The Appeal of the Irrational: Pseudoscience, UFOs, Cults

Several decades ago, when I was a student at the Chouinard Art School, out of curiosity I dropped in at a local Scientology center. I attended a few introductory lectures there, one of which included a filmed interview of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. In these lectures Hubbard was touted as a genius, not only a nuclear physicist, but a brain surgeon as well.

In reality, the extent of Hubbard’s education was that he attended George Washington University to study engineering but dropped out. In the interview it was obvious the man knew nothing of the nature of the human brain, and he generally came off as a complete nincompoop. In any case, I didn’t buy any of the pseudoscientific nonsense the Scientologists were peddling. However, had I been leaning toward trying Scientology, Hubbard’s performance in the filmed interview would have driven me away. For years after witnessing the manifest ignorance Hubbard exhibited in the film, I couldn’t understand why the Scientologists would show it to prospective recruits. 

It was only a few years ago, when I was researching flying saucer cults for my book (co-authored with the geologist and paleontologist Donald Prothero) UFOs, Chemtrails and Aliens, that I stumbled onto the Scientologists’ strategy: The film effectively drove off anyone inclined to be skeptical of their claims. Those who saw the film and still bought into their message were likely to remain loyal believers even in the face of massive evidence that Hubbard was a fraud and that the theology behind this quasi-religion was more absurd than the stuff of low-grade pulp fiction. (This is not unlike those Nigerian spam scam emails filled with typos and all caps—purposefully included to drive away the skeptically-minded so as not to waste the time of the scammers.)

What led to my enlightenment was researching the Seekers, a Christian flying saucer cult that flourished in the early 1950s led by a Chicago housewife named Dorothy Martin who, using automatic writing, believed she was receiving telepathic messages from space aliens she called the Guardians, who purportedly lived on the planet Clarion. The Guardians, she claimed, had told her the United States would be destroyed by a massive earthquake and tidal wave on December 21, 1954 (the winter solstice, of course). However, the Seekers would be saved from this apocalyptic disaster by the Guardians, who would whisk them away in flying saucers to the planet Clarion.

Those likely to be skeptical when experiencing disconfirming evidence were screened out. Those who stayed … were stauncher in their support.

Of course, December 21 came and went without incident, and that should have been the end of the Seekers. But no! The cult continued to flourish, as chronicled by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails.¹ Those members with less conviction left the group when the prophecy failed, but those with greater conviction stayed, strengthening the group’s resolve. Initially, they believed that their original estimation of the date of the apocalyptic event was slightly inaccurate but that the prophecy was true. Like the Scientology film, the failure of the prophecy served as a winnowing tool. Those likely to be skeptical when experiencing disconfirming evidence were screened out. Those who stayed in both cases were stauncher in their support and unlikely to be critical of the purveyors of either pseudoscience or failed prophecy. 

Failed prophecy likewise did not affect the celebrity status of Hal Lindsey. In his first end-times best-seller, The Late Great Planet Earth (the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s), Lindsey predicted the Tribulation—the seven-year period leading up to the Battle of Armageddon—would begin within the generation that saw the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. According to Lindsey: 

A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things will take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe that this is so.²

The year 1988 came and went without any sign of the Tribulation, which logically should have thoroughly discredited Lindsey. However, as with the Seekers this failed prophecy didn’t dim Lindsey’s star. In fact, many in the fundamentalist community came up with rationalizations concerning the year 1988 to prop up Lindsey’s basic assertion. World Bible Society President F. Kenton “Doc” Beshore, for example, asserted that a biblical generation is 70-80 years, based on this passage in Psalm 90:10: “The days of our life are 70 years; and if by reason of strength they are 80 years.” With new calculations, published in Beshore’s books When Will the Rapture Take Place? and The Millennium, the Apocalypse and Armageddon, the Second Coming should happen between 2018 and 2028. Adjusting for the seven-year Tribulation period, Beshore predicted that the rapture would take place sometime before 2021.³

So, despite the failure of his prophecies, Hal Lindsey remained popular in fundamentalist circles and was a frequent guest on evangelical network radio talk shows. He continued to publish his online blog, Hal Lindsey Report, and had amassed considerable wealth from his supposedly non-profit ministry when he died at age 95 in 2024. Reportedly, between 2013 and 2023, Hal and his wife JoLynne Lindsey took in $18.5 million from the Hal Lindsey Website Ministries, but “spent only $1,105,360 in charitable assistance to groups and individuals.”⁴ As with the Seekers, Lindsey’s prophetic failures merely served as a winnowing process, excluding those inclined to be to any degree skeptical. 

