[matthoiland]

> Astronaut James Irwin, the eighth person to walk on the Moon, experienced a religious epiphany during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. The following year, he resigned from NASA and founded an evangelical organization, the High Flight Foundation. During his outreach work, Irwin met Eryl Cummings in 1976 and expressed interest in joining one of his expeditions in search of Noah's Ark.

Seeing our vulnerable blue planet floating through space must trigger some primordial fear of annihilation, as this seems to be a common experience among astronauts.

[renegade-otter]

I would imagine looking at this fragile marble from space and then coming back to see things like decades-long killings over "disputed territories", or people getting grey hairs over completely insignificant things, all of that would seem incredibly petty and unnecessary.

[jfengel]

Yeah, that's nice to imagine.

Instead the guy spent the rest of his life promoting bad science (not just Noah's Ark, but creationism in general). There's no way to do that without implicitly or explicitly calling out a conspiracy consisting of effectively every single scientist on the planet.

And while I'm sure he imagined he was doing the "nice" version of evangelicalism, at a minimum it consists of pestering the three-fourths of the planet who isn't Christian and doesn't want to be Christian. And often finding ways to make their lives uncomfortable.

It sounds like seeing this "fragile marble" may change people, but not always for the better. It seems like in this case it just increased his cultural injunction to dominate the planet.

[ASalazarMX]

Jeff Bezos seemed immune to that, while William Shatner was visibly moved. Maybe you need a minimum of humanity for it to be stirred, ha ha.

[kej]

There's a name for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect