Greetings friends!

**#21** · **#21** by **Blackadder** » Jan 24, 2014 9:08 am

Welcome. On the occasions when I have engaged serious woo-heads and dug into why they believe what they do, I have found a deep-seated antipathy to what I will call the technocrats. That is scientists, physicists, astronomers, doctors and the like. They are described as "arrogant" and "unsympathetic" figures. This is possibly because the state of the art in these fields is so far beyond the everyday experience of the lay person that it's hard to understand. And scientists are generally not in the business of being warm and cuddly to the general public since that is not their aim. Add to that the cretinous reporting of science in much of the mainstream media, with especial focus on controversy and mistakes and you have a recipe for lots of people turning away from science and rationality to woo.

Now most of these people are not stupid. Ill-informed maybe, but not dumb. So they acquire evidence. Most of it anecdotal and most of it subject to huge confirmation bias, but nonetheless, it is evidence to them. If you layer on the blandishments of woo-sellers, who know exactly how to dress up bullshit to make it look scientific and know exactly how to push people's emotional buttons, you get some idea of what we are up against. The same applies by the way to all of the conspiracy cranks out there. Same process, different field.

So with all this arrayed against the rationalist, it's far from easy to convince such people that they are seriously wrong. In fact that's not even a fruitful thing to do. As Pelfdaddy said above, you have to engage them with respect and find some common ground. Find a subject where they do apply common rationality and start from there. There are more "sympathetic" figures in thw world of science, such as Nye, Attenborough, Cox, Roberts and others who are adept at educating without being condescending. Point them there.

Good luck with the moon landing one by the way. It's perhaps the hardest one of all since most of the counterevidence comes from NASA, which is regarded by most conspiracy loons as another name for the US Gubmint and having one too many "A"s in it.

**#22** · **#22** by **Calilasseia** » Jan 24, 2014 10:26 am

In answer to our newcomer, I have this to say.

Actually, most of us here don't even set out to try and make the conspiracy theory nutjobs wake up and smell the evidential roses, because like supernaturalists, they're implacably and irredeemably convinced of their own righteousness in the matter, as has already been noted by several other posters above. The reasons we take on the conspiracy theory nutjobs, are twofold: one: the proper business of discoursive diligence, i.e., ensuring that demonstrably false assertions do not pass unchallenged, and two, through said discoursive diligence, ensuring that the curious but otherwise uninformed are not misled by conspiracy theory assertions and apologetics, much of the latter being riddled with instances of discoursive mendacity of the sort we also see emanating from the dystopian parallel universe of creationism.

Sadly, the demise of the Richard Dawkins Forums deprives us of an easy means of educating the unwary with respect to the duplicitous nature of conspiracy theory apologetics. A prime case was provided over there by a user named "Oliver" (who, I emphasise strongly, is not the same person as the user here with the same user name). To distinguish between the two, I'll refer to our "Oliver" as "RO", short for "RatSkep Oliver", and the user over at RDF as "WO", short for "Wingnut Oliver".

WO was a particularly fulminating case, because he presented us with a genuine trifecta. He not only peddled Moon landing denialism with a level of obsession that was frankly inhuman, but also peddled creationist wankery and Illuminati woo. Indeed, in the case of his creationist outpourings, he brought a truly noxious mixture of juvenile playground taunts, abuse of discourse and rampant "Gish Gallop" assertionism to the table, earning much scorn and derision along the way. But it was his Moon landing denialism that saw WO's posts become practically self-parodying. In order to prop up his fantasies, WO ended up trying to assert that, wait for it, the Russians were part of the alleged "conspiracy", a suggestion so ludicrous in the light of the known facts, as to constitute WO's "Waterloo moment", as it were.

Fortunately, I preserved my own posts from that thread, and I think you'll find it instructive how those posts were responded to by WO, always assuming that his own regurgitations could be dignified by the word "response". The manner in which vast swathes of independently verifiable evidence, no matter how impeccable the provenance thereof, were hand-waved away with specious apologetic elisions, whenever said evidence did not genuflect before his presuppositions, whilst a veritable mediaeval bestiary of blind assertions and outright fabrications were peddled as The TruthTM, speaks volumes about the modus operandi that WO and his ilk routinely adopt. So much so, that this was one of the bodies of evidence leading me to generate an analysis of doctrine centred world views and the entire assertionist enterprise in general. It won't take you long to find my numerous posts on this latter subject here, but if you're interested in seeing the rebuttals of WO's nonsense at RDF reproduced here, this can be arranged. You'll find the posts in question not only instructive with respect to the matter of proper examination of evidence, but with respect to the aetiology of the entire assertionist enterprise, of which conspiracy theorising is a florid and particularly gangrenous subset.

**#23** · **#23** by **Sendraks** » Jan 24, 2014 10:31 am

Cali - I would love to see the WO posts and responses.

**#24** · **#24** by **Calilasseia** » Jan 24, 2014 11:13 am

Sendraks wrote:Cali - I would love to see the WO posts and responses.

You asked for it. Here's a distillation of some weapons-grade tard, and the firepower deployed to immolate it. :mrgreen:

Be prepared for a very long read ... in fact, it has to be split across two posts, because the content exceeds the maximum size allowed for a single post.

Welcome to Part 1.

Post #1:

Me at RDF wrote:Oh no, not more deranged nonsense. Let's take a look at this shall we?

oliver wrote:This may be well off topic but here goes..

Going to post more comedy blind assertions that are flatly contradicted by REALITY are you Oliver?

oliver wrote:Man never did set foot on the moon, it was entirely faked

This is total crap.

Oliver, the fact that observatories here on Earth are able to fire laser beams at the Moon, aim them precisely at arrays of retroreflectors placed there by the Apollo astronauts, the positions of which are precisely known, and are able to use those laser beams and the return echoes thereof to measure the distance from the Moon to the Earth with an accuracy of ten centimetres, flushes your drivel down the toilet. You're posting total and utter horseshit. Your "Moon landings were faked" tinfoil hat conspiracy bullshit is precisely that - BULLSHIT. The fact that you take this nonsense seriously merely demonstrates once again the brain-addling effects of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions.

oliver wrote:and having watched several documentaries on the matter

I suppose your idea of a "documentary" was Bart Sibrel's wingnuttery, is it?

Look, learn this lesson once and for all. Bart Sibrel is a WINGNUT. He is a FRUITCAKE. He is a COMPLETE AND UTTER MOON PIE. I wouldn't trust this cretin to tell me that two plus two equals four without independent verification.

oliver wrote:I am utterly convinced of this.

Crap. Once again, Capricorn One is NOT a documentary. Drop the absurd, moronic fantasies and start paying attention to reality.

oliver wrote:People even reported seen coke bottles on the set during the broadcasted “live” footage which wasn’t live at all.

Bollocks. This is complete and utter hooey. It's the fabrication of wingnuts who prefer to believe a Hollywood fantasy to REALITY.

oliver wrote:This was edited out before the next screening.

Poppycock. Complete and utter drivel.

Oliver, scientists here on Earth have been using those retroreflectors sitting on the Moon's surface for FORTY YEARS. Tell me, how can THAT be faked?

Moreover, the Apollo missions brought back several tons of Moon rock and regolith. Which have been subject to detailed scientific analysis. One of the details revealed by that analysis is that the regolith contains a substance known as nanophase iron, which can only be produced by cosmic ray spallation in vacuo. No environment exists on Earth that allows for the production of large quantities of nanophase iron. The 100 miles or so of atmosphere surrounding the planet sees to it that cosmic ray spallation of iron is vastly reduced compared to that taking place on a body bereft of an atmosphere, and that atmosphere also sees to it that any spallation iron that IS produced is quickly incorporated into iron oxides. It wasn't until 1996 that scientists figured out ways of producing nanophase iron here on Earth, and thus far, all the experiments aimed at producing nanophase materials have only been able to do so on a microscopic scale, such as this one in 2001. Another paper covering nanophase iron in detail, and its relation to space weathering, is this one:

Importance Of Space Weathering Simulation Products In Composition Modelling Of Asteroids: 349 Dembowska And 446 Aeternitas As Examples by Takahiro Hiroi and Sho Sasaki, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, 36: 1587-1596 (2001) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Hiroi & Sasaki, 2001 wrote:Abstract – Based on recent progress in simulating space weathering on asteroids using pulse-laser irradiation onto olivine and orthopyroxene samples, detailed analyses of two of the A and R type asteroid reflectance spectra have been performed using reflectance spectra of laser-treated samples. The visible–near-infrared spectrum of olivine is more altered than that of pyroxene at the same pulse-laser energy, suggesting that olivine weathers more rapidly than orthopyroxene in space. The same trend can be detected from reflectance spectra of the asteroids, where the more olivine an asteroid has, the redder its 1 μm band continuum can become. Comparison of the 1 μm band continuum slope and the 2/1 μm band area ratio between the asteroids and olivine and pyroxene samples (including the laser-treated ones) suggests that asteroids may be limited in the degree of space weathering they can exhibit, possibly due to the short life of their surface regolith. Their pyroxenes may also have a limited chemical composition range. Fitting the visible continuum shape and other parts of the spectra (especially the 2 μm part) has been impossible with any combination of common rock-forming minerals such as silicates and metallic irons. However, this study shows, for the first time, excellent fits of reflectance spectra of an A asteroid (Aeternitas) and an R asteroid (Dembowska), including their visible spectral curves, band depths and shapes, and overall continuum shapes. Our results provide estimates that Aeternitas consists of 2% fresh olivine, 93% space-weathered olivine, 1% space-weathered orthopyroxene, and 4% chromite, and that Dembowska consists of 1% fresh olivine, 55% space-weathered olivine, and 44% space-weathered Orthopyroxene. These results suggest that space weathering effects may be important to the interpretation of asteroid reflectance spectra, even those with deep silicate absorption bands. Modified Gaussian model deconvolutions of the laser-irradiated olivine samples show that their identity as olivine remained. The most recent submicroscopic mineralogical analyses have revealed that the laser-irradiated olivine samples contain nanophase iron particles similar to those in space-weathered lunar samples.

Oh look. Real experimental work as opposed to the erection of rectally extracted assertions on the Internet. This is how it's done, Oliver.

Basically, what these scientists did was to subject olivine and pyroxene samples from Earth to irradiation intended to simulate space weathering, then observed the samples spectrocopically, in order to determine the presence of nanophase iron, and then used this information to re-evaluate the spectra obtained from observations of two asteroids. When this was performed, the spectra of reflected light from those asteroids was consistent with the presence of space weathered materials.

Once again, Oliver, real science says you're talking horseshit.

oliver wrote:Back then we didn’t have the technology to travel to the moon and besides, radiation just beyond Earths atmosphere is too dangerous to pass through and would kill a human.

This is complete bullshit.

Oliver, the Russians had men living in space aboard the Mir space station for periods of over a year at a time. There are people living right now on the International Space Station who have been in Earth orbit for extended periods of time. For example, from this page, we learn the following:

NASA ISS Page wrote:Commander Oleg Kotov

Cosmonaut Oleg Kotov will serve as an Expedition 22 flight engineer and Expedition 23 commander. In 2007 Kotov served a six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station as an Expedition 15 flight engineer.

Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly to the station aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft to serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 22 and 23. Previously, he flew on STS-114 Discovery in 2005 and participated in three spacewalks.

Flight Engineer Timothy J. (T.J.) Creamer

NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer will fly to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft to serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 22 and 23. This is his first spaceflight.

Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri

Cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri will serve as an Expedition 23 flight engineer and Expedition 24 commander. A veteran of four previous spaceflights, Kaleri last stayed aboard the International Space Station as an Expedition 8 crew member from October 2003 to April 2004.

Flight Engineer Tracy E. Caldwell

NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell will fly to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft to serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 23 and 24. In August 2007, Caldwell visited the station as an STS-118 Endeavour mission specialist.

Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko

Selected as a cosmonaut in 1991, Mikhail Kornienko will travel to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft to serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 23 and 24. This will be Kornienko's first spaceflight.

Oliver, these are REAL PEOPLE who have FLOWN ON REAL SPACE MISSIONS. Two of them SPENT SIX MONTHS IN SPACE ON PREVIOUS MISSIONS. Once again, you are talking horseshit.

oliver wrote:Leaked NASA footage and tonnes of other revealing evidence testify to the hoax

Crap. ALL of the tinfoil hat wingnuttery has been debunked. You're talking horseshit.

oliver wrote:and even the crew when interviewed gave different accounts of a certain same event.

And if they'd given the same account word for word, tinfoil hat wingnuts would simply say that this had been pre-rehearsed. Look Oliver, we KNOW how the minds of tinfoil hat wingnuts work. They resort to the same apologetic processes as creationists, cherry-picking material to force-fit to their pre-formed conclusions, and ignoring anything that flushes those pre-formed conclusions down the toilet.

oliver wrote:There was much more at stake here and America would not have the Soviets beat them to it therefore drastic action had to be taken.

How come the Russians don't say it was a hoax, Oliver? The Soviet version of NASA admitted that they'd been beaten to it.

Plus, how come transmissions from the Moon were picked up by radio antennae in other countries?

For example, a favourite claim of conspiracy theory wingnuts is that the Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Aside from ignoring the fact that the telemetry tapes from Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 are still in existence and available for appropriate scientific scrutiny, the Parkes Observatory in Australia picked up the slow-scan television pictures from Apollo 11, which was then recorded onto 14 inch tape, before being subject to a scan conversion for broadcast on American TV. Here is the Parkes Observatory's online version of the paper that was submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Now, why would an Australian journal have any interest at all in supporting a purported "hoax" originating from the USA?

Incidentally, here is the paper in question for those who want to download it. Namely:

On Eagle's Wings: The Parkes Observatory's Support Of The Apollo 11 Mission by John M. Sarkassian, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 18: 287-310 (1st July 2001)

I quote therefrom:

Sarkassian, 2001 wrote:Abstract: At 12:56 p.m., on Monday 21 July 1969 (AEST), six hundred million people witnessed Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the Moon through television pictures transmitted to Earth from the lunar module, Eagle. Three tracking stations were receiving the signals simultaneously. They were the CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope, the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra, and NASA’s Goldstone station in California. During the first nine minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between the signals being received by the three stations. When they switched to the Parkes pictures, they were of such superior quality that NASA remained with them for the rest of the 2½-hour moonwalk. The television pictures from Parkes were received under extremely trying and dangerous conditions. A violent squall struck the telescope on the day of the historic moonwalk. The telescope was buffeted by strong winds that swayed the support tower and threatened the integrity of the telescope structure. Fortunately, cool heads prevailed and as Aldrin activated the TV camera, the Moon rose into the field-of-view of the Parkes telescope. This report endeavours to explain the circumstances of the Parkes Observatory’s support of the Apollo 11 mission, and how it came to be involved in the historic enterprise.

Oliver, if radio telescopes from other countries were picking up television signals transmitted from the Moon, this flushes your wingnuttery well and truly down the toilet. What part of this elementary notion are you incapable of understanding?

oliver wrote:Interestingly, Bill Bryson in his book ‘A short history of nearly everything’ points out that plans for the Saturn rocket were destroyed in a Nasa house-cleaning exercise. Was this not a convenient way to terminate any possibility of further expeditions in the public eye when NASA certainly knew that they could never pull it off again?

This claim is BULLSHIT. As this site reveals, the blueprints for the Saturn V exist on microfilm and are in safe storage.

From that site, here's a typical quote:

Space.com wrote:"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F-1 and J-2 engine production to assist in any future restart."

Give it up, Oliver, every time you erect a piece of wingnuttery, there is evidence to flush it down the toilet.

oliver wrote:Why can’t we fly to the moon in this modern age?

We can. It's a matter of finding the money to pay for the hardware. In case you've been living in a hermit cave for the past two years, we're facing a global economic crisis, which means that the money for expensive space programmes of this sort isn't going to be forthcoming for a while.

oliver wrote:Why do we fall for such blatant lies?

Yes, Oliver, why DO you fall for such blatant lies from the conspiracy wingnuts?

oliver wrote:I guess it's easier to believe a big lie than a small one.

You're providing ample proof of that with your absurd post, Oliver.

oliver wrote:Gather the footage and evidence and see for yourself.

Guess what? I just did. And what I found flushes your absurd wingnuttery down the toilet. GAME OVER.

oliver wrote:On the subject of Dinosaurs, evidence suggests that they only recently became extinct or are they really exctint.

Crap.

Oliver, the ancient Chinese developed the first human system of written language five thousand years ago. Archaeologists have found Chinese artefacts that are likely to qualify as examples of the first human writing dating back to 6,000 BCE. Now, if you're trying to tell me that the ancient Chinese wouldn't have taken notice of a sodding big Sauropod trampling through their rice paddies, and considered it significant enough to write about, then I suggest you learn to develop something akin to a connection with the real world, instead of staring glassy eyed at your favourite doctrinal holograms.

oliver wrote:In a large area of central Congo lies a swamp apparently inhabited by a saurapod known as Mokele-mbembe. There is also believed to be a tri-ceratops as well but this is most likely speculation at most.

Oliver, Gwangi and Lost Continent are NOT documentaries. Learn this elementary lesson once and for all.

oliver wrote: Even if they are extinct, in history we find reference to dragons by many long gone cultures..

Humans are capable of fabricating all sorts of fantastic entities with their imaginations. Any mediaeval bestiary will tell you this. Just as your wibblings here are demonstrating this principle in action on a grand scale here on these forums.

oliver wrote:Only in the 1800s was the name changed to Dinosaur and depictions of these ‘dragon’ have been noted on ancient artifacts.

No, Oliver, the term 'dinosaur' was specifically coined by Richard Owen to describe extinct Mesozoic reptiles, fossils of which he was working on when he coined the term. Go away and learn some real history along with some real science.

oliver wrote:Dinosaurs lived with man around 4500 years ago

Bullshit.

Oliver, how come NO civilisation makes mention of enormous Sauropods trampling through their crops? Or having their villages terrorised by wandering packs of Tyrannosaurus rex? It's because your horseshit is precisely that, Oliver, horseshit. Your eructations in your posts are amongst the most deranged, fatuous, nonsensical, droolingly encephalitic, sub-amoeboid drivel I have had the misfortune to read in my entire adult life, and given that I've had to deal with Robert Byers here on these forums prior to his being banned, the fact that you are competing with that functionally illiterate cretin for the title of "who can post the most screwed-up garbage" and in danger of winning the competition, should make you step back and take a look at yourself in the mirror. Oliver, your posts are a laughing stock, they contain wingnuttery, batshit insane drivel, nonsense, fatuous fuckwittery and cretinous bilge. if you really think non-avian dinosaurs were alive 4,500 years ago, then I have some timeshare holiday apartments in Baghdad to sell to you.

oliver wrote:and fossils of both man and dinosaur have been found together.

Crap. NO scientific paper has ever published anything of this sort. The only places where this sort of inane wankery appears is on wingnut creationist websites.

Once again, Oliver, go and learn some real science instead of filling your head with shit.

oliver wrote:Anyway, I appreciate the replies to my last post but still am not satisfied.

Oh, so citing a significant number of real scientific papers from real scientific journals wasn't good enough for you? Did you READ any of those papers? Are you even capable of understanding their contents? Or was your approach simply to dismiss them summarily because they didn't genuflect before your fantasies?

oliver wrote:It seems to me that what makes Evolution theory in a large part plausible, is the use of fancy terminology and complex explanations in order to make it so.

Oh, dear, it's the "Mummy, these scientists use big words and it's too hard for me to understand!" whinge.

Oliver, if you had bothered to pay attention in a science class at some time in your life, you would know what those terms mean. You would know that these terms constitute precise definitions of important concepts. You would know that the explanations constructed by scientists involve rigorous chains of reasoning applied to real experimental evidence. Apparently, learning this is too much hard work for you.

oliver wrote:What I mean by this is that it certainly looks impressive and from a scholar or laymans point of view it must be. Years of critical research made by scores of talented and well respected famous individuals lend to it an air of superiority and greatness and therefore little room for doubt. This unfortunaley does not make it true by default, it merely appears to be.

Oh dear, the utterly specious attempt to erect a fake "argument by authority" dismissal of the science.

Oliver, what makes the science valid isn't the reputations of the individuals who publish it, because those individuals acquire their reputations AFTER publishing ground breaking research. And the reason that they acquire their reputations AFTER publishing ground breaking research is that they demonstrate in that research that REALITY supports their hypotheses. What part of this elementary concept are you incapable of understanding?

oliver wrote:Having just finished reading ‘A short history of nearly everything’ I’ve also come to realise that Evolutionists

I've TOLD YOU about this DISHONEST DISCOURSIVE ELISION IN PAST POSTS. I HAVE ALSO TOLD YOU WHY IT IS A DISHONEST DISCOURSIVE ELISION. CEASE AND DESIST FROM USING IT AGAIN IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE CONSIDERED DISHONEST IN YOUR DISCOURSE.

oliver wrote:are squabbling about details so trival that it’s quite laughable

No, Oliver, what they are doing is striving to determine which of those details REALITY supports. And the reason that they are concentrating on such fine detail is because the core hypotheses are regarded as having been evidentially supported to such a massive extents that they are not seriously in doubt. Learn this elementary lesson once and for all.

oliver wrote:events that never have and can never be verified by Science

Oh no, it's the fatuous "where you there?" creationist drivel.

You weren't there when the events in your worthless mythology were supposed to be taking place. In fact NO ONE was there when some of those events were supposed to be taking place, because according to your mythology, humans didn't even exist until a whole slew of purported "creation" events had been completed. Strange how we don't have ANY evidence for the crap in your book of myths, but science has mountains of evidence to support the scientific world view of the past. Which, if once again, you had ever bothered to pay attention in a real science class instead of filling your head with drivel from creationist websites, you would KNOW constitutes rigorous and robust evidence, and the reasons why it constitutes this.

oliver wrote:have conveniently distracted us from the most pertinent question that is, did it even begin that way.

Yes. Your book of myths got it wrong. Next?

oliver wrote:You have to read the book to understand where I’m coming from

Oliver, Bryson does not support your absurd world view in his book. Bryson wrote that book because he wanted to know more about real science, and present that knowledge in a manner digestible to the layman. He does NOT agree with your gibberish AT ALL.

oliver wrote:and if ever there was a book which revealed more the absurdity of Evolution theory that would be it.

Poppycock. All you are doing here is erecting a fatuous blind assertion based upon viewing Bryson's work through your distorting ideological blinkers. Take them off and start looking at the real world as it actually is for a change.

oliver wrote:Kent Hovind has covered the case for an intelligent designer very well

:funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :roflma: :roflma: :roflma: :roflma:

You think Kent Hovind of all people is qualified to pontificate on scientific matters? A repeatedly debunked charlatan and fraudster?

