Does Bill Maher believe in extraterrestrial beings visiting Earth in UFOs?
Thought for 20seconds
Yes, Bill Maher currently believes that extraterrestrial beings (or non-human intelligence) are visiting or observing Earth via UFOs/UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).
foxnews.comIn a “New Rule” monologue on the March 27/28, 2026 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher (titled “The Disclosure Moment”), he stated:
“Given the increasing number in recent years of sightings by serious military personnel of unknown aircraft operating outside our apparent abilities, if at this point you don’t believe aliens are here and observing us, maybe you’re the conspiracy theorist. … They’re here, they came in a sphere, get used to it.”
youtube.comHe added that his view has evolved: “My opinion changes when the information changes.” Maher contrasted this with older abduction stories (which he dismissed as anecdotal from “rural people”), noting that current reports come from credible military pilots, intelligence officials, and bipartisan figures describing objects that defy known physics—accelerating instantly, moving between air and water seamlessly, and “playing peek-a-boo” with the military.
foxnews.comThis stance appears consistently in his recent appearances. For example:
- On his Club Random podcast with filmmaker Dan Farah (director of the UFO documentary Age of Disclosure, which Maher has promoted), he discussed government cover-ups of crashed UAPs, recovered non-human bodies, reverse-engineering efforts, and why disclosure could spark a global tech race.
youtube.com- He has raised the topic multiple times on Real Time in the past several months, treating recent UAP reports from “serious people” (military, politicians, officials with security clearances) as compelling evidence rather than fringe claims.
realclearscience.comCritics (including some skeptics and science writers) have called this a shift to “full-blown believer” territory and questioned the evidence, but the question is about Maher’s own position—not whether it’s correct. He has long been a vocal skeptic of pseudoscience and religion, so this represents a notable change driven by what he sees as accumulating high-credibility reports.
realclearscience.comIn short, as of early 2026, Maher explicitly accepts that extraterrestrial visitors are here and actively interacting with (or at least observing) us through these phenomena. He even jokes directly to the aliens in his monologue, asking them not to wipe us out while pleading for help with nuclear weapons and fossil fuels.
So, I may well have been wrong when I said Maher couldn’t possibly accept the existing “evidence” for aliens and UFOs. He actually appears to. I’d like to see somebody ask him the question straight out, and insist that Maher give a straight answer. If he said he was a believer, I have to say that my respect for him would plummet, for I see the evidence as thin. And where would those aliens have come from? Why hasn’t the nosey news media managed to sniff out the most important story in the history of humanity?
I don’t have any problem admitting I was wrong—I just want Maher to give a straight answer to a straight question. The Grok-ish answer above is, in my view, not dispositive.
I dunno. I watched the clip, and it seemed pretty obvious to me that his tongue was lodged firmly in his cheek.
Yes. Given his rejection of religious folderol, I would be shocked if he actually did believe in little green men. He did an awfully good job of making it seem rather foolish.
Aliens who are here and don’t reveal themselves–oh, except in little “accidents” that tip off their presence–may be one step less absurd that the all-powerful man in the sky inventorying the content of every human heart, but until there’s proper evidence, they go in the same bin.
“…sightings by serious military personnel…”
Well yeah, I mean when have THEY ever been known to over estimate their abilities?
Both my wife and I didn’t think he was kidding when we saw the show. “Believe” is a loaded word that gets thrown around in a lot of contexts. I am open to the “possibility” that Aliens are present. If so they would have to have technology as mysterious to us as an F-18 would have been to a Neanderthal. And those aerial videos, if true, that he showed appear to be mysterious. (I think they are likely very sophisticated manmade drones). If given the opportunity to ask the question, I would ask first “Do you suspect that Aliens are present?” Then ask “Do you believe that Aliens are present.”
For me, as a lawyer, I would require evidence that would be admissible in court that would prove the case without a doubt. I haven’t seen any yet.
I’m not sure if he really believes people were “probed” by aliens back in the 1950s, but I’m pretty sure he believes the strange blips on the computer screens are due to aliens. Well, it’s either that or some kind of software bug, or whatever. If your prior on aliens is near zero then you conclude the blips are due to bugs. If it’s not near zero the blips would move your prior much closer to 1. His prior was apparently enough so the blips are “conclusive”.
Given his history with vaccines it wouldn’t surprise me a bit that he believes that aliens from outer space live among us.
Right. I was about to say the same thing. Politically and socially, he seems to be a non-woke classical liberal like myself, Jerry, Steven Pinker, etc. However, he sometimes mentions “natural immunity”, vaccine scepticism in general, and about COVID in particular, with hints that the government might have used the pandemic as an excuse to place unnecessary restrictions.
There is almost certainly extraterrestrial life. Intelligent life? Civilization? Technology? Space farers? Unclear. Could the Solar System, perhaps the Earth, have been visited at least by probes, either recently or in the past? Maybe.
