[LV-426]

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that. I just remember the first time I ever saw that footage, couldn't believe what I was hearing, and haven't forgotten it.

My own objection isn't even about government/state promotion of religion - though I'm not particularly a fan of that - it's that a scientific body like NASA comes out with "God created Earth".

And I wouldn't even mind that if NASA stated it was their official position. Then anyone is free to decide on their scientific credibility.

Instead we had an organization making itself look ridiculous by unnecessarily pandering to beliefs it couldn't possibly officially hold.

[throwanem]

You are conflating the official position of the organization with a statement made by one of its employees on company time. The linked decision thoroughly considers this point as well, and finds it unconvincing. NASA's official allegiance in matters of faith was found to be as nonexistent as befits a US government agency. The court recognizes that sometimes people say things of their own accord, for which they alone are responsible. It seems a sensible enough analysis.

By modern mores, of course such a thing would be a firing offense and the seed crystal around which much Buzzfeed and Twitter would briefly accrete. (It would be a firing offense because it would be, &c., &c. I suppose it's only a mercy none of the Apollo 8 crew were seen in public to wear shirts their friends had made for them.) But we here discuss a historical event, now some fifty years in the past. The application of modern mores to historical events is called "presentism", a word whose pejorative connotation is well earned by the fact that such tendentious analysis generates only heat, never light.

And leaving fallacies of historiography aside, as far as I'm concerned, the employees of any past or future NASA capable of carrying out a manned lunar mission can quote whatever scripture they like from lunar orbit, because it strikes me as absurd unto risibility to be more concerned with their quoting scripture than with their doing so from lunar orbit. But I am certainly a very strange man, and will not in any case be consulted, and what people say will continue for probably some time to outweigh unto negligibility what those same people do. So it goes.

[LV-426]

> You are conflating the official position of the organization with a statement made by one of its employees on company time.

1. It was not one person, it was everyone on board.

2. Describing NASA trained professionals, paid by NASA, in their NASA gear and NASA hardware, representing NASA on a monumental, history-making, multi-billion dollar NASA mission into deep space as mere "employees on company time" is beyond ridiculous, frankly.

[throwanem]

Three employees, then. Did you have a substantive response to make? I mean, I understand that you're not satisfied with how the events of Apollo 8 played out. What I don't understand is whence comes the belief, which you seem to cherish quite strongly, that your satisfaction or lack thereof is of any relevance to those events.

[LV-426]

> Did you have a substantive response to make?

Did you?

> I understand that you're not satisfied with how the events of Apollo 8 played out. What I don't understand is whence comes the belief, which you seem to cherish quite strongly, that your satisfaction or lack thereof is of any relevance to those events.

I understand that you're not satisfied with my posts about how Apollo 8 played out. What I don't understand is whence comes the belief, which you seem to cherish quite strongly, that your satisfaction or lack thereof is of any relevance to anything.

[throwanem]

So, no.

[bolololo1]

Amen!