You really are in need of going back to school and learning basic science from the ground up, if you think Kent Hovind is anything other than a lying, cheating fraud and a charlatan. Kent Hovind, who I hasten to add demonstrated amply that he is a charlatan and a fraud during his trial for tax evasion, which led to him serving ten years because of his overweening, puffed-up arrogance, self-deluded and vastly inflated view of his own importance, and blatant criminality, is an ignorant huckster whose only real knowledge consists of how to milk the gullible for money by pandering to their bigotries. Not that he'll be doing that for a while, he's almost halfway through a ten year jail sentence.

oliver wrote:and who cares if he’s locked up in jail for tax fraud.

Funny how he's not the only creationist to be jailed for criminal activity. Harun Yahya is another one.

I can just picture the howls from creationists that would result if an evolutionary biologist ended up being jailed for the same reasons ... we'd be bored shitless with the smug, self-righteous crowing to the effect "oh look you evilushionists have no morals!!!111eleventyone!", but we're supposed to ignore the fact that Hovind was a fraud through and through, despite the fact that he practised similar fraud in his propagandising for his masturbation fantasy of a doctrine.

oliver wrote:We all make mistakes

You're demonstrating that principle in spades here.

oliver wrote:and even if he did it deliberately that’s not the point.

Excuse me, but he engaged in fraudulent dissemination of misinformation and outright lies in his propaganda for creationism. Hovind is a proven liar and fraud. He is a pathological liar for doctrine.

oliver wrote:The fact is, his arguments and logic behind what he stands for is absolutely sound

This is possibly one of the most cretinous pieces of drivel you have posted yet, and you've been racking up some Olympic medal-winning drivel in your posts.

Hovind's arguments are fatuous nonsense. There are primary school children here in the UK who would laugh at his tripe.

oliver wrote:and undeniable in my mind and in many others.

Only in the minds of those who don't want to learn about reality, and prefer their cosy little preconceptions.

oliver wrote:I also don’t care for attacks made on his claims and yes he may have a few details wrong here and there but so does everyone.

Oliver, Hovind is THE example of how NOT to learn about science. He doesn't just have "a few details" wrong, HIS ENTIRE WORLD VIEW IS A STEAMING PILE OF HORSESHIT. He is MANIFESTLY IGNORANT OF EVEN THE MOST ELEMENTARY FACT FROM REAL SCIENCE. HE IS A CHARLATAN.

oliver wrote:The fact is his arguments are logical and clear to see

Poppycock. Hovind's "arguments" are nothing but the oily delivery of a con man milking the rubes for their money. His drivel is scientifically worthless. He wouldn't know real science if it backed an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank into his ribcage.

oliver wrote:and I certainly can’t fault him on anything.

That's because you know NOTHING about REAL SCIENCE, Oliver, as you continue to demonstrate in the drivel that you post here.

oliver wrote:His debates are second to none as well.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Oliver, there's a YouTube video of Hovind being CREAMED by a real molecular biologist. It's been embedded here in the forums by one of the other posters in a previous post. Did you bother to watch it? Or did you do what every other creationist of your ilk does, ignore it and pretend that it didn't exist because it flushed your fantasies down the toilet?

oliver wrote:There really is so much more I’d like to mention here but would fill too many pages.

Pages that would only be of interest to a clinical psychologist.

Post #2:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:I don't dispute the ISS or anyting like that.. those radiation belts are further out.. Man have sent probes to Mars the Moon and elsewhere, that is fact.. Just that man landed on the moon is not.

That is my standing on the matter and I'll say it again that I've seen the evidence and made up my mind on it, nothing will convince me otherwise as they simply is no conclusive evidence that man landed on the moon.

So despite the fact that radio telescopes from numerous nations were all pointing at the Moon during the relevant occasions, and picked up the telemetry signals of the Apollo missions, you still prefer to believe a Hollywood fantasy than reality?

And you wonder why your posts are regarded as comedy fodder, worthy only of scorn and derision?

Tell me, did you READ any of the material I presented? You know, the scientific paper that documented what actually happened, as opposed to the ravings of fruitcakes like Bart Sibrel? The scientific paper on nanophase iron, a form of iron that cannot occur naturally on Earth?

oliver wrote:I also don't care for any emotional outbursts of spewing of foul language made to me or regarding my posts. You can rant and rave jump up and down thats fine, you're all entitled to it but it's not good manners on this forum

Next question

Oh, diddums.

Look, if you erect fatuous nonsense on these forums, expect the critical thinkers to describe it as fatuous nonsense. Which is eactly what your moon-pie conspiracy theory bullshit is.

oliver wrote:The lunar landing hoax was a lie of such magnitude that yes, it did fool the whole world. It's easier to believe a big lie than a smaller one.

Stop posting manifest horseshit, Oliver.

If you're trying to tell me that the US had the technology to fake telemetry signals coming from the Moon that were picked up in Australia, but didn't have the technology to put Armstrong and company on the Moon, then you're on a hiding to nothing. Have you any idea how much more complex an operation it would be to fake this than to put men on the Moon for real?

Once again, go and learn some real science instead of filling your head with bullshit.

Plus, Oliver, you erected blind assertions that have been established to be blatant lies from the conspiracy wingnuts. Such as your blind assertion earlier that the plans for the Saturn V has been "conveniently" destroyed. This is a blatant lie, Oliver, because a Federal Archive has two thousand nine hundred cubic feet of Saturn V documentation in its vaults. The Saturn V blueprints are stored on microfilm in order to make storage more convenient than a warehouse full of paper. The only reason NASA doesn't shut people like you up once and for all, digitise those blueprints and make them available on a set of DVDs, is because the technology, despite being 40 years old, would be a WMD proliferation nightmare if it landed in the wrong hands (Kim Jong-Il, anyone?). NASA isn't about to tell the North Koreans how to build an ICBM capable of hitting Washington DC, and it wouldn't take a competent team of engineers long to convert those blueprints into the plans for a MIRV-capable ICBM.

Post #3:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:I seem to have been misunderstood.. I don't doubt at all that NASA has built rockets capable of space flights. We've all seen the footage, the Satellites, the space station that's all real and obvious. I don't doubt that NASA has sent vehicles to Mars and the Moon and gathered minerals/photos etc.. What I do doubt is that NASA has sent man to the moon.

And once again, Oliver, the hard evidence from REALITY says you are WRONG. Live with this.

oliver wrote:I'm not going to present evidence because even if it's true you'll debunk it with your scientific jargon, it's what you do with any credible evidence for ID.

Fatuous garbage.

Oliver, we don't "debunk" your nonsense with "jargon", we debunk your nonsense with HARD EVIDENCE FROM REALITY. Just because you never paid attention in the relevant classes long enough to understand what is being presented to you doesn't invalidate that evidence in the least. The "I can't understand what those pointy heads are saying therefore they're wrong" notion is as fatuous as your other turgid discoursive erections in this thread. You probably don't understand the first thing about general relativity, let alone the details involved in finding solutions to the Einstein Field Equations and establishing that those solutions constitute physically real space-times, but that doesn't mean that the people who do this are wrong.

As for "credible evidence for ID", there IS NONE. You've certainly never presented any, and neither has any other IDist. Indeed, I have already told you why you have NO "evidence" for "design" in this previous post. Shall I repeat the reason for you here, since you continue to demonstrate that you need things repeating to you before you sit up and take notice?

You have NO "evidence" for "design", because you do NOT possess a rigorous and robust metric for "designedness", one that has been tested upon entities of known provenance, found to be reliable upon such testing, and which furthermore can be demonstrated to possess the universal applicability required to allow it to be applied to the biosphere.

You don't have this, Oliver. NO advocate of ID has ever had this, or has produced anything that would remotely fit the bill. If they had, they would be offered a free holiday in Sweden to pick up a nice shiny gold medal with Alfred Nobel's face on it, because the development of such a metric would be a landmark advance in science. Dembski's worthless "explanatory filter" consisted simply of surrounding a blind assertion that "design" existed in the biosphere, with obfuscatory language and specious probability calculations. Dembski was peddling his "explanatory filter" nonsense back in 1997, and it's taken him twelve years to realise that he was inserting his own head into his rectum over this. Read all about it here.

oliver wrote:I've been on this forum long enough to be cautious of this and what I'm really trying to do is get those who have never questioned authority before to check it out for themselves and make up their minds on the matter.

Oliver, I've LOOKED AT THE EVIDENCE. Your conspiracy theory STINKS. It stinks just as much as your fatuous assertion that non-avian dinosaurs were alive 4,500 years ago, and stinks just as much as your fatuous assertion that there exists "credible evidence" for ID. What's more, Oliver, it isn't just me who says that your rectally extracted blind assertions in this vein stink, it isn't just the other critical thinkers here that say your rectally extracted blind assertions stink. Oliver, REALITY says your rectally extracted blind assertions stink. Learn this lesson once and for all, Oliver, that REALITY flushes your assertions down the toilet WHOLESALE with mountains of evidence. This isn't "jargon" erected to obfuscate, Oliver, this is HARD EVIDENCE FROM REALITY that says your nonsense is precisely that - NONSENSE.

oliver wrote:de-brainwash their heavily brainwashed minds so to speak if they want to.

Physician, heal thyself.

oliver wrote:What I meant is that you'll discredit whatever is presented just for the sake of it and you do it all the time which is a fact.

POPPYCOCK.

Oliver, We discredit your nonsense BECAUSE REALITY SAYS IT IS NONSENSE. Learn this elementary lesson once and for all.

oliver wrote:Go look it all up for yourself, that's all I ask thanks!!

I did, Oliver, and when I checked your blind assertion that the Saturn V plans had been, in your words, "conveniently destroyed", I discovered that this was a BLATANT AND MANIFEST LIE. The blueprints are in safe storage on microfilm, and a Federal Archive has two thousand nine hundred cubic feet of documentation relating to the rocket and its design. The Rocketdyne company STILL has the plans for the F-1 and J-2 engines.

When I checked the matter of telemetry, I found a peer reviewed scientific paper from an Australian astronomical journal documenting how the camera signal from Buzz Aldrin was received at the Parkes Observatory in Australia. Oliver, your blind assertions are FLATLY CONTRADICTED AND REFUTED BY REALITY.

oliver wrote:Scientific jargon is all very well when it actually makes any sense. We do not see this occuring on the majority of this forum, period..

BULLSHIT.

You have demonstrated time and time and time again that YOU DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH REAL SCIENCE TO BE ABLE TO ERECT THIS ASSERTION.

oliver wrote:Go and read Bill Brysons books.. really briliant writer and hilarious but whats even more hilarious is his account of Evolution theory to date which will have you rolling with laughter till your sides ache, guaranteed.

Oliver, BRYSON DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU OVER EVOLUTION. The ONLY way that Bryson could be considered to "oppose" evolution is by deliberately distorting what he says through pre-fitted ideological blinkers.

oliver wrote:He is a well respected author and even though he makes the theory sound like utter tripe (except for micro evo of course), he actually doesn't find it ludicrous.

Oliver, once again, the book you have read was writetn by Bryson because he wanted to fill the gaps in his own scientific knowledge, and present modern scientific knowledge in terms that the layman could understand. He did NOT set out to write a polemic for creationism. Learn this lesson once and for all, will you?

oliver wrote:Interesting that if you don't believe in God, you have to accept Evolution as the only way by default.. that's what we witness here of course.

