Disclosure Day: Faith, Aliens, and Spielberg

Summary

---

The SkyePod — Episode Summary

Podcast: The SkyePod
Host: Skye Jethani
Guest: Esau McCaulley
Episode: Disclosure Day: Faith, Aliens, and Spielberg
Date: June 19, 2026

---

Overview of the Episode

In this episode, Skye Jethani and returning guest Esau McCaulley dive into Steven Spielberg’s new film, Disclosure Day, which tackles themes of aliens, faith, and societal upheaval. Prompted by the movie, the conversation opens up broader questions about how new and challenging information—particularly about extraterrestrial life—would impact Christian theology and worldview. Beyond analysis of the movie itself, the hosts critically explore how Hollywood interprets religion, the resilience (or naivety) of Christian thought around revelations of alien life, and where Spielberg’s storytelling fits within his legendary career.

---

Spielberg & Disclosure Day: Film Discussion

Spielberg’s Cinematic Legacy

• Spielberg’s impact across genres is discussed, from inventing the summer blockbuster (Jaws) to tackling heavy themes (Schindler’s List, Amistad) and classic adventure (Indiana Jones).
• Disclosure Day is praised for reuniting Spielberg with composer John Williams and for embedding classic Spielbergian tension and spectacle.
  • Quote (Skye, 03:13): "I liked the movie. I don't think it's one of his best."
• Both hosts agree Spielberg’s best work remains in his earlier films, suggesting later works, like Disclosure Day, have "flashes of brilliance" but don’t match his legacy highlights.
  • Quote (Esau, 04:53): "Every great artist…has their three to five movies, three to five albums, where what they're doing is just amazing. And then you either say, stop making content, or I am there for the flashes of brilliance…"

Spielberg’s Obsession with Aliens

• Spielberg’s career-long fascination with aliens is reviewed, tracking from Close Encounters and E.T. to War of the Worlds and now Disclosure Day.
• Skye notes Spielberg’s renewed interest in alien topics sparked after 2017’s UAP revelations in the New York Times and recent congressional testimony.
  • Quote (Skye, 06:39): "He’s been intrigued...since 2017. And the New York Times reports...he totally immersed himself in everything that was out there…"

---

Key Themes Explored in Disclosure Day

Religious Depictions and Critique

• The film puts questions of faith at the forefront, dramatized through a former nun wrestling with alien existence and its implications for God.
• Esau critiques the film’s reduction of religion to mere social cohesion, noting it misses deeper theological content:
  • Quote (Esau, 12:02): "The way that the religion is portrayed then in the film is as kind of a tool of social cohesion...not just the instability of society."
• The film suggests that religion’s role is utilitarian, fragile, and replaceable, framing it as a stabilizing myth that can be shattered by revelation.
  • Memorable Scene (Skye, 13:32): The nun says, “We've always thought of God as the Supreme Being, but what happens when we actually meet a supreme being?”

Transference of Religious Functions to Aliens

• Skye observes that Spielberg essentially maps the positive functions of religion—empathy, unity, transcendence, revelation, peace—onto encounters with aliens.
  • Quote (Skye, 14:26): "Spielberg takes all the benefits of religion and says, you can have them now without all the superstition… it's now going to come from aliens."
• The discussion highlights a subtle secular longing: aiming to reap religion’s communal and existential benefits without traditional "superstition" by ascribing them to advanced extraterrestrials.

Christian Power vs. Alien Power

• Esau unpacks how the film’s depiction of religious awe aligns more with Greco-Roman than Christian theology. Christianity venerates divine weakness (Christ crucified), not just power.
  • Quote (Esau, 17:43): “…the center of the Christian story…is not the imposition of power, but the embrace of weakness. It is Jesus who was crucified.”
• The film assumes any sufficiently impressive display of power would disrupt or replace faith—a point both hosts challenge as deeply incomplete.

---

Theological Implications & Real-World Parallels

How Would Alien Life Affect Christianity?

