We are going to discuss a controversial theory here. That humans never landed on the moon as shown on television, but ‘landed’ in a Hollywood-studio without stars. In order to prepare yourself for the landing, we need to become a little philosophical first.
OK, assume you’re starting off as an atheist: A ‘non-believer’ that claims to be rationally confirmed by the non-existence of ‘God’ because ’the science’ says so. This happens to be your favorite ‘argument by authority’, so much liked by your equally smart atheist friends.
They and you- according to these ‘science’ views- evolved their truths by random bio-chemical processes, to enhance the survival and proliferation of their DNA. Just like you: even when atheists have much less children then religious people on average, what you believe must be ’true’.
Because The Science says so.
So, while out there when Atheists socialize with their selfish-gene-directed biochemical coincidences dubbed ‘friends’, then there are these Jesus-people…the irrational ‘believers’. People who firmly believe they are the initiated in some vague ‘spiritual’ thing, true believers bound for the kingdom of heaven. Actually, there are quite a lot of them, up in the billions.
Now who’s ‘right’? And what belief is more ‘crazy’?
Sane and Insance
This question is not an introduction to some ‘religion’-debate, but to a more fundamental issue, in preparation to a bumpy moon-landing: how to determine that you are ‘right’, by more than confirmation of ’the facts’ presented to you by people you want to be identified with as equals? This means your peers, parents, state-education and media..
What is ‘being right’? Is this a mere question of technical evidence? For every argument, sooner or later always a counter-argument comes available, theories come and go. What guides your selection, of which facts to discard? So what makes you chose, if it is the one compilation of facts building the accepted world-view or the other? Social pressure? The social status of the messenger?
And where do you stop in the chain of reasoning, claiming the case has been satisfactorily solved?
Is the endpoint in the chain of reasoning determined by ‘reason’? Or by a sense of ‘satisfaction’ that enough is enough, some ‘feeling’ to having found some solid ground, intellectual safety. Does your fabric of facts enhance your sense of identity? Does it bring you power over others.
Or is it the knowledge itself that is the reward?
For example, the Atheist universe after the Big Bang-theory requires the Multiverse-theory. This means the existence of endless possible universes in multiple dimensions. So that in some dimension, you will have this unlikely Universe as ours, where al ‘natural constants’ are as they are. So that Life is possible.
This means, that there must also be a universe where Jesus sacrificed His life/Easter Weekend for our sins, some smart-ass-Christian could answer.
The point here is then: You don’t solve the argument on solid ground of indisputable fact. But you are instead satisfied with a belief motivated by desire. After reasoning from biology to chemistry to physics to astronomy, after all this science and intellectual exploration, you end up at the social starting-point: the belief of you with your peers, that you want to be associated with.
Which for atheist materialists who claim to defend ’the science’ means: not those pesky Christians with their outdated faith. And of course in reverse.
To my belief, the question ‘who is right’ can never be answered without involving some moral component. That you arrived at a view that is ‘good’, is a moral decision. The choice is between living in a Moral or A-Moral universe, which may also be the litmus-test between a ‘sane’ person and the insane.
To judge if someone is ‘sane’ is thus more than a matter of fact, but of recognising one’s moral stature, the desire to know the truth.
The Lie is the norm in the social fabric
‘Truth’ seems an irrational concept in the light of Atheist Materialism, where all thinking is an epi-phenomenon of biochemical processes. And thus – in this view- reason is a mere by-product of biological evolution to enhance species survival
This survival-concept of the human byproduct of coincidence, has no message whatsoever to metaphysical constructs as ’truth’. Maybe ’truth’ then instead is a mere desire, or it has a desire as a prerequisite. Which places truth more in the realm of morality, a desire to weigh existing evidence in an honest way.
So that a person who is convincing, does not only get ’the facts’ right, but demonstrates the willingness to do so. It is ‘good’ to pursue ‘The Truth’, we desire ’the good’. Thus ‘being right’ about something necessitates a moral component, not mere technicalities.
