Why Barack Obama says aliens are “real”

NOTE: The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a noted civil rights icon who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, died early this morning. I plan to respond to his passing and its significance in tomorrow’s Daily Article.

Former President Barack Obama generated headlines when he was asked by podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the existence of aliens and said, “They’re real.” Mr. Obama added, “But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility—unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

Hearing about his remarks, I wondered if the president was referencing factual information of which he was aware that the rest of us are not. It turns out, he was not.

Mr. Obama issued a clarification the next day: “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

If you believe aliens exist, you’ll focus on the “odds are good” part of his explanation. If you don’t believe aliens exist, you’ll focus on the “no evidence” part.

In other words, we tend to believe what we believe and interpret the facts accordingly. This is a fact of enormous relevance to the challenges we face today.

“Science appears to have become God’s ally”

It is unusual when a book about science and faith draws endorsements from some of the leading scientists and theorists in our world, but that’s the case with God, the Science, the Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution. A Nobel laureate and professors at Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton have all applauded its remarkable “panorama of current knowledge regarding the existence or non-existence of a creator God.”

The authors collaborated with a team of around twenty “high-level international specialists and scientists” over four years of research. The bestseller they produced is astonishing in its breadth and depth. It deals with materialistic arguments against God’s existence from across history, demonstrating that the universe and its various properties are much better understood as the product of a mind-like cause than by blind process.

The writers conclude:

Until recently, believing in God seemed incompatible with science. Now, unexpectedly, science appears to have become God’s ally. Materialism, which has always been a belief just like any other, is seriously shaken as a result.

Here’s why this matters: Materialism (the claim that the material is all that exists and that the spiritual and supernatural are therefore fictitious) is not just itself fictitious but dangerous. As the authors write: “Materialism in many cases has become an intellectual justification for both individualism and the rejection of moral standards” (my emphasis).

If the material is all there is, we have no authority beyond it by which to measure morality or encourage moral actions. We are mere animals among animals, behaving by instinct as we believe what we want to believe and do what we want to do. Tragically, this describes our post-Christian, post-truth culture where anything that does not hurt someone else (in theory) is tolerated if not celebrated.

But since fallen humans do not inherently know what is best for us, much less for society, materialistic amorality is illogical on the merits. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher is right:

Man, if left to his own devices, will tend towards ego-driven disharmony. . . . absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state, there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary to their own best interests, or those of the community.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”

If, however, we agree with the authors of God, the Science, the Evidence that materialism is fatally flawed on logical and empirical grounds, why isn’t belief in God’s existence not just logical but conclusive? The writers assert that their arguments are “all grounded in reason, careful analysis, and sober judgment,” but why don’t such arguments end the debate?

The most significant reason is that our world is filled with evidence not just of design and purpose but with the lack thereof. The suffering that infuses our daily lives can suggest not a benevolent Father but a malevolent tyrant.

We can respond, of course, that our fallen world is not the way its Maker intended it. Gerard Manley Hopkins begins one of his famous poems: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” but hastens to add:

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

In other words, the evil and suffering that argue against the existence of God are not his fault but ours. Creation fell when humans fell (cf. Romans 8:22). And Christians who fail to act morally do not disprove the morality of their Lord any more than criminals who break the laws disprove the morality of the laws they break.

Why “affliction is a treasure”

But I want more. I want to believe that a God who is truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent would not allow humans to besmear his creation so tragically. Here I find hope in the midst of hopelessness from an English poet and scholar who lived four hundred years ago but whose insight in the midst of his personal suffering inspires me today.

John Donne wrote Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions in December 1623 as he recovered from a severe illness now believed to be relapsing fever or typhus. After coming near death, he penned a series of twenty-three essays, representing the length in days of his sickness. In Meditation XVII, he penned the immortal line concerning death, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

But he did not stop there. A few lines later, Donne offered this reflection: “Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction.”

A world without affliction is a world without all that affliction can produce in our lives. As I reflected on Donne’s insight, I found it difficult to identify a single important truth I have learned except through suffering. Even what I gained through education came through hard work. And the times I have been closest to God have been the times when I knew I needed him most.

Charles Spurgeon spoke for me:

“I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.”

What “bed of pain” would you trust to your Father’s redeeming grace today?

Quote for the day:

“They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls.” —Charles Spurgeon

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