 screen. Welcome back to the Modern Challenges of Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Conference, Roswell, New Mexico's 70th anniversary. It's a pleasure to once again welcome up Dr. Michael Heiser. This is his fifth talk that he's prepared for this event and it's been many years since he was here. 2009 he did a one great talk at our Christian Symposium called Why an Extraterrestrial God Appeals Today to Today's Culture and I think today's is reminding me of a book from a flipside perspective. He's going to bring us science fiction televangelism for ET religion and see how the mindset of this alien phenomena is really getting into people's heads and creating new belief systems. That's a recurring theme in this conference as well. I look forward to seeing Dr. Michael Heiser. Welcome to our place. Thank you. I'm a bit tattered this time so hopefully I won't bring down anything with me. Thanks for coming. The annual academic meeting every November, everyone who submits a paper hopes that they're not selected to deliver a paper on Tuesday morning except for everyone who's gone. I have been in that slot once and you know this is actually a better attendance than I had at the end of the meeting. So I know how it is and thanks for coming. I know it's it's late in the week and everybody's thinking about going home, getting back to normal. This talk is sort of self-explanatory in one sense. Science fiction televangelism for ET religion. What I want to do is I want to overview sort of how science fiction writers and of course media like film and a little bit of television have been vehicles to articulate a theology and specifically a theology of the extraterrestrial as sort of displacing or replacing traditional theism and in some cases traditional Judeo-Christian worldview, Judeo-Christian theology. I have to confess that the real authority on ET stuff in Hollywood is not meaningless. It's Robbie Graham and so I want to give him a shout out. You should all go get this Silver Screen Saucers book. It's an excellent work. Lots of detail. This is going to be sort of an overview of the theological twist to it and for the sake of I think at least half the audience probably are going to be someone who would be a traditional theist or a Christian perhaps. So I want to again just provoke your thought a little bit in terms of what the kind of things that we like to watch slide. Let's talk first about elements of what I will loosely refer to here as the extraterrestrial gospel. We have generally sort of new myths in place of old creeds. New myths in place of old creeds. I want to start off with a few quotations from I think some in some cases will be well-known sources and others other sources I think are pretty important here. There is today at a time when old beliefs are withering a kind of philosophical hunger. You need to know who we are and how we got there. There's an ongoing search often unconscious for a cosmic perspective for humanity. As I know the Bible that was Carl Sagan way back in 1973 but you know honestly it could have been yesterday. This is just sort of the way things are again this philosophical hunger I would say a spiritual hunger. Most people don't think consciously about theology but I can say a theological hunger as well and for those of you who are Christians you know the New Testament specific in Paul with Romans 1 again my paraphrase of his language. It talks about how every every human heart sort of has a God-shaped void and wants to fill it with something and then something transcendent. Who are we? How did we get here? Who is that sort of thing? And this is what Sagan is really sort of striking out here. Ray Kurzweil in the Singularity is Near says we need a new religion. Now again he's specifically talking about transhumanism but transhumanism is going to be a theme in science fiction and in some cases it will be linked to extraterrestrial realities as we cast in science fiction. The search for superior beings, the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence is itself a kind of religion. Yeah I would wholeheartedly agree. This is Stephen Dick who is a historian of the extraterrestrial life conversation. His book Life on Other Worlds the 20th century extraterrestrial life and being which is a 1998 title. Dick has authored a number of books on the history of the extraterrestrial possibility both in terms of broader western civilization specifically within the church and broadly speaking church historical discussion and he's right the search for superior beings think about it which of course is related intimately to and you can almost make it a synonym the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence is in itself a kind of religion. This will be an extended quote. There it is an emerging canon and again for those of us who are christianists C-A-N-O-N is a significant word. Canon refers to the body of sacred literature that which is considered inspired. There is an emerging canon of transcendent stories that provides meaning to our lives the myth-making work of two powerful engines of cultural influence speculative science and yes science can be speculative but even those scientists don't like to talk in those terms it certainly is in many respects. Speculative science and the works of science fiction presented to us as a much needed alternative to more traditional perspectives of god people and the destiny of the human race an alternative that will open a spiritual pathway into the increasingly technological future. Another way of saying that is this as he puts it the emerging canon again in these engines of cultural influence are preparing us for our destiny at least as we perceive or as men have perceived it in a technological society context. This is from James Herrick's book scientific mythologies how science and science fiction form forge new religious beliefs is an excellent book. This is Intervarsity Press I think I have a picture of it here yeah. Jim Herrick is a professor of well what's his field it's not he's not a scientist or or a religion scholar but he's a he's a professor of rhetoric in that he's a he's a reform tradition for those christians in the audience he's a good god you know I've met him talked to him a number of