Depends on the specific religion. Just look at how many denominations/factions there are in a given faith. And the article seems to be less targeting people h

Depends on the specific religion. Just look at how many denominations/factions there are in a given faith. And the article seems to be less targeting people having fun with the concept and more that fringe minority who take such things seriously, and perhaps indirectly journalists/bloggers who prey on such people for ad revenue. Also if there's one thing I learned over the past few years, never underestimate the ignorance of the masses. I remember reading about a lawsuit against Walmart, and the Walmart legal team released a pretty boring PR statement saying "we are looking into the complaint...blah blah blah", and the most up-voted comment was along the lines of "well you can tell how much Walmart cares about this lawsuit when they just dismiss it as a "complaint"". Never mind that "complaint" is just the correct technical legal term, you file a "complaint" with the relevant court to start a lawsuit. Not defending Walmart, but clearly a lot of people were getting spun up over nothing and reveling in it, and it isn't healthy. I imagine the Alien stuff falls into the same category, albeit less on HN than elsewhere.