In this episode of the Youtube series Religion in Life, Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka is invited to talk about her views on UFOs as a form of an emerging religion, one in which technology plays a significant role because it permits us to approach anomalous aerial phenomena from a perspective different than pure faith. In fact, as she points out during the interview, UFOs have the potential to challenge one’s belief system and reinterpret the religion we grew up with through this new mythological lens. All of this will be the subject of Diana’s upcoming book American Cosmic.
Perhaps what’s more interesting about Diana’s personal journey and what she went through during the process of writing her book, is her discovering there are many well-respected scientists and technologists who take the UFO subject very seriously, and yet they asked her to remain anonymous as well as omitting a few disclosed pieces of information from her manuscript. From a religious perspective, this to me reminds of how early Christians had to hide their identity and conceal their rituals in dark catacombs away from the scrutiny of Roman authorities.
Will UFOs remain forever marginalized and ‘persecuted’ by the ruling empires of the world? Who knows. Maybe their role *is* to be in the outskirt of society, to serve as an engine of mythology making. Or maybe we all just need to have a little faith –pardon the pun– that in the end we’ll figure a way to establish a connection with whatever it is behind this greatest of mysteries; after all, isn’t that the meaning behind the word Religion (‘religare’) –to ‘reconnect’ Man with the Transcendent?