Atheists believe it is ‘good’ to believe there is no Moral Universe, because they assume to be more truthfull when thinking so. Just like postmodernists state that there is no truth, except their truth of their own relativism. So after 2500 years of Western philosophy ’the intellectuals’ have not evolved beyond the concept ‘everybody is stupid, except us’.
Which is the profane interpretation that Christians to some extent also have for the past millennia: we go to heaven, they don’t.
So then what about Truth in technical terms, if tribalism is such a great determinator? And if ’the facts’ are used as social attributes, to signal a belief-system to your peers and ‘enemies’.
Maybe The Lie is the norm, and Truth the exception. Therefore, most of the time what is regarded as ’true’ is not something that is supported by the weight of evidence. But by the weight of cumulative human flesh supporting a mental concept in a given area, social pressure. We constantly ‘lie’ a wee bit to people we love, in order not to offend them.
The person we lie the most to is ourselves, and this happens to be the one human being on Earth we love the most.
Nazi’s and CIA-spies would never lie!
So to what ‘White Lies’ must a State be capable in order not to upset it’s citizens, or lose it’s social status in worldly affairs? And when does a ‘white’ lie become pitch-black?
I pose this question because the seed of doubt has been planted by a hilariously funny but nevertheless convincing writer Dave Mc Gowan. On something I accepted for all of my life, the belief that Humans walked the moon. I drink coffee from a NASA-cup that I collected in Houston, saw the exhibition, been to nazi-scientist Wernher von Braun his V2-paradise in Peenemunde.
This reliable SS-officer Von Braun became the Apollo Space-programme’s architect. Together with other nazi’s imported with Operation Paperclip by the OSS of Allen Dulles, the later CIA presided by persons like George ‘read my lips’ Bush. So who am I to doubt these nazi’s and CIA-spies their integrity.
That such honest people are capable of lying to their people about such a grand thing as landing on the moon….
Those evil communists, had already in 1958 launched a probe- the Lunar 3- that photographed the far side of the moon, so they claimed. They had their first man in Earth Orbit (Gagarin) and the first Earth Satellite (Sputnik). And they made the US and their Paperclip-nazi’s look like pussies.
A White Lie of State-proportions was more then welcome, in order to save face in the International Social Arena in the Cold War Space Race.
An operation that everybody then, 6 years before my birth watched on television. And who would doubt the projections from this new medium called TV, that even in my toddler-years in the late seventies only had 2 channels and black and white-colour, no remote.
So while remote-control was not yet available for most Dutch lower middle-class-families 10 years later, those Yanks did the unthinkable: landing humans alive on the moon controlled from a distance by Houston.
Magic technology employed by fearless superhumans
Their Astronaut tempers are so ‘cool’ and ballsy, that they performed experiments, moonwalked their boots off, performing as world class photographers with thick gloves on their hands, and without being able to focus or see through the lens with their helmets on. And then after days, they step back in an Eagle untested for Moon-conditions, that was assumed to fire it’s engine without failure.
They then safely docked the mothership- an untested procedure under these conditons- in Lunar Orbit at 4000 miles per hour. In a space suit that limited all movement and visibility, of which the current NASA claims it does not have the material to make them again.
The Challenger-programme in the eighties proved, that it was even then a challenge for Nasa to get people even safely in low Earth orbit of 200 miles. The Space Shuttle-programme presented us with multiple fireworks.
But flying to the moon a half million kilometres and back flawlessly 6 times (Apollo 13 exempted) was performed with technology that was 20 years more primitive. Of course the Home of Hollywood-bravery would never lie to us in the ‘cold’ war by way of movie-actors, while trying to beat the Russians in social prestige.
Those with doubt in their mind, therefore must be mad flat-earthers, ready for a mental institution.
