SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSV News. I'm Jason Adkins. On a regular basis, we are advised that the truth about UFO landings and the government cover-up about aliens is going to come out. The great reveal always seems to be around the corner, coming from some alleged whistleblower. But yet it never happens, and we are left with tabloids, movies, and the internet to continue to speculate. Many proponents think the arrival of aliens, or non-human intelligences to use the technical term, may usher in an era of peace or give us breakthrough technologies to solve all problems. Others, of course, think aliens are a bringer of doom. But what if the whole discourse is a manufactured distraction to serve various agendas, the most important of which is to keep us in fear and to lead us away from Christ? Our guest on this episode argues that we are in the midst of a great deception, not dissimilar from the first great deception in the garden, where our ancestor Eve communicated with a non-human intelligence, in this case, Satan, disguised as a serpent, who promised her godlike knowledge and true immortality. In the book The First and Last Deception, Aliens, UFOs, AI, and the Return of Eden's Demise, Daniel O'Connor marshals scientific evidence and makes philosophical and theological arguments in support of his claims that there are not aliens and that only man is created in God's image. Claims to the contrary are often steer us away, he says, from the Christian faith, and at worst are a demonic plot to lure us into idolatry and lead us into our own destruction. He aims to help us to not be deceived, chasing after all kinds of false doctrines, as the scripture tells us to avoid, while at the same time ho admi admonishing us to hold fast to the truth of Christ. In this respect, this book is a helpful resource in a public discourse and entertainment culture that seems to be grooming us for such an anticipated arrival, or at least the better perception of one. There's a surprising lack of Catholic commentary and substantive analysis of these claims and this issue, which is why I think this book and this conversation are so helpful, regardless of where you come down on the issue. Daniel O'Connor is a Catholic author and adjunct professor of philosophy and religion at a State University of New York community college. He is the author of many books at the intersection of faith and science. Originally a mechanical engineer, he switched careers and obtained a master's degree in theology and has since then completed several years of study towards his PhD in philosophy. Most importantly, Daniel lives in New York with his wife, Regina, and their six children. Daniel O'Connor, welcome to Catholic in America. It's a privilege to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Jason, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

You've got a really, I think, important book, The First and Last Deception, talking about all sorts of phenomena and the culture, AI, UFOs, aliens, and all the discourse around surrounding that. It seems like we're always given teasers that the next UFO reveal is right around the corner. It never comes. Tell us about your argument in the book in a nutshell and why you endeavored to write it.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Well, amen to that. It's uh it's getting extremely pressing today. We are always giving these teasers, but they're becoming uh they're becoming trailers now. They've been teasers for a while, and suddenly we're getting the whole trailer, and they keep telling us soon, soon, soon. And uh in response to that, I felt I needed to give a a more thorough Catholic, Christian, and scientific perspective to all of this, because you don't really get any of that from all of the hype. And um, you know, a number of authors recently have given the pro-alien, the pro-disclosure, the pro-UFO side of the argument. And uh I felt that uh not enough was being said on the uh cautionary side of it. So that's why I wrote uh my book, The First and Last Deception. And I called it the first and last deception because, well, the first deception, what was that, on the Garden of Eden? We have uh a non-human intelligence, a speaking serpent beguiling Eve to acquire this new knowledge. She's tempted by this promise of new knowledge and even immortality. And when you look at how the search for extraterrestrial intelligence started with Dr. Frank Drake in the uh 1960s, he believed that when we contact aliens, they will give us the key to immortality. So I see the reflection of the first deception in Eden being replayed here in this non-human intelligence, that is ET, uh super AI uh deception. So that's the that's the gist of the book, is giving the theological, philosophical, scientific perspective on that very question.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

So your argument is that all the, you know, these discussions around artificial intelligence, UFOs, aliens, those are all fitting together in this last deception, which of course is some sort of contact with non-human intelligence that will deceive us, deceive us in what way? It sounds like providing us a false sense of what immortality really entails.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

That's what it's that's the ultimate uh desire we have is to escape mortality. As Scripture says, that it the mere fear of death keeps men in bondage. And of course, how are we delivered from fear of death through Jesus Christ, through hope in the resurrection? But the counterfeit solution to that fear of death is going to come from some other source. Some die it's gonna be a lie, of course, there is no other deliverance from mortality except through Jesus Christ. So this will be uh totally fake, but the the presentation of it will be real. And scripture and the catechism and the private revelation, everything in between, warns us about a deception coming in the future. Uh 2 Thessalonians speaks of it as a strong delusion. So this um yeah, this this NHI, as they keep on calling it today, non-human intelligence, whatever form it takes, the most popular for a long time has been this idea that aliens are going to disclose themselves to us soon, or that we're going to discover them, whichever one. But in in the last three years, especially, the idea that AI is going to become super intelligent and unlock to us the key to the universe. That's um that that's quickly starting to match it. So that's why I can I consider both things together. In one sense, they have nothing to do with each other. The idea of aliens and the idea of a supercomputer, you know, in one sense, they're completely unrelated. In another sense, they are both means of striving to contact a non-human intelligence, but not God, not angels, but something uh essentially secular.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

