Belief in aliens could be Amerca's next religion

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he aliens have landed.

Or at least, they’re about to. That’s a reasonable takeaway when a renowned Harvard astronomer publicly declares, without apparent fear of repercussion, that he believes an alien spaceship may be orbiting our planet.

Belief in the little green men (or tall, suspiciously Nordic, hyper-enlightened space brethren, depending on whose accounts you believe) has long been a one-way ticket to social disrepute. It belongs to the chainsmoking Nevada diner waitress, the virginal malcontent reading anti-Semitic lizard people websites in his mother’s basement, the aunt whose minivan is littered with pamphlets on lesser-known Marian apparitions and dire end-times prophecies, the bearded ’70s peace-and-love guru who later turned out to be a sex criminal. It is precisely three steps above joining the Black Hebrew Israelites.


But that seems to be changing. A new book by D.W. Pasulka — professor and chair of the department of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington — American Cosmic: UFOs Religion, and Technology, focuses not on grassroots investigative societies or marginal cults, but on UFO believers in the halls of power.

Her narrative begins on a drive through the hills with pioneering computer scientist, venture capitalist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee. “Silicon Valley is full of secrets,” he tells her. It ends in the Vatican Secret Archives (alas, not because the Ultimate Clue lies steganographically hidden in a Templar codex).

Along the way, Pasulka meets “Tyler,” a biomedical technology mogul associated with the U.S. space program. Tyler is the most curious part of a curious book. Like most of the scientists, government researchers, and tech giants Pasulka quotes, Tyler’s real name remains a secret. But Pasulka has presumably done scholarly due diligence on his background, which would otherwise be hard to believe: Tyler has over 40 biotech patents to his name, many of which he believes were communicated to him by non-human intelligence. He works in a government program where, according to him, the kind of intricate security-clearance labyrinths one might find in an X-Files episode are the norm. “I don’t know who is responsible for putting me on these jobs. I think that somehow they are responsible for it. My own direct boss doesn’t know what I do. This is how the program works.”

Pasulka describes him breezing through airports without getting stopped by security: “We arrived at the airport, and Tyler sailed right past security, past first class, past economy class, and out the other side. He seemed to be literally beyond the law.” His name unlocks doors at the Vatican. In his official capacity as a researcher with the U.S. space program, one of his roles is merely to be at certain places at certain times — his superiors believe, apparently that his physical presence produces certain outcomes at experiments and rocket launches.

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