Scientific rebuttals to ‘ancient aliens’ as popular alternatives to biblical history

Abstract

Just as Christian apologists need to rebut the ‘alternative’ historical claims of The Book of Mormon, so they need to rebut claims about so-called ‘ancient aliens’. These claims offer people with a secular worldview historical counter-narratives to biblical history that draw upon the scientific respectability of astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Rather than interacting with the specifics of ‘ancient alien’ narratives on a case-by-case basis, I argue that ‘ancient alien’ theories are intrinsically convoluted and highly ad hoc, and that multiple essential facets of such theories are disconfirmed by scientific evidence. Not only do we lack convincing evidence that extraterrestrial intelligences have visited Earth, but SETI has provided observational evidence that suggests technologically advanced aliens simply don’t exist, at least in our cosmic neighborhood. In sum, when it comes to ‘ancient aliens’, it’s those who believe in ‘ancient aliens’, not Christians, who are swimming against the scientific evidence.