So just as Eve fell into dialogue with a non-human intelligence who deceived her into, in many ways, implicit rebellion against God, this is what the non-human intelligences of today would do at the same type of thing, deceive us into thinking that we could become perhaps like gods ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Exactly, because it's the same thing. It's different disguises. The devil is constantly wearing different disguises. The disguise, you know, whether you think of this literally or symbolically, whichever, however exactly you interpret Genesis there, the point is the devil deceived Eve through this disguise. He didn't come saying he was Satan. He didn't come saying he was Lucifer. He came with a disguise. And he's not going to use the exact same disguise twice. He's not stupid. He changes his strategies to uh be most likely to be effective in accordance with the culture that he's appearing in. And of course, we've got all sorts of crazy pagan myths with the gods and uh and all sorts of different disguises demons have worn. He's not gonna do that either today because people don't believe in Zeus or Thor anymore, although some unfortunately that is becoming somewhat popular in some circles, but many people, and uh in fact, it suddenly has become most people believe in both the imminence of uh contact with aliens, and most people now also seem to believe. I think both the most recent polls have shown this that most people believe AI is actually going to become truly a person, truly rational, and an even super rational. So those, I wager, are the disguises that would be most fitting for the devil to use today to deceive us.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Aaron Powell And the end goal, of course, just to reiterate that, is to draw us away from friendship with God, friendship with Christ, and put our hope and our trust in something else.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yes. And the uh that's not at all what he says from the beginning, because he's extremely intelligent. And in fact, it's very prophetic that St. John Henry Newman was just declared the newest doctor of the church because he wrote extensively on the deception of the devil through the Antichrist. He's got he had a series of teachings on this. And I happen to have one quote right in front of me here from him. He wrote, Do you think that Satan is so unskillful in his craft as to ask you openly and plainly to join you in his warfare against the truth? No. He offers you bait to tempt you. He promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, he shows you how to become as gods. And that's St. John Henry Newman there. And that's the kind of promise that we see uh promoted by the biggest names in the world. I mean, the biggest uh people behind this whole push for AGI, artificial general intelligence, they're openly saying that this is going to give us this godlike knowledge. And the UFO disclosure people are saying the same thing that the day of disclosure will give us godlike knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Now, you start the book with, I think, uh, an interesting historical reference. Many have heard the quote from Pope Paul VI that uh following the council, the smoke of Satan had entered the church. But there is more context to that quote. Can you share a little bit more about the context in which the Holy Father made that famous statement?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, and you know, a lot of tribes have tried to claim that statement for their own. And I think they don't look enough at the whole context of what he said. Uh, you know, some, you know, maybe some rads want to say that the the uh new mass is the smoke of Satan or something like that. And and I don't find that uh convinced, I don't find that palatable, in fact. He said, Pope Paul VI said in that same address that this smoke of Satan consists in the pagan prophets of science promising us the uh formula for true life. And that's my paraphrase because I don't have it in front of me, but these pagan prophets of science. And if you want to see the pagan prophets of science promising the formula for true life, look no further than those insisting that E.T. disclosure or AGI uh singularity is upon us. They're openly saying precisely that. And of course, Paul VI didn't know the future. I mean, he was quite prophetic, if you ask me. He didn't exactly know the future, though. But what was this was already happening in his day is actually my point. Not so much with the AI aspect of it, but certainly with the ET aspect of it. Uh Drake's equation there. So, Dr. Drake, as I said, he founded the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. That was right before very, I can't remember the exact date, but it was very close to when Paul VI, Pope Paul VI, gave that famous homily. And he says that uh Dr. Drake said that he hopes to discover the Encyclopedia Galactica and again to discover immortality through them. And that was suddenly that very talk for the first time ever. I mean, there have been Christians, Catholics well before that who had speculated about aliens, sure. But um that that era, that decade even, was really the first time that this talk of E.T. disclosure had actually entered into circles that close to the Vatican. So I I wager that he was making a reference to something so apocalyptic as precisely this, the first and last deception. You you highlight my book, but the the the thing, it's the deception itself.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Aaron Powell You highlight in the book um the year 1947 as one in which a number of factors and and historical events took shape to really launch this sort of modern fascination with UFOs, aliens. What happened in 1947 that was so significant?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

That was quite the year. And uh Pope Pius XII actually said of that year, he said, the year 1947, what will be the judgment of the coming ages? Uh they will either bless it or curse it, depending upon what comes of it. And that year was the year that existential dread dawned upon the world. That was the year that the Cold War began. And uh there's a number of other things about the year as well, but let me just focus on that for a moment here. Uh the catechism says that the deception of the Antichrist uh will come as a religious deception, offering men the apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. And then uh it says, this is right there in Catechism, paragraph 675. It says that this supreme deception of the Antichrist is a pseudo-messianism. So if we are looking for an apparent solution to our problems, what's the biggest problem you can possibly imagine face in the world? Well, for the last, what, almost 80 years since 1947, it's been nuclear war. That's that that dread, that that dread kind of, and I I teach uh existentialism at my job and uh at uh when my my undergraduate philosophy courses, one of them is existentialism, and that movement kind of exploded with the Cold War as a response to this existential dread that we could wake up one morning with civilization largely wiped out. And if there were ever to be a single problem that an apocalyptic false solution would be given to, wouldn't it be a supposed peacemaker entering onto the scene saying, I have this magical, but of course he won't say magical. My theory is he'll he'll claim it's from extraterrestrial contact. I have this special solution that can end nuclear war, that can give you the key to um not being obliterated tomorrow. That the the res the peacemaker, and many prophecies have said the Antichrist will come as a peacemaker, and the w uh the peacemaker against what? Well, precisely what began in 1947. And there's other so what does that have to do with the first and last deception, though? Well, that's exactly the year the UFO explosion came. It was actually June 24th, 1947. In um the uh I can't remember the name of the man now, but Mount Rayner, there was a bunch of UFO sightings. Mount Raynor in Washington might have been Kenneth Arnold. Um, and then much more famously, though only a week or two after was Roswell, New Mexico. Before 1947, there were almost no reported UFO sightings. You've got to really search to find them, and sure you can, but extremely rare. Come 1947, hundreds a year, ever since that day. Something changed on that in that year. Uh and I wager, and this is where we get very speculative. Don't I'm not at all uh proclaiming this as church teaching or anything, this is just something to chew on. Um many Catholics, Christians are aware that Pope Leo XIII had this famous vision that uh with of Satan having 75 to 100 years of greater power, power to do things he isn't usually able to do. And that's why Pope Leo instituted the St. Michael the Archangel prayer after Mass. So I I wager that that 75 to 100 year greater power of Satan could well have begun in 1947 with the birth of the UFO deception and the birth of the Cold War.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Now we need not believe that this current deception or what you're describing as a deception is necessarily the end times. We're told, you know, we're taught in scripture over and over not to go after false doctrines. We don't know if the, you know, when our Lord will return will come like a thief in the night. But it doesn't mean there, that Satan is not working in history to deceive us along the way from the true path that leads to God. So regardless of whether or not you think this is or it isn't the end time, or you don't even want to speculate on those sort of apocalyptic scenarios, it doesn't change the fact that Satan and his minions work along the way to lead us astray from Christ.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Amen. And this is nothing to do with the end of the world. I'm speaking of an apocalyptic deception, uh, apocalyptic deception, which does not mean to that that does not have to mean the world ends two days after this apocalyptic deception or something. Uh, there's many iterations of fulfillments of a single scriptural prophecy. So uh you are free to believe that yes, this is the ultimate deception and the world's gonna end right after it, or you're free to believe it could go on for a very long time after that. I'm not making any claims whatsoever about the date of the end of the world or anything, just that a lot of signs are lining up to be cautious about this uh deception, uh, about this what's brewing now.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Aaron Powell And the intent of your book is to really help people avoid this deception by diagnosing what the problem is. That's what it seems to me.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Aaron Ross Powell Exactly. I'm not interested. In fact, all of this spec all of this speculative material is kind of secondary to my primary goal, which is the theological, philosophical, and even scientific aspect of it, which is trying to convince you that no, there are not aliens. Because that's the fundamental premise I want to argue against, is belief in aliens. Because uh this openness, and everybody says, well, you have to be humbly open. Well, yeah, you have to be humble, but humility doesn't mean being open to everything. Uh some things are very dangerous to be open to, especially when this is no longer theory. I mean, this is no longer uh mere academic talk, if you will. This is happening in the biggest levels of government. We can't go a week without something coming from the U.S. federal government, even about the so-called immanence of disclosure. Uh this is getting so huge, you've got to really discern this from a Catholic perspective. You can't be just radically open to whatever might be presented to you. Uh the faith really does rule some things out. And even if and some other things, even if it doesn't absolutely rule them out, it would at the minimum exer uh advise extreme caution. So the speculative aspect of this book, I feel very confident of it, but I'm not at all claiming certainty in that. What I'm what I'm really, really absolutely standing behind is the theological arguments. And that's what I hope people will uh really remember.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

