Do UFOs and the Bible have any business being in the same article together? Interstellar travel, interdimensional beings, aliens, hoaxes—what are Christians to think of UFOs and UFO reports? Does having a biblical worldview give us direction here? To help us understand this topic better from a biblically-informed worldview, we reached out to a guest expert. Dr. Hugh Ross is a Christian and an astrophysicist with his PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto. He is also the founder of Reasons to Believe. Among his many books written at the intersection of science and Christian faith is a book called Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extraterrestrials, which he wrote with Kenneth Samples and Mark Clark. In this Q&A, we (Bobby Harrington and Daniel McCoy) asked Dr. Ross to help us understand the landscape of UFO reports and how to navigate the topic as thoughtful Christians.
Q. Thanks for having this conversation with us, Dr. Ross. I (Bobby) have long been helped by your book, Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men. I initially read it because, in the church we had planted, we were getting so many questions about UFOs and that sort of thing. Your background training in astrophysics has been super helpful in all of this. We’re living in a time where increasing numbers of people are trying to make sense of UFO reports. As Christians, how does a Christian worldview shape how we might respond to reports of UFOs?
Well, I never intended to become an expert on UFOs. I was one of those nerdy kids that started studying astronomy early, when I was seven years of age. When I was seventeen, they made me the director of observations at Vancouver, Canada’s Royal Astronomical Society. And I said, “Let’s have an exhibit at the Pacific National Exhibition.” They put our exhibit right next to the Flying Saucer Club. So, that was the beginning of my interest in UFO study because people would go to their booth and then come to our booth and say, “What do you think?”
I later went on to study at the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, and Caltech. Because I was an amateur astronomer before becoming a professional astronomer and had observatory experience, they made me the guy who had to handle all the UFO reports, and we got a lot of them at those different institutions. And I was able to explain about 99% of the reports with natural phenomena. For example, what someone reported as a UFO might have been some kind of defect with their camera lens. Or maybe there was some secret military activity that the government didn’t want to reveal. Quite commonly in Canada where I was raised, it would be a hoax perpetrated by, say, a group of engineers.
But there was 1% that we call “residual.” Those residual cases defied any natural explanation. What was interesting is that you could prove that what had happened was a real phenomenon, but there were also indicators that it wasn’t a physical phenomenon.
“But there was 1% that we call ‘residual.'”
I remember talking about this with my fellow students and professors at the University of Toronto. At that time, we had Carl Sagan come in to give us a short summer course. He was extremely dismissive of UFOs. But that was because his worldview would not tolerate the existence of nonphysical reality. As a Christian, I believe that God created not only what we see within this universe, but also realities that exist outside this universe. There is a nonphysical yet real realm beyond the universe.
So, that’s a long answer to your question on what’s the Christian perspective on this. In short, the Christian perspective is that reality is not limited to the universe, and we shouldn’t be surprised if we encounter phenomena that proves to be real and yet at the same time violates all the laws of physics.
Q. What are some of the signs that these 1% of UFO reports—residual UFOs—are both real and yet not physical?
Well, if you’ve got multiple observers at different locations seeing the same UFO, you can actually track it and determine its velocity. And UFOs have been recorded coming in at more than 18,000 miles per hour. They don’t all travel at that speed, but many of them do, and yet the observers report that when they see the UFO going through our atmosphere, there is no sonic boom and no observed heat friction.
I mean, when the space shuttle would come through our atmosphere—I’ve heard it many times here in Southern California—you hear two loud sonic booms, and you can see a streak of heat behind the space shuttle. We don’t see that with these UFOs, and that violates the laws of physics. If something’s moving faster than the speed of sound, you will get a sonic boom, and if it’s moving that fast through our atmosphere, there will be observed heat friction.
The thing that I think really establishes that it’s real is when you can see it going through the atmosphere at that velocity and then it crashes into the earth. And when you go to the crash site, you can see a shallow crater. Something must have made that crater. And where it falls on snow, the snow is melted. And whether or not there is snow, the vegetation in the vicinity of the crater is always damaged. So, something must have damaged the vegetation. Something must have caused a crater to form.