times this is an excellent book he's written other books as well but I would certainly recommend it for our subject matter today. This is an excellent volume. So specific elements moving from generalities to some specific theological tenants for theological ideas. E.T. theism and just think about that term E.T. theism. It's not really an ox and one for ready. New gods for a technological post-christian age. Once life has started in a relatively benign environment and billions of years of evolutionary time available the expectation of many of us is that intelligent means will develop. We're now saving different sources this time dragging the speculations on the evolution of human intelligence. By the end of the 19th century the myth of the intelligent spiritual benevolent E.T. was entrenched in western thought. I want to comment on that. I've cut out a number of points about sort of the history of are there other worlds to be that can be traced again all the way back to the church fathers. This statement again has a lot behind it. In the in the Middle Ages we'll just say generalities here in the Middle Ages the church was very positively predisploits to the idea of there being other worlds. As I mentioned yesterday I'm kind of rich talk of those but there was a time when it was considered theologically abhorrent to deny gods ability and the possibility that other worlds could exist because you can't say that god couldn't do something because that's just not theologically permissible within the bounds of omnipotence. Of course god could do something so if you deny that there were other worlds you were sort of perceived as denying some point of omnipotence. It's just something that god could do. Well that was the church and broadly speaking as you go through the early modern period up into the modern period you have a number of writers speculating and typically in terms of fiction we didn't really have the term science fiction at this point but in terms of fiction they were proposing and writing about other worlds. The most familiar audience I think the most familiar instance of this for Christians would not be something in the 19th century, something in the 20th century in the C.S. Lewis's trilogy, the out of the silent flag caravan in the industry. Well there were writers before Lewis writing what we would later call science fiction and selling a good number of books. This was a popular and by the end of the 18th century a familiar idea and it included I think it's fair to say probably you know in the 18th century sometime you would have had the first book that talked about alien visitation to this world so in other words the question wasn't either other worlds but Fontenelle has a book specifically about this idea that there were visitors from other worlds who came here rather than later science fiction we go visit, we go visit other worlds and you can see us versus the silent climate. So both ideas were again in the intellectual culture in the literate or culture those people who read books from the end of the 19th century by the end of the 20th 18 visitation and the displacement of theism either current theism of how people thought about God in the 20th century or the idea that the gods in antiquity were actually extra trustees those ideas were also entrenched in Western thought. I mean this is kind of obvious for those of you who are here at this conference all I need to do is mention Zacharii Sitchin, Eric Barnadettekin, again it's not going away it's firmly entrenched in a way that we think today. Now you also have again to bolster or I shouldn't say bolster but to reinforce maybe or kind of operate in the background to to help convince people we are called the idea. You have official sources again a lot of stuff was talked about this week the military Nassau wondering about UFOs but when people see you know really smart people in the government if you have like a government label or a military job or a hundred intelligence community you're perceived as being in the now and so when you're wondering about extraterrestrial life or you're speculating that oh yeah it's out there or it's already bigger that reinforces what you're reading in science fiction it just does that for people it just lends validity to an idea that you might have been here reading fiction or books like Barnadettekin it's sort of important to be non-fiction but you know kind of get put in ridicule we'll look all with official people you know start talking about the same thing it makes it just sound no reason unofficial sources of course more science fiction writers filmmakers a filmist I think is arguably even more influential today than science science fiction books they're often made up of movies anyway but again remember that this idea both of these ideas that well maybe the gods of the antiquity or god as we think of them today is that really the being that religious books tell us who it is like the bible maybe god is an extraterrestrial or the gods of other cultures that close their extracrestrials in other words we don't have if it's foolish or or or not the conversation isn't owned by people who talk about a spiritual god and jesdemies that sort of thing the conversation is now at least equally represented by those who would say well we don't really need to think about a spiritual or something distinct from the material world we're talking about extraterrestrials which are part of the material world they're the beings that are involved just like we are and that sort of mental transition is kind of important here are a few of dick's books I just wanted to expose you to the titles here plurality of worlds extraterrestrial life today there's a volume that precedes this one this one is 1750 to 1900 by Michael Crowe again this is well-traveled turf in an academia this one is a little more recent Bennett which after Bennett beyond UFOs the search for extraterrestrial life and the astonishing implications for our future this is focused a lot on religious aspects religious implications this is another a little by Stephen nick many worlds alien worlds ET culture contact with the ancients of the alien civilizations all of these books and the ones preceded are published by academic presses and that's why I wanted