On August 7th, the Department of War released its fifth tranche of declassified Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) documents. The release included videos and images of alleged UAP sightings, and according to the Pentagon, there is still more to come. On a recent segment of The Drew Mariani Show, Drew covered this issue with UAP expert, Diana Walsh Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Though the interest in aliens is not new, Pasulka thinks the government is releasing these documents now as part of a broader push for global transparency. “Now that other countries’ astronauts are in space and… can take photos and videos and data, they’re going to see…what [we] and the Russians have been seeing.” So, she thinks, “we have to come clean” with what we know.

Aliens Replacing Religion

Pasulka thinks the recent fascination with UAPs is part of a broader push to replace traditional religious belief with fascination with extraterrestrial life. The professor explains that this narrative, at least in the 20th century, can be traced to the author Arthur C. Clarke, a British writer of science fiction who co-wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Pasulka explains that Clarke was writing science fiction from the perspective of a Catholic in the 1950s. However, in his novels the “extraterrestrials were actually the beings that Catholics thought were God and angels,” Pasulka said. He thought religion was a good first attempt at understanding the world, but he replaces belief in God with “a belief in extraterrestrials.”

That idea was on display in Disclosure Day, the latest film from Steven Spielberg. During the press tour, the famed director made headlines when he said the idea that the government was keeping extraterrestrial knowledge from the public since 1947 “ would mess up a lot of people.” He went on to say that such a disclosure would cause people of faith to question “the fundamental beliefs that many of us have” For example, “is God our God only on this planet?”

Pasulka, an admirer of Spielberg, says the movie ultimately follows the Arthur C. Clarke template of questioning faith and replacing it with belief in aliens.

Does Alien Life Exist 

When asked by Drew if she thinks alien life on another planet exists, Pasulka, who has researched the topic in depth, said she is “open to the possibility.” However, she doesn’t think the recent sightings reported are extraterrestrial life. “You know, I’m open to the possibility that that’s out there, but it doesn’t look like the kind of things that we’re seeing today,” she said.