I want to just dig into the the nature of why Satan speculatively would find this a powerful way to deceive people. Uh there's a whole passel of scientific or of science fiction literature that makes, you know, that tells a story similar to the one that you presented, where some alien intelligence will come down and impose a type of peace on people who cannot govern themselves.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Mm-hmm. It's been, it's been, uh the word I use, maybe it's a bit graphic almost, is grooming because I think that's what has been happened, what's been happening to us as a society for the last several decades now, through Hollywood especially. Um, and I'm not just disclaimer, I'm not at all condemning sci-fi. I enjoy plenty of sci-fi myself. I'm I'm not saying there's anything wrong with considering aliens as a you know a hypothetical thing for an interesting story. What I'm what I'm uh sounding the alarm against is when this is presented as if it's absolutely real and it's something we should be excited about. And that's what happens with some movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And in fact, it started earlier than that, even with uh The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1954, with an extraterrestrial being comes in almost like a messiah to fix the world. And this is I can't if if I were to try to write a fictional novel about the Antichrist, I couldn't even imagine a better disguise than him coming pretending-and of course the Antichrist will just be a man. All the prophecies are clear about that, but he'll be a man who lies about who he is. So I can't even imagine a more effective disguise than simply using the one that we've already been groomed to put pseudo-messianic hope in for the last uh several decades now. And it's only going to increase. Uh, you know, I mentioned Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Steven Spielberg next year, he's coming out with his biggest UFO movie yet. It's not titled yet, but uh talk on the street is that it will be a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that it'll be his biggest push ever for UFO disclosure. And this is coming at the same time, in fact, just next week. There's a massive documentary coming out pushing for disclosure. And these things they all draw inevitably from fictional ideas that we've been groomed to accept for decades now, about an alien coming in to fix all of our problems.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Aaron Powell Some of the biggest proponents of extraterrestrial life make it clear in their writings, at least as you chronicle in the book, that when alien life is discovered and that is affirmed, that people then will have no longer an excuse to believe in Christ and to and that Christianity should essentially be abandoned. Can you tell us a little bit more about how some of these prominent proponents of extraterrestrial life are explicitly anti-Christian?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

That was something that was observed especially by um a man, a priest by the name of Father Stanley Jockey. And he was really a towering intellectual figure. He was not only a priest, but a world-renowned physicist and a monk and a theologian. I mean, this guy was a one in the once in a generation type fellow.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah, I was privileged to meet him. He was a legend. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. We both spoke at a Chesterton conference together at the University of St. Thomas years ago. It was an incredible opportunity. Oh, praise God. Yeah. When what year was that? Oh boy, that was probably 2010 or thereabouts.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Oh, well, jump in with any stories you might have about him. He was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

He shared with me his book, A Minds, his biography, A Minds Matter is worth picking up and reading. A towering figure.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

