Reading List

Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith: Are We Alone in the Universe with God and the Angels?

By: Paul Thigpen PhD

For more than half a century, the question of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has been widely dismissed in our culture. That wasn’t always the case. Some of the best minds of the last twenty-five centuries in Western civilization have grappled with this mystery.

In Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith, best-selling author Paul Thigpen begins with a fascinating historical survey of the public conversation about ETI, tracing the thought of prominent Catholics and others. Well-known figures such as Plato, Saint John Chrysostom, René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and C. S. Lewis all speculated about the possibilities of life beyond our planet. Even Catholic saints and blesseds spoke of ETI, such as Pope Saint. John Paul II, Saint (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina, and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich.

Exotheology: Theological Explorations of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life

By: Joel Parkyn

Speculation regarding the plurality of worlds and the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials has remained an important question for Christian theology from antiquity until modernity. Advancements in space science now reveal a vast universe containing trillions of galaxies, and new discoveries of exoplanets, providing an unprecedented greater context and perspective in consideration of the place of humanity, possible intelligent extraterrestrials, and the role of divinity in relation to creatures. These scientific discoveries have increased the importance of understanding the relation of extraterrestrials to the Christian doctrines of the incarnation and redemption. An examination of the history of developments in scientific and theological thought on extraterrestrials, from antiquity to the twenty-first century will demonstrate a consistent pattern of theological formulations of extraterrestrials and their relation to Christian theology, however, without sufficient resolution. En route, this book explores ideas of extraterrestrial 'anthropology', psychology, morphological possibilities, sociological compositions, extraterrestrial religions, implications of contact, and argues for a 'divine pedagogy' of potential modalities of supernatural presence and action with extraterrestrial intelligences.

Unidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the World

By: James Madden

Unidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the World is an application of the tools of academic philosophy to the UFO phenomenon. James D. Madden’s central claim is that understanding the UFO will require a re-thinking of ourselves and our standing in what is revealed as a much wider cosmos. Along the way, he addresses issues in the philosophy of mind, technology, religion, and the possibility of a re-enchantment of the world.