to list here this is not these are not self-published it's not you know sort of a you know kind of a popular press or something like you know inter-traditions books or the publishers even executive institutions material these are all used to press leather publishers and this is just a small sample I have I don't want to say it all because I probably have missed something but I have most of the academic literature published on this subject and there's a lot of it and that doesn't even count journal literature the religious angle of religious implications of extraterrestrial life Arthur C. Clark again famously said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and Michael Sherman and famous atheists sort of stole that and said any sufficiently advanced ETI extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God and if you really think about that there's there's a lot of there's a lot of truth in that because if we if we encounter an extraterrestrial if there was some disclosure and it had astonishing technology it's a really short link for people to think well all those all those sort of miracles that you read about in the Bible and religious books maybe they weren't there it's maybe they were technology again if you were confirmed in this reality and in many ways we already have it in our heads very firmly because of science fiction there are a lot of people today if you get to know a religious conversation with them they're thinking well if there were ancient areas that's just that's just technology that's just parsed as being America it's parsed as being an act of the God who is independent from creation we're actually dealing with an extraterrestrial as advanced technology again this is this is nothing new I think for most in this intermediate audience at least in this room and I think Schermer his observation is on target for a lot of people they wouldn't even think about the way of it you know some of the stuff that you know whether it's the Bible or something in the Eastern tradition some of the stuff they describe really is beyond technology they create things in this example you know how would how would we attribute that to a manufacturing technology by a finite life that's extraterrestrial or not a lot of people will not sort of probe the equation you'll just accept that again we do we really mean God in miracles if we have extraterrestrial in life you know advanced technology it's just easy to go there and even though we don't have that in today as far as anybody really knows the idea has been sort of beaten into our heads over and over and over again so that it's it's just an easy thing to think about it's an easy and mental transition from one thing traditional theism to UT theism these beings this is saying again are super civilization gods these extraterrestrials these speculate about motivated by benevolence that also is a speculation and hundreds four thousands or millions of years beyond this they possess sciences and technology so far beyond the present capabilities as to be indistinguishable from magic again he's also barring place for part there well if we have ET theism or at least the idea sort of firmly planted in the western line by today again when i when i say firmly planted i mean for a lot of people the idea that there is no god there's just an advanced extraterrestrial that's on the table for a lot of people even though we don't have any solid evidence that there are extraterrestrials and as i lectured yesterday there's a yes a minority but a significant representation in the scientific community that the odds of having an extraterrestrial life form it's intelligent really are not that good despite that despite having no evidence despite something like the drake equation being entirely contrived people just are still there that is on the table for them without any evidence at all and science fiction and mass media again you know visual forms of science fiction have maybe not put that into the heads of of westerners because that was done through through the written work that he takes the 20th century but it certainly reinforces it and a visual reinforcement becomes pretty powerful but if we have the eti eti theism what is salvation well extraterrestrial salvation is not about saving humans from center it's about saving humans from themselves there it's a little shift there human kind will remain vulnerable so long as it stays confined here on earth martin reese our final hour is a scientist warning how terror and environmental disaster threaten human kind's future in this century on earth and beyond reese has built basically advocates colonizing the united states because we're well we're all going to hope this to destroy ourselves now again don't don't be cynical about the you know global warming thing and how controversial that is reese is a mainstream scholar and scientist and he's he's part of the significant number of people who believe our days are numbered for whatever reason and so he again wants to colonization well wouldn't it be great if we could meet an extraterrestrial or could use extraterrestrial technology or the extraterrestrials would teach us how to pull this off you know how to get to space how to how to advance in our technology to save ourselves here or get out there so that's the trajectory we are i really like this line again not because i agree with it because i think it's well said heaven purged of religion is transformed into space that's what it is because we all we have this conception in terms of religion that you know where does god live it lives out there it lives up in the heavens you know of course beyond earth that sort of thing well that's for the aliens live too so again that helps solidify this this analogy this equation and really when you think about it if you again either are an atheist or again you want to substitute swap in an extraterrestrial that's really well said it's really what you have heaven purged of religion is transformed into space you're really talking about the same thing except you don't have to be anything you have an extraterrestrial these beings are here to save us from a newly redefined fallenness now in traditional again junea christian thinking humanity is fallen that means a number of