But as far as there being any evidence for the classical UFO sightings, abductions, etc., that has long since been settled conclusively: https://m.xkcd.com/1235/
That’s what popped into my head immediately.
He’s scolded on vaccines here.
https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/aap-voices/bill-maher-can-do-better-we-need-real-talk-about-vaccines/
The first thing I think of when I hear claims of UFOs is “how”? As in, how did alien creatures traverse the vast distances in space to get here, apparently in metallic space ships? I know that we can have evidence for something occurring without knowing how it occurs, but still, the more I learn about astrophysics the more I can see why physicists are usually quite skeptical of these claims.
For instance, the distances involved are truly vast. Voyager 1 was launched almost 50 years ago and is now about 16.0 billion miles away from Earth. That seems impressive, but that is not even 1 light DAY. A light year is approximately 6 trillion miles. At Voyager’s current speed (about 38,000 mph or 0.006% the speed of light), it would take it about 18,000 years to make it to a star only one light year away.
Just go faster right? Well, under what propulsion systems would we be able to get spacecraft near the speed of light? And how do you slow down from those speeds once you reach your destination? And for emphasis…even if we do somehow reach near luminal speeds, it would still take YEARS, perhaps CENTURIES, to reach inhabited planets. But there are enormous practical problems associated with so-called “generation ships”.
Therefore the only feasible way to travel around the Universe would be superluminal. But, this is impossible based on our current understanding. Per special relativity, nothing with mass (certainly nothing the size of a spaceship) can reach or exceed the speed of light, because as an object accelerates toward light speed, its energy requirement grows toward infinity. Infinite energy is impossible to supply, and thus superluminal speed is impossible. QED.
I think that the belief in visiting aliens is indicative of:
a) The poverty of science education in most countries, AND
b) The effect of mass entertainment on how most of us view the world. Movies, TV shows, novels, etc. showing spaceships effortlessly zipping across galaxies, ignoring all the effects of relativity (including things like time dilation).
For every one person that learned about space from Sagan, there are 1,000s of others who “learned” about it from Star Wars.
Yes, not much of any consequence is going on in the world, so great to discuss what Bill Maher thinks about UFOs
Around here it’s considered rude to tell our host what to write about.
What I mean is, the whole UFO issue was settled long ago when Dan Aykroyd shared his experiences with the rest of us. What else is there to discuss?
I’m fairly sure he’s a true believer. Here he is, two months ago, discussing this subject with Dan Farah, who directed the documentary, The Age of Disclosure:
https://youtu.be/op9ynXtXego?si=MP_L4P4t_0C3-Z9U
Oy. Too bad if he really does believe it. The problem lies in the probabilities. The probability that we are being visited is vanishingly small, so small that it’s not worth taking seriously.
The probability that we are being visited is vanishingly small, so small that it’s not worth taking seriously.
And of all things, it’s the proctologists from space that discovered our planet. Guess we’re really lucky.
He seemed to accept the existence of UCPs initially.
But his message to the aliens just reeked of sarcasm.
I’m not sure where he actually stands.
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out,” Carl Sagan
Steady, steady… hold, hold… I can see some oozing, careful, careful…
I generally find myself in complete agreement with his views. But (like everyone else) he has idiosyncratic blind spots. He seems to uncritically accept climate alarmism (and, yes I do believe that the planet is warming because of human activity) while at the same time being exceptionally critical of mainstream medicine. In the case of climate science, RCTs are impossible and reliance on complex models is required – the problem with modeling has been thoroughly explored by Steven Koonin, a physicist who was Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration (and now pilloried as a climate-change denialist by his opponents who seem incapable of addressing his arguments). While medical science is deserving of skepticism, at least the use of RCTs should make medical findings more reliable. At least when compared to climate models which have a number of inherent limitations and often contradict each other. Blind spot or not, however, I still think he’s the premier political commentator of our era.
This reminds me of a speech by then president of the EU commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who, during a speech at the tinme of the Brexit vote, said “One should know that those who are watching us from afar are worried. I’ve seen and heard several leaders of other planets who are very worried” about the direction the EU was taking.
Juncker is known for gaffes and might have been drunk or very tired, he probably wanted to say “other leaders of the planet”. But the whole passage was somewhat strange (immediately before he’d talked of “horizons the EU is flying towards which are those of the EU and the whole planet”) and got heavily edited in the protocols. My quotes are sloppy own translations from a video, his speech was French
I’m just glad that JD Vance is going to get to the bottom of the alien issue. I just read about an interview he did on the March 27th Benny Johnson podcast. Asked if he’d looked into it Vance said:
“I actually haven’t,” Vance replied. “I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”
And he also said:
“I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion,”
That gives me confidence.
But I’ve seen enough optical illusions in nature to believe that’s all the sightings are. I once saw what appeared to be a nuclear power plant cooling tower out on the ocean. It was foggy but the structure was quite well defined. However when the fog cleared up the tower disappeared with it.