The urge has passed. I certainly don't need to explain to you some of the ridiculous and ignorant assertions about PH, and the other folks here probably aren't interested anyway. The PH "conspiracy" is similar in so many ways to the Apollo Hoax, but it distressingly has much wider public acceptance. Many people who think an Apollo "Hoax" is silly are quite willing to say FDR "knew." But enough!

I'm going to run with this because it relates to conspiracy theories in general. You raise a good point about acceptance of the PH conspiracy. I know otherwise reasonable people (including my dad) who adamantly believe that the US government "knew." I'm not sure why this theory has so much more of a following; it's frankly somewhat perplexing. I can somewhat understand all the JFK CTs--after all, no one wants to accept that one lone nobody could have committed such a spectacular crime. But PH conspiracies make me scratch my head.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

It's odd, but the reason to believe in some giant government hoax over Pearl Harbor, or the World Trade Center, is that the event in question is so terrible and hurts so badly there is a want to know "why" it had to happen. Somehow war or terrorists or whatever real explanation is too bloodless for some people. Perhaps they need someone closer at home to blame and hate?

There is always some cry of "someone must have known/it was all covered up/the government planned it all" from everything from a large wartime casualty to a big mine disaster.

The moon conspiracy, though, doesn't fall into that catagory. I am unable to fully understand its draw. Sure, there is a "secret club" aspect, the "only I and a few select friends know the truth." There is the religious aspect; rarely made explicit and quite possibly unconsious, but certain things including genetic manipulation, discover of hominid fossils, and escape from Earth into the domain of Heaven seem to get a knee-jerk reaction from some mainstream Catholics.

I like the suggestion made somewhere above that the Moon Hoaxers also enjoy the feeling of superiority me and the NASA-geek high school kids I used to hang with had. Aka, that they know better science then the unwashed -- or at least are privy to inside knowledge about the science and technology that has greater and greater presence in our lives.

But why this? Better to believe as the hard-line Creationists do, that every science teacher of grade school and above is in on the conspiracy. There is just too much volume of data about the Moon Landings. Too much built, photographed, reported, planned, discussed...it would take a team several times the size of the one the landings had to fake all that data, and they'd have a much harder time keeping it all internally consistent. Not to mention this would be an international team with connections deep in the news and entertainment industry as well as all over government, industry, and academia.

The Moon Hoax kills itself in its own explanations for me. It is hoist on its own petard; if Hollywood had done it, they would have done a "better" job. The majority of the "clues" the hoaxers point out with glee -- missing stars, isotrophic reflectivity, behavior of dust with no atmosphere, lack of visible jets -- would all have been done wrong but convincingly by Hollywood. It is, in fact, the non-intuitive strangeness of the actual conditions that I find most immediately convincing. Real data is like that. Only faked data fits so closely to one's preconceptions.

I heartily agree: some of the alleged "anomalies" are more evidence in favor of the truth of the Moon landings than fakery because fakery would have met expectations better.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Something that came up in a recent conversation was the 'Shark Attack Conspiracy' that was building during the months before the eleventh of September 2001.

There was a series of media reports on people being attacked by sharks along the US east coast, while the actual cause of this series was the fact that it was a 'slow news' period, I can remember reading some claims that 'Terrorists' had unleashed 'trained attack sharks' to ravage America. I can also remember people (even in Australia) trying to 'make sense' of what was in fact just a quite random series of events.

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

My grandmother flatly did not believe anybody went to the moon. She was born at the turn of the 20th century and didn't have a great deal of education (she was actually quite intelligent, though). I remember when we visited soon after Apollo 11 (I was pretty young) and saying "Wasn't that moon landing fantastic, Grandma?"

"There wasn't any landing. It was fake," she said flatly. It took me some time to realize she was serious. My mother thinks that my grandmother still equated "space" with "Heaven" though she wouldn't actually admit it.

This may sound incredibly silly, but keep in mind that going to the moon was considered fantasy by most people in the '50s. (Even in the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet" they pegged the moon landing for the last decade of the 21st century!). Many people thought Kennedy's moon landing plan was insane.

The idea that the moon landing and the space program were fake was around from the start. You just had people looking for excuses for their belief. That's why they had traction - and it doesn't matter if the excuses sound silly to us, it only has to make sense to people who don't understand the issue in the first place.