• Skye finds the Christian response (“alien life wouldn’t affect faith much”) naïve. He sees three major challenges:

  1. Integrating Aliens into the Christian narrative: Would aliens need salvation? Are they “fallen?” What does “made in God’s image” mean if applied to non-humans?
     • Esau notes this isn’t a problem of power or threat but of “the story”:
       • Quote (Esau, 19:04): “If a Christian finds an alien…that’s not the theological problem. The problem…is how does the alien fit within the Christian narrative?”
  2. Historical Revision: If aliens have interacted with humanity for ages, it would undermine how Christians (and Jews) read sacred history and interpret mysterious figures (e.g., angels).
     • Quote (Skye, 27:00): “If you suddenly insert a completely new set of characters into that history…maybe these are not deities…maybe these are actually alien beings…it changes the framework completely…”
  3. Origins: If evidence emerges that humanity’s origins are extraterrestrial rather than divine, core beliefs could be shaken.

• Esau complicates these scenarios by reasserting Christian doctrine:

  • God is the creator of all things, so the mere existence of aliens or their past involvement doesn’t, strictly speaking, disprove Christian claims about divine creation.

Conspiracy, Secrecy, and Public Anxiety

• Both hosts briefly address the plausibility of government cover-ups about extraterrestrials.
  • Quote (Skye, 25:12): "When you get people as credible as Navy pilots and Barack Obama saying there are unexplained aerial phenomenon...I have no reason not to believe those people."
• Esau is skeptical of long-term secrecy, but Skye points out that whistleblowers and leaks have been ongoing for decades, only now gaining wider traction due to technology/new media.

Christian Subculture Reactions: Demons & End Times

• Discusses how some Christians interpret UAPs as demonic phenomena or end-times signs, referencing online rabbit holes and dispensationalist thinking.
  • Quote (Skye, 25:55): "Christian subculture online…universally, basically is saying this is all demonic…preparing for the end times and the Rapture…"

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Spielberg Not Consulting Real Theologians:

  • (Esau, 10:40): "But [Spielberg] couldn't spend 15 minutes talking to somebody about Genesis. Like, that dialogue was so weird. It was so clearly written by someone who knows nothing about how this works."

• On Religion as Power vs. Vulnerability:

  • (Esau, 17:43): “The idea that we are only attracted to power is almost a Greco Roman understanding of deity, not a Christian one…at the center of the Christian story…is not the imposition of power, but the embrace of weakness.”

• On Empathy and Unity as Alien Gifts:

  • (Skye, 14:27): “The ability of the main character to look someone in the eye and immediately feel what they're feeling…that's one of the things that religion did for people, was create empathy across…boundaries. Unity…transcendence…revelation…All these qualities…Spielberg says…will be given to us from aliens.”

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:43] — Introduction to Spielberg’s Disclosure Day and episode framing
• [03:13] — Skye and Esau’s personal reviews of the film; Spielberg’s place in his own canon
• [06:39] — Spielberg’s recent fascination with real-life alien news
• [10:05] — Religious themes in the film; depiction of nun and faith shaken by aliens
• [13:14] — Religion as social utility, and what happens if it’s replaced
• [14:26] — Spielberg transferring religion’s psychological functions to aliens
• [17:43] — Christian approach to power and humility vs. Greco-Roman views of deity
• [19:04] — The true theological challenge of aliens is their placement in the Christian story
• [21:00] — Biblical motifs in the film (Adam & Eve, speaking in tongues, peace on earth)
• [24:36] — Discussion of government secrecy and public leak culture around UAPs/aliens
• [25:55] — Christian responses to UFOs: demonic explanations and end-times narratives
• [27:00] — What if aliens have been active in human history all along?
• [28:27] — Theological response to the possibility that humans were created by aliens

---

Final Thoughts

Disclosure Day provides fertile ground not just for sci-fi speculation but for serious theological inquiry—raising (if not adequately grappling with) questions about faith’s resilience to paradigm-shattering knowledge. Esau and Skye commend Spielberg’s ambition but criticize the film’s superficial engagement with theology, challenging the assumption that faith would simply dissolve in light of alien revelation.

If you wrestle with the intersection of faith, science fiction, and contemporary culture—or if you want to hear two sharp minds probe why aliens never quite free us from our spiritual questions—this episode is a timely and lively listen.