Oh, not this tired and tedious bollocks.

Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist, Oliver. He is also a practising Catholic.

Once again, REALITY flushes your worthless rectally extracted assertions down the toilet.

What are you going to do for an encore, Oliver? Tell us that David Icke's droolingly encephalitic brainfart fantasies about aien reptiles ruling the world constitute fact?

oliver wrote:you already missed the truth and will continue to do so.

Wow, talk about the supernaturalist pot calling the reality-based kettle for lack of chrome plated lustre!

Oliver, YOU are the individual who has ignored peer reviewed scientific papers, because [1] you continue to demonstrate that you are incapable of understanding their contents, and [2] you have decided in advance that you're going to ignore anything that doesn't genuflect before your supernaturalist and conspiracy-theory presuppositions. The only one missing the truth here is YOU, Oliver. I asked you earlier to tell me how observatories on Earth could fake those laser reflection results, if your farcical drivel about the Apollo missions being faked bore any connection to REALITY. You have FAILED to do so. Just as you have FAILED to support ANY of your rectally extracted blind assertions ONCE in this thread. All you have here is an ever-growing litany of wankery, served up as if it constituted established fact, without a single shred of proper, critically robust evidential support, and bluster to conceal the fact that you can't be bothered learning enough to work out WHY the evidence that has been presented to you is ROCK SOLID.

oliver wrote:Turn to the Bible for an explanation to that one

Oliver, your worthless book of myths is, like you, FLATLY CONTRADICTED BY REALITY. There did NOT exist talking snakes. The global flood is a FANTASY.

oliver wrote:and as for forgiveness it's what God did for our sins. that's creationist website, check your spelling.

Another blind assertion. When has any supernaturalist presented proper, critically robust evidential support for their blind assertions about their pet species of magic man in 5,000 years?

oliver wrote:yes I've read most of the posts besides the insults but like my previous signature stated.. explain it to me in laymans terms please or does your own theory evade you as to make that not possible.

Oliver, we've LED YOU THROUGH THE BABY STEPS. You've IGNORED OUR EFFORTS AND CONTINUED TO PEDDLE YOUR WORTHLESS BLIND ASSERTIONS.

Post #4:

Me at RDF wrote:Oh dear ...

oliver wrote:Ok back from the week break..

Still haven't learned anything from the real world in that time, though, have you? I cite this latest post of yours as evidence.

oliver wrote:Just for the record I watched a very good documentary detailing the technical and scientific observations made by Jim Collier in 'Was it only a paper moon'

Who?

Only the name "Jim Collier", when subjected to the relevant searches, yield the following:

[1] A photographer in the San Francisco Bay area;

[2] A former American footballer;

[3] A minor British television actor;

[4] Yet another of the endless stream of sanctimonious panhandlers for mythology that America seems to spawn faster than bacteria in warm tuna salad;

[5] An individual who blogs on racial politics;

[6] A Michigan insurance agent;

and finally:

[7] Dr James Collier, profesor of geosciences and chairman of the Fort Lewis College Faculty of Geosciences, whose principal research interests are, quoting from the Fort Lewis College website:

His main areas of research are: Precambrian metallogenesis, granites, high temperature geochemistry, geostatistics, and computer modeling.

None of these individuals appear to have anything to do with space sciences.

As for the "Paper Moon" reference, the largest number of hits I can find for this are for the 1973 comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovitch and starring Ryan and Tatum O'Neal. Other references include a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode and an album recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. So why do I have the feeling that you're referring here to another fringe wingnut production?

oliver wrote:and have once again come to the undeniable conclusion

Translation: you have reinforced your existing prejudices ...

oliver wrote:that NASA faked the trip

So the fact that observatories here on Earth have been pointing laser beams at retroreflectors located on the moon for 40 years, retroreflectors whose positions coincide exactly with the stated positions given by the Apollo astronauts who placed them there, is one of those inconvenient facts you're going to ignore? Quelle surprise.

Keep living in your fantasy world, Oliver, while those of us who paid attention in a science class point and laugh.

oliver wrote:it's all there to see and absolutely clear.

Crap. All you have to offer is uncritical acceptance of wingnuttery from dickheads such as Bart Sibrel.

oliver wrote:Also I noted that NASA is planning a trip to the moon in 2020, why the 50 year wait since the "first" one?

[1] Other projects in the pipeline;

[2] The expense involved.

Simple. Unless of course you happen to believe wingnut conspiracy theories. Oh, by the way, the Chinese are thinking about their own Moon landing project, and the European Space Agency is contemplating adding manned missions to the Moon to its Aurora long term space exploration programme.

oliver wrote:My guess it that by then we'll have mastered the technology required for such a feat but I still doubt it.

oliver wrote:Also, on one forum was being discussed the issue of the lunar rovers, we should be able to see them with current technology. Well this one touted that all one would have to do is get hold of a large enough scope and it shouldn't be too difficult to view the rover on the moon but another one stated that we will never be able to spot them due to technical limitations on telescope equipment... huh!!

Oliver, it wouldn't matter if NASA pointed Hubble at the Moon tomorrow and obtained high resolution images of them, the conspiracy theory wingnuts would still claim that the images were faked, and you'd swallow it uncritically like you do every other piece of wingnuttery you give credence to.

oliver wrote:Ok enough of that let's move on..

To what? Your "non avian dinosaurs were alive 4,500 years ago" bullshit?

oliver wrote:I came across this article which sums up quite nicely why Evolution religion is bogus, just like other religions I might add:

Er, since when did any religion subject its core postulates to direct experimental test and verification, Oliver? Which is what evolutionary biology HAS done, if you had ever bothered to look away from whacked-out creationist websites long enough to read some real scientific papers.

oliver wrote:http://www.themythofevolution.com/Site/Evolutionists.html

Oh, quelle surprise ... right on cue, a whacked-out creationist wingnut site peddling all the boringly familiar, tiresome and previously debunked canards. Yawn. Play another record, Oliver, this one's worn out.

Let's get something straight here Oliver. Evolution has been observed taking place in real world living organisms and documented doing so in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Your refusal to accept this reality doesn't stop it being reality, nor does your fatuous repetition of the moronic assertion that "evolution is a religion" stop that moronic assertion from being anything other than manifestly false, at least to those of us who bothered to stay awake in science classes. As I said above, what "religion" has ever subjected its core postulates to direct experimental test and validation, and what "religion" has ever amassed large amounts of evidence from the real world supporting its hypotheses? Your creationist religion certainly hasn't.

So, apart from your usual horseshit, do you have any substance to offer here?

oliver wrote:That photo of the moon surface revealing some fuzzy lines and a shadow prove nothing..

Oliver, it won't matter if CNN send a news crew up there and send back real time images of the lander in close up, you'll STILL be claiming it was a fake. You've made up your mind that you and the conspiracy theory wingnuts you give credence to are all right, and that the hard evidence from reality is all wrong.

oliver wrote:In less than a minute I could create the same effect using simple windows paint.

Yeah, right. And I'm President of the European Union.

oliver wrote:I'm not discrediting it

Bollocks. You're dismissing the evidence out of hand from the outset because it doesn't conform to your presuppositions.

oliver wrote:although all the other evidence I've seen leads to the assumption that this has been photoshopped

Assumption being the operative word here, Oliver, because that's what you do - assume your "conclusions" are true in advance and try to force-fit reality to those "conclusions". Where have we seen this before?

oliver wrote:and unfortunately I cannot change my view on the matter at this stage..

Oliver, you wouldn't change your view if someone stuck you in a rocket, flew you to the Moon and took you on a guided tour of the Apollo landing sites. You'd STILL be claiming it was faked.

oliver wrote:Unless somebody can fly me over the moons surface to witness it for myself. I'm actuallty not against the principle behind it, I want man to set foot on the moon.. to see progress made and yet we've made a lot of progress in space but the evidence reveals that we have not yet made it to the moon apart from unmanned craft.

Crap. You've decided what you're going to believe and nothing is going to change that. The only reason we're bothering to respond to your posts, by the way, is to provide an education to other readers of this thread with respect to the palsying effects of uncritical acceptance of unsupported blind assertion, a demonstration of which you're providing in quantity.

oliver wrote:Quite possibly they did not have photoshop but they could easily do some simple photo manipulation back then..

Guess what, Oliver? Photo manipulation techniques of that vintage are detectable. Strange how no one in the world of real science has noticed any signs of this.

oliver wrote:you cannot tell me that that was impossible to do in the 60's or 70's but on a more obvious note, f these photo's were only published recently they could very well have been photoshopped.

Oliver, try engaging some brain cells for a moment. I know it's hard, but do try, there's a good chap.

At the time that the Apollo missions were taking place, the Russians were trying to get there first. They had all the equipment required to detect the presence of that spacecraft in flight on its way to the Moon. If they had picked up signals telling them that the whole thing was a fake, do you think for one moment that they wouldn't have used this in their propaganda output? If you think that the Russians were somehow a party to this "conspiracy", then you really have disconnected yourself totally from reality.

oliver wrote:Well if they were only taken recently then it's more plausible that they were photoshopped.

Yeah, right. Forgetting of course that it wouldn't just be NASA communications receivers that could pick up the signals, and that other communications stations in other countries would be able to reconstruct the photographs. Which means any fakes would be instantly noticeable to the real scientific community. Oliver, your tiresome eructations are farcical. I've already presented a scientific paper from the Australian Astronomical Society covering the use of an Australian radio telescope to pick up Buzz Aldrin's TV signals, and the scientists operating that telescope saw the same thing everyone else did. Your "conspiracy" is a fantasy, Oliver, it's wingnuttery pure and simple.

How does someone function whilst believing this tripe?

Here endeth part 1.

**#25** · **#25** by **Calilasseia** » Jan 24, 2014 11:17 am

Welcome to Part 2.

Post #5:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:Calilasseia "The critical thinkers post peer reviewed scientific papers and hard evidence from reality supporting their arguments. Oliver posts links to websites erected by twonks wearing tinfoil hats that contain nothing but blind assertions and, in some cases, outright lies. And he wonders why we treat his threads as comedy fodder".

Well if you watched "was it only a paper moon" you'd realise that it does actually contain sound hard evidence and supports the argument extremely well.

You mean the way Bart Sibrel's wibble contains "hard evidence"? Sibrel's work has repeatedly been demonstrated to contain falsehoods, innuendo, outright fabrications and deliberate manipulation of the evidence to force fit it to a pre-determined conclusion. When Buzz Aldrin delivered that smacker to Sibrel's rodent-like face, it was well and truly earned, because Sibrel is a manifest liar, fraud and charlatan. If this Collier's work is of the same calibre, why should I bother giving it the time of day?

oliver wrote:James Collier makes no blind assertions as he backs up his evidence with hard scientific facts including video/photographs/measurements etc.. which cannot be refuted and no lies there.

Really? How about you put your money where your mouth is, and bring this evidence to the table here, instead of expecting us the line the pockets of a conspiracy theorist in order to check whether or not you're stating something that isn't bullshit for once? Are you even capable of doing this, I ask myself?

oliver wrote:Just get hold of the video and if you can't I'd be willing to send it to you with tonnes of other interesting stuff regarding the lunar hoax.

If that other material includes anything by Sibrel, don't bother.