“The observers report that when they see the UFO going through our atmosphere, there is no sonic boom and no observed heat friction.”
Yet, you look at the crater site, there’s zero evidence that the crater has any debris or any artifacts, and we all know that, when an aircraft or a drone crashes into the earth and you go to the site, you will find remains of the item that crashed. We don’t see that in these incidences.
And we’re not talking just one documented incident. There are over 2,000 documented cases of UFOs being observed through the atmosphere, crashing to the earth, and yet people going to the crash site and finding no debris. There are no artifacts, but they do see evidence of the crash—a shallow crater, melted snow, damaged vegetation.
So, these sorts of reports establish that we’re dealing with something that is real but not physical. Something that’s subject to the laws of physics and the space-time dimensions of the universe would leave physical evidence. But with these, we don’t see any. Notice in the congressional hearings on UFOs that have been sponsored in the last few months, none of the people that testified before Congress could produce any tangible evidence of physical remains from a UFO or UFO bodies. They talked about it, but they couldn’t produce it.
Q. What’s to rule out the view that these residual UFOs are physical—even if they transcend the laws of physics as we currently know them?
Well, that’s the most common explanation given for these residual UFOs, the 1% that appear to violate the laws of physics but nevertheless are real. In fact, when people report having had conversations with UFO entities, what they’re told is that they’re from another planetary system and they traveled from a distant planetary system to earth in a spaceship.
But that again is further evidence that we’re dealing with something that’s nonphysical but real. This is because it’s impossible for beings our size to travel across interstellar space without being killed or without our spaceships being damaged. We astronomers actually have a proposal to send spaceships to the nearest planetary system outside of our solar system. But we’re aware that we’re going to have to travel at least one tenth the velocity of light to get there in under 50 years.
But when you travel at a significant velocity, you encounter more damage. It’s Einstein’s equation “e=mc2.” The faster you travel, the more damage to your spaceship, and it goes up with the square of your velocity. This is why we astronomers have said, well, we could go two tenths the velocity of light, but we would encounter four times the damage. So, let’s stick with just one tenth the velocity of light. But even so, we recognize, just to get to the nearest planetary system—four-and-a-quarter light years away—we can’t send spaceships bigger than 10 centimeters across. If we do, the damage will be too great, and the spaceships will not be able to give us any information.
“It’s impossible for beings our size to travel across interstellar space without being killed or without our spaceships being damaged.”
We also know that, even at 10 centimeters, we’re going to need to send a thousand of these spacecrafts, because most of them will be totally damaged. A few will survive to a sufficient degree, and we’ll get some useful information back from those spaceships. But if we’re talking a maximum size of 10 centimeters, we’re not sending beings our size. We can’t even send a termite. Even a bacterium won’t survive that distance in a spaceship that small. So that rules out the most common explanation, that we’re being visited by beings from another planetary system. That can’t happen unless these beings have the capacity.
When you look at the Bible, you learn that God created two distinct species of intelligent life—human beings that are subject to the laws of physics of the universe, and angels who are not. God seems to have granted angels the power to come into a realm and leave our realm anytime they want. We don’t have the power to go into their realm, but God has granted them the power to come into our realm.
I’ve got a collection of books written by physicists and astronomers who have each devoted at least a decade to studying the UFO phenomena. As far as I know, I’m the only one amongst them that’s a believer. But what they all say—atheists, agnostics, deists—is that we’re dealing with something interdimensional. That was the conclusion of Jacques Vallée, the French astrophysicist, who has put the most study into these phenomena. He says we’re dealing with interdimensional entities who are also personal beings.