---

[End of free segment. The rest of the conversation is available to HolyPost Plus subscribers.]

Transcript

[A]

We're here to colonize. Like, the entire movie was like a twist at the end. We're going to kill you all.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Sky Pod. I'm Sky Jatani. We are here with my colleague, Esau McCauley.

[A]

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is my second time.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

Second.

[A]

Third. I know second. Not a lot, but enough.

[B]

Something like that. For those of you who are newer to the Skypod, this is a podcast that is produced by Holy Post Media. If you are not a Holy Post plus subscriber, you're going to get through about half of this episode and then it's going to fade out and you're going to hear my voice come back saying, hey, you should be a subscriber so you can listen to the whole episode. If you are a subscriber, thank you for that, number one, because you are supporting all the work that we do here at Holy Post Media, and you're going to get this whole episode. So right now, if you aren't a subscriber, go to holeypost.com

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Yeah. And you can sign up either for Patreon or on Substack and get access not just to the full episode of the Sky Pod, but to everything we produce at Holy Post plus, which is a ton of things, including my daily devotional, which is now part of Holy Post plus with God Daily, the devotional for people who hate daily devotionals. But today we're here to talk about a movie and the themes that spin off of that movie.

[A]

Oh, I thought you invited me to talk about the World cup or the Knicks.

[B]

No, you got your soccer jersey.

[A]

Psg.

[B]

Are you a Knicks fan?

[A]

I was a Knicks fan last week.

[B]

So was I. Yeah, it was great.

[A]

I was like. It just.

[B]

It was great.

[A]

Yeah, it's great to see, like, the underdog. It's weird. The New York City's the underdog. I know, but like a long suffering, 53 years. It feels good. But no, I'm here to talk about something else.

[B]

Something more important, clearly. Okay, so Esau and I both recently saw Disclosure Day, the new movie by Steven Spielberg. And I guess there's two ways we could do this. There's the movie. We could just talk about the movie as a movie and how much we liked the movie or didn't like the movie. And then there are the themes of the movie which seem to have real life implications.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it's been. I was looking at this and probably I should have done more research on this on the podcast for your podcast. But they said this is his fifth largest opening ever for a Spielberg movie, which is actually pretty high. And I was like, I don't even know what all of the Spielberg movies are. Aren't they like E.T. what are the ones that he's doing?

[B]

Oh my gosh. I mean, he's the greatest filmmaker I know. But like, first of all, he invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws and.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

He did Jaws. He did Close Encounters of the Third Guy.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He did all of the Indiana Jones movies.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He did Jurassic Park.

[A]

That's pretty good.

[B]

Schindler's List. I mean, Lincoln, he's done every genre you can imagine. He did west side Story for this

[A]

to be fifth in his. Actually, people said, and one of the things that's interesting, they said that his movies have a long tail. So like he, he doesn't have like a huge debut all of the time. People just come back and watch it over and over and over and over again. And so I'm gonna ask you this. So you are a Spielberg fan? Apparently I am too. Cause I know all of people are gonna kill me in the comments. I'll let you know all of this. So where would you put this? Maybe put it this way. Where would you put this in the Spielberg kind of pantheon? Where would you put this?

[B]

Not super high.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, I liked the movie. I don't think it's one of his best.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The things I liked about it are, number one, it was the reuniting of Steven Spielberg with John Williams, the composer. John Williams is like 128 years old or something. He's, he's way up.

[A]

Pull him out and let him do the show.

[B]

I know, but the music was good. I, I, it, it's very Spielberg esque in some of the tension and action sequences. He, he's had a long history of dealing with alien issues from Close Encounters to ET Minority, Minority Report wasn't Aliens, but it was kind of telepathic stuff. And War of the Worlds, he did the remake of War of the World. So he's been in this genre for a long time. I liked all that, but I, I don't think when the books are written on the legacy and history of Steven Spielberg that this is gonna be held up as one of his shining achievements. It's fine. It's not great.