things you don't want to collapse into a theology lecture period the fallenness is imperfection it is it is not possessing in and of ourselves immortality it is being estranged from the god who created us again because of sin and so on and so forth it's a number of things but in et religion again and I hope you're catching the drift here et religion is this idea again that we shouldn't really be talking about god or it makes less sense to talk about god or it tends to talk about fabulous and transcendent extraterrestrial if in that theology well it doesn't make any sense to have this thing called a sin or a stranger what estranges us from et is that we're not them we're not as advanced we're not as technologically astute we're not as evolved spiritually or whatever although this vocabulary is kind of familiar so we have to redefine what the fallenness means humanity is not lost in sin but humanity is in the primitive stages of biological spiritual and social evolution humanity in its present condition is a threat to itself it must be saved by a great intelligence so salvation in this worldview this this religious worldview religious framework is a greater intelligence coming along and showing us the error of our ways not in terms of mending a relationship between god and his creatures his hidden creatures but in terms of addressing our stupidity okay in terms of helping us to become more like our superiors but to save ourselves from ourselves that would be the definition of saving humanity humanity is the divine image its destiny is to become the divine you know you can spare me a worldview the divine image means we are like our extraterrestrial brethren or creators so we need to talk a little bit about the term image of god now it's very clear in christian theology the liberal theology that human kind is created in god's image you know this is a big theological focus well part of that biblically speaking is the beginning of it is associated with god creates a human family he already has a divine family he wants a human family as well he creates a world where he can be among his embodied human creatures on that world you know creates the garden this is where he creates humanity this is the beginning of god sort of blending his family his human family with his divine family and him living in the midst of all of his creatures his intelligent children this is the end of the framework for the biblical story and that's what god originally wanted to attend to god gives the humans a mandate he says okay now i have lots of babies because i got a big job for you it's bigger than two people i want you to go out and subdue the earth i want you to be a steward of this place a steward kingship i'm giving it to you and i want you to multiply because your job is to spread evenly essentially all over the rest of the world that's when you need to multiply and do that and god wants earth to be like a second home for himself and his the other members of his divine family he wants a blended family so the biblical idea is god come to earth with human beings and actually the normal circumstance we as embodied beings should think of it as normal as god intended to live in god's realm to be a member of the divine family even though we are human and divine and embodied that's that that is the whole point of the early chapters of Genesis where we know again that that doesn't work well there's a fall and a strange that there's expulsion believed in all that but the idea that humans are supposed to be members of a divine family is a biblical that is a biblical idea new testament writers talk about it all the time christian theology it's referred to as the end point of sanctification it's referred to as glorification it's referred to as theosis in the eastern tradition eastern orthodox it's referred to as deification the scholars are used that term because they don't want to use ordinary information okay so the idea is a biblical well in a panspermia worldview where human life is a direct result of the seething of the planet seething of earth by intelligent extraterrestrials in other words we they are our creators in that view the divine image means evolving to be like them and this is a a major theological tenet a major theological trajectory you know a lot of science fiction again just this notion of we are here to help you become us and we are your benevolent father for you benevolent creators we're here to help you leap to the next stage of your evolution and even in recent times you can get this thread contact it's not in recent but the arrival there's a little bit of this in it again some of the more thoughtful extraterrestrial movies but we're going to talk about movies here at mobile but i mean good grief you know 2001 and we're looking at the imagery i'll show you some pictures some still shots but that is theology 101 according to that movie 2001 et had to get it speculated et evolution undoubtedly is propelled by science and technology and so our evolution is to be propelled by science and technology science and technology again i think it's fair to say that a lot of the human population here now have already made science and technology their gods but this pursuit of extraterrestrial contact or at least you know can we recover their technology and duplicate it you know it's for a lot of people it's more than just a lot of give us bigger guns than the Soviet Union or something like that you know for a lot of people it's more transcendent the goal is different the goal is not complex the goal is becoming again superior it's leaping forward in evolution this is where Gaila Ray Kurzweil again his material but the whole transhumanist idea has become an important sort of ingredient in this theological mix that it's our destiny to become more than human and it just it just kicks that idea a little bit down the road and gets us ready for it and gets us prepared for it or to endorse it or to want it and for it's marketed really well actually so our own evolution has to follow the same path that you two would show us the way space is where humanity will meet its gods eventually if we get out there and get far enough to make enough noise and whatever we start colonizing you know send probes here and there or of