Plus, what's wrong with you bringing this material here to a public forum, where it can be subject to the appropriate critical scrutiny in the open? The same way I've brought scientific papers to these forums in the past, because I have confidence in the validity of their contents? Or are you afraid that if this material is brought to a public forum, it will be utterly annihilated?

oliver wrote:No, your inane notions about evolution is comdey [sic] fodder second to none.

This from an individual who thinks non-avian dinosaurs walked the Earth 4,500 years ago, despite the fact that humans who had developed writing systems that far back didn't appear to find the appearance of 100-ton Sauropods trampling their crops worthy of committing to permanent record.

I suppose the authors of those eighteen thousand peer reviewed papers in evolutionary biology published in 2007 alone are all "lying", are they?

I love the way you regard a valid scientific theory as "comdey [sic] fodder", whilst being unable to spell "comedy" properly. Not to mention the fact that you espouse ideas that are, not to put too fine a point on it, retarded drivel.

Meanwhile, returning to your Moon landing conspiracy bullshit ...

Once again, Oliver, give me, and everyone else here who has asked you this, one reason why the former Soviet Union, which at the time was an implacable ideological enemy of the United States, would co-operate with the USA in perpetrating a fraud on this scale, when exposing such a fraud, if it had taken place, would have been invaluable politically to them. Bear in mind whilst contemplating your answer, that in 1969, the USSR had, for the first time, overtaken the USA in ICBM deployments (they had successfully deployed the SS-8, SS-9 Mod 3, SS-11 and SS-13 missiles, and were in the engineering test phases for the SS16, SS-17, SS-18 and SS-19 missiles), at a time when US ICBM deployment was static, and that as a consequence of this, the USSR either posssessed, or was on the verge of possessing, a credible first strike capability that the USA had to live with as a military reality (operational first strike capability was confirmed when the USSR successfully deployed the first SS-18 ICBMs in late 1974, which had a range of 11,000 Km and a CEP of 180 metres). Bear in mind also that in the European theatre, the USSR possessed overwhelming land forces superiority (peak deployment reached 51,000 main battle tanks), and consequently possessed more than enough muscle to throw its weight around on the world stage, something it had a habit of doing now and again (Hungary, 1956, Czechoslovakia, 1968, Afghanistan, 1979), which meant that the idea of the USSR somehow being subject to leverage by the USA with respect to any "fraud" of the sort you're postulating, Oliver, is frankly ridiculous. Why would an ideological enemy of the USA, one that had achieved ICBM deployment superiority in 1969, and was well and truly in a position to capitalise upon any failure by the Americans in this regard, collude with their bitterest opponents?

The only one posting comedy here, Oliver, is you.

Meanwhile, I notice your response to this:

LinzeeBinzee wrote:Is there any piece of evidence that would convince you that the moon landing was not a hoax?

you posted this:

oliver wrote:Hi LinzeeBinzee

No, but I do hope there is evidence which would change my view on the matter.

Ignoring the fact that hard evidence required for the purpose has been presented to you in quantity.

oliver wrote:Apparently there are identical rocks to be found in Antarctica but that could be incorrect and by the way, NASA was apparently in the region prior to the missions.

This is bullshit plain and simple. Because earlier in this thread I presented a scientific paper on nanophase iron, which is a form of iron that does not exist naturally anywhere on Earth, and is produced by space weathering. Your posting the above statement after my presenting that paper here leads to one of two conclusions, either [1] you ignored my post in the hope that everyone would forget about it, or [2] you erected that above statement fully possessing the knowledge I had imparted to you earlier on, and chose to post a manifest falsehood.

Which is it, Oliver? Did you simply ignore evidence presented to you because it didn't fit your presuppositions, or did you read it anyway and decide to post the above manifest falsehood regardless?

The problem here being, of course, that both of the above actions on your part constitute discoursive malfeasance on a large scale on your part.

oliver wrote:Thousands of people were involved in the missions but even the ground crew and those in mission control could have been duped.

Yeah, sure Oliver, trained astrophysicists who knew how to use radio telescopes for tracking could be "duped". Care to tell us all how? Or is this latest eructation of yours, as is far more likely, another of your fatuous blind assertions that has no basis in reality? Particularly as, in the same post that I linked to earlier, I presented a scientific paper describing how the Parkes Observatory in Australia captured telemetry signals from Apollo 11 and relayed the television signals to the rest of the world? Oh look, Australia had the capability to receive and decode telemetry signals from spacecraft in lunar orbit ... and verify that those signals were indeed being transmitted from a spacecraft genuinely occupying a lunar orbit.

Oliver, your conspiracy theory is, in the light of all this, fatuous shite of the most stinking order.

oliver wrote:Only a few would have had to know about NASAs alterior motives if there were any.

Tinfoil hat excrement.

Oliver, your assorted blind assertions have been busted wide open by hard evidence from reality. All you have here is blind assertion, bluster, the erection of blatant falsehoods, and all the other familiar manifestations of the aetiology of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertion in preference to listening to reality. There were telemetry-capable radio telescopes pointing at the moon from multiple nations around the planet, none of whom had any reason whatsoever to support your purported "faking" of the Moon landings, and at least one of whom had a massive amount to gain politically and ideologically from exposing that fraud, that latter nation being a strategic nuclear superpower. The idea that a strategic nuclear superpower, with a lavishly funded military intelligence apparatus, including its own spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground, could be "duped" by your purported "conspiracy", is fucking laughable.

oliver wrote:Millions watched the launch of the Saturn rockets no doubt, but while the astronauts were floating about in Earths orbit, pre-recorded footage was been aired on TV or so the hoaxers believe.

And that's all that you and the conspiracy theory wingnuts have here, Oliver ... belief. Namely, uncritical acceptance of unsupported blind assertions as being purportedly "axioms" about the world, which is all you have likewise with respect to your fantasies about creationism. Your wingnut conspiracy theory has been flushed down the toilet by REALITY, Oliver.

oliver wrote:I have in my possession high-def photos from the missions and lots of video footage which I have carefully considered myself including documentaries such as "was it only a paper moon" and "Astronauts gone wild", the first containing the most conclusive and convincing material which I don't think can be disputed by anyone due to the fact that it's hard and sound evidence.

Oh really? Astronauts Gone Wild is a propaganda screed by arch-charlatan and liar Bart Sibrel. With respect to that, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has stated that Sibrel deceived his way into his home using faked History Channel credentials, and after alighting upon this, ejected Sibrel from his home "with a boot in his rear".

The mere fact that you're peddling this screed as purportedly constituting "valid evidence", Oliver, demonstrates that you don't know what real evidence is.

oliver wrote:I have taken my knowledge from photos/video and witnessed the interviews conducted with each astronaut which by the nature that they conduct themselves is convincing enough already.

Did Sibrel film Edgar Mitchell booting him out of his home for using fake credentials to gain privileged access?

oliver wrote:I was very skeptical at first but upon delving deeper into this matter I have come the conclusion that it was a hoax.

Bollocks. Your pretence at 'scepticism' consists of "accept uncritically wingnut assertions, and dismiss summarily hard evidence from reality".

oliver wrote:This realisation does sadden me somewhat and sometimes I wish I could just leave it alone and accept what is dished out to us in this life

Oh, admitting here that you reject reality in favour of your fantasy presuppositions? Nice to see you being honest about your biases for a change.

oliver wrote:but it all started with macro-evolution theory which has led me to question things.

Bollocks. You have yet to demonstrate that you know enough basic science to be able to ask the right questions in the first place.

oliver wrote:Grizby, I'll do some research on that aspect and come back to you but the short answer is that they were duped as well.

:funny: :funny: :funny: :roflma: :roflma: :roflma:

This is fucking unbelievable.

A nation possessing the technology to deploy eight different ICBM systems in 11 years, including one with an 11,000 Km range and a CEP of just 180 metres for the MIRVed warheads on board, was "duped"?

A nation that possessed one of the best funded military intelligence arms on the planet, with spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground at its disposal, all centrally controlled and coordinated by some of the best people in the espionage business, was "duped"?

You really don't have ANY connection to reality at all do you Oliver?

oliver wrote:"The Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled".. This I will do some more research on, just came across this while googling so will have to verify it.

Grizby has already handed you your arse cheeks on a silver platter, stir-fried in rationalist napalm and seasoned with a reality based hoy sin sauce on this one, by listing a series of Soviet lunar missions that required long distance telemetry capability. Indeed, in 1967, the Soviets parked Venera 4 in orbit around the planet Venus and received telemetry data from that spacecraft. At its closest to Earth, Venus is 38.2 million Km away, which is 99.47 times further from Earth than the Moon. The Soviets were able to receive accurate chemical analysis data of the Venusian atmosphere from the Venera 4 probe, over a distance at least 99 times greater than that of the Moon from the Earth, and, depending upon the position of Venus in its orbit relative to Earth, potentially much further away still. Which means that the Russians had deep space telemetry capability at least two years before Apollo 11 was launched, and deep space telemetry capability that could reach a spacecraft in orbit around Venus.

But once again, Oliver, you simply looked for something to fit your presuppositions, posted it here, then said in the weaselly manner that has become your hallmark here of late, that you would "do more research later" on this. This isn't good enough, Oliver - if the critical thinkers can exercise the effort and mental diligence required to check their facts properly before posting them., why can't you?

Post #6:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:
Calilasseia wrote:The fun part is, Inkracer introduced Oliver to the retroreflector laser ranging experiments way back on page one of this relocated thread, and I referred to it in an even earlier post from the original hilarious "Design of Atoms" thread. Apparently the scientists who conduct the laser ranging experiments are now planning to increase the accuracy of their measurements to the millimetre level of accuracy. Yet despite this, Oliver persists in pretending that the spaceflights carrying those instruments to the Moon never happened. What does it take to make reality penetrate the tinfoil hat he's obviously wearing?

Woah!! I never mentioned anything about spacecrafts not reaching the moon, like I said before, moon would be a doddle since we've made it to mars, but WITHOUT HUMANS.

Yawn. Play another one, Oliver, this one's worn out.

Why are these pieces of kit located exactly where the men who took part in those missions say they're located? And why is it that recent reconnaissance photos of the Moon show other left over bits of Apollo hardware nearby?

Oh, and once more, given that your blind assertions about the Russians not being able to track this kit have been demonstrated to be complete hooey, not least because the Russians sent a spacecraft of their own to Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched and received detailed telemetry data from that spacecraft, why should we regard your other blind assertion that the Russians were "duped" as being anything other than yet more hooey, given that we're talking here about a nation that at the time was a rival nuclear superpower to the USA (and indeed still is), was at the time an implacable ideological enemy of the USA, and moreover, funded lavishly one of the world's largest military intelligence arms, complete with its own spy satellites and thousands of ground-based spies? If you're trying to tell us, Oliver, that a nation capable of operating a global military intelligence network, equipped with spy satellites capable of photographing objects to 1 metre resolution from 500 miles up, that employed a massive number of personnel (the Border Guards Directorate of the KGB alone employed 245,000 people) in said intelligence network, and had a sophisticated C3I structure embedded within said intelligence network, wasn't capable of blowing wide open the sort of fraud you're asserting was perpetrated by NASA, then allow me to contend here that you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

For the record, the head of the KGB at this time was none other than Yuri Andropov, who was later to become Brezhnev's successor as leader of the Soviet Union. This was the man whose CV includes the arranging of the ruthless suppression of Imre Nagy's Hungarian government and the execution of Nagy himself, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 (it seems Andropov was fond of using tanks as a means of enforcing conformity to orthodoxy), and who presided over the deliberate manipulation and subversion of Western peace movements to further Soviet foreign policy ends. If you think that this arch-manipulator and arch-cynic could be "duped" by your purported fraud, Oliver, then it's just as well you never lived in the Soviet Union, because you wouldn't have lasted five minutes amongst people like Andropov. Andropov, upon encountering you, would probably have thought liquidating you by his own hand to be a suitably efficient way of dealing with you, and yet you want us to believe that this man, whilst head of the KGB, would not have lifted a finger to exploit real hard data confirming that your purported "hoax" had actually taken place?