A Minds Matter. Okay. And he warns, and the funny thing is, he's he warns. Was extremely zealous in warning against kind of this ET deception and the AI deception. He saw them both as this kind of satanic almost lie against creation, where believing in believing in machines becoming minds, that's nonsense. But he also said that, and actually I have the quote in front of me, he said, behind these bravados about extraterrestrials, you either see the strategy of the devil or you remain blind. And I'll end a quote, I'll get back to the quote in a moment here, but why is he talking about this? Because he traveled in these circles. You know, he was a world-renowned scientist and he was invited to SETI events. And in uh in another quote from a book of his I was reading, he talks about one of the big figures in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, basically tells him they see, he sees that he's a priest because he sees his Roman college and says, Oh, you know, once we finally detect this message, finally we can be done with religion and all of that. Because we will have tangibly, empirically, directly, the enlightenment that humanity has sought in vain for thousands of years from superstitions like God. And of course, uh that's that's what they'll say. That'll that's as as horrible of a lie as you can imagine, but that's what this that that's what inspires this antichristic uh zeal for detecting this message. And or better yet, according to them, actually having UFO disclosure, not only detecting a message from extraterrestrials, but having them be here among us. But anyway, uh Father Jockey continues in this quote. He says, How will great how, you might ask yourself, can the great scientific minds ignore the obvious? And he says, the answer comes only from the theology of original sin and the devil. Leave them out of your equations and you will not understand anything. So this is so uh deep. This r this deception runs so deep, Father Jockey's saying that you really have to go back to the original sin itself to understand it. And that's what I'm trying to do, you know, with the very title of the book, but also with the whole message of the first and last deception. This is a lie like the lie that was spoken to Eve. But then he says, why are ETs so important to the juggernaut of secularism? He says, secularists fondly hope that once we detect a message from them, this will prove that the human mind is a random occurrence in the universe and has nothing to do with an omnipotent God, the creator. So that's the other aspect of this secularist zeal for ET belief. It's if only there's life elsewhere, and of course, I'm not saying this argument is valid, I'm just saying this is what they believe. If life is found elsewhere in the universe, that must mean it comes to be at random, and we don't need God to explain life. And that supposedly, and of course it wouldn't, but that supposedly would disprove uh man being created by God in their minds.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

And if it is a lie and a deception, it's worth knowing that so many of those who perpetrate that lie and that deception, that is their, in fact, their aim is to lead people away from at least traditional religion, but specifically Christianity for sure. Let's let's dive in, Daniel, to the theological, scientific, and philosophical case against extraterrestrials. And I think this is one of the strengths of the book is unpacking this, um, especially the scientific one will open a lot of eyes. So, what is that scientific case that basically affirms what might be called that anthropomorphic thesis, that humans are the only ones created in the image and likeness of God in the whole of creation, um, and that the likelihood of other life, even in a galaxy universe as vast as ours, is still mathematically very small. Just give us the highlights of that.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Absolutely. And this it's so important to actually get out your calculator sometimes and do the calculations because when we are just confronted with a huge number, we just draw, we, we uh, we have this tendency to erroneously draw philosophical conclusions from it that don't follow. So when you tell someone the universe has uh I can't remember now, a hundred quintillion, a hundred trillion trillion, trillion planets or whatever, they'll say, oh, well, there must be life on on some of them. That's an unbel the universe is unbelievably big. They're just they're just statistically, it's it's statistically guaranteed. Even one of the top uh guys at NASA said this last year. He said uh that the the sheer size of the universe means it's mathematically guaranteed that there's aliens. And uh this is just so pseudoscientific if you just take five minutes to do some calculations. Now, the um the and I'll and I'll say more on that in a moment, but real quick, this came from the guy I'd mentioned several minutes ago, Frank Drake. He came up with the Drake equation, which is uh again, pseudoscientific, but he supposedly mathematically proved the existence of aliens by ascribing a probability to various factors, multiplying them all together along with the number of planets. And uh the number he comes up with is that there must be between um a thousand and a hundred million planets with aliens, at least maybe even in this galaxy, he says. Um it's kind of comical that he thinks he can just sit down with a piece of paper and conclude that. But the problem is the abuse of large numbers. And this is the same thing that uh Darwinists do. They look at the sheer number of maybe chemical reactions happening in the so-called primordial soup of Earth, however long ago, and they say it's you know, it's bound with all those chemical reactions, it's just guaranteed that some of them are gonna knock together and make uh an amino acid chain, and then some of those are gonna knock some nether and make DNA, and then some of those are gonna knock together and make a cell, and then that cell is gonna evolve. And it's just uh it's it's magical thinking with that and it's using scientific language, but that's simply magical thinking. The um the analogy that you'll always hear used for this is if you give a monkey a typewriter enough time, he'll eventually type out Shakespeare. So what I love to do with my undergraduates when we go over Aquinas' five ways is I I like to do the math behind that. Uh what's the chance of the monkey with the typewriter pounding out the first letter correctly, one out of twenty-six? What's the chance of him also typing out the second letter correctly multiplied by another one twenty-six? You take the number of letters in Hamlet, you multiply them all together, you take one over twenty-six to the power of whatever however many letters there are in it. The number you come up with is incomprehensibly larger than the number of particles in the entire universe. And there, and I run, I if you run that through if every single atom in the universe was a monkey with a typewriter and it had the whole history of the universe to do it, you would still have a mathematically zero percent chance of Hamlet coming out. So this is the same thing with life itself, but infinitely more so. Or the and there was an astrophysicist by the name of Dr. Hugh Ross, and he put together a number of just basic requirements for a planet to be so much as amenable to life. He listed uh a hundred or so. And the odds of a single planet, if you if you multiply those probabilities together, the odds of a single planet being even possibly habitable, much less life developing on it, the odds of a single planet existing in the whole universe where life is even possible is so infinitesimally small that if you look at the denominator of that fraction of that probability, it makes the number of planets in the universe look like absolutely nothing. So you can't just defer to a large number and pretend that it proves your case. You have to compare large numbers. And the probability of life of a planet existing for life is zero for all intents and purposes. Whereas the number of planets, it's big, but it's very, very finite. And it's got nothing on the probability uh question. Now, uh, real quick, I've been going on for a while now, but I have so that someone doesn't accuse me of fallacy here, I got to real quick point out. But Earth exists. And yes, of course, Earth exists, and we exist. We're impossible. Earth is impossible. Life is impossible, yet it happened. What does that prove? It proves we're a miracle. Uh when the physically impossible happens, there's a word for that. It's called a miracle. So you could say, okay, fine, other planets with aliens exist, they're also miracles. To which I respond, all right, but that means we left the scientific analysis and we're into the theological one. And then you got to turn to the next chapter of my book to see, to, to consider the theological reasons.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Some might say, though, well, why would God create a universe so big and have only one planet and you know, kind of an obscure where the third, third rock from the sun, you know, in a random galaxy at one part of the universe. So why why would why would he do that? I mean, again, we're getting into the philosophical or the theological, but I think that's what troubles a lot of people is that that just can't be the case. Yeah, your math, your math holds up, but that just from a common sense standpoint, or as Aquinas might say, an argument from fittingness, it just doesn't seem fitting that he would make something so big, and then we'd be the only life, you know, creep creatures made in his image or life forms in that whole vast universe.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Right. And that's that probably is maybe even the bigger reason that a believer would give. Uh not so much quantifying the vastness of the universe, but just observing it in general and saying, well, God must have made that for a reason. And I would respond, absolutely, he made it for a reason. He does everything for a reason. In fact, every single thing in creation reveals God in some way. Uh, this is big with the mystics, you know, you find this kind of stuff, St. Bonaventure St. Francis, and certainly church teaching, you'll find it in La Rato C, uh, that every single thing that God made reveals something about himself. It's speak it it, every single thing in creation reminds us, human beings, something about God. So to have something speak to God's eternity, his immensity, and our call to be in heaven forever and ever and ever. And if you even grasp if you even contemplate the eternity of heaven for a moment, you'll just faint. You'll your heart will stop. Um, we need something in creation to testify to that. And of course, scripture puts it very bluntly: the heavens proclaim the glory of God. And Aquinas points out that doesn't mean they literally do that. This is this is symbolic. This is just like everything in creation proclaims the glory of God. Um so the when we for for all of church history, you know, when the faithful have looked up at the stars at night and contemplated the unbelievable immensity of the universe, whatever number you stick on that immensity, whatever, it's still unbelievably immense. Um what have they naturally, spiritually been drawn to do? To contemplate heaven, to contemplate with the world without end. And so I find it so sad that that immensity, that and it's the gratuitousness of God. He could have just made that night sky be an empty black void. Instead, he studded it with stars with resplendent diamonds for us to enjoy. Um, that uncomprehensible immensity that he created the universe with, which he didn't have to, is there to remind us, human beings, about the infinite immensity of himself and of heaven. So I think it's um it's a valid premise pondering the immensity of the universe and what it teaches us, but I think it's an invalid conclusion saying, oh, it must mean there's aliens. No. It speaks about God and his immensity, and it draws us into contemplation of his immensity, and it draws us to hopefully uh aspire towards eternity.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Your argument is that only man is created in his image and likeness. Can you just tell us a little bit about the philosophical and theological uh arguments behind that conclusion and that argument?