course setting a signal other possible intelligent races out there why do we do that well it may not be verbalized in some cases it is and I've actually heard statements like this in academic meetings but one of the one of the reasons we want to do this is not just to know that there's other life forms we want to meet our gods we want to meet gods again defined as beings that are so far superior to us that what else would we call them what else would they read we want to again achieve we want to do this we want to evolve sufficiently and we hope that that we can meet them and they can help us so that we can restore even ourselves we want to attain unlimited knowledge we want to overcome human evil and stupidity we want to transcend humanity itself we want to be like they are we want to be as gods and it's really easy to put a theological spell I think I have something about Peter Thaler here I hope I can put it back if not if I remember it well I'd like to say a little bit more about him again transhumanism is is sort of the the intersection of the technological master the extra trustee the new et god and our destiny you know while we're trying to meet our gods we're going to do our best to become wise we're going to do our best to transcend ourselves we're going to do our best to become more intelligent because that's what they want to do we want to be like them we want to do what they do be like them because that way you know we really will be fulfilling our destiny as their images their integers you know we're not we're not the image of a transcended invisible separate from creation we get it beginning to be in the image of god we advance ourselves so that we would be like them not like this invisible god the Bible or something that sort to be like them so we have this talk today about biological enhancement genetic enhancement uploading consciousness synthetic biology nanotechnology of course the singularity becomes spiritual machines where we can just transfer our consciousness from you know machine form to machine there is the okay Peter feel i like to include this because feel is his parents were christians missionaries i believe in the evangelical tradition uh Peter feels as the founder of paypal is lots of money he's an enthusiastic transhumanist enthusiastic really is too weak he is he's beaten the drum the other word you can and if you talk to him he will he will pass this in explicitly theological terms some of the things that i just said there's on the internet i don't i don't have this included in this presentation but you can find a video of a conversation between peter feel and nt right i feel like the nt right is he's probably the most famous theologian christian tradition today um and you know he's he's the real deal is he's a he's a scholar he was a genuine you know christian not just christian by name only and you can find in this interview is arranged by uh i don't know if it was the veritas form or something else but it's a conversation between him and feel about transhumanism and and right is not antagonistic he's he's not going to be agreeing with why feel the same he's saying but he understands because he is a theologian that it is part of the human destiny to transcend humanity to become glorified become like goth first jar of greed hold no matter what the following is bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of god and that's what we are in justice you know someday we will be like jesus and someday we will become like him it doesn't mean we'll become gods become real planets and we become the allies god fathers every like Mormonism what it means is that we will get new bodies like jesus had and we won't be limited by our humanity we will become as close to to being like jesus as we can in his relationship to the father so feel those eyes this is his tradition and so he would say things like well look why are you opposing transhumanism isn't this what we're supposed to do aren't we supposed to become divine isn't this what the genesis creation branding really had at its core aren't we supposed to make Eden happen with transhumanism and nanotechnology and synthetic biology we can do things like eliminate disease we can do things like eliminate genetic defects okay we can do things like reverse or at least halt or maybe reverse the aging process because really why most people die because their cells start to die okay they're something in the cell where it starts to deteriorate and die so hey if we can find out why each individual cell does that and stop it now you can still get rid of it by the truck okay but you will not age and die shouldn't we do that isn't that what god would want us to do didn't this is how good for me to be and again he's very in a much favor of all this other exploration we're talking about but the whole what i'm talking about is the modern theological tenor of transcending humanity and one of the specific forms of that is or we hope bt helps us but until we meet our gods what we'll try our best to do that because that that's just what we should do a lot of people again we'll put it in theological guard but a lot of people will a lot of christians will cannot not really ask them questions like well okay that's that's the end of the audience but is that really the means that god said this would happen this really means that god said will bring this about no when peter still ever seems to ask that question he assumes the end is addressed in the bible but not the text they're both addressed they're both there he skips one and goes to the other the extra trust will last forever we already have a hint of this science fiction with their propaganda blurring lines between etian christian theism and christology it's about the messaging and not sort of cartoonish the nonsense and lots of space and film and pages have been devoted to this we have a new heavenly father and a new heavenly son and the heavenly father is going to be in the past as some non-human godlike figure from some other place and he's going to have a son of course and this this gets carried out a lot that the film we just want to get into some films now instead of talking about some of these routines being close encounters in the third kind have you ever noticed that