Read the above slowly several times, Oliver. Whilst doing so, work out from the above why the critical thinkers regard your eructations here as being even less credible, than statements from a psychiatric ward inmate to the effect that he is Napoleon Bonaparte.

Post #7:

Me at RDF wrote:Oh dear, not this shit again ...

oliver wrote:i know they have been "debunked"

Oliver, the Americans' most implacable ideological enemies disagree with you. They accept the validity of the Apollo programme. And, if anyone had the means to expose your fantasy "hoax", the former Soviet Union had the technology AND the motivation to do so. Once again Oliver, why would the USA's most implacable ideological enemy collude with the USA in perpetuating a hoax that they could have capitalised upon ruthlessly, especially in the light of the fact that the arch-cynic and arch-manipulator Yuri Andropov was head of the KGB at the time?

You have no answer to this Oliver, which is why you keep trying to pretend that the question has never been asked, in the hope that it will go away and leave you free to entertain your fantasies.

oliver wrote:but of course it will be when NASAs entire reputation is riding on this.

Oliver, NASA has since achieved other firsts in space exploration. As an organisation, it doesn't need to concern itself with what tinfoil hat wingnuts think. It simply gets on with the job. A job it does very well despite the carping of people who know nothing about the science involved, and who for some reason want to believe some fantasy, most likely because it allows them to preen their inadequate egos.

oliver wrote:I want to believe man landed on the moon but having seen and heard all evidence against it I cannot accept that we did.

Bullshit. You only accept "evidence" that conforms to your presuppositions. This has been demonstrated time and time again, when you have erected assertions that have been demonstrated to be manifestly false. Such as your blind assertion that the Saturn V plans had been "conveniently destroyed", which was manifestly false, and your blind assertion that the Russians didn't have the technological capability to receive telemetry signals from distant spacecraft at the time, which was manifestly false. As for your assertion that a rival superpower, one capable of sending spacecraft to Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched, was somehow "duped" by NASA, I shall continue to regard that as cloud cuckoo land wankery.

oliver wrote:Everything about the claim stinks to high heaven

Everything about your claims stink to high heaven, certainly. Not least because two major assertions of yours have been demonstrated to be FALSE.

oliver wrote:but I guess we will never know for sure.

The LRO is about to kick your fantasy right in the testicles.

oliver wrote:There are just too many anomalies like NASA losing documents/original footage which was apparently taped over???

Yawn. This one's already been debunked. Play another record, Oliver, this one's worn out. Whilst some tapes pertinent to Apollo 11 happen to be missing, the tapes for Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 are still in existence. Plus, in the case of the television footage, how come I was able to refer to a peer reviewed scientific paper in an Australian astronomical journal detailing the Parkes Observatory's role in capturing television signals, that the Americans decided to use because they were superior in quality to those picked up by the Goldstone reciever?

oliver wrote:/plans for rockets destroyed

I established that this blind ex recto assertion of yours was a blatant lie earlier in this thread, Oliver, when I alighted upon the fact that two thousand cubic feet of Saturn V documentation still exists. Not to mention the fact that the Saturn V plans are on microfilm.

oliver wrote:and the very lack of details provided when they "returned".

Poppycock. Were you sitting in on their debriefings? No you weren't.

Anyone who has had even a passing familiarity with military debriefings will tell you that these are thorough. Air force personnel in particular are trained for years to be observant and to memorise what they observe for debriefing purposes after a mission. The idea that these people failed in their training, despite being chosen deliberately from the most capable people that the air force had to offer, is frankly laughable.

oliver wrote:NASA had complete mock-ups of pretty much every aspect of the missions created in high detail just like it would be on the moon but here on Earth.. why??

For the same reason they train pilots on simulators, Oliver. Is the fucking obvious too difficult for you to understand here?

oliver wrote: WHy did they have to practice sticking poles in the ground and walking up and down ladders and inane everyday actions here on earth when other priorities were in order.

Because they would have to perform these activities at one sixth of Earth gravity, Oliver, which means that they would have to exercise care and attention whilst performing actions that seem like everyday tasks here on Earth. Ask anyone who's been in the ISS why careful training is needed to perform even the simplest of operations in low gravity if you're not used to it.

oliver wrote:Why couldn't the astroNOTS demonstrate basic physics on the moon with a rock or such item to demonstrate the gravity difference and etc etc etc etc...

HAHAHAHAHA!

Are you fucking serious here?

I see Virphen has already provided the video clip of David Scott dropping his geology hammer alongside a feather in order to illustrate Galileo's principle with respect to falling bodies during the Apollo 15 mission. I remember seeing that being transmitted live when I was just 11 years old.

oliver wrote:Why did none of the astronots swear on the Bible that they had walked on the moon? Even if they were atheists it wouldn't hurt to do that simple action. So so many questions.

So many inane questions arising from tinfoil hat wingnuttery.

Oliver, you have FAILED to provide substantive answers to ANY questions put to you. You have FAILED to present real objections to the validity of the Apollo missions. You have POSTED BLATANT FALSEHOODS that have been EXPOSED as such. Your credibility here is ZERO.

Now, are you going to ANSWER those questions put to you, by myself and others, including:

[1] Grizby has presented evidence that the Soviet Union was able to receive telemetry data from spacecraft as far back as 1959, and I presented evidence that the Soviet Union was able to receive telemetry data from a spacecraft in orbit around Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched. On the basis of this, are you going to retract your manifestly false assertion that the Soviet Union was unable to track the Apollo missions independently?

[2] Care to explain how a rival nuclear superpower with its own manned spaceflight technology, one moreover that was an ideological enemy of the USA, one that operated a large and lavishly funded military intelligence agency, with access to its own spy satellites and thousands of spies working on the ground, could be "duped" by NASA?

Post #8:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:Hi Grizby

Apparently NASA paid off the Russians by sending secret shipments of grain after the 'missions'. This I cannot seem to verify but I guess could be plausible.

Oh look who's back, posting yet more blind ex recto assertions and debunked tripe.

Oliver, you have FAILED to provide ONE single coherent, genuine reason why your tinfoil-hat conspiracy is anything other than a FANTASY.

Now, here are some FACTS that I would like you to address, since you failed to do so the first time I posted them.

[1] The Soviet Union, at the time the Apollo missions were being conducted, was an ideological enemy of the USA. FACT.

[2] The Soviet Union possessed its own in-house manned spaceflight technology, and was therefore in a unique position to expose any "conspiracy" or "fraud" allegedly perpetrated by the USA. FACT.

[3] The Soviet Union had previously flown missions to Venus and obtained detailed telemetry data from those missions, once again demonstrating that they had the capacity to expose any "fraud" allegedly perpetrated by the USA. FACT.

[4] The Soviet Union maintained, at the time of the Apollo missions, one of the world's largest, if not the world's largest, military intelligence operation, which had access to its own spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground, and which again was eminently well placed to expose any alleged "fraud". FACT.

[5] At the time the Soviet Union was maintaining said intelligence operation, said operation was headed by Yuri Andropov, the KGB hard man who was responsible for having tanks sent into Hungary in 1956 and who organised the assassination of Imre Nagy. FACT.

[6] Yuri Andropov later became the leader of the Soviet Union, and was leader at a time when Cold War tensions with respect to the deployment of SS-20 missiles in Europe were at an all time high. FACT.

[7] The Soviet Union was, at the time the Apollo missions were being conducted, a rival nuclear superpower to the USA, and developed its own first strike capability that rendered the US Minuteman missile fleet vulnerable, in the form of the SS-9, and later, the SS-18, ICBM systems, the latter having a range of 11,000 miles and capable of dispensing 10 1-megaton nuclear warheads per missile. FACT.

[8] The Soviet Union also possessed one of the largest conventional armies on the planet, deploying 51,000 main battle tanks in Europe, 6,000 combat aircraft, 3,000 attack helicopters, and 2.8 million troops in 210 divisions. FACT.

[9] The Soviet Union was a rival in the space race with the USA, and was striving to beat the USA to the Moon as a matter of national pride. FACT.

Given facts [2], [3] and [4] above, which meant that the Soviet Union has the means to expose any alleged "fraud", given in addition facts [1], [5], [6] and [9], which meant that the Soviet Union had the motivation to expose any alleged "fraud", and given facts [7] and [8], which meant that the Soviet Union had more than enough military muscle not to be intimidated by other powers, give me one good reason, backed by hard evidence and solid facts, why the Soviet Union would collude with their bitterest ideological enemies and rivals to uphold American prestige in this respect. I want something with a bit more substance than some blind assertion about grain sales that you admitted above you cannot verify.

Now, are you going to address the above in a substantive fashion, using proper, independently corroborated evidence, or are you merely going to engage in more of your tiresome, duplicitous handwaving, erection of blind ex recto assertions, and fatuous posturing?

It's at this point that the Richard Dawkins Forums underwent the infamous meltdown.

**#26** · **#26** by **Mike_L** » Jan 24, 2014 12:03 pm

Calilasseia wrote:Welcome to Part 2.

[Reveal] Spoiler: post
Post #5:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:Calilasseia "The critical thinkers post peer reviewed scientific papers and hard evidence from reality supporting their arguments. Oliver posts links to websites erected by twonks wearing tinfoil hats that contain nothing but blind assertions and, in some cases, outright lies. And he wonders why we treat his threads as comedy fodder".

Well if you watched "was it only a paper moon" you'd realise that it does actually contain sound hard evidence and supports the argument extremely well.

You mean the way Bart Sibrel's wibble contains "hard evidence"? Sibrel's work has repeatedly been demonstrated to contain falsehoods, innuendo, outright fabrications and deliberate manipulation of the evidence to force fit it to a pre-determined conclusion. When Buzz Aldrin delivered that smacker to Sibrel's rodent-like face, it was well and truly earned, because Sibrel is a manifest liar, fraud and charlatan. If this Collier's work is of the same calibre, why should I bother giving it the time of day?

oliver wrote:James Collier makes no blind assertions as he backs up his evidence with hard scientific facts including video/photographs/measurements etc.. which cannot be refuted and no lies there.

Really? How about you put your money where your mouth is, and bring this evidence to the table here, instead of expecting us the line the pockets of a conspiracy theorist in order to check whether or not you're stating something that isn't bullshit for once? Are you even capable of doing this, I ask myself?

oliver wrote:Just get hold of the video and if you can't I'd be willing to send it to you with tonnes of other interesting stuff regarding the lunar hoax.

If that other material includes anything by Sibrel, don't bother.

Plus, what's wrong with you bringing this material here to a public forum, where it can be subject to the appropriate critical scrutiny in the open? The same way I've brought scientific papers to these forums in the past, because I have confidence in the validity of their contents? Or are you afraid that if this material is brought to a public forum, it will be utterly annihilated?

oliver wrote:No, your inane notions about evolution is comdey [sic] fodder second to none.

This from an individual who thinks non-avian dinosaurs walked the Earth 4,500 years ago, despite the fact that humans who had developed writing systems that far back didn't appear to find the appearance of 100-ton Sauropods trampling their crops worthy of committing to permanent record.

