Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day”: Would Knowing Aliens Exist Threaten Faith?

In his film Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg not only offers an exciting story, he ponders some spiritual questions.  Would the revelation that aliens exist be a challenge to the Christian faith?  A nun in the movie offers a clear answer.

Eve Hewson as Jane in Disclosure Day (2026), https://www.disclosuredaymovie.com/.

In the movie Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg raises a pair of fascinating religious questions – and answers them thoughtfully.

The questions are: Would the appearance of powerful aliens contradict the Book of Genesis?  And would the discovery of other intelligent life in the universe pose a threat to the Christian faith?

How might the existence of aliens cause some people to question their faith?

In the film, several characters raise the concern that revelations about aliens might shake the faith of believers.  I would have thought this was a farfetched concern, but it’s not.  Some corners of Christianity have been in a tizzy surrounding the U.S. government’s release of its so-called “alien” files.

An evangelical pastor with nearly a million online subscribers claimed in April 2026 that evangelical pastors were invited to a briefing to prepare their churches for the government release of alien files that might cause people to turn away from their Christian faith.  Some of these evangelical pastors have even argued that UFO sightings are evidence of demonic activity.

This issue arises because too many Christians have a very narrow understanding of God.  If you start with a highly literal view of the Bible, you might think that God only really cares about humans.  That exceedingly human-centric view of God’s relationship with his creation leads to a very crimped view of what God might think about other creatures.

Let’s take a more nuanced look at the questions raised in Disclosure Day.

Would the existence of aliens call Genesis into question?

In Disclosure Day, one of the protagonists, Jane, asks a Catholic nun how such aliens could exist if Genesis says that humans are God’s “supreme creation”?  The question is based on an inaccurate reading of Genesis, but Sister Maura’s answer is clear: The story of Genesis describes only the creation of life on Earth.

The creation account in Genesis does not actually say that humans are God’s supreme creation.  It only says that humans have “dominion” or “rule over” other creatures (Gen. 1:28), and that role is more about stewardship than about lording it over other creatures.

But Sister Maura’s key point is accurate: Genesis only says that humans have this dominion “on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).  Genesis says nothing about other worlds.

Would the existence of aliens actually be a problem for the Christian faith?

The second question Spielberg raises is whether the existence of other intelligent life in the universe would pose a threat to the Christian faith.  This concern is built on a misinterpretation of Scripture that leads some people to think that humans are God’s (only) special creation.

Would the existence of aliens mean that humans aren’t special?  No.

Sister Maura’s response is instructive: “Why would he [God] make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us?”

Wouldn’t God, who is full of overflowing love, want to share his endless love with as many creatures as could receive it and offer it back to him?

Anywhere in the universe, if a planet has the necessary resources to sustain life, and if life does indeed develop, and if creatures on that planet develop to the point where they are capable of consciousness and have the capacity to probe for a spiritual understanding of their life, wouldn’t God want to instill a soul in such creatures so that they could commune with him?  Surely, God would take delight in placing his spirit in any creatures who could know him and love him and become like him, as humans are called to do.

Does that mean that humans are not special?

If the parents of a child decide to have another child, does that mean the first child is not special?  Of course not.

Just as a parent can love many children, God has more than enough love to spare and to share.  Even a billion intelligent life forms on a billion planets could not exhaust God’s love – and each would be special to him, as we are.

Does the Bible say anything about aliens?

The Bible does not tell us anything about aliens, one way or the other.  It would have been far beyond the readiness of anyone in Bible times to grasp.

There is one intriguing verse in the Gospel of John where Jesus says to the disciples, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold” (John 10:16).  This statement is usually interpreted to be referring to the Gentiles, but does it have to apply only to the Gentiles?  The early church had to be pushed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit to embrace people who were in some ways different from them (Gentiles).

If God were to choose to endow other beings in the universe with souls, he most certainly would also want to draw them into his fold.

To claim that the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations would undermine Christian doctrine is to claim that God is limited and can’t produce other intelligent lifeforms in addition to humans.  Is it not more likely that it is us who are limited in our ability to comprehend how God could love other creatures and lead them to love him?

Through the voice of Sister Maura, Spielberg gets it right

Sister Maura points us in the right direction.  God’s revelation to us in the Bible does not preclude the existence of aliens, and God has more than enough love to share with all of the intelligent life forms in the universe, however many or few they are.

But if humans actually come into contact with aliens, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?  That will be the subject of a future post.