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Apollo 8 Astronaut Re-Creates 1968 Christmas Broadcast To Earth
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "AP reports that standing by a part of the Apollo 8 spacecraft he once rode, retired astronaut James Lovell read the 1968 Christmastime broadcast from the day he and two others became the first humans to orbit the moon marking the 45th anniversary of the orbit and the famous broadcast. 'The idea of bringing people together by a flight to the moon where we encompassed everybody in our thoughts is still very valid today,' says Lovell. 'The words that we read are very appropriate.' Millions tuned in on Dec. 24, 1968, when Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Lovell circled the moon. A television camera on board took footage of the crater-filled surface as the astronauts read Bible verses describing the creation of Earth. They circled 10 times and began reading from the Book of Genesis on the last orbit. 'It's a foundation of Christianity, Judaism and Islam,' Lovell said of choosing Genesis. 'It is the foundation of most of the world's religions. ... They all had that basis of the Old Testament.' Lovell says at the time the astronauts weren't sure who would be listening and how the broadcast would be taken. The famous "Earthrise" photo was also taken during the mission. Lovell closed with the same message the astronauts did in 1968. 'From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.'"
It's become really foggy in my mind. Anybody can remind me which state it was they played the movie inside of?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
I thought TFA would link to a stream of the event, but it does not.
The book of Genesis is certainly not the foundation of most of the world's religions. There are hundreds of religions with more than a million followers each. In demographic terms it may be closer, with followers of Abrahamic religions making up close to half of the world population. However there are billions adhering to other faiths, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.
As divided as we all seem to be these days, Christmas still seems to be a time when we each can remove these mental boundaries and see humanity for what it is, regardless of our religious (or lack thereof) preferences.
In nature, when it's summer time, and food is plenty, generally wild animals fight for food, fight for mates, and fight for whatever else they see fit to fight over. But when it's cold, food is scarce and everything seems to be fighting to live, even some wild animals share what is available.
Merry Christmas everyone. I hope it was/is filled with the things that you love most.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
China went to the moon. Now go dig out some of the cool stuff NASA did before we started funding useless wars for no gain instead.
We can't look like we're second to china...
Remind everyone what cool stuff we used to do.
Oh. By the way. You can't spend any money to do it.
I know you can’t be a dumbass and make the astronaut corps, so I’m a little confused as to how he could be saying something so stupid. The Old Testament is the foundation of exactly three of the world’s major religions (and that’s counting Judaism as arguably major.) It’s irrelevant to half the world’s population.
Did they orbit the Moon again?
Would have been exciting to be around back when Sputnik took off or men orbited or landed on the moon.
Wonder how long it will be until another major leap for humanity.
Perhaps the Wright Brothers achieving flight or Columbus discovering the New World fits in that category.
These days, we have to settle for technological achievements like the start of the world wide web or the launch of the iPhone --- maybe New Horizons flying past Pluto will be a bit of a "first ever" moment for humanity here in a bit over a year.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Happy Grav-Mass!
Why not celebrate comprehensible laws of physics that got your astronaut asses to the damn Moon by honoring Isaac Newton? You know, someone who was actually born on December 25th?
You can ask many a thirtysomething and younger nowadays, and even some fourtysomething, "Did humans
walk on the moon in your lifetime" and most will know the answer and some will respond "Did they ever?".
Yet these are the millions going down the street heads down, ears cupped, submerged into their own lives (and
thousands of so called 'friends' waiting to hear if the corner they rounded just now was to the left or right), these
lives totally and entirely framed within some 4x3 illumination.
It wasn't done on location.
So this is where we Americans are now. Alleviating the misery of our old, fat and lazy existence by getting a charge out of watching recreations of almost ancient history, lounging around and reminiscing about our grand and glorious past.
Yeah, they all did. Except for non-Abrahamic religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Shintoism (which by the way encompass more people.)
I can't help but picture Lovell sitting on his porch, reminiscing of how great we were and how good the times were and how much everything was better back then... ...and being one of the few people who're right when they say everything used to be better... even the future.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Talosians became addicted to their illusion making powers, getting so caught up in their imaginary world as to completely care nothing about reality; dooming themselves to extinction. I'm beginning to think the writers of that story were on to something about human nature due to the imaginary alternate world of the internet having an effect on Americans that seems eerily similar.