The Greatest Conspiracy of All Time
So MacGowans point boils down to 1 basic: it was technically impossible back then, Nasa cannot even do it with today’s technology. The technical capacity to lie was greater than the technical capacity to land and return living astronauts to the moon. Then is MacGowan a crazy conspiracy theorist for presenting his case?
Let us first butcher this whole concept of ‘conspiratory thinking’, which was invented to make informed curiosity socially unacceptable. So that those with a rational self-image do not want to be associated with it, in risk of losing social standing.
Take Christians: they are all believers in a conspiracy theory that is socially accepted and immensely popular. A theory where behind the veil of Earthly life, hides a spiritual battle between God and Satan for your soul,. Which the latter is claiming, in order to fuel Hell’s fire.
The story- literally taken- is so absurd that it is too easy to make jokes about. Like ‘Jesus sacrificed his Easter Weekend for our sins’ in the final battle to settle the heavenly score. And then He went up to the Heavens, much Like the Apollo-rocket: this was the image in the print-Bible of my childhood.
Meanwhile there is a God that actually is capable of ‘blessing’ America, the Great Nation that put men on the moon a half century ago.
Now: Most of these Christian Believers are considered being sane citizens. As long as they pay their taxes and do not offend The State. Has Ronald Reagan ever been dubbed a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for asking the Lord to bless America? Or the Catholic JFK?
The christian belief in their millennia-old conspiracy theory – that Celestial Powers behind the scene rule the show- is socially accepted globally. As long as these powers remain invisible and difficult to prove. It’s only when people say that ‘God’ is talking back, that believers are sent to a mental institution and declared ‘schizophrenic’.
Or shut up somewhere in Guantanomo Bay.
So you are allowed to believe in God as long as you don’t hear or see Him. Because if you do, then you are declared ‘mad’. And it’s not just the low-IQ’s that raise their hands up to the Heavens and pray, talk to ‘God’, as Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project demonstrates.
Even the proponent of Neo-Darwinism Theodosius Dhobzhansky was a Russian Orthodox christian. (nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution) Even the smartest minds may carry beliefs that do not depend on technical evidence, that sound outlandish at closer inspection. And they still lead productive lives.
So one can even question the authenticity of the moonlanding-footage based on (missing) evidence for it’s technical possibility, and be a sane person.
Only sane people…
Maybe in a secular society the call to conformity to The State is even larger than in religious ones, Now an appeal to ’the science’ is presented, hard evidence, solid ground, ’the measurable’.
Psychiatry and psychology suspiciously look like Atheist Materialist-philosophy with medical pretensions. You are your brain. And if you think or behave ‘different’ from the social statistical ‘average’ of other biochemical- induced gene-proliferators, than something is dubbed a ‘disorder’. As if your rocket engine needs a repair by a technician.
Being declared ‘mad’ requires at least 2 people, with one judging so. It is not a physical condition like a broken foot, which I could have in complete solitude without a doctor telling me so.
In Atheist Technocracies that the Western nations evolved to, the condition ‘mad’ means that you are someone most people do not want to associate with socially. So it is behaviour with the risk of economic exclusion.’Mad’ may mean, that you are A danger to the social equilibrium in the production society.
Some ill-informed call this the ‘consumer’ society. While it is the other way around. A whole propaganda-industry of billions of dollars/euros is needed to create ‘consumers’ through mental manipulation and stimulation of their greed-center. Because there are producers who want these ‘consumers’ to exist perpetually and in growing numbers.
So production comes before consumption. And if the twain refuse to meet the State declares it is a ‘crisis’. And yes, maybe it’s just a crazy world, where people willingly accept beliefs that look more absurd at closer inspection.
…get State-funding to blow op the earth
If you fire rockets with a nuclear payload into the magnetosphere of the Van Allen Belt that shields us from harmfull space radiation, and then detonate them, you are not only considered a ‘sane’ person by The State. Your project in 1962 is dubbed ‘Operation Fishbowl’.
You are also subsidized with billions of dollars to go on ’testing’, just as when you blow up the Bikini Atol with an H-Bomb.