I've thought that this issue of "space" and "heaven" being one in the same probably had a great deal to do with some people rejecting the concept that we went to the moon. Add that to the belief that anything having to do with space exploration has to be "science fiction" and you have extremely fertile ground for the idea of a moon hoax. I'd be curious to know if highly religious folks believe in the hoax more frequently than non religious people...but that's an issue for another place and time.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

No idea if they do or not. I think the main thing is an ignorance of science really, so it probably affects people across the board.

I can understand the confussion though as there are a number of "heavens".

There is the 1st heaven - the atmosphere. The 2nd heaven - space, and the 3rd, God's seat. The 3rd is said to be beyond the 2nd, so take that as you may. I tend to look at it as outside of the universe be it dimensionally or physically.....

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

None of the high profile HBs are religious in any conventional sense of the word to my knowledge. The few HBs I have met have been more of the "maybe it is possible" sort. Bit like my friend at work who thinks that just maybe a plane did not hit the Pentagon on September 11. It would not say that religious people were any more prone to this mild form of HB than non-religious people. I would say that it is not religious belief that is the predeterminant, but whether or not one is inclined to a conspiratorial socio-political world view.

Jon

Even my grandmother wouldn't personally admit she thought space=heaven (my mother thinks she did, however), but she definitely didn't have the concept of the moon being a world in orbit about the earth. It clearly wasn't real to her, hence it wasn't possible for people to go there.

The question at the beginning of the thread was how the hoax started - for some at least, it was that they simply couldn't accept that people could go to a light in the sky. To some, it was impossible, or at least made no sense in their world view.

(Incidentally, going back to the top of the thread, John W Campbell was known for writing very provocative editorials, and wasn't above lying through his teeth just to get a rise out the magazine's readers. He may really have believed it was a hoax, but I wouldn't be surprised if he knew it was real. He had even written a story himself about a flight to the moon and easily understood the astronomical details.)

IIRC Bart Sibrel is a member of some odd christian sect. His attitude toward the moon hoax is reminiscent of his approach to religion. This was discussed some time back here. I don't feel like bothering to look it up - can you imagine how many references to Bart Sibrel there are on this page?

I think this is the thread you're referring to. And a search for Sibrel turned up 1233 posts.

Scott, Irishman, that is interesting info, thanks. But the question still remains, is Sibrel a HB because of or independent of his association with the ICOC? Does the ICOC formally hold to such a position, or does its methods presuppose its members to such beliefs?

Jon

It's really appropriate somehow that a google of ICOC provided this link first. Now to start a thread about the possible Sibrel-Resenmut link/alter ego. 8)

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Now, now Maksutov, you know you are supposed to just say no to rugs.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

My house has nice hardwood floors. I think you need to direct that admonition towards Bart, senmut, and the ICOC. 8)

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Uh Oh! I have rugs, oriental rugs! Does this mean I'm in any sort of danger? However, my rugs have more of a floral theme...no planets. Hmmm...."Day of the Triffids" just popped into my mind.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

That is an important question. I wrote in response to this statement:

I remembered that previous conversation linked by scottmsg. Specifically, Bart Sibrel self-identifies as a christian, and uses religious arguments as part of his justification. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment, but I was trying to fill in the gap in knowledge that at least one high profile HB is religious.

The more important question is the one you raise, do his religious beliefs have anything to do with his hoax beliefs?

I don't really know Sibrel's religious beliefs, nor the beliefs of the ICOC. I only looked it up in response to this. From what I gather, there is no overt link between the moon hoax beliefs and the teachings of ICOC (or the Nashville Church). There is no reason to believe from anything so far presented that the ICOC or Nashville Church give a hoot about the moon hoax topic.

If there is a connection, it falls in the realm of mindset. From what I read on the REVEAL website, the ICOC methods are very cultish, and the attitude cultivated in the church is very much one of submission to your superiors in actions and beliefs. They teach a very supremist position that the only "True Christians" and only really saved people are members of the ICOC, those that have been "baptised as a disciple". They exclude not only all other religions, not only all other denominations, but even the other Church of Christ churches on these grounds. They combine this supremist position with a strong urging to proselytize. They are practically demanded to seek out converts. This pairing of ideas seems to me to set one up to have an attitude of superiority in thinking you are the sole holder of the truth, and to stand your ground against all forms of confrontation.

That type of mindset is exactly what Sibrel brings to his moon hoax position. He states he would bet his life that he is correct and the Apollo missions were a hoax, and I believe he is sincere. I think he truly believes that and thus feels justified to go to any lengths whatsoever to bring the story to light - including harassment and abuse of astronauts (who must be in on the hoax). And he must interpret all evidence to support this position, thus he cannot see the film as anything but the astronauts preparing a hoax, not the innocent rehearsing prior to broadcast. He holds his beliefs on emotional grounds and can't be swayed by anything.