I suppose the authors of those eighteen thousand peer reviewed papers in evolutionary biology published in 2007 alone are all "lying", are they?

I love the way you regard a valid scientific theory as "comdey [sic] fodder", whilst being unable to spell "comedy" properly. Not to mention the fact that you espouse ideas that are, not to put too fine a point on it, retarded drivel.

Meanwhile, returning to your Moon landing conspiracy bullshit ...

Once again, Oliver, give me, and everyone else here who has asked you this, one reason why the former Soviet Union, which at the time was an implacable ideological enemy of the United States, would co-operate with the USA in perpetrating a fraud on this scale, when exposing such a fraud, if it had taken place, would have been invaluable politically to them. Bear in mind whilst contemplating your answer, that in 1969, the USSR had, for the first time, overtaken the USA in ICBM deployments (they had successfully deployed the SS-8, SS-9 Mod 3, SS-11 and SS-13 missiles, and were in the engineering test phases for the SS16, SS-17, SS-18 and SS-19 missiles), at a time when US ICBM deployment was static, and that as a consequence of this, the USSR either posssessed, or was on the verge of possessing, a credible first strike capability that the USA had to live with as a military reality (operational first strike capability was confirmed when the USSR successfully deployed the first SS-18 ICBMs in late 1974, which had a range of 11,000 Km and a CEP of 180 metres). Bear in mind also that in the European theatre, the USSR possessed overwhelming land forces superiority (peak deployment reached 51,000 main battle tanks), and consequently possessed more than enough muscle to throw its weight around on the world stage, something it had a habit of doing now and again (Hungary, 1956, Czechoslovakia, 1968, Afghanistan, 1979), which meant that the idea of the USSR somehow being subject to leverage by the USA with respect to any "fraud" of the sort you're postulating, Oliver, is frankly ridiculous. Why would an ideological enemy of the USA, one that had achieved ICBM deployment superiority in 1969, and was well and truly in a position to capitalise upon any failure by the Americans in this regard, collude with their bitterest opponents?

The only one posting comedy here, Oliver, is you.

Meanwhile, I notice your response to this:

LinzeeBinzee wrote:Is there any piece of evidence that would convince you that the moon landing was not a hoax?

you posted this:

oliver wrote:Hi LinzeeBinzee

No, but I do hope there is evidence which would change my view on the matter.

Ignoring the fact that hard evidence required for the purpose has been presented to you in quantity.

oliver wrote:Apparently there are identical rocks to be found in Antarctica but that could be incorrect and by the way, NASA was apparently in the region prior to the missions.

This is bullshit plain and simple. Because earlier in this thread I presented a scientific paper on nanophase iron, which is a form of iron that does not exist naturally anywhere on Earth, and is produced by space weathering. Your posting the above statement after my presenting that paper here leads to one of two conclusions, either [1] you ignored my post in the hope that everyone would forget about it, or [2] you erected that above statement fully possessing the knowledge I had imparted to you earlier on, and chose to post a manifest falsehood.

Which is it, Oliver? Did you simply ignore evidence presented to you because it didn't fit your presuppositions, or did you read it anyway and decide to post the above manifest falsehood regardless?

The problem here being, of course, that both of the above actions on your part constitute discoursive malfeasance on a large scale on your part.

oliver wrote:Thousands of people were involved in the missions but even the ground crew and those in mission control could have been duped.

Yeah, sure Oliver, trained astrophysicists who knew how to use radio telescopes for tracking could be "duped". Care to tell us all how? Or is this latest eructation of yours, as is far more likely, another of your fatuous blind assertions that has no basis in reality? Particularly as, in the same post that I linked to earlier, I presented a scientific paper describing how the Parkes Observatory in Australia captured telemetry signals from Apollo 11 and relayed the television signals to the rest of the world? Oh look, Australia had the capability to receive and decode telemetry signals from spacecraft in lunar orbit ... and verify that those signals were indeed being transmitted from a spacecraft genuinely occupying a lunar orbit.

Oliver, your conspiracy theory is, in the light of all this, fatuous shite of the most stinking order.

oliver wrote:Only a few would have had to know about NASAs alterior motives if there were any.

Tinfoil hat excrement.

Oliver, your assorted blind assertions have been busted wide open by hard evidence from reality. All you have here is blind assertion, bluster, the erection of blatant falsehoods, and all the other familiar manifestations of the aetiology of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertion in preference to listening to reality. There were telemetry-capable radio telescopes pointing at the moon from multiple nations around the planet, none of whom had any reason whatsoever to support your purported "faking" of the Moon landings, and at least one of whom had a massive amount to gain politically and ideologically from exposing that fraud, that latter nation being a strategic nuclear superpower. The idea that a strategic nuclear superpower, with a lavishly funded military intelligence apparatus, including its own spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground, could be "duped" by your purported "conspiracy", is fucking laughable.

oliver wrote:Millions watched the launch of the Saturn rockets no doubt, but while the astronauts were floating about in Earths orbit, pre-recorded footage was been aired on TV or so the hoaxers believe.

And that's all that you and the conspiracy theory wingnuts have here, Oliver ... belief. Namely, uncritical acceptance of unsupported blind assertions as being purportedly "axioms" about the world, which is all you have likewise with respect to your fantasies about creationism. Your wingnut conspiracy theory has been flushed down the toilet by REALITY, Oliver.

oliver wrote:I have in my possession high-def photos from the missions and lots of video footage which I have carefully considered myself including documentaries such as "was it only a paper moon" and "Astronauts gone wild", the first containing the most conclusive and convincing material which I don't think can be disputed by anyone due to the fact that it's hard and sound evidence.

Oh really? Astronauts Gone Wild is a propaganda screed by arch-charlatan and liar Bart Sibrel. With respect to that, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has stated that Sibrel deceived his way into his home using faked History Channel credentials, and after alighting upon this, ejected Sibrel from his home "with a boot in his rear".

The mere fact that you're peddling this screed as purportedly constituting "valid evidence", Oliver, demonstrates that you don't know what real evidence is.

oliver wrote:I have taken my knowledge from photos/video and witnessed the interviews conducted with each astronaut which by the nature that they conduct themselves is convincing enough already.

Did Sibrel film Edgar Mitchell booting him out of his home for using fake credentials to gain privileged access?

oliver wrote:I was very skeptical at first but upon delving deeper into this matter I have come the conclusion that it was a hoax.

Bollocks. Your pretence at 'scepticism' consists of "accept uncritically wingnut assertions, and dismiss summarily hard evidence from reality".

oliver wrote:This realisation does sadden me somewhat and sometimes I wish I could just leave it alone and accept what is dished out to us in this life

Oh, admitting here that you reject reality in favour of your fantasy presuppositions? Nice to see you being honest about your biases for a change.

oliver wrote:but it all started with macro-evolution theory which has led me to question things.

Bollocks. You have yet to demonstrate that you know enough basic science to be able to ask the right questions in the first place.

oliver wrote:Grizby, I'll do some research on that aspect and come back to you but the short answer is that they were duped as well.

:funny: :funny: :funny: :roflma: :roflma: :roflma:

This is fucking unbelievable.

A nation possessing the technology to deploy eight different ICBM systems in 11 years, including one with an 11,000 Km range and a CEP of just 180 metres for the MIRVed warheads on board, was "duped"?

A nation that possessed one of the best funded military intelligence arms on the planet, with spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground at its disposal, all centrally controlled and coordinated by some of the best people in the espionage business, was "duped"?

You really don't have ANY connection to reality at all do you Oliver?

oliver wrote:"The Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled".. This I will do some more research on, just came across this while googling so will have to verify it.

Grizby has already handed you your arse cheeks on a silver platter, stir-fried in rationalist napalm and seasoned with a reality based hoy sin sauce on this one, by listing a series of Soviet lunar missions that required long distance telemetry capability. Indeed, in 1967, the Soviets parked Venera 4 in orbit around the planet Venus and received telemetry data from that spacecraft. At its closest to Earth, Venus is 38.2 million Km away, which is 99.47 times further from Earth than the Moon. The Soviets were able to receive accurate chemical analysis data of the Venusian atmosphere from the Venera 4 probe, over a distance at least 99 times greater than that of the Moon from the Earth, and, depending upon the position of Venus in its orbit relative to Earth, potentially much further away still. Which means that the Russians had deep space telemetry capability at least two years before Apollo 11 was launched, and deep space telemetry capability that could reach a spacecraft in orbit around Venus.

But once again, Oliver, you simply looked for something to fit your presuppositions, posted it here, then said in the weaselly manner that has become your hallmark here of late, that you would "do more research later" on this. This isn't good enough, Oliver - if the critical thinkers can exercise the effort and mental diligence required to check their facts properly before posting them., why can't you?

Post #6:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:
Calilasseia wrote:The fun part is, Inkracer introduced Oliver to the retroreflector laser ranging experiments way back on page one of this relocated thread, and I referred to it in an even earlier post from the original hilarious "Design of Atoms" thread. Apparently the scientists who conduct the laser ranging experiments are now planning to increase the accuracy of their measurements to the millimetre level of accuracy. Yet despite this, Oliver persists in pretending that the spaceflights carrying those instruments to the Moon never happened. What does it take to make reality penetrate the tinfoil hat he's obviously wearing?

Woah!! I never mentioned anything about spacecrafts not reaching the moon, like I said before, moon would be a doddle since we've made it to mars, but WITHOUT HUMANS.

Yawn. Play another one, Oliver, this one's worn out.

Why are these pieces of kit located exactly where the men who took part in those missions say they're located? And why is it that recent reconnaissance photos of the Moon show other left over bits of Apollo hardware nearby?

Oh, and once more, given that your blind assertions about the Russians not being able to track this kit have been demonstrated to be complete hooey, not least because the Russians sent a spacecraft of their own to Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched and received detailed telemetry data from that spacecraft, why should we regard your other blind assertion that the Russians were "duped" as being anything other than yet more hooey, given that we're talking here about a nation that at the time was a rival nuclear superpower to the USA (and indeed still is), was at the time an implacable ideological enemy of the USA, and moreover, funded lavishly one of the world's largest military intelligence arms, complete with its own spy satellites and thousands of ground-based spies? If you're trying to tell us, Oliver, that a nation capable of operating a global military intelligence network, equipped with spy satellites capable of photographing objects to 1 metre resolution from 500 miles up, that employed a massive number of personnel (the Border Guards Directorate of the KGB alone employed 245,000 people) in said intelligence network, and had a sophisticated C3I structure embedded within said intelligence network, wasn't capable of blowing wide open the sort of fraud you're asserting was perpetrated by NASA, then allow me to contend here that you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

For the record, the head of the KGB at this time was none other than Yuri Andropov, who was later to become Brezhnev's successor as leader of the Soviet Union. This was the man whose CV includes the arranging of the ruthless suppression of Imre Nagy's Hungarian government and the execution of Nagy himself, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 (it seems Andropov was fond of using tanks as a means of enforcing conformity to orthodoxy), and who presided over the deliberate manipulation and subversion of Western peace movements to further Soviet foreign policy ends. If you think that this arch-manipulator and arch-cynic could be "duped" by your purported fraud, Oliver, then it's just as well you never lived in the Soviet Union, because you wouldn't have lasted five minutes amongst people like Andropov. Andropov, upon encountering you, would probably have thought liquidating you by his own hand to be a suitably efficient way of dealing with you, and yet you want us to believe that this man, whilst head of the KGB, would not have lifted a finger to exploit real hard data confirming that your purported "hoax" had actually taken place?

