Religion Today

What do you get when you cross nihilistic materialism, a century of compulsory retardation in public schools, three generations of complete immersion in the alternative reality of technological mass media, a lot of cynical profiteers, and the innate and intractable human need for ultimate answers?

Oh! I see an object in the sky that I cannot easily identify because it is so far away, or the sky so dark, or my eyesight and knowledge of aerial objects or optical phenomena so limited. It must therefore be one of those alien portal motherships that I have seen on television! I should take a shaky, blurry video of the sky, in which the object will be entirely distorted by the intrinsic properties of camera lenses taking in distant light, by the technical limitations of my camera’s focus and zoom capacities, and by the jerky movements of my hands holding a camera in fullest zoom such that every twitch creates the illusion of sudden motion “that defies the laws of physics,” while I repeatedly shout “What is that?” or “Holy s—!” into the camera’s microphone. Then the whole world will see the proof of my discovery, and I might even become famous. I believe.