Oh and by the way, in 1958 there were equal rocket-tests – Project Argus and Project Hardtack- with nuclear payloads that were detonated some 100 miles above the earth. The nuclear fallout of electrons caused it’s own artificial ‘Van Allen Belt’, that was also detected by the Soviets.
These nuclear missile launches should have punctured a hole in the freshly discovered Van Allen belt. Later plans also involved puncturing holes in the Ozone layer above the South Pole for ‘weather warfare’-research.
Van Allen- the discoverer- summoned to make the Hardtack-‘research’-results publicly available, as several satellites where knocked out of functioning by the detonations. Ah, those where the days, of the Dr Strangeloves, who even fantasized about the civilian use of atomic bombs, detonating them to create artificial harbours in Alaska (google ‘Operation Plowshare’)
Why would a Nation that tries to blow up the magnetic shield that protects the earth from radiation, lie to us as big as with faking the moonlanding? A nation that commits genocide on 2 million Vietnamese with bomb carpets and chemical weapons, could it’s deep state-government be so bad?
Crazy Conspiracy Theorists!
And so we are back at the universe of Moonlanding-deniers. They say that 50 years ago it was technically impossible to transport living people alive to the moon, without being fried by the magnetic radiation of this Van Allen Belt, the space equivalent of the microwave oven.This is a reason why it has not been done in the 50 years since.
And that it was impossible to land flawlessly on the moon with completely untested equipment for moon-conditions. And then hopping around for three days eating, peeing and farting in your moonsuit, while being constantly bombarded by micro-meteorites. Dust from space that would puncture the space-suits, instantly killing you and boiling your blood.
However, against all logical odds: Not even one time, but 7 times in a row did the astronauts return unscathed, while on most rocket-missions these ballistics have a high risk of blowing up. For example, in my youth in the Eighties the Nasa’s space-programme was equivalent to a Fireworks-show.
Actually, even with today’s technology it would be impossible to not only fly tot the moon and back with live astronauts, and actually land them on the moon.
This is a reason why NASA claims it would take more years with current technology to plan a mission to go ‘back’ to the moon, than the meagre 8 years it took the US with half a century old technology completely from scratch.
Those magic Cold War years, when the US was waging a Hot War against the Vietnamese Communist-vermin. In a time, when the ‘silicon chip’ was regarded as a novelty.
And that one digital image of this website alone, would be beyond the calculating-capacity of the Nasa’s board-computers that put men on the moon flawlessly 7 times.
No stars in Hollywood
Let alone that these astronauts in their pressurized suits of 100 kg and helmets, would make these perfect compositions of photo’s of each-other. Without being able to adjust aperture and distance with their thick gloves. On film that is already even damaged when put through the radiation of the detector of an airport-security-device.
Let alone by the Microwave of the Van Allen Belt.
While Nasa had to send the Hubble-telescope in Earth Orbit, so that is is not hindered by scatter of the atmospheric water vapour to photograph the stars. On not one Apollo-photograph of the moon a star can be seen, states MacGowan. While the moon-sky should be crystal clear and full of stars without the disturbance of an atmosphere.
One would expect more stars, also if the photographs were taken in a Hollywood-studio. Let alone that there are no suits to withstand the sudden temperature differences of 100s of degrees on the moon.
Let alone that the magic space suits on the photo’s do not look pressurized at all.
Original footage ‘vanished’ and ‘moonrock’-forgeries
And then there’s so much more then that. For example, that all the alleged ‘moonrocks’ that were ‘collected’ are now ‘missing’, or forgeries. (…..)
For example, take the case of the ‘moon rock’ that was donated to the Dutch Rijksmuseum by the Apollo-Astronauts on their world tour. This was a forgery, as discovered in 2008. And then notice, that you do not need to go to the moon to collect moonrock. Because they are also found on Antarctica as a form of Space debris.