Unfortunately, we've past the point of no return and there won't be a Vulcan, star ship Captains or Number Ones to save us from our demise.
If you're talking about the number of sects and splinter groups, then maybe "It is the foundation of most of the world's religions. ... They all had that basis of the Old Testament." But if you're talking about the population of believers, the Hindus and Buddhists might have a thing or two to say about that.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Get over yourself. The fact you're quoting entertainment as some kind of reference point is both highly amusing and disturbing to me...
And that, boys and girls, is what we call "an unintended example of the point being made."
I was 9 years old when Apollo 8 flew to the moon. I remember that Christmas eve broadcast just like it was yesterday. I was a "space nut" from the first launch I saw, John Glenn (being too young to remember Sheppard, Grissom's flights. I had a standing pact with my mom who woke me up to watch the launches, no matter what time they took off. Saw every launch from Glenn, to the first few space shuttle launches. I remember that Christmas eve, opening presents, pausing to watch that broadcast on that black & white tv in the living room, and seeing those grainy images of planet Earth thinking how small the world was. Apollo 8, kind of closed out 1968. Being 8, I didn't understand but today I do, how important that flight, and that broadcast were to a nation that was tearing itself apart. In the space of a year, the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam, Martin Luther King Jr, Robert F. Kennedy were both murdered, the riots after King, the 1968 democratic convention riot in Chicago among the many problems of that year, that one little broadcast, helped close out the year, on a positive note.
Nah. The referent is about people making an observation about human nature and creating a story around it. The demise is in the U.S. losing economic power status and being replaced by another, becoming its lap dog like so many countries before this country.
We ran the experiment. We've spent TRILLIONS on anti-poverty programs and we have more poor people now than before we started spending the cash. Oh, and before some religious person pops up and tells us to give till it hurts..... Jesus said "For ye have the poor with you always" when his followers tried to scold a woman for not selling some oil to raise money for the poor - his point was NOT to oppose charity, obviously, but even He was expressing a limitation to the ability to solve the so-called poverty problem with money. The simple fact is that most (but not all) people in the US who are in poverty are their by their own choices.... do not get drunk, do not use drugs, graduate from high school, get married to somebody of the opposite sex and stay married, do not have kids until after you are married and you will most-likely never be in poverty. Oh, and I cite these rules NOT from some religious text but because they are the primary statistical indicators; there are always exceptions to all stats, but for most people, it's just that simple.
There is simply no justification for the nation needing to halt progress and re-direct funds from productive activity into taking care of a bunch of idiots who jammed syringes full of toxic substances into their arms; that's a backward, warped, twisted, evil and phony form of compassion. Individuals may CHOOSE to give money to such people as an act of charity, BUT the society as a whole should feel no compulsion to re-direct is money and efforts to coddling such dysfunctions. As for people going hungry in America on Christmas.......oh, PLEASE..... we have the fattest poor people on EARTH. Obama has DOUBLED the food stamp program so we now spend FAR more on food stamps than on NASA.
Lumping all religions together and then assigning blame to "religion" for many discreet misdeeds committed by practitioners of various religions is like lumping together all secular thought and then blaming "secularism" for all non-religious bad acts. Sorry, but physics is not responsible for what some 1930's Germans did with phrenology, and Chemistry is not at fault for Stalin's massacres. Catholics are not responsible for human sacrifices by the Aztecs, Protestant Christians are entirely blameless for both the Crusades and the Inquisition.
WHAT somebody believes and what ACTIONS that person takes as a result are FAR more important than whether or not a person HAS beliefs.... and that goes just as much for religious beliefs as for non-religious beliefs. You might like to slime "religion" but those same religious people have done more to feed, heal, clothe, and educate people than any atheist groups have ever done.
Oh, and while the Apollo missions were great scientific and technical accomplishments, most of the people involved where Christians and/or Jews and the overall endeavor was a fantastic HUMAN achievement that also involved the human spirit, philosophy, art, culture, etc
Merry Christmas,
-- Hollywood
Last I checked neither India nor China follow any of the Abrahmic religions dominantly. They constitute at-least 40% of world population? (even back in '68)..
