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Why Barack Obama says aliens are “real” · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Tuesday, February 17th, 2026, and this is the Daily Article Podcast from Denison Forum.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily article is written by Cultural Theologian Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Note, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a noted civil rights icon who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died early this morning.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I plan to respond to his passing and its significance in tomorrow's Daily article.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Former President Barack Obama generated headlines when he was asked by podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the existence of aliens and said, they're real.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then Mr. Obama added, but I haven't seen them.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not being kept at Area 51.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no underground facility, unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hit it from the president of the United States.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, hearing about his remarks, I wondered if the president was referencing factual information of which he was aware that the rest of us are not.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It turns out he was not.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Obama issued a clarification the next day, quote, statistically the universe is so vast that the odds are good that there's life out there.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: but the distance between the solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens are low and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, If you believe aliens exist, you'll focus on the odds are good part of his explanation.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't believe aliens exist, you'll focus on the no evidence part.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, we tend to believe what we believe and interpret the facts accordingly.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a fact of enormous relevance to the challenges we face today.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is unusual when a book about science and faith draw endorsements from some of the leading scientists and theorists in our world, but that's the case with God, the science, the evidence, the dawn of a revolution.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: A Nobel laureate and professors at Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton have all applauded its remarkable panorama of current knowledge regarding the existence or non-existence of a creator God.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The authors collaborated with a team of around 20 high-level international specialists and scientists over four years of research.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bestseller they produced
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: is astonishing in its breath and depth.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It deals with materialistic arguments against God's existence from a cross-history, demonstrating that the universe and its various properties are much better understood as the product of a mind-like cause than a blind process.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The writers conclude, until recently, believing in God seemed incompatible with science.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, unexpectedly, science appears to have become God's ally, materialism, which has always been a belief just like any other, is seriously shaken as a result.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, here's why this matters, materialism, the claim that the material is all that exists and that the spiritual and supernatural are therefore fictitious, is not just itself fictitious, but dangerous.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the author's right, materialism in many cases has become an intellectual justification for both individualism and the rejection of moral standards.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote,
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the material is all there is, we have no authority beyond it by which to measure morality or encourage moral actions.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are mere animals among animals behaving by instinct as we believe what we want to believe and do what we want to do.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Traditionally, this describes our post-Christian post-truth culture where anything that does not hurt someone else, at least in theory, is tolerated if not celebrated.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But since fallen humans do not inherently know what is best for us, much less for society, materialistic immorality is illogical on the merits.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cultural commentator Rod Dreyer is right.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Quote, Man, if left to his own devices, will tend toward ego-driven disharmony, absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state, there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary to their own best interests.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: or those of the community, in quote, if, however, we agree with the authors of God the science, the evidence.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That materialism is fatally flawed on logical and empirical grounds.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why isn't belief in God's existence not just logical, but conclusive?
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The writers assert that their arguments are all grounded in reason, careful analysis, and sober judgment.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But why don't such arguments in the debate?
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The most significant reason is that our world is filled with evidence not just of design and purpose, but with the lack thereof.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The suffering that infuses our daily lives can suggest not a benevolent father, but a malevolent tyrant.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can respond, of course, that our fallen world is not the way it's maker intended it.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The world is charged with the grandeur of God, but hastens to add, generations have trod, have trod, have trod, and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel being chod.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, the evil and suffering that argue against the existence of God are not his fault, but ours.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Reffencing Romans 8 verse 22, creation fell when humans fell, and Christians who fail to act morally do not disprove the morality of their Lord any more than criminals who break the laws, disprove the morality of the laws they break.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I want more.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to believe that a god who is truly omnipotent and omnibenevalent would not allow humans to be smear his creation so tragically.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here, I find hope in the midst of hopelessness from an English poet and scholar who lived 400 years ago, but whose insight in the midst of his personal suffering inspires me today.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: John Dunne wrote devotions upon emergent occasions in December 1623 as he recovered from a severe illness now believed to be relapsing fever or typhus.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: After coming near death, he pinned a series of 23 essays representing the length in days of his sickness.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Meditation 17, he pinned the immortal line concerning death never sent to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't stop there.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: A few lines later,
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man had enough of it.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: No man had the fliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, a world without affliction is a world without all that affliction can produce in our lives.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I reflected on Duns Insight, I found it difficult to identify a single important truth I have learned
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Except through suffering, even what I gained through education came through hard work.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the times I have been closest to God have been the times when I knew I needed him most.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Charles Spurgeon spoke for me, I am certain that I never did grow in grace one half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, what bed of pain would you trust to your father's redeeming grace today?