[A]

So this is maybe, I know we're gonna get into disclosure, but that's interesting that you said that is how do you deal with someone who had this formative impact on you as a film, as kind of growing with these movies that we grew up on? But there's a certain tie between our age, when we saw these movies, and how great they were. Because Indiana Jones. I felt like I was a kid when those movies came out.

[B]

Yeah, they came out in the 80s and so. And all the newer ones weren't very good.

[A]

Well. Or you were older.

[B]

No, they weren't very good.

[A]

Objectively.

[B]

Objectively. I mean, you can.

[A]

Look, everyone agrees. Yeah. I mean, but everyone's once again comparing it to, like, his earlier stuff. Regardless of that, I was saying it's like sometimes I'm okay with. Every great artist, musician, writer has their peak.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

They have their three to five movies, three to five albums, where what they're doing is just amazing. And then you either say, stop making content, or I am there for the flashes of brilliance to come and go. And I felt like Disclosure Day had some come and go brilliance. That was enough for me to be happy.

[B]

I liked it. I don't want to say I didn't like it when you compare it to his best work. Yeah, I don't think it's up there, but it's good. And I think for a filmmaker like Spielberg, the better bet is not to revisit genres or even characters from his peak in the 1980s, but to go in a completely different direction. So, for example, you know, in the 80s, he was known for that action adventure kind of thing. Indiana Jones maybe epitomizes that. So in the nineteen, was it, I think was the 1990s, he suddenly pivoted and did Schindler's List.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A completely different kind of film, which is, in its own right, stunning and brilliant. But no one compares Schindler's List to Indiana Jones.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, they both have Nazis.

[A]

Let's punch in Nazis. Yeah.

[B]

But they're totally different films. So I think he needs to. To continue to build his. His reputation. He needs to not retread the ground he's already done. He needs to go in new directions. And he's done that all through his career. He did Amistad. Do you remember that movie? And Lincoln are both kind of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, American history pieces that deal with slavery in some way. And that's very different than Minority Report with. With Tom Cruise, which is another one of his films. So he can do anything, and he does them all. Well. I don't think there's ever been a true stinker that he's created.

[A]

But what if it's your thing, though. What if he's, like, really into aliens and he feels like he has something to say about aliens?

[B]

Oh, he clearly did. If you've seen his interviews recently about this movie, he said that he's been intrigued again with this topic since 2017. And the new York Times reports that came out about the government agency investigating uap. And Spielberg said that in preparation for this film, he totally immersed himself in everything that was out there. All the speculation, all the whistleblowers, all the congressional testimony, all the documentaries that have been made.

[C]

So he.

[B]

And if I've gone down that rabbit hole as well, and it clearly comes out in this movie in some specific ways. So he got really intrigued by it. And then the simple question he's trying to ask in this movie is, what if it's all true and the world finds out? How would they react? What would kind of the core dilemma be? There's a lot to like about it as a film. I thought the third act was a little bit lackluster. Yeah, it was.

[C]

All right.

[B]

But rather than spending our whole time talking about the film film, I'd rather talk about the issues raised by the film.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, you're a New Testament scholar. Yes. You are a priest.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, I'm sure you've.

[A]

But you were ordained, too, but. Yes, but I was.

[B]

Yeah, I was ordained for 20 years.

[A]

And you have an MDIV, right?

[B]

I do.

[A]

So, okay, there's two theologians here, but we'll keep going. But.

[B]

All right. You're a little bit more trained than I am, let's be honest. But before we get into, though, Esau, have you gone down the YouTube, Internet, rabbit hole of aliens, UAP, all the different crazy theories?

[A]

I am like. I am surface level. All right. I see every now and then, like, oh, they do these stories, and there's probably not. Sorry, I don't think there's aliens. Okay. So, yeah, I've not done a lot of research, and I just. Yeah, it's not my thing.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

What. All right, Is that a disappointment?

[B]

No, it's a little bit disappointment. Because I'm curious to know how much you've thought about these things theologically.

[A]

Sorry, hold on. I have strong theological takes.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

What I'm saying is I've not done the. Here's the truth about this stuff. I read the New York Times articles. I haven't done. Sorry, when you say the rabbit hole, I imagine the guy on YouTube who says, here's what the government doesn't want you to know.