the christian minister there's you know in the final scene of the big mother ship descends on the top of the mountain there and when they start saying well you know we're going to we're going to do an exchange you know some of you etians are going to stay here and all the stuff we're going to send some people with the Richard Dreyfus character of course gets enthusiastic and drafting into this and there's a minister as they're going out of the mother ship he reads from Psalm 91 11 before humans you know they're actually take off in the ship and the verse says for he will command his angels concerning to guard you and all your enemies who are the angels you know and you could say well the priest is praying that the angels of god will protect these humans from you know on their trip to wherever okay but you could also say that the verse is there to reinforce a plant the idea that the etians are the angels they're the ones that will take care of the kings that they promise to take care of them on their way anybody else know where this passage is quoted in the bible Satan well it's he's in the scene yeah say he's in the scene who quotes it Jesus quotes it you know to war off where Satan's temptation and of course the implication is that he is the one being protected you know in the context which is a real interesting spin if the angels are extra trust again so if you have in your mind how that passage is actually used in the testicle you have again this mental connection so again that's a bit of a obtuse example ET possesses powers to heal soar through the heavens yet if you've seen the movie he has a spiritual connection with the boy Elliot and of course ET rises from the dead in the womb again it's this is this is these are christ motifs applied to routine you know this this is stuff that the divine demons would do the angels or gods or something like that day of the year stood still in two versions of it anybody remember the name of the alien who's actually clot to an alien language you remember the name of the guy who passes himself off as John Carpenter of abbreviations Jay film drops a lot of this kind of subtle stuff that we call Easter eggs they've been doing this for a long time and if you're familiar with the story he's a savior figure where the humans turn on and kill you know again there are elements of the gospel story the story of Jesus that put into the day of the year stood still but you know Jesus is swapped back for an Indian superman this is superman in the academic literature is a famous christ figure everybody likes to write about superman because it's so obvious and superman of course is an extra thruster he's you know now i'm saying well it's kind of pressing things a little bit here's a scene from the first superman this is why he's going to go on and save the earth when he finally gets off of the leadership where he's been imprisoned where he does the crucifixion pose of course he goes in later in baton in superman he dies does anybody not think the superman's going to rise from the dead and don't you know the college they have him on father and son Thor the first movie what happens to Thor he dies it seems we'll give him credit for death it's a big death saving humanity that he pops out of it when his father you know approves but his father approved of his selfless act and the hammer comes back and throw it off again this is if you if you want to go back to the late antiquity when christians are trying to evangelize in the Nordic territories christian missionaries are going to use connections between Odin and Thor to do evangelism it's called syncretism i'm not recommended because it gets you in all sorts of theological trouble there on but they would do it because there's some similarities this is a terrific book don't let the cover to see these if you're interested in this subject i highly recommend our gods or spandex christopher knowles the secret history of comic book heroes and basically this book is all about how marvel and decent comics propel not only different forms of what we would call today the alien narrative in the aliens who really are the gods and the human beings at all different stages of history how comic book characters and comic book arcs you know mythic arcs in the comic book series how they cook forth that idea that theology but knowles also does get into theology how comic books do theology but of course they swap in different characters they use biblical stories and theological ideas as the beginning point for a lot of their own you know episodes they're one story it's really a good book this is named christopher knowles this one is a more academic tone even though it's a look it's a paper bag it's not dense reading it's pretty easy reading um Goliaths teaches at a teaches history at a community college at canterbury where but extraterrestrials in the american zeitgeist alien contact tale since the 1950s again what he does is he he'll go through the again the contact team sort of era and he will talk about how he'll he'll give you touch points with science fiction and how science fiction contributed to forming the alien mythos in the 20th century and if you've ever been if you haven't you've been in the subject frame on a time when you've all heard you know how this sort of happened how early serials you know magazines comic books you know Ray Palmer is a big figure Jack Kirby from Marvel how what they wrote actually helped form and fill out what we think of today as the alien narrative in some cases it gets very specific uh i've been recommended again you read books by by and about Kirby or Ray Palmer you'll begin to see some striking similarities between stuff they published that sound i'll just use roswell for example it sounds suspiciously like the roswell story before that ever became popular and people have noticed this uh scholars and other academics have tracked on who isn't curious you know how one thing sort of contributes to the other is the science fiction writers sort of propelling the narrative the UFO narrative or did they get their ideas from the UFO narrative and then write their stories well it's actually a little bit of both but it's really interesting again to actually go through something they're laid out and academic