Thus the swearing on the Bible being so important to him. If they won't swear on the Bible that they really went, then they must be lying and afraid of God's retribution. Of course if they do swear on the Bible, then they're just evil people who don't care about God, so aren't scared to swear a lie.

To tie this to your ultimate point, is there anything about religious belief in general that makes one suceptible to hoax belief? That's hard to say, because I don't think it is cut and dried.

Thanks irishman very interesting.

So perhaps it would be true to say that while Sibriel's views do not have a formal religious foundation, they have a religious flavour because of his own convictions.

In this case his insistance on oath-swearing is an interesting observation, because many Christians object to oathswearing on principle, whether on the Bible or anything else.

Cheers

Jon

In my experience those who have a poor approach to science also have a poor approach to religion -- more specifically, to their own religious beliefs if any. Conspiracists tend toward fundamentalism in religion, adopting rigid interpretations of the religion's teachings. In both cases the adherent seems to thrive on opposition, believing that if one's beliefs are opposed (regardless of the reason) then he or she must be "on the right track."

Dogmatism applies in both cases. One's interpretation of religion is simply defined as infallibly correct simply because it is the axiomatically infallible tenets (e.g., the Bible in the case of Christianity) that is being interpreted; the authority of the source is inappropriately carried into the interpretation. All questions that the religion addresses are addressed in black-and-white clarity. Similarly, conspiracists approach science in the same simplistic and dogmatic terms: shadows should be parallel and that's all there is to it.

In Sibrel's case, a fair amount of direct denial is required. Footage that directly contradicts his cutout or transparency argument is on the reel he saw. Sibrel makes the mistake of showing us the slate frames on his original footage, allowing us to narrow down his source to one single reel of videotape. We know now exactly what he was looking at. And on that reel is a glimpse of Earth through the window, from close up -- not across the cabin -- showing the frame in the picture. The camera moves, giving us appropriate parallax. It is one thing to allow one's interpretation of facts to be skewed by one's preconceptions. This is hard to avoid even for the seasoned researcher. But it is quite another thing simply to ignore pertinent facts that directly and conclusively contradict one's findings.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yes.

It's only a mistake if Sibrel is consciously trying to pull something over on us. But if he believes what he's saying, then he's consciensiously citing his source, and validating that it's real film. That it is useful in refuting him is irrelevant. Again, he's in denial, so he sees what he wants in it.

Yes, it would take someone either intentionally hiding the facts, or someone truly delusioned. Or both. How about someone delusioned enough to think he's right no matter what the evidence says, because the evidence is tainted anyway (it all comes from NASA). So it's perfectly acceptable to misrepresent what's shown to tell the story you want to tell, because that's "the truth".

It's only a mistake if Sibrel is consciously trying to pull something over on us.

Yes, that's what I meant by "mistake". I think Sibrel honestly believed no one else had ever seen his raw footage or would ever see it again. That gave him a sort of carte blanche to characterize it as he saw fit, whether out of deliberate malice or out of delusion. The slate frames identify it as a videotape made at Honeysuckle Creek during the first day of the Apollo 11 mission.

But if he believes what he's saying, then he's consciensiously citing his source, and validating that it's real film.

He did that by showing the disclaimer. The slate frames are meant to document when certain clips were taken (although Sibrel liberally cuts between different telecasts without warning). The argument goes, "See, this clip was shot on such-and-such a date when the astronauts were supposed to be tens of thousands of miles from Earth, but they were really in low Earth orbit." In other words, it's just an elaborately stated claim with little substantiation.

Later a different slate frame is shown for a later telecast, and Sibrel says, "A cutout was placed over the window and the camera moved to the back of the capsule to simulate photographing a distant Earth." Again, merely a claim -- a wild story -- with little substantiation.

The only attempt at substantiation comes when Sibrel points to the very bright Earthlight when Buzz opens up the f-stop to photograph inside the capsule (something he should understand, being a cameraman). He says the full glow in the window "reveals" that the capsule is in Earth orbit, and that other windows are glowing too (something that doesn't fit this theory either). He tells his viewer that only a few seconds of all this hour-long footage was ever broadcast, but that's just wrong. Either Sibrel is trying to reinvent history, or he honestly doesn't know that the telecast lasted 30 minutes and included the footage of the glowing window -- the "reveal". What Sibrel claims is "backstage" footage that "reveals" his theory, was instead broadcast live on television for millions of people!

