Those previous two sentences may be the most controversial thing I write in this article (with the exception of my penultimate paragraph). Ironically, they will also be among the most objectively provable. Before explaining that, though, I want to look at how we arrived at the belief that since the universe is so vast, it’s statistically probable that we are not alone in the universe. That belief is the thickest strand in the through-line-of-action I hear from every person who believes that aliens are out there (and possibly already here). This isn’t a far-out belief held primarily by tinfoil wearing cranks. I assume that if polled, a majority of Americans would respond in the affirmative to it. While adding clarity to a short answer he had given to a question about the existence of aliens, President Obama said, “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.” To be fair, he added, “But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
So, where does the belief that “the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there” come from?
While hanging out with some physicist buddies at Los Alamos in 1950, the “architect of the nuclear age,” physicist Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Laurate, posed the thought experiment, “But where is everybody?” His question was in the context of the perceived high probability that alien life exists somewhere contrasted with the shocking lack of evidence for alien existence. This became known as the Fermi Paradox.[1] A few of the posed solutions to the paradox include that aliens are observing us as researchers and don’t want us to know it; the evolution/creation of humans happened first and aliens are technologically behind us; they used to exist, but some type of extinction level event – like gamma ray bursts – killed them. There are other possible answers to the Fermi paradox. An important one is the rare earth hypothesis.
In their book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, first published in 2000, Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee argue that the necessary variables for complex life – biological, geological, astrophysical, etc. – are too intricate, nuanced, and specific to expect replication elsewhere. For the two scientists, the Fermi Paradox is incorrect at its core: the assumption that the existence of intelligent life in the universe is statistically likely is false. The rare earth hypothesis has its detractors, of course, including one reviewer on Amazon who concluded his/her(?) review with the acerbic quip, “To write a review of this book…I had to wait 11 years. Hope these guys must be eating their words now.”
There are legitimate scientific critiques of the rare earth hypothesis, as posed by Ward and Brownlee, and I’m not denying that. But that hypothesis is not what I had in mind while typing, “Except it’s a belief that’s wrong. Mathematically wrong, in fact.”
In 1961, astrophysicist Frank Drake formulated an equation to show that the possibility of intelligent life (aliens) elsewhere in the universe is statistically probable. Known as the Drake Equation, it’s become a staple in astrophysics. The SETI Institute goes so far as to assert, “The Drake Equation has been called the second most important equation in science. How many alien societies exist and are detectable? The Drake Equation is a step toward the answer.” They conclude by explaining that “It’s also noteworthy that this famous formulation encompasses all the research activities of the SETI Institute, from our efforts to probe the harsh landscapes of Mars to our extremely high-tech searches for alien signals. It is the scaffolding upon which the Institute has been built.”
It should also be noted that after decades of research, the famed SETI Institute has yet to uncover a single shred of evidence that aliens exist. And they admit that. But back to the Drake Equation.
In 2018, a group of researchers at Oxford University took a hard look at the Drake Equation. After realizing that Frank Drake had failed to include any uncertainty in his equation, the researchers corrected that mistake. The reworked equation spits out the result that it is highly probable that humans are alone in the universe. Their report, aptly titled “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox,” concludes, “This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.”
There’s a second part to my lottery ticket analogy that may be less obvious than the first part. While the first part deals with the logical possibility of alien existence, the second part is intended to speak to the fact that even if – big if – aliens do exist, we’ll never know about it – i.e., I’ll never see any of the money.
President Obama alluded to this in his explanation when he added, “the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low.”
The closest star to earth not named the Sun is Proxima Centauri. It is about 4.25 light years away. Meaning, obviously, that it would take 4.25 years to reach earth if aliens traveled at the speed of light from a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. There’s quite a bit packed into Einstein’s theory of relativity (both special and general) that comes to bear here. I gave myself a headache writing paragraphs attempting to explain some of it.[2] Mercifully for the readers, I deleted those paragraphs. While there are important points buried within the fascinating world of physics, here’s an easily understandable (not the math, mind you), salient point coming out of physics: assuming that the highly theoretical warp speed is even possible, it would require harnessing the energy of stars to be able to travel at light speed from Proxima Centauri to the earth. Please note that’s plural. Stars, not star. And I’m talking about aliens existing on a planet orbiting our closest stellar neighbor. Add the many light years necessary to travel here from star systems even farther away, and the amount of energy needed is insurmountable according to the laws of physics. Again, this is also assuming that warp speed is even possible.
There’s another problem here. For the sake of argument, even if aliens were able to solve the problem of traveling at the speed of light (and how to do it is not the only problem, mind you), the universe is not empty. The amount of carnage inflicted on their spaceship (and themselves) as they hurtle through spacetime would be devasting. When you start drilling down into the actual mechanics of traveling through space over distances of light years, the problems and the theoretical solutions become as close to insurmountable as possible. And please note, the mounting improbabilities need to be accounted for.
Now, and here’s where the rubber kinda meets the road in this discussion. In my experience, most people who choose to believe that aliens exist and have already made contact resort to imaginative answers shaped by science fiction at this point to fight back against the mounting improbabilities. I mean, I could refute myself by imagining a space unicorn who travels through space behind a rainbow forcefield that creates a clear path through space for me. Or, I could imagine a race of aliens with physical bodies so porous that space may as well be empty for them. And on and on. Not to mention, and moving on from imaginative sci-fi explanations, that their belief demands the ability for these theoretical aliens to be so advanced that they’re able to transcend the laws of physics many times over. This circles us back to the Fermi paradox.