The Earth- like the moon- is constantly bombarded by meteorites and space dust. With the exception, that the Earth’s atmosphere burns most of the smaller particles, we are safe here. Not on the moon, were they can puncture your spacesuit and let you be sucked into a vacuum.
And did you know that all the original film-footage of the Apollo-missions is now ‘missing’, gone, Nasa lost it? The footage of the greatest technological feat in the history of mankind. Gone.
So while the Rijksmuseum is able to preserve the Nightwatch of Rembrandt from the 17th century, a painting that was even partly destroyed by former owners during moving to an other apartment in Amsterdam. A painting that was disliked and maltreated because it’s mastery was not recognised by it’s contemporaries.
The US Space Agency is not capable of even preserving the original footage of the greatest technological and scientific feat in human history, from just half a century ago. This seems somewhat odd.
Wagging the Moondoggie, a tribute to MacGowan (RIP)
All these, and many more unlikely details about the Apollo-programme necessary for the mission to be succesfull, not 1 time but 7 flawless times: I did not know until yesterday, not untill after reading Dave Mc Gowan.
His 14-part story ‘Waggin the Moondoggie’ is such a great read, full of hilarious details and a great sense of humor to digest it. So that I can recommend it to anyone that appreciates his style of writing, like that of an entertaining bar conversation with a Carlin-touch. It is not only all the details that are entertainingly shocking. But especially all the logical questions that he asks….
At the end, someone else may convince me of the counter-argument: we WERE on the moon. For every argument, some counter-argument can be made, and this happens to be the case in the Apollo-debate. McGowan sums it all up, the arguments of his ‘Debunkers’. And thus he makes his case highly believable.
More convincing then al the facts, is his sense of humor and some outrage with which dinner is served. These capacities may be the only way to separate a mentally sane and healthily curious person, from someone who is out of his mind. The most crazy people are those who firmly believe in their own sanity and higher morality,.
That they are somehow ‘better’ than you and me, in the God-seat. MacGowan seems to notice that there is also a component of ‘morality’ in truth. This sense of morality is what is fuelling his outrage. So to my definition, a ‘sane’ person is a man with morality.
The Motive of Lunacy.
I was a Believer who did not require any evidence beyond the social confirmation of those other billions who did not care either.I wanted to believe that humans are capable of such extraordinary feat a landing men on the moon.
I also got the sole evidence for their believe from the TV-screen and it’s many repetitions in media. Who would doubt that the Eagle had Landed in July 1969? The small step for Man, the loneliness of Aldrin when losing contact with Houston in the shadow of the Moon.
It is not that I desperately WANT to believe that the moon-landing was filmed in a studio. More to the contrary. However, I regard it now as more plausible then before, when I would laughingly refute such outrageous claims even weeks ago.
The most convincing factor of doubt is the political motive, that justified a lie of this epic proportions. The Apollo-programme was used as a diversion on television to make the nation look great, while committing atrocities in Vietnam. The US were losing the moral war on TV, and distraction was needed.
Wether it was technically possible or not, the pledge of JFK in 1961 to ‘go to the moon’ had to be shown to the American audiences and beyond.
Here came the Apollo-astronauts making America look great again. An Apollo Hollywood-show coinciding with TV-prime time 9:00. Adding more dramatic details like the failure of Apollo 13 starring ‘Tom Hanks’, to capture the attention of growing moon-wary audiences. And a roll of Duct tape saving the day.
We see the same diversion-tactic with Earth Day at 22 april, 1970 partly sponsored by CIA-man Robert O Anderson (Aspen Institute), where the Anti-Vietnam protests of California students in ‘Teach Inns’ were directed tot ‘Saving the Earth’,. With an Earth-image (taken with an unmanned US-probe in 1967) from space as Iconic motivation.
Spaceship Earth…
..hostilities seize together with scientific interest in the moon
As MacGowan describes: The Apollo-programme seized when the hostilities in Vietnam were drawing to a close. And suddenly all scientific interest in the moon disappeared for more than 40 years, together with all the authentic evidence that the astronauts have actually been there. How come, if the scientific community loses interest in it’s satellite it knows hardly anything of?