Here's how that works.

The Honeysuckle tape contained about an hour of footage. The last thirty minutes of it was the live telecast that happened at about 34 hours into the mission, from an altitude of 130,000 miles. The previous portion of the tape is two or three telecasts, amounting to about half an hour, that were never sent live to Houston. They were recorded at Honeysuckle Creek because the microwave television link to Houston wasn't always set up. Each of those clips has the blue slate frame, documenting when it was recorded. In one of these legitimately behind-the-scenes videos, the astronauts discuss what they will say and what camera settings to use. There's a three-way conversation between the crew, the flight controllers, and the HSK ground controllers.

Sibrel either believes, or wishes to convey the notion, that almost all of this was raw footage and that very little of it made it to the air. He seems to believe, or wishes to convey, that the astronauts sent an hour of raw footage to Earth from low Earth orbit, that was to be edited together into the "live" telecast, using low-tech tricks to simulate the distant Earth. He seems to believe, or wishes to convey, that this "raw" footage reveals the way the trick was accomplished, by showing the full glowing window.

Yes, it would take someone either intentionally hiding the facts, or someone truly delusioned. Or both.

Yes. We can see on our monitors exactly what Sibrel saw on his monitor. He may have been fooled by the ominous (to him) disclaimer frame at the beginning, saying that the footage was not for public consumption.

Because the microwave link was only set up at certain times, the ground stations waited until the link was connected and then played their videotapes over it so that they could be recorded at Houston. HSK edited the telecast tapes together into a one hour "file" program which they transmitted afer the live telecast, or at some other time. NASA TV does that still to this day, broadcasting raw footage over its satellite link. At the time this would have been faster than trying to physically transport the videotape to Houston from Australia.

It's possible Sibrel simply assumed that all of his tape was backstage footage and didn't check to see how much of it was actually telecast. (Most networks carried the 34h GET transmission in its entirety, clipping at most a few seconds from either end.) Unfortunately his "backstage" footage with the glowing window went out live (or "live" as Sibrel phrases it). If what we saw on television was an edited version, why was the smoking gun left in? Sibrel either does not know or doesn't care that his understanding of who saw that footage is completely wrong.

But the most telling footage, which Sibrel ignores entirely, is the behind-the-scenes footage where the camera is very close to the window and you can see the window frame. And in the distance you see the small Earth. As you know, if you stand near a window and look at something in the distance through it, moving your head causes the distant object to change position with respect to the frame, or vice versa.

So two questions come to mind. Why doesn't Sibrel account for this evidence in his theory? He must have seen it because it was sandwiched between two clips from which he shows slate frames. It's possible he didn't notice it. It's possible he saw it and simply deluded himself into thinking it really wasn't there. It's possible he relied on his belief that no one else could get that footage to let him use only the bits and pieces he liked.

The other question is why that footage doesn't appear in the final telecast. If we accept for the sake of argument that the footage was faked, and that this reel of raw footage was intended to be edited together to make the telecasts, why not use it? It's much more convincing than any of the other "backstage" footage. Nobody who saw that footage could reasonably believe this was being done with darkened capsules and cutouts or transparencies.

When it comes down to it, Sibrel presents no real evidence. He just repeats his claims over and over again in different forms. "Here the astronauts claim they're 130,000 miles from Earth, but in reality they're still in Earth orbit." That's not an argument. That's just gainsaying. Doing it over and over again doesn't make it any more true. "The frame appears to show a distant Earth, but the Earth is really only a hundred miles away." Again, no evidence: just a statement.

This would fit the pattern of delusion. A delusion seems self-evident to the person making it, so stating a delusional claim as if it were fact is the same as a rational person saying, "The sky is blue," or "That train is loud." But we have to look at Sibrel's other behavior. Luring astronauts to interviews under false pretenses and deliberately provoking them into embarrassing behavior suggest to me malice and intent to deceive.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

They were recorded at Honeysuckle Creek because the microwave television link to Houston wasn't always set up.

Do you mean Goldstone?

I mean all the ground stations capable of receiving television. And by microwave link I mean the rather complicated connections -- involving microwave and satellite systems -- that were required for television bandwidth, as opposed to the permanent setups for voice and telemetry. I'm not trying to oversimplify the MSFN, merely point out that television connectivity to Houston was not a full-time proposition and that the infrastructure necessary to do that was scarce enough that it had to be used for other purposes when not used for Apollo.

Mike Dinn explained this to me, so he'll necessarily have a Honeysuckle Creek bias.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base