121–130 of 201 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others.
Parent comment said nothing to gain from. Pascal's wager (at least) would suggest some kind of logic to it
Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax or that there's some kind of conspiracy about vaccines. Have you ever tried to get thousands of people to cooperate on anything, let alone perpetuate a massive lie, when they have nothing to gain personally from doing so?
They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.
They would have you believe that the United States Government perpetrated a gigantic fraud on its citizenry. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened, by any government. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lie could be described using the exact same sentence, and that wasn’t even twenty years ago. Not defending the moon landing doubters, or conspiracy theorists in general, but: the proper response to…
I think you're missing the point that Armstrong tries to make. While he indeed starts with your selective quote, he then goes on to say that it is rather unlikely that the government would get away with a fraud of that scale. If nothing else, then simply because of the amount of people involved in the moon landing, and third parties that then and still to this day are able to confirm that the moon landing actually happened.
My experience is also that people who trust the tales of a conspiracy over a wide array of substantial counter arguments are simply not open to actual counterfacts from others. It's like fake news, the conspiracy supports their believe system, and rational arguments to the contrary simply isn't effective.
Still I agree that conspiracy nuts need to be confronted. Perhaps though, not so much in an attempt to convert the believer as to stop them from spreading the conspiracy to others.
They would have you believe that the United States Government perpetrated a gigantic fraud on its citizenry. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened, by any government. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lie could be described using the exact same sentence, and that wasn’t even twenty years ago. Not defending the moon landing doubters, or conspiracy theorists in general, but: the proper response to…
Wasn't the wmd not a fraud? It was just overselling a truth. IIRC the claim was that Saddam Hussein had ceased reporting the location of stockpiles of nuclear material that the UN used to keep track of. The sin of the bush administration was that they sold it to the public that this was a national security threat even though they knew it was very lightly enriched and counted on the public not knowing or caring (remem…
Colin Powell stood up at the UN to present the world his Power Point of lies:
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think OP is being reductive, but at the same time, people do make new religions. We usually call them cults. Christianity didn't get a billion followers overnight, it took literally 2000 years of proselytizing. Who knows, the scientologists of today might be the mainstream religion of tomorrow
Cults are cheap, they come and go. Religion - a true one, that's what counts. Cults we've had in the high school, nobody remembers them after a while.
He dictated the last few words on his latest iPhone to save time before telling Siri to send the email - magically connecting himself to the fraudulent spaceman, bits of data flying over air in an instant.
"We are still thousands of years away from having the technology to fly to the moon", he chuckled. He turned his lights off, sank back into his bed. Content.
Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax or that there's some kind of conspiracy about vaccines. Have you ever tried to get thousands of people to cooperate on anything, let alone perpetuate a massive lie, when they have nothing to gain personally from doing so?
They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think OP is being reductive, but at the same time, people do make new religions. We usually call them cults. Christianity didn't get a billion followers overnight, it took literally 2000 years of proselytizing. Who knows, the scientologists of today might be the mainstream religion of tomorrow
Cults are cheap, they come and go. Religion - a true one, that's what counts. Cults we've had in the high school, nobody remembers them after a while.
And cults turn into religions all the time. There's a fine line between a cult and a religion, and that line is ownership of real estate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Did you try to establish a new religion? L. Ron Hubbard. Church of Latter Day Saints. There have been major religions established in the last 2 centuries in the USA alone.
Those are not major enough, not billions. 2 centuries are longer than Moon controversy, though not by much.