that makes that chase knowing again if you've never seen this movie if you're into this sort of subject matter i would certainly recommend it i know we some people just don't like this page don't let that discourage and this is really a good movie uh these guys here are you don't know if they're villains or if they're good guys you know that is getting into the good movie but the thesis of the movie is that we'll see what happens on the next slide i'll show that much the thesis of the movie is that niggles cages little boy finds a at school they buried a time capsule back when the change was was young and now it's it hits the 2025 year mark or whatever it was but so he takes the kids to school they're going to pull out the time capsule and see what the little kids you know way back when they're putting the time capsule and one of the one of the kids you you see this in flashback in the film it's a little girl who's obviously disturbed and you suspect possibly abused and on the day that they're supposed to draw pictures and stuff to put in the time capsule this little girl is sitting in the back of the room and drawing nothing but numbers row after row after row after row of numbers and teachers just are freaked out tries to stop from doing it finally takes the paper away they put it in the time capsule or cages kid is you know they pull the time capsule out every kid gets an envelope of course cages kid gets the one with the numbers and cage is an atheistic astrophysicist but he stumbles on the discovery that these numbers correspond to dates of tragic events catastrophic events and the body movements for each one so he spends like a whole night in google tracking all of them gets freaked out and ultimately the story is religious because the last day doesn't really have a number it has EE which means they find out everybody else is going to die so it's actually a prophecy of the apocalypse and the imagery of Ezekiel in this case includes the book of Revelation Revelation repurposes the book of Ezekiel Ezekiel's vision of Revelation 4 and 5 for those who aren't familiar with that becomes a prominent element in the story so that by the end we got this I would have had to have shown you part of the movie but there's this sort of fantastic vision at the end where you have a recreation of what the filmmaker thought Ezekiel's wheel and chariot thing would have looked like and of course it's populated by extra trustees and they come to take the little boy and he makes a friend along the way this girl to a new evening and everybody else stops so it's a direct link with biblical prophecy biblical imagery associated with the angels a god, a divine thrower with extra trustees it's it's very explicit and you know I don't want to be a killjoy viewer I like watching this this is a good movie it has high entertainment value and I sat there at the end and I thought you know if I was a filmmaker and I was thinking about you know creating imagery for Ezekiel one that's the idea it's actually very striking the way they do it they really put some thought into it but it's just overt messaging it's theological messaging again they're here to save us from ourselves save us from oblivion you know in this case it's the culprit is not global warming it has something to do with a solar flare 2001 of course famous space odyssey again at the end of the movie you know Dave evolves into a cosmic a cosmic human I don't know how else you really put but of course the pictures of Dave being reborn as a baby but yet with these adult features you know drifting out into space they're quite famous it's a very clear and overt casting a theological idea of human evolution transcendent humanity of Earth itself and becoming a cosmic being Arthur C. Clarke in 3001 see now they're lords of the galaxy and the road of love among the stars that's human destiny in Clarke's vision it's just a classic point you know the team theology and team salvation I just want to go through some superheroes and it's just real fast and you know unfortunately kind of superficial have you noticed that your superheroes are one of two things they're either aliens or they are enhanced humans that they some kind of technology on the vision in Marvel is is essentially human consciousness married to the technological wonder so he's kind of a part of the part of hybrid cap in America enhanced human you know Ironman is an enhanced human Hulk is an enhanced human nothing he likes it but there you go the whole gallery thing spider-man is an enhanced human X-Men and mutants that's what they are there's something more to think about I want to I think this is the end but I want to end with Prometheus Prometheus of course is the prequel to the alien series and this is again extraordinarily overt and would have been more overt in its in its recasting Christian theology into an extraterrestrial religion had Ridley Scott's original script been the focal point of the actual film so if you remember the movie these are you remember the name these are the engineers and these are going to be the creators and one of the engineers sacrifices himself to drink something that his body deteriorates his DNA grows into the the super you know mix that is on the new earth you know this this virgin planet that doesn't have life here's the scene and his DNA eventually evolves into us the human beings they are our creators in the story eventually again humans will get this alien messaging and the skibble out of the plot but they travel back to the place where the engineers come from and they encounter them and of course it's kind of interesting the engineers turn out to be giants there's that kind of an interesting twist they're up there they're divine beings and up there also giants so we're mixing the Genesis six stuff to understand the rest of what I'm going to show you here the Prometheus myth from Greek mythology Prometheus is a titan that he is a trickster titan trickster figure credited with creating man from clay he's also referred to as the divine garter again from the heavens in this case from space in the movie the engineers look smooth like white clay and then going back here that's intentional our DNA comes from theirs he defies Prometheus defies the gods by giving fire