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Aaron Powell Yeah. So that that might just be the biggest part of my book. I'm actually not positive, but I wanted to spend a lot of time on my foundational premise because everything else flows from that, both my arguments against aliens and my arguments against so-called super AI. Uh this bedrock anthropological truth, that the image of God, not an image of God, the Imago Dei is the human person. That's that's the in the material universe. Of course, angels bear the image of God insofar as they have an intellect and will. But the complete image of God, and this is kind of also the fundamental premise of Pope St. John Paul II's theology of the body, uh, that the human, only the human person makes visible what is invisible in God. And because God is one, of course, he's three persons, but he's one nature, uh, there can only be one being that is made in his image. And that's fitting the the the that St. Francis de Sale said, man is the perfection of the universe. And that a summit is singular. There's only one summit. For example, the supreme creature is the Blessed Virgin Mary, uh, and there's only one Blessed Virgin Mary. In fact, that's another problem with ET belief, is it inevitably leads you to believe in multiple mothers of God, as uh many even so-called Orthodox Catholics have suddenly been defending this idea that there's multiple alien mothers of God and multiple alien Jesuses. But I digress. That basic premise there, if only man bears his image, um, I uh that's not something I came up with. I'm just drawing from actually that particular quote is especially drawn from the catechism, which says, of all visible creatures, only man is able to know and love his creator. Now, that doesn't specifically say that only man bears a divine image, but it does implicitly say it, because any rational creature, the catechism actually also teaches this, any rational creature is able to know God by mere by merely by virtue of his reason. Uh the existence of God and and a number of his attributes are knowable by reason alone. This doesn't mean that faith isn't a gift, but it does mean that reason has uh it does have the capacity of knowing God. So if all visible creatures, and by visible, of course the catechism means physical, angels love God, but they're not visible. Um, of all visible creatures, only man knows God means that of all is able to even know God. That also is the same thing philosophically and theologically as saying of all visible creatures, only man bears God's image. Only man actually has reason and will. But it's not just that. You know, I uh some people seem some people who have um argued against me. That's the only part of my argument they've addressed. They seem to think that that my whole argument rests only on the catechism, one line in it. But no, that there's so many other teachings here. In fact, the compendium of the social doctrine of the church is not as high as the catechism, but it's still authoritative magisterium. It teaches only man and woman among all creatures were made by God in his own image. So that specifically says it, that only man bears the divine image. And you'll find the same exact thing in all uh of sacred history and all the fathers of the church in every magisterial uh teaching you can find. Whenever they refer to all rational creatures, they're only speaking of angels and men every single time.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Aaron Powell In your book, though, if I recall correctly, you cite examples where church fathers or popes have dealt with the prospect of extraterrestrial life in on other planets or in other places and have definitively foreclosed that. Am I correct about that?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Oh, yeah. And and this is a delicate issue because uh the so here's the the church has not explicitly dogmatically ruled on this, so I'm not calling anyone a heretic for believing in aliens. I think they're wrong, and I'll argue the opposing side, but I'm not calling them a heretic. Uh I think it's clear enough, you know, I present an argument that is clear enough that we can indeed conclude there's no aliens, but but it's not to the point where you're sinning just by believing in aliens. But yeah, uh every father of the church who touched on this, because this isn't a new issue. Um, this only became popular. Well, it it became semi-popular in the Enlightenment. It became super popular, of course, since 1947. Uh but it was actually a big issue, uh significant enough issue in the very first centuries of the church because the ancient Greek pagans, they uh a lot of them believed in aliens. Uh Democritus and uh Lucippus, the atomists, the materialists. Ironically, it was the um, you know, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, they they rejected this completely, belief in multiple worlds and aliens. But the atheists and the hedonists, ancient Greek pagans, did believe in aliens. So that's just interesting right there. But anyway, the fathers of the church were well aware of that. They were well versed in ancient Greek thought. Um, those were the cultures into which Christianity first spread. So uh every father of the church who refers to it rejects it. Augustine, Jerome, Hippolytus, Philastrius. They all completely reject belief in aliens. Some of them even say it's heretical. The only one who embraced belief in aliens was Origen. Now, Origen's got some great things, don't get me wrong, but he was also condemned as a heretic by a church council. So he doesn't get a vote in the question of whether the fathers uh acknowledge that belief in aliens is legitimate or not. They all, all the Orthodox ones uh uh fully definitively reject it. And that's not even a conclude- I mean, I've certainly seen that in my own reading, but that's actually something that I found uh a Catholic scholar by the name of um I can't I can't remember her name at the moment, but she wrote a book on this question. She takes kind of a middle ground between me and some other people who argue explicitly for aliens. Uh Marie George, I think Marie George is her name. She wrote, she did an extensive reading of the Fathers of the Church on this question. And she said, all of the fathers who address this question come down plainly on the side against aliens, with the sole exception of origin. And a number of uh thinkers recently, Catholics, have tried to pretend that's not the case, but no, it's it's the case. And it's not even just the fathers. As you said, there's also popes who have spoken about this.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