Read the above slowly several times, Oliver. Whilst doing so, work out from the above why the critical thinkers regard your eructations here as being even less credible, than statements from a psychiatric ward inmate to the effect that he is Napoleon Bonaparte.

Post #7:

Me at RDF wrote:Oh dear, not this shit again ...

oliver wrote:i know they have been "debunked"

Oliver, the Americans' most implacable ideological enemies disagree with you. They accept the validity of the Apollo programme. And, if anyone had the means to expose your fantasy "hoax", the former Soviet Union had the technology AND the motivation to do so. Once again Oliver, why would the USA's most implacable ideological enemy collude with the USA in perpetuating a hoax that they could have capitalised upon ruthlessly, especially in the light of the fact that the arch-cynic and arch-manipulator Yuri Andropov was head of the KGB at the time?

You have no answer to this Oliver, which is why you keep trying to pretend that the question has never been asked, in the hope that it will go away and leave you free to entertain your fantasies.

oliver wrote:but of course it will be when NASAs entire reputation is riding on this.

Oliver, NASA has since achieved other firsts in space exploration. As an organisation, it doesn't need to concern itself with what tinfoil hat wingnuts think. It simply gets on with the job. A job it does very well despite the carping of people who know nothing about the science involved, and who for some reason want to believe some fantasy, most likely because it allows them to preen their inadequate egos.

oliver wrote:I want to believe man landed on the moon but having seen and heard all evidence against it I cannot accept that we did.

Bullshit. You only accept "evidence" that conforms to your presuppositions. This has been demonstrated time and time again, when you have erected assertions that have been demonstrated to be manifestly false. Such as your blind assertion that the Saturn V plans had been "conveniently destroyed", which was manifestly false, and your blind assertion that the Russians didn't have the technological capability to receive telemetry signals from distant spacecraft at the time, which was manifestly false. As for your assertion that a rival superpower, one capable of sending spacecraft to Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched, was somehow "duped" by NASA, I shall continue to regard that as cloud cuckoo land wankery.

oliver wrote:Everything about the claim stinks to high heaven

Everything about your claims stink to high heaven, certainly. Not least because two major assertions of yours have been demonstrated to be FALSE.

oliver wrote:but I guess we will never know for sure.

The LRO is about to kick your fantasy right in the testicles.

oliver wrote:There are just too many anomalies like NASA losing documents/original footage which was apparently taped over???

Yawn. This one's already been debunked. Play another record, Oliver, this one's worn out. Whilst some tapes pertinent to Apollo 11 happen to be missing, the tapes for Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 are still in existence. Plus, in the case of the television footage, how come I was able to refer to a peer reviewed scientific paper in an Australian astronomical journal detailing the Parkes Observatory's role in capturing television signals, that the Americans decided to use because they were superior in quality to those picked up by the Goldstone reciever?

oliver wrote:/plans for rockets destroyed

I established that this blind ex recto assertion of yours was a blatant lie earlier in this thread, Oliver, when I alighted upon the fact that two thousand cubic feet of Saturn V documentation still exists. Not to mention the fact that the Saturn V plans are on microfilm.

oliver wrote:and the very lack of details provided when they "returned".

Poppycock. Were you sitting in on their debriefings? No you weren't.

Anyone who has had even a passing familiarity with military debriefings will tell you that these are thorough. Air force personnel in particular are trained for years to be observant and to memorise what they observe for debriefing purposes after a mission. The idea that these people failed in their training, despite being chosen deliberately from the most capable people that the air force had to offer, is frankly laughable.

oliver wrote:NASA had complete mock-ups of pretty much every aspect of the missions created in high detail just like it would be on the moon but here on Earth.. why??

For the same reason they train pilots on simulators, Oliver. Is the fucking obvious too difficult for you to understand here?

oliver wrote: WHy did they have to practice sticking poles in the ground and walking up and down ladders and inane everyday actions here on earth when other priorities were in order.

Because they would have to perform these activities at one sixth of Earth gravity, Oliver, which means that they would have to exercise care and attention whilst performing actions that seem like everyday tasks here on Earth. Ask anyone who's been in the ISS why careful training is needed to perform even the simplest of operations in low gravity if you're not used to it.

oliver wrote:Why couldn't the astroNOTS demonstrate basic physics on the moon with a rock or such item to demonstrate the gravity difference and etc etc etc etc...

HAHAHAHAHA!

Are you fucking serious here?

I see Virphen has already provided the video clip of David Scott dropping his geology hammer alongside a feather in order to illustrate Galileo's principle with respect to falling bodies during the Apollo 15 mission. I remember seeing that being transmitted live when I was just 11 years old.

oliver wrote:Why did none of the astronots swear on the Bible that they had walked on the moon? Even if they were atheists it wouldn't hurt to do that simple action. So so many questions.

So many inane questions arising from tinfoil hat wingnuttery.

Oliver, you have FAILED to provide substantive answers to ANY questions put to you. You have FAILED to present real objections to the validity of the Apollo missions. You have POSTED BLATANT FALSEHOODS that have been EXPOSED as such. Your credibility here is ZERO.

Now, are you going to ANSWER those questions put to you, by myself and others, including:

[1] Grizby has presented evidence that the Soviet Union was able to receive telemetry data from spacecraft as far back as 1959, and I presented evidence that the Soviet Union was able to receive telemetry data from a spacecraft in orbit around Venus two years before Apollo 11 was launched. On the basis of this, are you going to retract your manifestly false assertion that the Soviet Union was unable to track the Apollo missions independently?

[2] Care to explain how a rival nuclear superpower with its own manned spaceflight technology, one moreover that was an ideological enemy of the USA, one that operated a large and lavishly funded military intelligence agency, with access to its own spy satellites and thousands of spies working on the ground, could be "duped" by NASA?

Post #8:

Me at RDF wrote:
oliver wrote:Hi Grizby

Apparently NASA paid off the Russians by sending secret shipments of grain after the 'missions'. This I cannot seem to verify but I guess could be plausible.

Oh look who's back, posting yet more blind ex recto assertions and debunked tripe.

Oliver, you have FAILED to provide ONE single coherent, genuine reason why your tinfoil-hat conspiracy is anything other than a FANTASY.

Now, here are some FACTS that I would like you to address, since you failed to do so the first time I posted them.

[1] The Soviet Union, at the time the Apollo missions were being conducted, was an ideological enemy of the USA. FACT.

[2] The Soviet Union possessed its own in-house manned spaceflight technology, and was therefore in a unique position to expose any "conspiracy" or "fraud" allegedly perpetrated by the USA. FACT.

[3] The Soviet Union had previously flown missions to Venus and obtained detailed telemetry data from those missions, once again demonstrating that they had the capacity to expose any "fraud" allegedly perpetrated by the USA. FACT.

[4] The Soviet Union maintained, at the time of the Apollo missions, one of the world's largest, if not the world's largest, military intelligence operation, which had access to its own spy satellites and thousands of spies on the ground, and which again was eminently well placed to expose any alleged "fraud". FACT.

[5] At the time the Soviet Union was maintaining said intelligence operation, said operation was headed by Yuri Andropov, the KGB hard man who was responsible for having tanks sent into Hungary in 1956 and who organised the assassination of Imre Nagy. FACT.

[6] Yuri Andropov later became the leader of the Soviet Union, and was leader at a time when Cold War tensions with respect to the deployment of SS-20 missiles in Europe were at an all time high. FACT.

[7] The Soviet Union was, at the time the Apollo missions were being conducted, a rival nuclear superpower to the USA, and developed its own first strike capability that rendered the US Minuteman missile fleet vulnerable, in the form of the SS-9, and later, the SS-18, ICBM systems, the latter having a range of 11,000 miles and capable of dispensing 10 1-megaton nuclear warheads per missile. FACT.

[8] The Soviet Union also possessed one of the largest conventional armies on the planet, deploying 51,000 main battle tanks in Europe, 6,000 combat aircraft, 3,000 attack helicopters, and 2.8 million troops in 210 divisions. FACT.

[9] The Soviet Union was a rival in the space race with the USA, and was striving to beat the USA to the Moon as a matter of national pride. FACT.

Given facts [2], [3] and [4] above, which meant that the Soviet Union has the means to expose any alleged "fraud", given in addition facts [1], [5], [6] and [9], which meant that the Soviet Union had the motivation to expose any alleged "fraud", and given facts [7] and [8], which meant that the Soviet Union had more than enough military muscle not to be intimidated by other powers, give me one good reason, backed by hard evidence and solid facts, why the Soviet Union would collude with their bitterest ideological enemies and rivals to uphold American prestige in this respect. I want something with a bit more substance than some blind assertion about grain sales that you admitted above you cannot verify.

Now, are you going to address the above in a substantive fashion, using proper, independently corroborated evidence, or are you merely going to engage in more of your tiresome, duplicitous handwaving, erection of blind ex recto assertions, and fatuous posturing?

It's at this point that the Richard Dawkins Forums underwent the infamous meltdown.

Coincidence? I think not! The NSA/FBI/CIA/FDA/MIB-orchestrated meltdown of RDF happened just as Oliver was getting close to the truth!

:grin:

(Kidding)

**#27** · **#27** by **Agrippina** » Jan 24, 2014 12:04 pm

Happy Birthday Cali! :cheers:

**#28** · **#28** by **Mike_L** » Jan 24, 2014 12:05 pm

Agrippina wrote:Happy Birthday Cali!

Seconded!

**#29** · **#29** by **igorfrankensteen** » Jan 24, 2014 12:59 pm

Plus one to Pelfdaddy's post, Threadstarter, in the cases where your goal is to get along with such folks. I have one in my own close family, and I get along with her just fine, because I follow that gentle and respectful approach.

Remember (as I wish more people in forums like this one would remember!) that one does not need to support another person's beliefs, to treat with them as respectable equals as people.

For that subgroup of people for whom you find your tolerance in jeopardy, I suggest you examine YOURSELF a bit further, first of all. Figure out why their beliefs upset you to that extent. After all, unless someone is in a position to deflect your life away from where you want it to go, the fact that they are nuts or worse really doesn't matter. I have found that lots of people who angrily demand that they MUST confront all such believers, themselves have serious psychological issues to overcome. In fact, many of them have the exact SAME personality defect which drives the more annoying of the conspiracy nuts: the certainty that they MUST make every moment all about their personal crusade.

When it comes to dealing with those kinds, all you can do to get along, is to allow them enough of a lead to run around the room a few times every time you deal with them, until they calm down and get on to whatever is actually going on. Whether they are the "pro" or the "anti" conspiracy fanatics, resistance, no matter how reasonable, will just energize them more. A calm smile, and asking them if they'd like some tea, and gently redirecting the conversational subject usually works much better.

**#30** · **#30** by **Alexinchains** » Jan 24, 2014 8:42 pm

Thanks everybody. Your responses were very helpful. I guess I should clarify what my issues with patience are. I don't blow up on people but I do get frustrated. I don't exactly think I need a psychoanalysis because of this. Who doesn't lose patience now and then? I was looking for other people's experiences and approaches. Believe me that I am as nice as I can be provided my opponent behaves the same. My goal is mostly to call out the nutters who try to convince other impressionable people, but I consider it a bonus if the nutters are also convinced. I've convinced moderates but no diehards.

Greetings friends!

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