It appears the more absurd the claim, or the more outrageous the demand, the more effective it is as a winnowing tool.

A similar winnowing process took place among the Branch Davidians when David Koresh announced that all the women in the world—and particularly all those within his compound outside Waco, Texas—belonged to him.⁵ Those men unwilling to give up their wives at Koresh’s demand, along with those women unwilling to be part of his harem, left the cult. Those who remained were intensely loyal to Koresh. 

It appears the more absurd the claim, or the more outrageous the demand, the more effective it is as a winnowing tool. One such absurd claim recently caught my eye, because it fit the narrative trope of alien abductions I had researched for UFOs, Chemtrails and Aliens: 

Katie Souza, whose show Healing Your Soul airs on Trinity Broadcasting Network and Faith Broadcasting Network, told her YouTube channel Friday she was a child victim of an extraterrestrial conspiracy to create alien-human hybrids. “I was visited when I was a young girl and aliens—alien beings—implanted an interdimensional device in me that harvested my eggs over my lifetime,” said Souza, 63. “This device obviously was harvesting them right when they would mature so that they could then … try to create a hybrid child.” Souza, who founded a popular prison ministry in 2006 after her own release from prison, said thousands of other women have had this happen to them too, though many remain unaware. She said alien implantation is a cause of infertility, as well as other mysterious illnesses and unexplainable anger.⁶

Since claims of alien abduction often come from people with a New Age spiritual orientation, they tend to be dismissed by evangelical Christians. However, evangelicals have an explanation for alien abduction and alien implantation stories that fits their own mythology: Those posing as extraterrestrials are in fact demons, out to deceive humans and turn them away from Christianity. Souza’s view of the aliens she claims stole her eggs is one variant of this explanation: 

Souza offers a spiritual interpretation. She says extraterrestrials exist but are not physical creatures that evolved in another solar system. Instead, they are fallen angels warring against God’s plan of redemption … Souza connects her story and contemporary stories about flying saucers to the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis 6. The Bible passage says they “went to the daughters of humans and had children by them,” called the Nephilim.⁷

The biblical passage to which Souza alludes is Genesis 6:1-4 (New International Version): 

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim⁸ were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 

The predominant belief among evangelical and fundamentalist religious authorities is that UFOs are demonic apparitions, rather than actual extraterrestrial aliens.

It is tempting to dismiss Souza’s claims as patently absurd and to relegate her to the lunatic fringe. However, her popularity is such that her net worth is said to be upwards of $5 million.⁹ Nor is her assertion that extraterrestrial aliens are actually fallen angels in disguise a fringe belief. In fact, the predominant belief among evangelical and fundamentalist religious authorities is that UFOs are demonic apparitions, rather than actual extraterrestrial aliens. Hal Lindsey folded this trope into his end-times scenario.¹⁰ Another proponent of this mythology-based theory is none other than U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance: 

Promoting his new book about his conversion to Catholicism, Vance told right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson that he came into office “obsessed” with learning the truth about UFOs. But he also said his faith led him to suspect that scientific and government observers have historically misidentified beings from other dimensions. “I don’t think they’re aliens; I think they’re demons,” Vance said.¹¹ “When I hear about, sort of, extra-natural phenomenon—that’s where I go to is the Christian understanding that, you know, there’s a lotta good out there, but there’s also some evil out there.” 

Vance returned to the idea last month in a conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan. “If we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is humanlike but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon,” the vice president said.¹²

Considering that someone with the degree of credibility of the Vice President of the United States can believe that demons are trying to seduce gullible people by posing as extraterrestrial beings, perhaps Souza’s claim that aliens stole her eggs could be viewed as a mere eccentricity on the part of someone whose views are otherwise well within the spectrum of Christian belief. As such her popularity and monetary success might not require her followers to accept anything otherwise absurd. Thus, as a reformed criminal who was involved in manufacturing and trafficking methamphetamine and who now has a prison ministry, she might be reasonably worthy of a devoted following. Thus, her supporters might simply overlook her one quirk. That, however, is not the case. Her belief that aliens harvested her eggs is not an isolated oddity: 

Souza then shifted into faith healing and deliverance, speaking more and more frequently, as time went on, about spiritual warfare and generational curses. Her life story has also grown darker as time has gone on. In 2025, for example, she told Christian podcaster Dan Duval that her grandmother was sexually assaulted by a Nazi officer during World War II.¹³ She said that she had to break a family curse connected to Adolf Hitler’s attempt to harness the power of a Satanic altar. She added that another family member was a sex trafficker with the Illuminati, a group that some conspiracy theorists believe controls major world events. 