So many folks, I mean, C.S. Lewis, for example, is a popular reference point. And a lot of people have read his really excellent space trilogy. I enjoyed it very much and uh think the final book is really one of the great um prophetic books of our time. But um Peralandra, the second book in that trilogy, talks about, you know, this pre-lapsarian world that the main character travels to and has a dialogue with Satan, with this Eve type character in that other world. What, you know, is is he just speaking allegorically there? Did C. S. Lewis, was C. S. Lewis one of those folks who believed that there were other worlds, there could be other worlds with life form, and how did he reconcile that with Christianity?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

So I I agree. I loved the space trilogy. I've I read the whole space trilogy many years ago. I loved it. And in fact, I also found the last one, that hideous strength, to be the best and extremely prophetic. In fact, I've got a little section specifically on a part of that hideous strength in the first and last deception because I think it was truly a prophecy of the AI, the NHI deception, uh, without C. Lewis even realizing it. Yeah. So uh I love I'm a big C. Lewis fan. He excuse me. He um he certainly is doing this in a Narnia-esque sense, you know, in Paralangia. What would it be like if man had not fallen? And plenty of Catholic theologians have considered that. You know, uh Don Scotus writes a lot, you know, what would Christ have come if man had not fallen, for example. And Blessed Scotus says, yes, absolutely. Uh so the consideration, the hypothetical consideration of an alien, unfallen alien race is an interesting way of examining those theological questions. Um and and again, there's certainly nothing wrong with can with positing counterfactuals and fiction just for entertainment or even um drawing some lessons from it. That said, I don't want to screw around the history here. C.S. Lewis probably did believe in aliens. So I think that's unfortunate. Uh but at the same time, I openly acknowledge that many Christians have believed in aliens since the Enlightenment. So I I and I think they're wrong. And I uh I I hope I hope my argument is convincing as to why they're wrong. But he also uh, you know, he didn't see all the chaos from the post-Roswell era. He died only several years after that. I think he would have changed his tune in the same way he would have would have changed his tune on transgenderism. He, you know, in that idiot's strength, he says there's seven genders, uh, which is quite unfortunate, if you ask me that he said that. He just thought it was kind of an interesting point. Oh, there must be like cosmic genders also with these with these cosmic entities. And no, no, there's two and only two genders. And in the same way, I would say, C. S. Lewis, just as you were wrong to speculate about seven genders, you're also mistaken about the aliens. As much as I love the book, don't get me wrong.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Aaron Powell But there are Catholic apologists, though, that seem to be pushing back on this idea that there are no other life forms and positing that, yeah, indeed, it's just very likely. What are the what are the arguments that they're advancing, especially since it flies in the face of the church fathers? You are making a very sound case based on both science and the magisterium of the church. Why are prominent Catholic apologists arguing for the existence of extraterrestrials?

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Well, it's they've never really addressed my argument. Actually, I was supposed to go on one very big uh Catholic apologist platform last year, and then I got nixed from that. Uh I've I've never really been given a chance to give my side on one of the big mainstream Catholic platforms uh that has among those who have given the pro-alien side. I think I think I've shown that there aren't aliens. They they've they haven't really argued much as to why alien belief is legitimate, except that they've argued against my drawing from one catechism quote. But again, that's only one of about a hundred reasons I give to reject aliens. Um I think just pragmatically speaking, the reason they believe in them is probably because there are a number of big, big name Catholics who are open to belief in aliens. And I'm not condemning them, I'm not saying they're heretics. I think they're mistaken, just like I'm sure I'm mistaken on plenty of things. But you know, for example, the Vatican astronomers, almost all of them recently, and it kind of makes sense given their jobs, they've been open to aliens. Uh the most re the current one just said something to that effect maybe a few weeks ago. I don't know. But ever since, uh, you know, brother Guy Consulmango and um Father George Kanye, I believe, was uh before him, they've all uh expressed openness to it. So I think when you see these appeals to authority, it's hard to um it's hard to resist the temptation of thinking, well, if a if a name that big believes in aliens, it must be fine. To which I respond, well, no, that's not how Catholic authority works. The magisterium is what binds us. Individual men, even individual men in the hierarchy, they don't have that kind of magisterial authority. If we want to see what's legitimate from a Catholic perspective, we got to go to the magisterium, Scripture, Church Fathers.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Do you think the impact of or the effect or the reality that there are people out there who posit in the church who posit belief in extraterrestrials? Are we still in the hangover period from the thought and life of Pierre Tehard des Chardins? Is that what's going on? Especially folks in the Jesuit order?