[B]

Oh, yeah. There's all that.

[A]

That's what I mean. So I've not done that part, but I know about the issues at hand. I've read about it. One of my favorite, the C.S. lewis Space Trilogy, I read those. So I got alien takes.

[B]

Yeah, okay. I mean, that's enough. That's fine.

[A]

We.

[B]

We'll get there. But essentially what Spielberg lays out in this film is a lot of the conspiracy theory that's out there. Essentially the government has been involved in an 80 year.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Cover up and that there's way more than we're aware of and there's defense contractors that are heavily involved. But the, the movie, to Spielberg's credit, the movie raises theological questions about faith and God and all these things. If, if this alien stuff is true. Some of the stuff I've read from great folks like Russell Moore and others who've written about this, Ross Douthat has a piece in the New York Times right now about it. But for the most part, what I've been reading about from Christians is essentially, hey, if there's alien life out there, great. No big whoop. It doesn't really impact our faith in any significant way. And I think that's a little naive.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I think it impacts things a lot more than people realize.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

Well, we'll get into that. Okay, we'll get into that. But let's start with the film.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So one of the characters in the film is a former novice who was in a monastery, essentially, or nunnery, whatever they're called.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And there's some nuns that are in this story and they're kind of brought up in questions about aliens. And at one point, this young woman is talking to this nun about, well, what if there are aliens? Does that impact our view of God? And the nun essentially says that Genesis claims that we are God's greatest creation on Earth.

[A]

Can I say this is where I get annoyed at certain depictions of religion in him, is that people do all you would do a deep dive on. I did all of this stuff on, like the ufo. I did all this research. I looked into all of this stuff. But he couldn't spend 15 minutes talking to somebody about Genesis. Like, that dialogue was so weird. It was so clearly written by someone who knows nothing about how this works. So in the dialogue, this spoiler alert, Right?

[B]

Yeah, there's lots of spoilers coming in this conversation.

[A]

So she got a. Well, I want to talk about that character. We'll start where you are. Genesis says that we are the supreme creation. Like, this is the idea and with the aliens, like, if there are aliens, would that mess it up? And she goes, no. Genesis says on Earth, Genesis says none of those things. Genesis says God created mankind in his image.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the thing that is actually the emphasis of Genesis is not our. It does say that we're supreme over animal creation. But even that is in the place of stewardship, of service. Right. We were meant to serve creation. And it doesn't say that we were the best. They're like, God just made us to reflect them. And so it displays this idea that the first thing that happens if there were aliens is that Genesis gets messed up.

[B]

Yeah. This wouldn't be the first time people's reading of Genesis gets messed up.

[A]

But no, I'm saying no, that's how they depict it. I don't think that the other thing that's at least interesting, if I can talk about this kind of character. So the person is a nun. And rather than having. Maybe it's just not an interesting love interest, like the woman who was a nun has left. The nun has left being a nun and is now, like, kind of shacked up with the other main character. And she even says at the beginning, like, she doesn't really believe that God is divine. She just thinks that God is important to people. And so the way that the religion is framed is that it's this unifying thing to keep society from unraveling. She says this at the beginning of the film. And the idea then is that if someone upsets religious narratives, it's going to destabilize people, and it's gonna then destabilize society. And so the way the religion is portrayed then in the film is as kind of a tool of social cohesion. And I think that this movie would have been much more interesting if they had actually pressed into what does it actually mean about our beliefs about God and creation, not just the instability of soc.