Q. So, you’re saying that around 1% of UFO cases have no known physical explanation, including interstellar travel, and that even though they are nonphysical they are nonetheless real. Furthermore, the best explanation for these residual UFOs is that they seem to be interdimensional. Thus, you’re suggesting that a plausible explanation is that they are angelic, specifically fallen angels. Is that correct?
Yes, I’m saying that these can’t be beings like us that are subject to the laws of physics, but that they could be the beings that the Bible speaks about: angels, who are not subject to the laws of physics. Again, in the phenomena, we see strong evidence that we’re dealing with something real, but equally strong evidence that we’re dealing with something that’s not physical. You especially see this in the congressional reports where they interview pilots who, for example, describe seeing objects going at very high velocities and yet stopping and turning direction. No physical object can do that without being torn apart by the gravity that’s being exerted on it. But an angelic being could do that.
And that raises another question. Are we dealing with the righteous angels, or are we dealing with the evil angels? And this too is where I find agreement among astronomers who have devoted a minimum of a decade to studying UFO phenomena. They conclude that we’re dealing with entities that, when they meet us, mean us harm and not good.
This was evident even back in the 1960s when our government commissioned the astrophysicist, Allen Hynek, to study UFOs in Project Blue Book. He was the one that coined “close encounters” of the first, second, and third kind. They now have expanded that to the fourth and fifth kind. But what he was documenting is that, with anyone who has a close encounter with one of these 1% residual UFOs, it is 100% of the time deleterious. It’s never beneficial for the individual. Often, there are recurring, terrifying nightmares afterward. There are even cases where people have been killed by the encounter.
“They conclude that we’re dealing with entities that, when they meet us, mean us harm and not good.”
In our book Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, we show that the people that are having close encounters with UFOs are often people that have been involved in the occult. And if they get the occult out of their life, that’s the end of their encounters with UFOs. Involvement in the occult is giving permission for fallen angels to invade your life. They can’t bother you unless you give them permission. But you give them permission by seeking occult powers.
I knew two astronomers who were seeing UFOs literally every time they went on the telescope. I saw this when I was in my graduate school career. Wasn’t this interesting? These two astronomers only logged three or four hours of observing time a year—but every time they went on the telescope, they had a UFO encounter. We graduate students were logging 1,500 hours a year, and we were seeing nothing. What was going on here? But that’s when I discovered that those two astronomers were deeply involved in the occult, whereas we graduate students were not.
And so, when I run into people that are having these close encounters, I always question them. Are you involved in astrology? Have you been practicing a séance? What about a Ouija board? The occult is where you’re trying to gain supernatural power outside of God’s help that we see in the Bible. And the demons are more than willing to give you power in exchange for control of your life.
“Involvement in the occult is giving permission for fallen angels to invade your life.”
Q. Dr. Ross, can you point to some scriptural references to similar things, or at least of descriptions that would lead us to think that this is a good hypothesis?
Well, probably Ephesians 6 where Paul tells us that we who are followers of Jesus Christ do not just wrestle with flesh-and-blood beings like ourselves. We’re wrestling with powers beyond the realm of the physical universe, and we’re being warned that these powers mean us evil intent. They mean to deceive us. They mean to physically harm us.
We might wonder from time to time why it is that politics all around the world seems to be so chaotic and irrational. In Daniel 9 and 10, we’re told that there’s a war going on in heaven between the righteous angels and the evil angels, and the evil angels are especially targeting the political leaders of the nations of the world. Why do so many leaders seem to be making decisions that are so irrational and counter to their best interests? We need to be praying for them. We’re told in 1 Timothy 2:1-2 to pray for our leaders, and it’s no wonder because they seem to be under spiritual attack to a degree that the rest of us are not. They’re wrestling with these powers. And especially those that are not believers are particularly being targeted. I believe that, if it wasn’t for an angelic battle, politics would make a lot more sense. There’d be a lot fewer wars being fought.
We need to realize there’s a battle going on that’s beyond just what’s taking place between human beings.
To learn more about this topic, check out Dr. Hugh Ross’s book Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extraterrestrials.