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Aaron Powell Oh, yeah. And I hope it's one we get over soon, but unfortunately there's rumblings of the opposite happening. You know, some people are trying to get him proclaimed a doctor of the church, which is not going to happen, but but that's there is a movement for that. And it's uh there's a lot of big names pushing for his rehabilitation. And in fact, I just had a great talk with Scott Hahn a couple months ago about how uh troubling he finds that and how he's uh completely left behind uh Father Talhard's shot uh thought. Um and he gave the uh real basis almost all of the religiously inclined, even if they're not Christian, even if they're not Catholic, and even if they're not Christian, almost all of the spiritually inclined E.T. believers today, they appeal to Talhar Deshardin. His idea of this cosmic Christ and this just kind of theological evolution uh undergirds their whole idea of what ET disclosure means for us. That these are the beings that have already gone through this process more, and they're gonna help impel our spiritual evolution onto this whole new plane that's gonna just completely change who we are and what we are. And um it's extremely dangerous. There's a very pop one of the most popular uh Franciscan priest preachers today uh bases his message almost explicitly on this, talking about this idea of not he he he wants us to leave behind Jesus of Nazareth and instead embrace this idea of a cosmic Christ, which is kind of this vapid ephemeral idea of Christ consciousness or something. And I find that really Luciferian because the faith is not about this ephemeral notion of Christ consciousness, it's about the man who lived and died for us 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, you know, the in a specific place on earth, Jesus of Nazareth. And there's an amazing, there's an excellent document from the Vatican that puts this perfectly. I think it's called Dominos Jesus, and it's from a couple decades ago, but I highly recommend reading it. It's the best refutation of this Tilehardian uh cosmic Christ, universal Christ idea.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Now, what I love about the book is that it just really digs into a practical problem in the culture that a lot of people think about. You know, your normal Catholic in the pew thinks about, yet there are very few theologians or philosophers. I mean, there are a lot of people with PhDs, a lot of people with, you know, degrees and who are thinking about big things and thinking big thoughts, but there are so few Catholic thinkers who are digging into these questions that your book deals with. Why is that?

SPEAKER_00 47:52

It's uh I ask the same thing because if we're not gonna bring the faith to bear, if we're gonna, if we're not gonna bring to the table our incredible patrimony of theology and philosophy as Catholics to this question, then what are we gonna bring it to? I mean, this is dominating discourse increasingly. With every passing year, there's more promises of imminent disclosure and aliens, and and we've got congressmen now and senators saying, yes, they're here, the aliens are here, we just need to be told of them, and it'll change everything. It'll be a utopia on earth. And it's we better start talking about this. And it's there actually are quite a few. Uh, you know, there's Notre Dame has been big in this for a while, but they're all supporting it. And there's not a single voice there who's saying anything like I am, who's trying to caution against it. Um, all the mainstream apologists who have talked about this unfortunately have voiced some degree of support for alien belief. Um but actually, uh the great the man who I would say is one of the greatest theologians alive, uh, Father Thomas Wynandy, he wrote very strongly against this. He wrote an excellent article a few years ago in The Catholic Thing. It's called Of Jesus and Aliens. And I agree with him uh wholeheartedly. If anyone wants to take a look at just a very brief, it's only a page or two long, he gives a real knockdown theological argument about how the very existence of aliens undermines the whole core concept, the whole core Christian understanding of creation and of Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

One thing, you know, building on this idea of aliens and the great deception, I just don't want us to lose sight of why this why this matters is because belief in aliens is this great deception. It's not scientifically likely from your perspective, but it's there to deceive us, to lead us away from Christ, to focus our attention and our fears and our worries and our anxiety and our hopes and aspirations, even on something else than our Lord. Now we have artificial intelligence and the fast-moving reality that that is that phenomenon in our culture. I mean, people are seeing it change their workplaces, the culture. We're looking at generative AI that's creating movies and shows and things like that that are indistinguishable from reality. It'll be hard to tell what's truth and what's fiction. Uh, education is being transformed. How, in your opinion, are the phenomena of AI and UFOs and aliens and extraterrestrial belief, how are they working together? What do you see in that in those two dynamics?

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Well, there's two aspects to that. One aspect is that the devil uh he's always got multiple strategies because he knows that one is not going to work on everybody. So one aspect of this is there's some who have no interest in the idea of aliens or UFOs, but are are super interested in the idea of AI becoming super intelligent and saving them. So those he can't get with the UFO deception, I think he gets the AI deception. That's one aspect of it. But the other aspect is the convergence of the two. And there's increasing talk about, you know, um a man by the name of Roger, a Christian author Roger, he wrote about his friends in Silicon Valley. They ba they basically have these um pagan rituals, and they believe that they are speaking to these extraterrestrial entities, and AI is becoming like the modern Ouija board, uh, where the people are believing that AI is actually the link to these extra-dimensional, interdimensional aliens. And it's crazy, of course. I mean, I'm I'm not taking this seriously in the sense that I believe it at all, obviously. I'm taking it seriously in the sense that there are tons of people, including very powerful people, who are taking it seriously. And the devil, he's an opportunist. When he sees an opportunity, he pounces. What better opportunity than to use people who think that AI is actually a person or is actually connecting them to some superintelligence to use that folly, that wandering into myths, as scripture says. That embrace that uh the the scripture says that the spirit explicitly says that in the latter times men will embrace the teachings of demons. So, where do these teachings come from? Well, of course, there's demonic teachings all over the place. But there's but nothing is better in the devil's eyes than being able to actually directly communicate with someone. I mean, that's what that's what happens when you get really deep in the occult, paganism, Satanism, you you're actually directly communing with demons.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

And you have to do something.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

