What Disclosure Day Misses About Aliens and Religion

Late in Steven Spielberg’s new film, Disclosure Day, a former nun-to-be calls the abbess of the convent she left behind. The world is about to learn that aliens have been living on Earth for decades. Although Jane, the onetime novitiate, is no longer religious, she still thinks that the idea of God is what “keeps whole civilizations together.” She’s worried that when people find out that humans aren’t the only intelligent beings in the universe, they’ll lose their faith, and society will crumble.“Genesis says we’re his supreme creation,” Jane begins, but Sister Maura interrupts her: “On Earth,” the nun clarifies. “It says we are God’s supreme creation on Earth.”In other words, Jane shouldn’t be afraid. The existence of aliens does not necessarily conflict with belief in God. As Sister Maura says later in the conversation, “Why would he make such a vast universe yet save it only for us?” Jane seems not to have heard this perspective before, and it reassures her. But centuries of Catholic writing and thinking about the universe demonstrate that Sister Maura’s view on God and aliens is hardly novel.[Read: An alien movie for a post-truth moment]Although the Catholic Church takes no official position on the existence of extraterrestrial life, past and present Catholic figures have explored the possibility and not found it threatening. The 15th-century cardinal Nicholas of Cusa surmised that “none of the other regions of the stars are empty of inhabitants” and even that some said inhabitants might be “brilliant, illustrious, and intellectual.” In 1821, the Catholic philosopher Joseph de Maistre puzzled over the fact that some of his contemporaries regarded other planets as “mere globes, destitute of life and beauty, which the Almighty has launched into space, apparently like a tennis-player, for his amusement solely.” And in a 2010 interview, the former head of the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, said that he would be “delighted” if humans were to discover i