[B]

Yeah. To that end, there's a scene where she's talking about with the nun. She says something along the lines of, we've always thought of God as the Supreme Being, but what happens when we actually meet a supreme being? People will see aliens as deities and they'll stop believing in God.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's kind of the conceit of the movie. And to your point, the assumption there is, well, religion has served this utilitarian function. And when something else comes along that can serve that function, we're going to get rid of religion, which is going to be destabilizing to the world.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

This touches on what I Think isn't explicit in the film, but probably was my biggest takeaway from the film. And that is the way the script is written. Spielberg and I forget who the writer is. They basically take all of the functions that religion has played.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In human civilization and they transfer all that over to aliens. So let me give you some examples from the movie again. Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. A huge theme in the movie is empathy.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. The ability of the main character to look someone in the eye and immediately feel what they're feeling and know them deeply. Historically, that's one of the things that religion did for people, was create empathy across, you know, boundaries. Unity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How do we bind ourselves together as communities, as people, as diverse people? Well, religion, again, especially Christianity, was supposed to do that. Transcendence. This idea that I can experience something beyond the temporal meaning, what's the whole point of the world? Where does that all come from? Revelation, a revelation of truth, like religion traditionally has given that through. So, I mean, it's through chemical induced things. Otherwise through scripture and deliverance, the sense of humanity is destroying itself and we need someone to rescue us. All these qualities that have historically been attributed to religion. Spielberg takes them and says, no, no, no. This is all going to be given to us from aliens.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And for me, what's weird about it is takes all the benefits of religion and says, you can have them now without all the superstition.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because we're going to give it to you in a scientific, materialistic worldview. It's now going to come from aliens.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which for me was like, wow. Like it's. It's both an admission that we need religion, but we don't want religion.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So how can we get all the benefits of religion from science rather than from.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Superstition.

[A]

I'm going to try not to be like. But actually on his whole account, his issue is that he depicts the God in Christianity as being a slightly better version of who we are. And so once this person shows empathy, there's a scene where one of the main characters, because they figure out that she's an alien or she's not even an alien, she just has abilities given to her from the alien.

[B]

She has spiritual gifts. She has spiritual gifts from the alien power.

[A]

From the alien power. The alien gives her powers and the person sees her and there's a part where she kneels and she crosses the person who sees the character and kind of begins to worship her. And the idea is that all Christians worship is power. The problem with that is at the center of the Christian story that actually leads us to worship God is not the imposition of power, but the embrace of weakness. It is Jesus who was crucified. Right. Who came amongst us and who loved. Right. And so it was the weakness of God that was stronger than man's strength. And so that's part of what I was like. So, like, the idea that we are only attracted to power is almost a Greco Roman understanding of deity, not a Christian one. Because the Romans do worship the gods who can get them what they want, who are the powerful gods and God and the Christian God is different. So I do think that there is a utility. It's like it is a critique, interestingly enough, of Greco Roman religion couched as the critique of Christianity because gods are functional. It keeps society cohesive. Sorry, this is like Christian nationalism, right? The purpose of the God is to keep the state unified and operative. And Christianity doesn't do that. That's where I kind of felt like I wasn't the person being critiqued.

[B]

Well, you read into it far deeper than I did in that moment. But in that scene, to your point, this woman who is imbued with powers from the aliens to be deeply empathetic and have knowledge, can look at somebody and know their whole story. This other person kneels in front of her, makes a sign of the cross, and she responds. And this is a quote. I wrote it down. She responds by saying, I will not be anyone's religion. And I agree with you. In that moment, there seems to be a humility, a worship of this transcendent power that's visible in this other person. You do see that in the Gospels. I mean, when Jesus has the miraculous catch of fish in Peter's boat, Peter falls in front of him and says, away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man. There are numerous scenes of people falling and bowing before Jesus, stunned by his power and authority.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Over disease, illness, demons, whatever it might be. But it's when you read the entire story and you get the cross in there that everything gets turned upside down. Jesus surrenders himself to the powers of darkness and is a victim of all the evil in the world that our understanding of God's power is changed. So I don't want to completely dismiss what's depicted in the movie because I think it is a human instinct to be in awe of something that is truly remarkable and fall in utter astonishment before.