to humanity in the Greek myth this gift enabled civilization and progress Prometheus is known as the champion of humanity and he's sentenced to eternal torment by Zeus he's bound every day and evil comes and rips out his liver and heals only to have it happen all again in the same day that's his torture and comes to feed the liver and grows back and gets eaten the next day now we skip it out well there's there's the edge right there this is hard to see and I'm not going to give you a website we could actually get a better view of this but here is the Prometheus figure and this is one of the engineers you can see the human form here and he's got his side torn open here and he it's really hard to see but the one that tears at it is one of the alien to the alien movie so think you have to think a little bit abstract of here you know the giver of human life having his abdomen torn open is a dying god well it's obvious jesus the spirit of science created the giver giving his life for humanity and of course keeping the devil at bay which is the alien figure if you go to movies.com and you know there's a few other sites there's one I'll just spell it for you it's it's a blog called by a guy that goes by the name cavalon c-a-v-e-l-o-i he has a long sort of gnostic alien gnostic theological expose on this movie it's actually quite interesting if you've seen the movie the main character is a female she's a red head her name is elizabeth think by her here it was you know and there's a very name in the film as well which was associated with her she ends up being impregnated with the alien she performs a serene birth on herself I'm not going to tell you how she does that of course the alien is birthed again there's all sorts of like mixed biblical images but the real kicker never made it in the film if you go up to movies.com they're interviewing a riddly scott and they they say we heard it described that the engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of them or their representatives and that jesus christ might have been an alien is that ever considered and riddly scott's response we definitely did and then we thought that there's a little two on the nose but if you look at it as our children are misbehaving down their scenario there are moments where it looks like we've gone out of control running around with armor and skirts which of course would be the roman empire you were given a long run a thousand years before the disintegration actually started to happen and then you can say well let's send down one of our emissaries to see if we can stop it guess why they crucified so this is where scott wanted to go in the movie we'll stop there if you want the slide presentation this is the euro get it just a few sort of closing comments movies like promes movies like 2001 they're the most well-known knowing the most overt sorts of examples but it is really hard it's really hard to find a science fiction movie or a superhero movie that does not do theology really guardians of the galaxy which i love it's the second one everybody there we see guardians too okay remember how it ends with that advanced race and they're getting ticked off because they didn't get the guardians and so they're going to make sort of a super version of themselves what do they call it what does she say it's the last slide in the movie i think we'll call him Adam that's going to be Adam Warlock if you're familiar with the comic book material who is a christian go google it look it up and wouldn't repeat it Adam Warlock and if you know the comic book stories in the arts it's off the art and again the the the comic books the movies we didn't really get any TV shows here they retell biblical stories and biblical theology through their characters but you can say well you know maybe maybe they do that because those are just good stories it's good story tell and it is it's compelling story teller but it's hard to believe that again over and over again especially when you read something like this really scotty review that there's not some intentional behind it and but when i say that i'm not saying that you're saying that i'll just hate christians i think no i'm not saying that at all i guess you got some of those people okay whatever what i'm saying is that intentionally or unintentionally it gets masses of people millions and millions and millions of people to think about god and jesus and humanity and human destiny and salvation the major core elements of theology it gets them to think about all those things in a different way and in such a way that he raises god jesus he raises all those things he completely redefines them and you know that just it becomes part of the way people process the visible message and trust me folks well sometimes it helps but often it doesn't you know when you try to talk to people about spiritual things you're already a post christian culture you know i don't have any problems about saving time uh and and you can you can be sit there and be fearful about that i'm actually not and i won't i won't want to say this but for a number of reasons i think it's a good thing i think it's a really good thing but the fact of the matter is you have to realize that when you try to have a spiritual conversation with people they're not parsing terms like you parse them and in some cases they may not even be capable of that you're going to have to sort of get into this world and how this world trains people to think about big theological concepts you're going to have to be able to interact with that with a lot of people and just help them see you know there's similarities here and that might build a bridge to the discussion but there are significant disconnections that you're ultimately going to have to address that's all i have for today if you have any questions i don't know if our guy wants to wrap up here anybody and if you're interested in this i really recommend our gods were spandex there are other books in this genre subgenre you can call it that but that's really it's very readable good examples lots of those experiences it's it's really quite good and then robby graham's solar spring saucer that which is for the general hollywood uniform science fiction anybody at all all right thank you for coming