Steven Spielberg tries to define God

www.americanthinker.com

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. I was 14. I enjoyed the visual spectacle—its special effects hold up well today—but hadn’t a clue about its meaning.

I eventually showed it to my Advanced Placement kids in high school. They were used to having all the answers, so I asked them to keep question logs we’d answer after the film. They scribbled furiously and constantly and walked out each day—it’s a long movie—muttering to themselves. Finding out you don’t have all the answers, that you really don’t know it all, is hard—and character building.

After a period in which I answered some questions and left the rest unanswered—they were ready to explode—we watched 2010: The Year We Make Contact. More question logs, and a possible answer: God reveals His secrets when He chooses, or not at all. Or maybe it was aliens all along.

I didn’t answer all their questions, other than to note we can’t answer or know everything, and some things are outside the realm of science and human knowledge. We must take some things on faith or not at all. That’s the nature of human life, of reality.

It now seems we may soon know more about alien visitations than ever before. Some are affirming the government has long had possession of crashed alien craft, and even multiple species of deceased aliens.

That’s scary.

It’s scary because, as I told my students, if we have been visited by extraterrestrial intelligences, they must have mastered faster-than-light travel—much faster than light. That, or other dimensions exist, and they can bridge them. Or other realities exist about which we can only theorize. That being the case, their technology must be far ahead of ours. The only potentially encouraging factor might be that if they can crash here and die, they’re no more immortal or indestructible than we are—maybe.

Just in time for the summer blockbuster season, Steven Spielberg is releasing Disclosure Day, which he apparently thinks will upend everything:

Graphic: X Post

The last true blockbuster was Top Gun: Maverick, which was a return to non-woke, classic Hollywood movie-making. Breitbart speculates:

For the first time in a decade, Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is delivering a summer blockbuster with the upcoming Disclosure Day. Will this return to the world of extraterrestrials break one of our greatest living director’s 20-year losing streak?

Spielberg’s high-water mark is 1993’s incredible two-fer of Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. Then 47-years-old, Spielberg directed that year’s biggest blockbuster and that year’s Best Picture winner. He also won his first Best Director Oscar. Even for the man behind Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., this was an incredible accomplishment that had never been done before and has not happened since.

Spielberg has had quite a box office drought, but he scored with E.T and Close Encounters, and he’s doing appearances in which he says he now believes there is intelligent life out there in the universe. He’s in the movie, money-making, business, so is he suggesting his movie will have us questioning our faith typical Hollywood marketing hype, or is he on to something more profound?

There is, so far as I can tell, nothing in the Bible that precludes alien life, or that enthrones man as God’s exclusive, superior creation achievement. There are suggestive passages, such as John 14:2:

“In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.”

“Father’s house:” the universe? “Many mansions:” different planets/species/intelligences? Common speculation, but our science suggests sapient life is possible elsewhere. Does that mean confirmation it exists and may be considerably more technologically advanced than us invalidates faith in God?

Why should it?

It has been often observed that to define God is to limit Him, limit him to what we, His creation, can imagine and understand. Why should we imagine that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God is limited to creating sapient life on a single planet in an infinite universe? And are we to think confirming he did create life elsewhere must somehow invalidate our faith in His power and majesty? Or is it more likely that’s the insecurity of those who resist reliance on God and think accepting Him on faith, which is what He leaves to us to choose, somehow diminishes them?

The confirmation of extraterrestrial or extradimensional life will certainly change the way we think about much, and may introduce technological transformations, but human nature doesn’t change, nor does the nature of God.

As the aphorism goes: “Man plans; God laughs.” Steve Spielberg is but a man, like the rest of us.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.