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NASA Plus Clergy Means Aliens, Right?
It also means Ivy League think tanks.
The bait that lured our clicks was that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA hired clergy to introduce space aliens to Earth.
The switch that calmed our jets was that NASA funded a program at Princeton University’s Center for Theological Inquiry.
The center’s mission is to bring together leaders from across disciplines with theologians in a way that has a global impact.
It wants to share what they discover to inform the way people think and act. Imagine a think tank, plus theology with Ivy League branding that seeks to influence how you feel and act.
Alien expectations
NASA hired 24 theologians and paid the center a little more than a million dollars to think about what it means to be human or alien.
Their mission was to consider how humans might deal with intelligent life from another planet.
This is a far cry from news stories that made it seem like NASA specific aliens in mind or that we were due for another unexpected revelation about unidentified flying objects.
Those were two of the less alarming possibilities.