Even if there are aliens so advanced that they’ve been able to solve all the problems posed by physics and biology, we would only be aware of their presence if they wanted us to be aware of their presence. This removes the possibility of terrestrial governments hiding aliens or alien accoutrements from citizens (there’s another problem here that I’m going to get to in the next paragraph). The hypothetical imaginings need to multiply to the point of nonsensical to explain why these hyper-advanced aliens would broach mere earthlings keeping their kin or their kin’s spaceships hidden away. We would be so totally at the mercy of such advanced beings that no president, including Trump, would have anything to release unless the aliens willed it so. And even then, no president, including Trump, would be able to release that information unless the aliens wanted him to. Positing the existence of aliens who have already made contact with us requires the hubristic belief that we – humans – are equal (or near equal) players in the equation. Or, I guess, the belief that we are already their unwitting slaves and all those children mysteriously missing from Disneyworld have been absorbed into the alien’s food source … but there I go melding imaginative sci-fi solutions with other conspiracy theories.
There’s another problem inherent in the belief that aliens have made contact with us: the problem of semiotics – the problem of being able to communicate with each other.
When NASA hurtled Pioneer 10 into deep space in 1972, they did so with the accompanying belief that an advanced alien species may come across the spaceship. Because of that, they included a pictorial plaque intended to communicate basic information about humans to these theoretical aliens. The problem, as pointed out by semiotician Daniel Chandler, is “that ‘reading an image, like the reception of any other message, is dependent on prior knowledge of possibilities; we can only recognize what we know’ (ibid., 56). Communication depends on a shared frame of reference, which includes at least a basic ontology (a conceptualization of entities and their relations); we need to be able to recognize the referents. These alien beings would have no knowledge of what sort of things exist in our world. In the unlikely event that they shared our visual capabilities, without direct experience of human life they would have no understanding of our ‘ways of seeing.’”[3]
Obviously, NASA intended the plaque to be received by aliens who have yet to make contact with us. That’s the scenario that Chandler excoriates. But in his refutation of NASA’s communicative intent lies the problems for communication even if aliens were to make physical contact with humans. Did you notice in the quote the statement “in the unlikely event that they shared our visual capabilities”? Our sensory abilities operate within an electromagnetic spectrum that is quite narrow. It’s improbable that aliens would come from a world with an electromagnetic spectrum that falls in the same range as earth’s. The ways in which we interact with phenomena and data are likely different than the theoretical aliens. We would lack the necessary shared reference points, even at the level of sensory abilities, for communication. Even if aliens were able to overcome all the laws of physics and make it here, our ability to understand each other would face greater obstacles than those faced by researchers attempting to interpret ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
One of the things – sad things – I’ve learned, though, is that science and logic make for poor defenses against what people want to be true. Every single person who has talked to me about aliens has ultimately relied on the existence of grainy, fuzzy videos and anecdotal evidence to justify their belief. And I’ve told every single person that the existence of grainy, fuzzy videos and anecdotal evidence should fall under the rubric of Ockham’s razor. For example, every single person has brought up the testimony of Air Force and Navy pilots who’ve observed unexplainable, (seemingly) physics-defying phenomena from the cockpit of their aircraft. My response has always concluded with the rejoinder, “Well, Ockham’s razor tells me that there are people out there with a higher security clearance than the pilot.” Beyond that, Ockham’s razor suggests that there are terrestrial explanations for every supposed incident of a UFO or UAP (whichever designate you prefer). I guess it’s human nature to immediately jump to fantastical explanations when confronted with something they don’t understand.[4] I hope not, but as I get older, and especially after over 5,000 rides as an Uber driver, the combination of Dunning-Kruger effect and the seeming inability for humans to sit with the unexplainable lead me to that conclusion.
But why does any of this matter? Why am I writing an article about aliens? Well, because conspiracy theories are not benign. I acknowledge that not all research and discussion about aliens sinks to the level of conspiratorial. Much of it does, though, especially at the lay level. While on one hand, believing in aliens is benign (like believing that the earth is flat), engaging in conspiracy theories, at best, is epistemological hubris and adds to the muddying of the cultural epistemological waters. At worst, conspiracy theories undermine both knowledge and truth, creating an epistemological environment that serves to further chaos and confusion. Because of this, I do not believe that Christians, of all people, should engage with conspiracy theories, no matter how benign they may appear on the surface. Doing so undermines our ability to bear witness to the Resurrection. It also undermines our ability to love our neighbors because it makes discourse (and empathy) harder than it has to be. It also puts us on poor footing to combat the explicitly harmful conspiracies, like QAnon and antivaxxers, that are making inroads into our churches. Conspiracy theories center ourselves as the arbiter of truth in ways that are even more self-serving than the pure empiricism of logical positivism. It untethers us from any authority, which is the ultimate fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Look, fellow Christians, if you want to believe in aliens then believe in aliens. But please do so in a manner that puts you far out of reach of conspiracy theories. That requires at least some adoption of Ockham’s razor when dealing with unexplainable phenomena as well as a willingness to be honest about the problems posed by physics and biology to interstellar travel. Conspiracy theories are not benign, and we should be careful to not feed those in our churches who are in the thrall of explicitly harmful conspiracies. Holding to conspiratorial thinking about aliens may be aiding others to stumble.
[1] Fermi wasn’t the first one to wonder this, for the record. He just has the distinction of having the paradox named in his honor.
[2] In case you’re interested in exploring Einstein and his theory of relativity, two books that have been helpful for me are Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Relativity: A Very Short Introduction by Russell Stannard (it’s part of the excellent Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press). A few other books that have been helpful for the continued expansion of my understanding of physics are The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe by Stephon Alexander, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime by Sean Carroll, Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghorne, and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli.
[3] Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: the Basics (London: Routledge, 2021), 227.
[4] Different but still related, I once went to a séance with a group of people dropping acid. They were convinced we had communicated with dead people. I was convinced we were tripping … because we were.
Practically Known Theology 