Newsflash: Belief in Aliens Easier than Belief in God; Aliens and Science the Preferred Saviors of Humanity

The alien race, the San-Ti, scan all the available info they can access about our human civilizations and realize that they can use religion to motivate the less-intellectual humans into doing their bidding. They interact with such people as if they were god, and their followers call the San-Ti spokesperson “my Lord.” But those that follow “my Lord” serve only to kill scientists and hopefully prevent the human race from advancing beyond the technologies of the San-Ti and thus be able to wipe out the alien race when they arrive to earth 400 years in the future.

Sounds a lot like the view of many atheists – the view that religious adherents are all dangerous anti-science zealots who will blow up abortion clinics and fly planes into buildings packed with people.

In 3 Body Problem, (it was new when I first jotted out some notes) a Netflix series, it's all about the science. It's easy to miss the argument that is being put forward under the surface of the story, because the special effects are cool, and well – who doesn't get a bit emotionally worked up by a story about aliens coming after us?

Funny how all the alien movies seem to start with one of two premises, both of which are rather negative assumptions: 1) there is no God that created the universe, so aliens can be just about anywhere on the moral/ethical spectrum, but given that Darwin must be right, they are probably coming to smash us; or 2) even if there is a God out there somewhere, aliens must be fallen nut-jobs like us bent only on self-glory, conquest, exploitation, and taking everything for themselves.

It's all strangely dissatisfying.