American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology

by D.W. Pasulka

Overview

More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions. Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190693503
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/23/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	93,979
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

D.W. Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Her current research focuses on religious and supernatural belief and practice and its connections to digital technologies and environments. She is the author and co-editor of numerous books and essays, the most recent of which are Believing in Bits: New Media and the Supernatural, co-edited with Simone Natalie and forthcoming from Oxford University Press, and Posthumanism: the Future of Homo Sapiens, co-edited with Michael Bess (2018). She is also a history and religion consultant for movies and television, including The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring II (2016). She has been the principal investigator for numerous grants, including the Federal grant program Teaching American History, which supported middle school and high school teachers in their efforts to teach religious and American history to public school students throughout North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Preface- A Tour of Silicon Valley with Jacques Vallee Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1- The Invisible Tyler D. Chapter 2- James: Master of the Multiverse Chapter 3- Scott Browne's In the Field: The War is Virtual, The Blood is Real Chapter 4- When Star Wars Became Real: The Mechanisms of Belief Chapter 5- The Material Code: Moving Beyond the Disembodied Soul to the Materiality of Quantum Information Chapter 6- The Human Receiver: Matter, Information, Energy... Contact Chapter Seven- Suspended in Space: Levitating, Bilocating Saints and Tyler D.'s Spiritual Conversion in Rome Conclusion- The Artifact

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/12/2018
Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, approaches UFO believers with an open mind in her irresistible debut, diving into how technology and media are creating a new religious experience for them. Pasulka admits that ufology is a field replete with dead ends for an academic, given its code of silence and history of disinformation and public hoaxes. Instead of crafting a well-sourced argument, she offers a personal account of her encounters with believers and a frank discussion of her evolving understanding of the UFO phenomenon. Lively character sketches bring the story to life as Pasulka meets the brilliant and charismatic Tyler, who takes her on a blindfolded journey into the desert to visit a potential crash site, and James, a bold, adamant researcher who is the only scientist Pasulka met who was “ ‘out’ as a UFO experiencer.” As she goes deeper into the murky subculture, she wrestles not just with flying objects, but with the nature of perception, truth, and myth. Pasulka compares ufology to more traditional religions, such as Christianity, likening miracles to UFO sightings and faith in God to faith in abduction. Pasulka gives wonderful, entertaining insight into the curious study of UFOs. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"...American Cosmic is well worth the attention of scholars interested in how the religious is both created and functions in the contemporary world." — Jeremy Rapport, International Journal for the Study of New Religions

"This book deserves to be given attention by those in the religious studies field whose familiarity with UFO Religions is confined to historical cases or more modern personality-driven organizations." — Aaron John Gulyas, Nova Religio

"refreshingly engaging." — Benjamin E. Zeller, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Pasulka's book is nothing short of spectacular and intriguing-a mind-blowing read with fascinating insight. Her research and knowledge present a whole new truth, some of which is very scary, and we don't scare easily." — Chad and Carey Hayes, writers of The Conjuring and The Conjuring II

"From a solid base of scholarship Dr. Pasulka introduces us to the players at the frontier of biological and physical research. Her sharp insight is drawn from her research into spiritual phenomena, updated by her travels from the purported UFO crash sites of New Mexico to the archives of the Vatican. The result is a timely introduction to the revelations in our collective future." — Jacques F. Vallée, author of Wonders in the Sky

"UFOs are a remarkable phenomenon that both believers and skeptics initially have a hard time connecting to religion. American Cosmic is a vivid and even moving account of the way this strange world works as a kind of sacred mystery for those within it." — T.M. Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back

"[Pasulka] approaches UFO believers with an open mind in her irresistible debut . . . lively character sketches bring the story to life . . . Pasulka gives wonderful, entertaining insight into the curious study of UFOs." — Publishers Weekly

"Pasulka makes a reasonable case that the spirits, angels, divine messengers, manifestations of God, aliens or their spaceships that humans have been reporting since the dawn of history are too numerous to be entirely delusional, so they deserve serious investigation." — Kirkus Reviews

"A thought-provoking book about religion today." — Booklist

"American Cosmic is a superb investigation into the birth and rise of a new religion." — Foreword Reviews

"The book as a whole is a highly sensitive, and erudite." — Paradigm Explorer

"D.W. Pasulka's American Cosmic has all the trappings of a sober ethnographic study of unidentified flying objects. Its organizing thesis holds that belief in the existence of shapeshifting extraterrestrial visitors can be understood as an emergent religion, offering communion with a higher power, reassurance of universal interconnectedness, and a simplifying explanation for a chaotic world." — Nathaniel Rich, The New York Review

From the Publisher

2018-10-28

A scholar investigates alien phenomena as an example of religion.

Pasulka (Religious Studies/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington; Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, 2014, etc.) begins by pointing out that religions do not depend on objective reality, so belief in aliens is independent of proof that they exist. The story traditionally begins with the first flying saucer sightings in the 1940s, but other manifestations—e.g., "orbs of light, flames that penetrated walls, luminous beings, forms of conscious light, spinning suns, and disclike aerial objects"—have appeared in writings since ancient times, including, some UFOlogists maintain, the Bible. "Many religious practitioners," writes the author, "view the strange spinning aerial contraption witnessed by the biblical prophet Ezekiel as a UFO." Pasulka's description of the famous 1917 Our Lady of Fátima apparitions in Portugal reads unnervingly like a modern supernatural encounter. "Different people reported seeing different things," she writes, "yet all were convinced that they had witnessed something entirely supernatural. The church, after thirteen years of investiga­tion, approved the event as worthy of belief, albeit under the category of ‘private revelation,' as distinguished from ‘public revelation,' which is something Catholics are obligated to believe." As the author documents, about one-third of Americans believe in UFOs. Enthusiasts hold conventions, and their websites pepper the internet, but Pasulka discovers a subculture of scientist believers who keep their research secret for fear of ruining their reputations. There is also an entirely public subculture of entrepreneurs that supports studies and serious amateurs working to document sightings, many of whom work equally hard to detect the ever present hoaxes. Many believers seem rational, and the fact that physical evidence remains steady at zero does not change matters.

Pasulka makes a reasonable case that the spirits, angels, divine messengers, manifestations of God, aliens or their spaceships that humans have been reporting since the dawn of history are too numerous to be entirely delusional, so they deserve serious investigation.

Kirkus Reviews