And with all the material, footage and possibilities now available, IF we actually landed on the moon? Why not return using much more advanced technology..
Then we may say that Houston did have a problem. They could not land men on the moon with ’60s technology, because they are incapable of doing it now. So Lunacy, madness is named after the moon that man may have never been to in flesh, although governments, history lessons and media teach us otherwise.
And the greatest lunacy of all may be a belief that The State, whether the US or the Russian- will never lie to us, while involved in a global arms race.
I’d rather believe in God then, if we return to the starting point of the discussion. The classic spiritual battle between Good and Evil. This old conspiracy-theory also embodies the hope that there may be some final celestial reckoning. A time when the evil-doers and liars get what they deserve. And the belief in a place where writers like the late MacGowan have their pint of heavenly beer served.
RIP and tnx for the hilarious information that was the best read in years.
Geweldige serie artikelen “Wagging the Moondoggie” van Dave MacGowan,
heb ze in een keer uitgelezen en brengt je echt aan het twijfelen, een aanrader!
V.w.b. de maanlanding vraag ik me altijd nog altijd af en ik heb er nog geen goede informatie over gevonden, hoe de shuttle en bemanning de ontsnappingssnelheid van de maan hebben bereikt. Deze is wel veel lager dan op de aarde, maar het moet nog wel ff gebeuren.
Vwb een andere consiricy, 9/11 vraag me altijd nog af:
– hoe is het mogelijk dat een vliegtuig met 1cm wanddikte aluminum, door 10cm dik staal komt. De gevel van het WTC was opgebouwd uit zeer dik staal en het gebouw was daarom bijzonder sterk.
Een beetje beschading, brand van de kerosine OK, maar meer niet.
– hoe kunnen die dag 3 gebouwen rechtstandig inzakken met de valsnelheid. In de natuur valt een constructie (dus ongewild) nooit rechtsstandig, maar altijd schuin om, neem een bouwwerk, bijvoorbeeld een toren. Er zit altijd asymmetrie in dus valt het schuin om. Om dat te voorkomen, worden, bij geplande sloop, zorgvuldig explosieven aangebracht om de toren zonder gevaar voor de omgeving rechtstandig te laten inzakken, met de valsnelheid als gevolg.
– waar is al dat staal van het WTC gebleven na het instorten. Er was heel veel stof maar heel weinig staal, het is niet verbrand maar had gewoon op een hele grote berg bijelkaar moeten liggen.
Gewoon logica.
Dirk van Noort wist al in 1981 te vertellen hoe het zat en kende geen twijfel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMkokpaAh78&list=RDFMkokpaAh78&t=3
..als je geen twijfel kent klopt er iets niet, we praten hier meer over kans-rekening, dat het waar kan zijn of niet: zoals MacGowan al schrijft kan hij de 100 procent niet geven, maar het officiele verhaal is ZO onwaarschijnlijk dat het bijna onmogelijk waar kan zijn…
Dat je 7 maal foutloos achter elkaar op en neer naar de maan vliegt en een module landt, terwijl je 20 jaar later nog stuntelt en regelmatig faalt om zelfs maar een Shuttle in een baan om de aarde te krijgen
Dat is onwaarschijnlijk.
En verder heeft hij me ook met zijn menselijke schrijfwijze aan het wankelen gebracht.
De wijze waarop hij het debat ingaat deugt, hij probeert niet de smart-ass uit te hangen in de hoop op sociale punten voor zichzelf (de typische houding van wat ik ‘het Linksche Thuigh’ noem, Links Liberaal zijn is een sociaal-morele aandoening, eigenlijk is iedereen die geestelijk onvolwassen en oneerlijk is een ‘links liberaal’)
Dat doet hij alleen door gewoon erg grappig te schrijven
Maar qua inhoud wil hij gewoon weten hoe het zit en verbaast zich.