Did we really land on the moon?

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CICFreestyler17
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Did we really land on the moon?

Post by CICFreestyler17 » 04 Sep 2011 18:25

So recently I suffered a concussion in training (MMA) and I have had a lot of weird thoughts and dreams. This is something I had never questioned before either. So I start googling and youtubing and all the conspiracy theorist pretty much had the same thoughts I was having. Basically that it was staged at area 51. Just curious what others think about this?

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Jeremy
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Post by Jeremy » 04 Sep 2011 19:03

People definitely landed on the moon.

Believing that the moon landing was faked is a classic example of confirmation bias and ignorance, where people who don't understand science look only for evidence that confirms their beliefs while failing to look at the explanations for why that evidence doesn't show what they think it does. They only pay attention to the positive evidence and not the negative evidence.

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Post by Jeremy » 05 Sep 2011 16:21

I realise now that this was a troll, albeit an amusing one. Good job.

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Post by CICFreestyler17 » 06 Sep 2011 04:08

Like I said, I had never questioned it, still believe we have but it just raised some interesting points. GOD, how can anyone possibly tolerate or like you on this forum? You are a know it all condescending asshole. This doesn't stem from this one post, I have been on here almost ten years following and I see the way you treat people. Especially when they don't agree with your beliefs. AMERICA is the greatest country in the world. Eat a dick. Now let me go get my thesaurus so I can comprehend your meaningless response.

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Jeremy
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Post by Jeremy » 06 Sep 2011 15:01

Look, your argument is; "I suffered concussion, which is a type of brain damage and then I realised that the moon landings were fake."

It's interesting that you apparently believe that to be true, while still stating that America is the best country in the world.

Anyway, if you really believe this is true, put forward the actual evidence.

Here's a good website that debunks the moon landing hoaxes.

http://www.clavius.org/

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Post by worldbound » 07 Sep 2011 06:37

Here are some neato photos of the landing site and tracks left on the moon. http://tinyurl.com/3dqax4r
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Post by CICFreestyler17 » 08 Sep 2011 21:37

Yes, a consussion is a type of brain injury. No I did not say I realized the moon landings were fake. I said I had thoughts that conspiracy theorists also pointed out. Like I said it is something I had never questioned before but upon further review others had similar opinions to my thoughts. I still believe we went to the moon and I was simply asking if anyone else doubted we did or had ever looked into it. Kind of like how some people think 9/11 was an inside job and there are many theories and no actual facts.

I'm sorry for being a harsh in the way I called you but it had been building up for awhile. I only said AMERICA and GOD to piss you off because I know you hate America and I know you're and atheist.

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Post by ThisIsFate » 09 Sep 2011 16:10

The question should be "Why there are no more moon landing since 40 years ago". :P
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Post by CICFreestyler17 » 09 Sep 2011 17:25

While looking into this subject a little bit I found that NASA funding was cut and there was a loss of interest among the general public after we had already been there. I find it weird that Russia never got to the moon and gave up though. I guess it looks like China will be the next to go to the moon.

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Post by Jeremy » 09 Sep 2011 18:09

A few points.

1. Firstly, as a very active skeptic, I have read a fair bit on the supposed moon landings. My opinions aren't based on speculation or dogma, but the fact that I have at least 3 books off the top of my head, two written by an astronomer (Carl Sagan), that have sections talking about the supposed moon landing hoax. I also read a lot of skeptic websites that have addressed the issue in the past - Phil Plait's (another astronomer) Bad Astronomy in particular.

2. It's a good rule of thumb, whenever you hear (or think of) a positive claim of this kind of a nature, to look not for evidence supporting it, but to see what evidence exists against the claim. In the case of the moon landing hoax, and indeed the 9/11 conspiracies, there is far more and stronger evidence against the claims then supporting them. If you look at all the evidence, the conclusion is obviously, but of course if you only look at the evidence for one side, you'll probably think that this side is true. "Rational" comes from the word "ratio" and is talking about the ratio of evidence for and against a claim. If you weigh up all the evidence on both sides you're being "rational." If you only look at the evidence from one side you are being "irrational."

3. Many atheists, including myself, use religious words such as "God" or "Jesus Christ" as interjections or exclamations. Such usage, which is the same usage you used, is considered blasphemy and indeed directly breaches the 3rd of the 10 commandments (or 2nd if you're a Catholic). You can probably see then, how you blaspheming was probably not insulting to an atheist.

4. I don't hate America. Indeed I think many aspects of America are excellent. I am also fully aware of patriotic Americans and seeing them express their love of their country is not something I find offensive, although perhaps I do feel pity and frustration with nationalists in general, including American nationalists, and I'm sure they'd find my pity offensive.