[A]

Oh, no, that's not what I'm. What I'm saying is, like, if you tie. Maybe this is what I was saying. If you tie the beginning of what the woman, the main character, says about religion as social cohesion, and that was his function. And she was more concerned not about truth itself, but. But what the truth might mean for people. And so her religious dilemma, this goes throughout the film, is, can people handle the truth about the potential of an alternative source of power, which then reduces religion to, like, a concern of power and social cohesion. And so then you see, the idea is that once you see something that's more powerful than a person is going to, like, destroy Christianity or call into question Christianity, I think, to me, doesn't necessarily deal with the way that. Sorry, if I could be nerdy for one second. If a Christian finds an alien that is more powerful than a human being, that's not the theological problem. Correct. The theological problem for a Christian is if there's an alien, how does the alien fit within the Christian narrative? Like, how does it. Does the alien need to trust Jesus? Is the alien fallen? So to me, the kinds of theological questions posed by aliens is not a matter of strength, it's a matter of the story. And so that's what I mean, what they were missing in the narrative is how do you. And this. I think this is what Christians. This is where I think that you're correct earlier. This is an important question. How would an alien who's not a part of the Christian narrative fit within that story? And I think that would have been an interesting question that they don't pose in the clip.

[B]

Right. I think that's one of three significant challenges to Christianity I think the discovery of alien life would pose. We'll get into the others in a minute.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Before we leave, kind of some of the narrative of the movie itself, though I don't know if you recognized all of the ways in which the story itself draws so heavily from biblical and Christian themes.

[A]

Oh, it does, yes.

[B]

So, I mean, we could rattle them off. First of all, again, tons of spoiler alerts here. The idea is that the aliens have chosen two children, a boy and a girl, sort of an Adam and Eve kind of thing, in this garden like, setting of this, you know, this Thomas Kincaid house in the woods. And they have imbued these two children with special knowledge and gifts which only become active later when they're adults. And these are the two main characters. The boy is given the ability to understand deep computational mathematics.

[A]

There's some, as you say, this. This is kind of gendered.

[C]

Oh, totally.

[A]

I didn't even think about it until this moment. Like, the guy knows math and the

[B]

Girl is given deep empathy. Right. It is totally gendered.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But you do have this Adam and Eve kind of thing going on here.

[A]

Yeah, but it's funny. Like, the guy knows math. Sorry. In the film, spoiler alert. The woman is empathetic and the guy knows logic. That's kind of. I never thought about that.

[B]

Spielberg. Totally gendered. Right.

[A]

He notes there.

[B]

The other thing is, again, drawing from kind of the story of acts. They are given the power to understand languages and to speak. They are given the gift of tongues, basically. That's weird.

[C]

And then

[B]

the notion that, again, what I shared earlier, that this special knowledge coming from these celestial beings is going to bring. I mean, the backdrop of this whole story is that the world's on the brink of war. I guess it's between North Korea, Russia, the United States, whatever. And the moment all this knowledge about these other beings is revealed, the whole world stops being disunited and it kind of comes together. So unity, salvation, peace, all these things happen. Stops the war. And what's amazing to me is when you look at all these details, whether it's the Adam and Eve motif, the speaking in tongues motif, the empathy motif, the peace on earth motif, the salvation from our own problems, all of these are promises or ideas that are lifted from the Christian narrative.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it feels to me like the very things that the gospel are supposed to bring to the world. This movie says, ah, religion can't get us there, the aliens can.

[A]

Yeah. And I would say this is one of the things that I was really. And this is what I think. And actually I like the film, so I feel like I'm being a little bit critical of it. I think that it got something really right about human nature. Is that the first thing that we do when we see something that we don't know and we don't understand and we try to exploit it and bend it to our will.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So they kind of find the aliens and they experiment on them and they torture them and they use the power that they found from the aliens to kind of help enrich themselves. And if religion and aliens are being tied to one another, you see a similar kind of phenomenon. It's that people in power see religion as something we useful to further to their own ends. So you do see the.

[B]

It's the opiate of the masses, as Mark said.

[A]

But you also see, like, the fear that government and society has around something they don't understand. And if you're afraid of something, your first instinct is to try to kind of kill it. And so I Do think that it is a reflection on the corruption of power. And that's the reason why I don't. And like this. Maybe we're going to jump. We'll get to this. Maybe later. One of the reasons why I think that there is no conspiracy is I don't think that you could control something like this for this long. I think people would have found out.

