B_Hickboy
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I've got to doubt that man ever landed on the Moon...
- Thread starter D_Crystallized Ginger
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No matter: defenders of conspiracy theories are never embarrassed or deterred when one of their arguments turns out to rest on false premises. Since they operate with a total lack of confirming evidence from the get-go, it makes no difference to them whether their arguments are based on fact or fiction. Rather than admit that they have been using bad arguments, they will just come up with more bad arguments. They have no intellectual integrity and no shame.
The essential basis of their strategy is this fact: Debunking a false claim takes far more time, more work, and more knowledge than making one. Proponents of conspiracy theories have access to an inexhaustible supply of arguments, namely their own imaginations. They don't require their premises to reflect actual fact: what matters is that they sound, to people who don't know better (which is to say, most people who first encounters their claims), like facts. So the refutations can never really catch up with them. While you have been busy doing the research necessary to refute one of their arguments, they have come up with four more arguments. The fact that the arguments are utterly worthless does not reduce their effectiveness on credulous minds.
Stephen Law, in his recently published book, Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (Prometheus Books, 2011), terms this mode of operation "the Blunderbuss." It is not peculiar to conspiracy theorists. Law discusses how it is used by young-earth creationists:
Young Earth Creationists have amassed a vast arsenal of such irrelevant or invented problems to fire off at their opponents in debate. It usually takes time and patience to deal properly with even just one example. Often it also takes specialist knowledge that scientists working in another field may not possess. So it's often fairly easy for Young Earth Creationists to get their rivals bogged down, seemingly stymied by the "problems" they raise. "Explain this! And this! And this!" they say, and watch with mounting satisfaction as looks of confusion and desperation begin to creep across their opponents' faces. (92)
This is one reason why I tend to get impatient and abusive toward people who propound this sort of nonsense. To respond by rebutting their arguments presumes that they are engaging in argumentative discourse in good faith. But that is almost never the case. It is not possible for anyone who exercises critical thinking to arrive at such a preposterous conclusion as that the Apollo moon landings were faked. So anytime that you encounter such claims, you know that you are dealing with someone whose reasoning and judgment are at least seriously impaired by bad habits, if not positively corrupted by them. They often prove this by engaging in the sort of shabby tactic that Hypoc has been using, of producing one bad argument after another and simply disregarding the refutations.
I don't understand why you say that "nobody really knows" whether the moon landings took place. The proposition "Astronauts walked on the moon in the Apollo missions" is as sound a piece of factual knowledge as, e.g., "The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776," or "Bucharest is the capital of Romania." If you are going to deny that anyone knows that the moon landings took place, then I don't know why you should make an exception for Neil Armstrong (for some reason you don't seem to count the other eleven astronauts who walked on the moon): you could just as well make it part of your fantasy that he was deceived too. But such a fantasy is not a ground for doubt. The fact that there are people in the world who will doubt or deny these facts does not in the least render them uncertain or reduce them to mere personal beliefs. It just means that some people are ignorant, ill-informed, or given to defective modes of reasoning and judgment.... and by believers I meant people who believe Man landed on the Moon... btw it's interesting to notice not every usa citizen believe it all was true... I want to say you that in Italy most of people believe the Man landed on our satellite so it is a worldwide accepted truth although nobody really knows wheter it was only film or not, except for Armstrong of course
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who the hell gave italy satellites??? you don't have satellites wolfy boy, it is a hoax played out by the sinister cosa nostra, who secretly runs your corrupt country anyway. now refute that!!! it's a fact!! i read it on the internet and that's what i want to believe!Dear Calboner I love you scientific approach to any problem, be it a matter of penis size or anything else.. you are right when you advice me to read some surveys before to shot statements of any kind... well I just wanted to know what lpsg members think about the Moon conquest... and by believers I meant people who believe Man landed on the Moon... btw it's interesting to notice not every usa citizen believe it all was true... I want to say you that in Italy most of people believe the Man landed on our satellite so it is a worldwide accepted truth although nobody really knows wheter it was only film or not, except for Armstrong of course
you see very well that sending a satellite in the space isn't the same thing as landing on the moon...
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yeah, but i still don't think your country could pull it off. it's all a hoax and since it is such a lesser technology and undertaking, much easier to pull the wool over the entire world's eyes and say you did it when you really did not.
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btw, that's exactly the point!! the scope and size of the MULTIPLE moon missions would be totally and utterly impossible to hoax and get away with it.
I've never said we didn't go to the moon, and I've never said we did. All I'm saying is there is a lot of things that just don't add up.
If you choose to believe we did then good for you, but there are many people who don't believe we did and many like myself that really haven't made our minds up for sure that we did.
Who are you to decide whos arguments are good or bad? I think you need to come down off your highhorse.
Besides making some lame ass response to my post that has nothing to do with the topic do you have any explanation to any of the points I brought up? You seem to be one of these people here that has all the answers.
midlifebear
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I'm the one who posted replies (#18) to some of your arguments ("The flag waves in the wind!" "The shadows show two different light sources!") that show that those arguments simply don't hold water. Others have done the same with those bad arguments and other bad arguments that you have made (#21, #29). Are you still going to make those arguments, or do you now admit that they are worthless? If you are still going to make those arguments, how do you answer the criticisms?
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B_blueonblue1964
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Yes, we went to the moon....and, Oswald killed Kennedy, Hitler killed himself in that underground bunker, Elvis died on the toilet, and Marilyn Monroe killed herself. No conspiracy theories. Sometimes, shit just happens. Period.
And there you suggest the most basic reason why people are susceptible to conspiracy theories (and to religious beliefs): they don't want to live in a universe in which shit simply happens. In Conspiracy World, events may be controlled by evil cabals, but at least they are controlled, and controlled by intentional agents rather than by accidental combinations of blind forces; and while the workings of those agents are hidden from public view, it is always possible to know them by inference, if one knows what to look for (e.g., lens glare in a film of astronauts on the moon is a reflection of light off the fly wires from which they are suspended on an earthly movie stage).
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:kiss:wow, i am glad you came along and cleared all that up!!:kiss:
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not to fall into it or start anything, but having been a hunter for most of my early life, the pristine bullet has always caused me problems
I don't see or hear em anymore, ever scince I started wearing my tinfoil hat.
I had an explanation and you ignored it. I could explain an answer for every one of your points if I wanted to take the time. But I don't see why I should because if you were curious enough, you would do it for yourself.
First of all I wasn't responding to you.
Secondly, please by all means don't waste any of your precious time on little ole uneducated, ill-informed, unintelligent, shabby tactic self.
From now on if I see it on tv it must be.