5. There's a big debate in the astronomy community about whether manned missions to space have provided any significant scientific value, apart from when repairing satellites (such as the hubble telescope). When you look at the amount of money spent, compared with the scientific gain, and then compare it with the money to gain of unmanned satellites, I think you can get a reasonable idea why there have been few moon landings and indeed a move away from manned space expeditions.

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Post by drillbit » 11 Sep 2011 18:48

there is no way ANYONE went to the moon
what a crock of shit

think about it......we cant cure cancer, cant fix an economy, cant fix clean water or hunger, cant find clean efficient fuels...........no way in hell we can send people into space and back alive. thats stoopid talk.

unless of course the aliens are involved and giving us their advanced mojo..........

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Post by Pinkus » 27 Sep 2011 02:21

The question is whether or not what they allowed us to see is the whole story or not. I'm positive we landed. The one thing that I wonder is if they are withholding any information from us.

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Post by Jeremy » 27 Sep 2011 14:20

But what kind of information would they be withholding, and why?

I was thinking about this yesterday watching the newest transformers movie. It seems to me that the notion of finding alien life and keeping it a secret is completely a Hollywood fiction and the opposite of what would happen if we did find evidence in reality. We can see this to some extent already with the overblown papers NASA publish every few years which invariably turn out to be wrong.

The discovery of alien life would almost certainly be made by scientists, who have three good reasons for immediately publicly publishing the results, and no reasons for even telling the government anything about their discovery before publishing.

1. Reputation; Science is largely judged by reputation - how many papers you've published, in what quality of journal, how many times they were cited, whether future work supports them. To gain a high regard as a scientist, which is the main measure of success, you need to make ground breaking discoveries. What would be more ground breaking than discovering aliens? Telling the government and have them cover up the event (why would the government do that, is another unanswered question) would be like having the choice between being the NFL MVP or being a coaching advisor. Surely everybody wants to take the famous position, especially if they chose to get into that field in the first place. Would a scientist want to be compared with Darwin and Einstein, and remembered forever for their discovery, or not?

2. Money; Big discoveries and a big reputation open the doors to funding and money. I don't just mean personal wealth, but funding to do more science. Even a PhD student at my small university at the bottom of the world can get grants in excess of $200,000. As the discovery of alien life you would be able get huge amounts of money to study whatever topics you want. A scientist who discovers alien life would be hugely excited because of the meanings for science and humanity, and the benefits to themself, and they'd write up the article and publish, or have a press conference first. They wouldn't even consider telling the government, or know who to tell.

3. Science; One of the key parts of science is repeatability and openness. Typically when you make a discovery, you then publish it in an open environment and people read the details, criticise your methods and repeat what you've done. When they come to the same conclusions eventually it becomes accepted as true. This is especially true of big claims. How would a discovery of alien life be verified? The government doesn't know how to do this, only scientists can. It would need to go through the normal processes of science. When you consider the previous NASA claims, any alien discovery would be initially viewed sceptically, and would need a rigorous examination of the evidence to be accepted. That wouldn't happen in some secret government lab, but only in a public scientific debate. One of the reasons many people cite for the US being so much better at science than somewhere like China is the US has such a strong culture of individual competition, while China does not. Science needs that competition to make robust discoveries.

The other question, that I raised earlier, is why would the government cover the issue up? When you look at past issues that governments have kept secret and then finally come to light, all of them relate to issues that if they became public would either be damaging to get the government re-elected, or would be damaging if the enemy they are at war with (or cold-war with) found out. Fair enough that governments keep secrets from people they are warring with, pointless that they'd keep a scientific discovery as profound as alien life secret.

The other issue is the impracticability. Imagine you discover some strong evidence of alien life tomorrow. What do you do with it? Which part of the government do you tell, in order for them to be able to cover it up? Would you actually tell a government department at all? There's just no system in place to deal with such a discovery.

So basically I think the idea of governments discovering aliens and keeping it secret is ridiculous, and is an invention of Hollywood that has become almost an accepted belief. The reality would be completely different. I think most cover ups are the same. I can believe in cover ups when people make mistakes, or behave illegally, but I can't believe in cover ups of science except when at war.

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Post by ThisIsFate » 01 Oct 2011 14:54

Transformer 3 sure is a good movie :D. I think by the meaning of the alien life which the government trying to cover up is not some microorganisms, but beings who are much more advance than human. If the government find a high tech flying saucer machine, I doubt they would make it a public and not keep it in secret and research it.
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Post by Jeremy » 01 Oct 2011 15:06

But how would the government be the people to discover this alien life? Organisations like NASA, SETI etc. might be government funded, but the people doing the research are just scientists, and the government only has control over them via legislation.

The only time I can envisage some kind of secrecy would be if the scientists weren't completely sure of their discovery, and want to confirm it before going public. There isn't even a system in place in which "the government" would find out about the discovery of alien life, until it's published. Unless it's a secret system, of course.

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