Podcast 8: "Believe What You Want"?: Part 3
by Carl Atteniese IIThis is part three in my series called “Believe What What You Want”, questioning whether this concept is hurting us.In my last installment in this series, I mentioned that, because seemingly innocuous concepts are accepted as believable—or accepted as non-problematic, as notions acceptable to think—true and their lack of logic and evidence is ignored and given a social pass, we are having trouble with more consequential issues of a similar type. First, let’s look at the seemingly ”innocuous issues”:We generally accept–in polite company and even among family and friends–that some people have very different opinions on the truth or falseness of what are actually objective facts and non-facts. For example:I. The Moon (& Space Program) HoaxIt is an objective and historical fact—verifiable with millions, if not billions of pieces of documented evidence—that human beings have been to the moon—nine times, landing there 6 times, with twelve men having been on the lunar surface and 27 men having visited lunar orbit. The American space program—and most famously, what has come to be known as the heroic space age, beginning with “manned”, or crewed missions in Project Mercury, in the early 1960s, and arguably culminating in 1972, with Apollo 17 being the last mission in which Americans visited the lunar surface—is perhaps the most stunningly and thoroughly documented set of historical events in human history—having involved hundreds of thousands of Americans—up to this day—and the hundreds of people from different countries, there’s more evidence of this participation, there is more evidence of this participation, around the world–and it exists as history in the modern era—meaning many of us were alive during all the missions there—including this writer—who followed it and read about it voraciously! I should also add that I have friends in the space program—and friends of friends of friends—and I am friends with the family of some of the heroic astronauts of that period. So—it’s personal.Multiple countries have photographed the descent stage of the lunar modules and astronaut- & rover- tracks on the surface of the moon—and we still receive reflected-laser-beam measurements, bounced off devises left, there, on the moon for that purpose. Space programs thrive today in other countries—in Canada, Europe, India, China, Japan—and now in South and North Korea. Yet, astronauts have been accosted by bible-toting hoaxers, goading them to swear they waked on the moon. One such person harassed and upset Buzz Aldrin so, that the Korean-war-fighter-pilot, MIT-PhD-astrodynamicist, Gemini 12-space walker and 2nd man on the moon punched the pest in the face. John Young, the astronaut veteran of the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programs—who flew and tested the space shuttle on its maiden flight and walked on the moon—the man who carried the distinction of having flown four types of spacecraft—told the same man to ‘stick it in his ear.’ The disbelief on Young’s face was enough to know he was sure he was speaking to a man whom he thought was on the other side of sanity. Alan Bean, the first artist on the moon—who returned to Earth and launched his career as a painter of wonderfully original impressions of scenes from the missions—a famously kind and open astronaut actually hosted the same hoaxer in his studio and attempted to humor him by placing his own hand on the Bible and swearing for the hoaxer. This writer has witnessed, in many live-video coverage sessions of space-station-spacewalks in online chats—multiple people positing their assertions that the astronauts in such situations are ‘in swimming pools’ or ‘in front of a blue screen, aided by CGI.And I might add that—while I’m reading this—in a post on Twitter, I saw a flash on my screen from my NASA-friend Dr. Phil Metzger, now a professor of planetary science, who specializes in rocket engine ejecta. We know these people, is what I’m saying.)II. The ‘Flat Earth’It is an historically, mathematically, scientifically and photographically proven physical and geometrically-verifiable fact that the Earth is an oblate sphere—more typically expressed as “the Earth is round”—and it has been known to be such for thousands of years–provable every day by standard observations and especially with the advent of the aerospace industry—since nineteen-fifty nine.II. We have millions of photographs—and video—which lends itself to point number I (we’re now on point number II about “flat earthers”), as well. We have photographs of the Earth from space—and more coming every day. There is GPS- and other types of satellite—which are limited by reach for the curve of the globe under them occluding what is beyond that curve. We can see diminishing visual evidence of ships traveling over the horizon. We witness the Earth’s circular disk in shadow, eclipsing the moon and sun. We have the seasons—dependent on the curvature of the planet catching light and heat from the sun—in varying degrees different from one location to another, north to south and vice versa, hemispheric-ally, depending on our position in orbit—with summer in one hemisphere and winter in the opposite. We observe different constellations and pole stars north and south of the equator. Who would deny it is day in the Eastern hemisphere when it is night in the West? How would any of this be possible on a flat Earth? Furthermore, the Earth’s core rotates, giving us our magnetic field. Do flat-earthers think it is a disk, or a sphere embedded within the disk of a flat-earth? And—of course, these people could duplicate Eratosthenes’ practicum, measuring shadows in different cities to calculate the circumference of the Earth—the angle of which prove[s] that a staff used in two locations—more than 100 miles apart to measure [their] shadows, will indicate a different sun angle—which is caused by the hiding of some of [one] staff [with the northern-most one producing a shorter shadow in northern-hemispheric winter and the southern-most one doing the same in southern-hemispheric summer] in the curve of the Earth; this wouldn’t happen on a flat Earth. And Eratosthenes calculated, accurately, the circumference of the Earth over 2,200 years ago….III. ‘Miracles’It is an observable and documented scientific fact that no one we know can prove with evidence that any one of us–minus the aid of falsehood via technology–can be visited by “angels”, become pregnant without sexual intercourse, be guided by a moving star directed in its motion for one or a group, be “born of a virgin”, fly or hover without flying machinery, walk on a body of liquid water, trans-substantiate [inhabit multiple locations simultaneously], heal the sick without medicine or with hands alone, turn water into beverages—without factories—nor loaves into fishes, survive crucifixion when it has actually been performed correctly and the victim is actually dead, nor emerge from a crypt or tomb after actually having actually died.And yet–we accept social, familial an… This is a public episode. 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