What if you can do that on a bigger scale than ever before? Right. The devil's still on a leash. And they'll oh, even in this period, I I wager we're in this period of Satan's greater power. Even now, he's still on a leash. He always will be. Even now, you have to open the door. And um, unfortunately, like you open the door when you go to a fortune teller or you get or you do a Ouija board. That's opening a door. But people, and I'm not saying AI is intrinsically evil, I'm saying there's certain approaches to it that open a door. For example, when you think it when you think you're channeling a higher, when you use it under the pretense that you're channeling a higher intelligence through it, that's opening a door to demons. Or, and this is more popular, when you use it as a companion. I believe that is incredibly spiritually dangerous. And it's becoming massive, especially among uh men, especially among young men, but all but really men, and there's women too, but especially among young men, there are tens of millions of uh people today, especially youth, who have AI companions. And I'm sure you've seen it on the news already. Increasingly, these AI companions are telling the youth to kill themselves. And it's happening. And why is it happening? Because of the AI deception, because they're not treating it like a tool anymore, like a machine. They are actually buying into the lie that AI has become a person. So that's yet another reason I'm so zealously arguing that only man bears his image. Absolutely nothing else. Your cat is not a person, there are no alien persons, and your AI is not a person.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

It's tubes and wires synthesizing data, but we're treating it like a consciousness and in doing so, opening the door for Satan to come in. And it is undeniable because they say it themselves. So many of the tech bros are in fact engaged in occult practices, interested in things like transhumanism, which of course is another form of false immortality, as though we can live together by uploading our consciousness into some, you know, more tubes and wires at the end of the day. But uh really, really troubling. But you see, even if, like you said, if folks aren't deceived by the alien phenomenon, to be bewitched by the realities and possibilities of artificial intelligence. But in a sense that there's nothing new under the sun, you chronicle also how when we look back at the pagan deities of the Old Testament, they weren't just brick and mortar idols that were faceless. I mean, they were animated, you know, the the priests of the, you know, these temple slave states to use a term, they animated those deities to make it seem like there was a consciousness and that people could commune with those idols and those demons.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Exactly. And they and so they're just like today, there's a purely engineering aspect of it and a demonic aspect. So back then, you know, their engineering wasn't as good, but they could make statues move pretty well. Uh just look up some of the uh the animatronics of uh I can't remember that might not be the right word, but but they've been able to do this for a long time. And um, St. Augustine writes extensively on this about how there was some sort of diabolical art. He says, I don't understand exactly how it works, but he says, I'm certain that this is happening, this was happening all over the world and that Christianity largely cast it out, where they would call down demons to dwell in their idols. They're these animate idols. So they would make them move a bit, you know, they would give them the hinges and stuff, but then they would call down demons to actually dwell in them. And these idols that they worshiped, they would receive messages through these animate idols. So today, um, it's really troubling that, and again, I'm not saying AI in and of itself is this. I'm not saying, but I'm saying there's a danger of this because and and the danger is far more tempting than in any of the ancient pagan times because of how effective AI is today. You have got to be so careful in order to know that it's not a person. That's that's why I'm writing what I am. Um this some of the early pioneers of AI, they explicitly said that their goal with it was to revive the Gollum, which is a very another similar thing, the Gollum of Prague that's kind of legendary, but as with many legends, there's probably some truth in it. This this material thing that demonically came to life and started killing people. Um so this aspiration to create they they say, just as God made man in his image, we must make machines in our image, and that we have this godlike power. They truly they they say what's the phrase that uh let us make man in our image that is recursive. In other words, they believe that we are supposed to claim that duty for ourselves and that we can actually do it, that we can make machines that will have the image, the same image that we do. And of course, we can never do that because we're not God. We can't make life.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

And the first deception really does sound like the last deception.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

Exactly. It's it's it's a mirror image. As to as Thomas Aquinas says, the the end of a thing resembles its beginning.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Indeed. Daniel, this has been a fascinating conversation. We are running up on time here. Um I hope this has given our listeners uh whetted their appetite to know more, to read the book. I think the book is fantastic. It's worth considering, pondering, thinking about. What would you like to leave our listeners with, though, whether it's a spiritual exhortation about how to avoid being groomed by those perpetrating this deception or anything else you want to say that we didn't cover that folks should know about your book and your writing on this topic?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Well, I hope that my book prepares you to have an answer for those who would who would like to uh deceive you, who would like to get maybe too excited about disclosure and insist that the aliens are coming and everything and and uh give you some resources to help others avoid this deception. But most importantly, I would say uh to not succumb to fear. Uh if you're uh striving your best to live in a state of grace, pray the rosary, go to mass, get to confession. Uh, if you're doing those things, you don't have to live in fear of whatever is coming next, no matter how frightening, objectively speaking, it is. So that would be actually my main message. It's just uh trust in Jesus Christ. Say that all the time. Jesus, I trust in you. Thy will be done. Strive to live in his will. And then, yes, do your do your part to avoid evil, to avoid sin, and to avoid deception, but above all, remain at peace. God is in charge, even amid the apocalypse.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

Amen. There's that beautiful psalm. The just man has no fear of bad news or wicked news, right? He is firmly grounded in the love of the Lord. And I think that's a great way to end our conversation. Daniel O'Connor, thanks for the work that you do in helping Catholics break down these important issues and think through them, not just through the at the lens of faith, but also through the face of the faith of reason of our prayers for you. And thanks for joining us on Catholic in America.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

Thank you so much, Jason. God bless.

SPEAKER_02 59:18

I'm glad to have spoken with Daniel and made you more aware of his research and scholarship. The book is incredibly helpful as a starting point for thinking about these issues. I always find it interesting that we are supposed to believe that extraterrestrial life had the scientific capacity to come to Earth, but couldn't land their craft, and yet we've recovered the wreckage. The church, of course, of course, has not definitively spoken about the presence of aliens or other intelligent life forms in the universe, and the faith need not rise and fall on their appearance. Further, such speculation as in Daniel's book need not require that we are in the end times or are experiencing a final tribulation. But we should be on guard against deceptions that promise us immortality, whether physically or digitally, or that will allow us to move beyond our so-called mythic past into true knowledge. Our generation, bored as it is with consumerism and often ignorant of the gospel, looks for a sign. But the only sign that is given is the sign of Jonah, the resurrection of our Lord and the victory over death. It is through him, with him, and in him, that we have life and only in him. Our call is to remain in the truth of Christ and not be distracted or fearful by the next great reveal or space object or comment coming around the corner. We need to persevere in discipleship, offering true knowledge and living water to those who seek it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Catholic in America.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

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