[B]

I know the funny thing is I've always held to that same view. The problem is when you get into the rabbit hole a little bit, you realize people been leaking stuff for 80 years. Like there's been whistleblowers and leaks. And I think it's just accelerated now because of cell phones and the Internet. Right. But you go all the way back to Roswell and you'd be like, yeah, people have been saying this for 80 years. So there have. It hasn't been a secret. It has been leaked in a lot of different ways. I'm not taking a position here.

[A]

I think you are. I think you are.

[B]

Well, I.

[A]

Come on. Here's what this is a safe space. There's nobody.

[B]

Here's what I'll say. When you get. When you get people as credible as Navy pilots and Barack Obama saying there are unexplained aerial phenomenon that we have well documented and cannot explain with our current knowledge of physics and technology, I have no reason not to believe those people. Now what that is, I don't know. Now, the other thing you'll find when you go down the rabbit hole on the Internet, especially when you go down the Christian rabbit hole on the Internet, which is a whole other weird world.

[A]

So what do I need to Google Christian us? Like, what activates the rabbit hole?

[B]

I don't want to give you. It's not good. The algorithms will never let you go.

[A]

Never let me lose.

[B]

Yeah. So what you find is almost universally, and J.D. vance said this publicly, like the Christian subculture online, especially in YouTube, universally, basically is saying this is all demonic. I saw that with it, it's just all demons. And some people will go, especially if they're dispensationalists, will go down the road. This is preparing for the end times and the Rapture. And so when the Rapture happens, the world's gonna think it's aliens. It's not the Rapture, that it's all that kind of craziness. So they want to dismiss it all as just demonic deception. Whatever. I hear going back to though, let's. Let's veer away from the movie for a minute and let's talk about our world. Let's say, hypothetically, that something like what's revealed in the movie turns out to be true.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

What would it do to our faith? You already mentioned. Yeah. There's this dilemma of where do you put aliens in this narrative, in this story of Christianity and salvation and all that kind of stuff? I think that's. That's intriguing and perplexing a little bit, but it's not. It's not going to shake the foundations of. Of the Christian faith.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I don't think. I mean, people like Lewis and others have kind of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Speculated about. Even the Catholic Church has come out and said if there's alien. Intelligent. Alien life, fine.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like that doesn't disrupt our doctrine. But I think there are two other things that would.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

One would be not simply the discovery of alien intelligent life somewhere in the universe, but the discovery that that alien intelligent life has been interacting with humans throughout human history.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I think that would severely disrupt a lot of people's belief because part of the Christian and Jewish claim is that the narrative we have in scripture, though sometimes difficult to interpret and subject to genres and different historical interpretations, is nonetheless in some sense an accurate depiction of human history.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So if you suddenly insert a completely new set of characters into that history that have been involved all along, I think it would make a lot of people go, well, wait a minute, maybe these are aliens. They're not angels. Maybe these are not deities that are mentioned in the, in the Old Testament, but these are actually alien beings that are interacting with humanity. It changes the framework completely of how we have understood our own history and development and even going so far, and some speculate this as well, that the origins of humanity are actually alien, not divine. So that would, I think, disrupt our own understanding of our story.

[A]

This is where I disagree. And this is what I mean. Well, the question. So once again, Christianity does not posit God as the creator of this universe. He is the creator of all things.

[B]

No, but I think it does say God is our creator.

[A]

No, no, no. He created all, like. Yeah, all things.

[B]

But I'm saying humans, Humans were created by God in his image. But what if knowledge is given to us? No, actually we were created by an alien species. So that would be weird.

[A]

So, I mean, this. That's a. Can I. Can I. So let me talk about this. What I was. Let me say this part, then it gets to the answer to your question. So if we posit God as the

[C]

creator, don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a HolyPost plus subscriber. So head over to HolyPost.com SkyPod and sign up. For just $5 a month, not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll also get access to everything else at Holy Post plus, including episodes of Getting Schooled by Caitlin, Chess, bonus interviews, live streams, the Holy Post Book Club, exclusive merchandise, and a whole bunch more. And you'll get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting our work of creating smart, pro neighbor Christian content. So head over to holypost.com skypod and subscribe today.