Great debate on the Abrahamaic religions, although it seems most everyone is missing a basic point: the old testament didn't start anything except a handful of offshoot cults; all it was was a regurgitation of Sumerian mythology, with some Egyptian added in... and probably a few others we've mostly forgotten about, although when every city has their own God (or gods), you really don't need anything else to pick and choose from. Then, of course, you have the Sumerians God's and beliefs that are are just a distortion of whatever culture was before before them.
Religion... the perfect long con.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I don't really see much point in getting involved in a religious discussion, but just to set the record straight -- most wars are caused by the personal ambition and greed of the ruling class, and seldom have anything to do with religious beliefs of one side or the other. Jonathon Kolkey's World Wide War Project (www.worldwidewarproject.com) contains a body of supporting material for his thesis, which is generally borne out by examining various wars in history. At most, religion seems to be used as part of a vague, cynical appeal to a wide range of values and emotions, including cultural differences, nationality, past grievances, logical fallacies ("they break the small end of the egg, so they're evil!"), and so on. Even the Crusades seemed to be as much about an epic land grab as anything else.
Merry Christmas.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Some theory being deemed important because a majority of crazy people believe it.
If you believe in some invisible superhero who lives in the sky and watches you masturbate, YOU'RE CRAZY.
You have the right to believe in your anti-masturbation sky fairy, but I have the right to believe YOU'RE FUCKING CRAZY.
Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Little Kimmy of North Korea, etc. killed 100+ million in the name of their own perverted political science.
Odd that you're modded up, but responses (many very good) were modded offtopic. So I'll take my my downmod too -- your comment is not only barely on-topic (you only used the topic to bash religion) and it's flamebait.
What is wrong with a religious scientist using religion to celebrate a scientific achievement that caused him (and many others) to have a religious experience? Over half of the world's scientists worship in one religion or another.
Your troll is especially offensive being posted on Christians' most holy day and your link about something that happened four hundred years ago was icing on your trollcake. Are you going to say the Holocaust didn't happen this coming passover? It's the same damned thing, asshole.
Your bigotry is forgiven, though. That's what Christians do. That's what Christianity is about -- love and forgiveness.
Now repent your damned trolling.
Free Martian Whores!
The narrative of Abrahamic religions is creation, fall, redemption and consummation. Individuals coming into existence continue to exist. Individuals have two destinies.
The narrative of Dharmic religions is Deity fragmentation into a matrix called the Universe, discreet fragments of Deity experience existence as solids, liquids, gases, plasma, quantum foam, compressed matter energized distortions in the fabric of space (black holes), rocks, plants, animals and humans. Souls get recycled n times ( 8.4e6 = n 1/0 ). Sometime in the distant future, Deity will remerge and its existence will resume as it once had before the fragmentation. Notice that individuals at this point no longer exist and so destinies are moot.
The part that humanity instinctively abhors in the Abrahamic scheme is that individuals continue to exist eternally in the unpleasant destiny PRECISELY BECAUSE it is the DEFAULT destiny of all except [ insert here name of religion that so teaches ].
Nobody likes to be told that they will roast for eternity if they don't accept the claims of the Nazarene and "lose their originality". It is a personal destiny of the worst case. Eternal suffering is worse than ceasing to exist AND remerging in Deity.
Your troll is especially offensive being posted on Christians' most holy day
Is it Easter Sunday already?
*ducks*
"As empires turn back into sand" - Moody Blues
We have several intersections here with 1 or 2 people at each, holding up badly scrawled "work for food" cardboard signs. All of them are bloated, some them sitting in their portable chairs. I don't get it myself. The more fortunate express outrage at any type of constructive criticism and brag about being homeless as if it was a badge of honor.
Personally, I think people are sociopathic in general and secretly enjoying the misfortune of others. It's the only way they can feel better about themselves. If the truly honest people that chose to be empathic had any power, they could easily resolve this particular problem.
The summary made a strong point of putting religion up as a significant part of the story. I responded to that, and to its inappropriate mixing with a major scientific and technological achievement. If you think that's "off-topic", then you don't know a topic when you see one. What I posted was on-topic, highly relevant temporally, and served as a fine conversation starter, which, you may recall, is what this place is all about. Controversial? Sure. Christians hate having their religion dragged out in the daylight, and I don't blame them -- it's really a mess. Also, don't blame me for your incoherent, ad homonym ridden failure to make a cogent response thus far. That's on you.
