In the fairly recent past, people who believed in aliens or beings who did not originate on Earth, or believed in contact with aliens, were considered weirdos. Many, many people lumped believers with those cross-eyed people who call up radio stations saying we have to stop the government and/or aliens from sending brainwaves into their heads and screwing with refrigerators to make them talk. In other words, people thought that those who believed in aliens were crazy, crazy people with outlandish beliefs that have no basis in reality... but do they still believe that?
In September 2015, a poll taken by YouGov, a UK market research company, released a poll that showed 54 percent of Americans believe that not only does life exist outside of our planet, but there is intelligent life outside of our planet that does have the ability the communicate. In other words, people don't think that out there, somewhere, there are a couple of amoeba on some floating rock in space, but that there are actually intelligent alien civilizations. Now, that is a mighty big jump from "only people with tinfoil hats living in dumpsters believe in aliens and extraterrestrial contact" to "half of America believes that intelligent life exists outside of Earth."
Why the big jump? I think there are several reasons why people have changed their minds about alien life. I think one may be because of our own technology. Some people used to think aliens couldn't exist, and if they did, our technology is not good enough to communicate with them. However, with advances like 3-D printing, where we are starting to literally print real objects like clothes, food, and guns, a "Harry Potter"-style invisibility cloak for military use (I kid you not), and glasses that double as computers, it seems that technology is getting advanced enough to the point where people can believe that if we can create this stuff, there is no reason to not believe that somewhere out there, someone else is doing the same thing. Or more.
Another hang-up people have about belief in aliens is God. Many holy doctrines say that humans, heaven, earth, and everything that we know and love, or do not love, was created by the divine. So when people start mentioning other people who were not created along with everything we know, they start to get anxious. The overall social conflict in the belief in aliens is the ultimate example of this. However, this not the case in The Vatican. Surprising, right? According to the 2008 FoxNews.com article, "Vatican: It's OK for Catholics to Believe in Aliens," Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory (the Vatican has its own observatory), is quoted as saying that while there is no definitive proof, the expansiveness of the universe means that there could be life on other planets. "As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God." So basically, the Vatican itself, the same religious organization that once condemned a man for saying that the sun does not revolve around the earth, but visa versa, is now saying in the twenty-first century that it is possible that aliens exist and it is okay.
Let's look at the belief in aliens from this perspective. If we exist, it's possible that something else exists somewhere else. Plain and simple. While we can see based on our own galaxy that the development of life is incredibly rare, it is obviously not impossible and it can clearly happen. In my case, I am and always will be a believer. It doesn't make sense for aliens to not exist and I have seen way too much to believe otherwise. I take comfort in this belief. It just means that there is so much more to see.