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Souza said. “You wonder why you’re fighting stuff your whole life? Because people are controlled by demons and they come in when you’re a child and submit you to that kind of behavior, that demonic behavior.” Souza has also made statements about believing in time travel, astral projection and werewolves. More recently, she has talked about a “spirit spouse”¹⁴ trying to take her from her husband, Robert Souza.¹⁵

One bridge from orthodox Christian belief into the absurdities Souza claims to espouse could be the Christian concept of spiritual warfare, the idea believers are involved in a war not just against unbelievers, but against demonic forces as well. In the New Testament this concept is most specifically spelled out in martial language in the Pauline epistle to the church in Ephesus (Ephesians 6:10-17): 

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 

The believer’s metaphysical armor would seem to derive from the Wisdom of Solomon, from the Septuagint (LXX), the Jewish scriptures translated into Greek (Wis. 5:17-19): 

The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor and will arm all creation to repel his enemies; he will put on righteousness as a breastplate and wear impartial justice as a helmet; he will take holiness as an invincible shield. 

The Wisdom of Solomon is considered apocryphal by Protestants and Jews and is excluded from the Masoretic Text (MT), the official Jewish scriptures, as well as from the Protestant Old Testament, which is based on the MT. Likewise, the epistle to the Ephesians is seen by many scholars as deutero-Pauline, i.e. likely written in Paul’s name by someone other than Paul. However, this isn’t the only scriptural underpinning for the curious concept of spiritual warfare. The genuinely Pauline epistle, 2 Corinthians, states (2 Cor. 10:3-5): 

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 

Such warfare terminology likely reflects the siege mentality of first century Christians, who were genuinely under threat in the hostile climate of the Roman Empire. 

The absurdity of the narrative screens out the rational and the skeptical, and tragically snares the credulous.

Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in America today, however, also see themselves as beset by a secular system full of threats and seductions, including not only agnostics and atheists but alternate religions as well. Here is fundamentalist minister and lecturer John MacArthur on the message above from 2 Corinthians: 

Paul is describing how the church must respond to false religion, worldly philosophies, psychologies, theories, and every other ideological fortress that stands in opposition to the truth of the gospel. Spiritual warfare is a battle against all anti-God ideas. He’s calling believers to fight against the religions of demons.¹⁶

The demons MacArthur is referring to in the quote above are not limited to those of us skeptical of religion, but any other religion as well: 

Such a conclusion is incompatible with the view of those who contend that somehow Hindus, Buddhists, and people of all other religions and worldviews can find their way to God through intuition, natural reason, and spiritual inclinations. If Paul is correct—and he is—those other faiths don’t present alternative avenues to heaven, nor does human reason present an alternate means of obtaining grace. The Apostle bluntly says that those pursuits can’t lead people to God because they’re actually demon worship. And while devotees of other religions wouldn’t self-identify as demon worshipers, demons are nonetheless behind all false religion and at work in all false systems. Satan is the father of lies who masquerades as an angel of light, and his ministers disguise themselves as angels of light and bearers of the truth (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).¹⁷

The idea that Satan’s servants “disguise themselves as angels of light and bearers of truth” dovetails neatly with the belief on the part evangelical Christians that those who report encounters with extraterrestrials are being deceived by demons. Also, as noted by the late Carl Sagan in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, forced sexual unions between demons and mortal women bear a striking resemblance to alien abduction narratives: 

There are no spaceships in these stories. But most of the elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically and perform breeding experiments on the human species.¹⁸

Speaking of sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic state, when the brain is awake, but signals from it to the motor nerves are blocked, Sagan noted other aspects of alien abduction narratives reminiscent of Katie Souza’s belief that aliens had stolen her eggs: “If you are a man, they may take sperm samples; if you are a woman, they may remove ova or fetuses or implant sperm.”¹⁹

Thus, via the physiological ramp of sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic state, the concept of spiritual warfare slides easily into Katie Souza’s narrative of aliens harvesting her eggs. Meanwhile the absurdity of the narrative screens out the rational and the skeptical, and tragically snares the credulous.