What's wrong with it??? Religion is a horrible thing. Look at what it's done to our legal system; look at the crusades, the inquisitions, exorcisms, "witch" burnings, blood libel, repression of women, vilification of sexuality, promotion of slavery, invasion of the educational system with utter nonsense like creationism, utter tripe like can't eat shellfish, wear mixed fibers, have sex with someone of your own gender, flights into buildings, clinic bombings, usurpation (and narrow-minded restriction) of the very idea of marriage... I could go on and on. If it were just that religion is bunk, that'd be bad enough. But religion is toxic. That's what's really wrong with it. It's not just another easter bunny story -- the easter bunny is not a force for evil, very much unlike religion in general.
Most holy day, eh? Christ, if he existed (there's no evidence for that), wasn't born on the 25th -- or even in December, according to the most authoritative Christian estimates. This date, Dec 25th, is arbitrary, except in that had the benefit (to Christians) in that it usurped other, already extant festivals. Santa isn't a Christian symbol. The tree isn't a Christian symbol. Commercialism and gift giving isn't a Christian symbol. All Christmas is, is a massive implosion of identity confusion among the deluded. The vast majority of Christians (including you, obviously) don't even know what day should be "most holy", because their little book of mythology is a compendium of copies of magical stories made hundreds of years after the initial birth of the cult, contradicts itself repeatedly, lacks validation by even one direct, contemporaneous witness, and contains almost no information about the magic man at the center of the story from his purported youth. It's no wonder Christians had to make something up.
Finally, I will say this: I will stop complaining about Christianity when they get their greasy little fingers out of United States legislation. What's that? They have every right to meddle with our laws? Well, that's (highly) debatable, but let's go with the assumption that it is so: I have every right as well to speak my mind, and that's not debatable. I don't hide behind political correctness, I don't pretend something is ok when it appears to me by every indicator to be toxic, and I certainly am not going to support some nonsense where attempts are made to mix objective facts with superstitious balderdash in the name of science.
Aside from the blatantly transparent attempt to put words in my mouth and the superfluous name-calling, no. Hitler's backing faith was Christianity, mixed liberally with other random superstitions -- this is well documented. His pacts with the
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Christ, if he existed (there's no evidence for that), wasn't born on the 25th -- or even in December,
Biblical scholars say that Dec 25 was the date of conception.
Santa isn't a Christian symbol. The tree isn't a Christian symbol. Commercialism and gift giving isn't a Christian symbol.
Very true. Saint Nicholas was a real priest, but he was a mortal man who died.
contradicts itself repeatedly,
Examples?
lacks validation by even one direct, contemporaneous witness
The 1st century Roman historian Josephus
Every once in a while, one of you starts to think clearly, and that's the end of the magical thinking.
And once in a while one of you finds God, although I personally know only one such person, who was raised in an atheist household and found God after a bout of homelessness.
Of course religion can be misused by evil men, there is nothing in the world that can't be.
Free Martian Whores!
No, they don't.
Sure
Non-contemporaneous. Josephus, AKA Yosef Ben Matityahu A.D. (37 ~100+). Not at all contemporaneous with the time Christ was reported (by the bible) to have lived. There's no overlap at all. Christ would have died before Josephus was even born. So he won't do -- he's in the exact same position of someone born after the Heaven's Gate UFO cult had come and gone, attesting to the reality of the UFO itself, even though he never could have seen it himself, even to the extent that the UFO probably never existed at all, just as there is no actual evidence for Christ -- so far -- except the existence of the cult itself.
Agreed. However, my point is that the vast majority of religion, and particularly Christianity, is inherently evil. Christianity espouses (and worse, imposes) many harmful ideas in the name of a constipated, selfish morality. I have said many times, and will repeat here for the benefit of this conversation, that if Christians kept their craziness out of the legal system and out of government, I'd have no particular objection to any adult practicing/believing. Or, if they eschewed the craziness entirely and simply quietly worshipped with no attempts to enforce those ideas on others. However, that's not the case. From blue laws to sex to words we can or can't say to bibles in the courtroom and 6000-year old planet myths as (supposedly) science in schools, Christianity is highly active as an invasive, harmful force. It is in that role that I object to it most strongly. It has a terrible, dark history of interfering with other people's lives; I take that as a strong cautionary note, one that can be seen still echoing and taking root in modern society.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.