Food for Thought - Disbelief in the Moon Landings

(First written 11-13-25, revised 11-14-25)

There are a good contingent of people that do not believe that the United States actually landed on the Moon in 1969, and that the broadcasts were instead filmed from a soundstage on Earth. I wonder how many of these people subscribe to this theory because they have a sincere cosmological belief that the Moon is not something that can be physically landed on.

Human cultures have come up with a lot of stories on what the Moon is, including beliefs that the Moon is simply another light in the sky like the sun and the stars, or beliefs that the Moon is a physical object but is much smaller than science has determined it to be. (After all, any culture that does not have access to a telescope really doesn't have much to go on). Human cultures also have a wide array of beliefs about the nature of the sky, or whether outer space is something that can actually be reached. A lot of times those beliefs don't have much effect on wider cosmology or everyday life, but sometimes there can be very real practical factors riding on them, such as wanting to believe that an authority figure with a certain cosmological belief is trustworthy. This especially includes the issue of cultural identity, where a person might associate belonging with their group in terms of believing something about the world, especially if it is contrary to the beliefs of an "other" group that they do not get along with.

This is, after all, a terrific motivator behind the Flat Earth conspiracy theory. A lot of people who believe in flat Earth do so because of Biblical literalism - if you read the stories of the Bible at face value, especially the Genesis 1 creation story and the stories of the wandering Israelites in the book of Exodus, you get a rather clear picture of the Earth as a flat surface with four corners, with a solid but transparent "firmament" separating the surface of the Earth from an infinite supply of water above it, and God will open and close that firmament to let water through as rain as He sees fit. Having previously come from a Christian community, I can tell you that a lot of people take stock in the Bible this way - the world can be a confusing, unknowable place, and a common response to cope with that is to regard the Bible as an axiom, treating it as an ultimate source of truth and using it to interpret the rest of the world around them. Even if you don't think too much about all the implications of Biblical literalism, you may subscribe to it because you have parents, friends, and teachers who do as well. Biblical literalism was and is also an important part of Protestant religious tradition, since the assertion that one can use the Bible by itself as a complete guide to living life helped them to regard the authority of the Pope as irrelevant.

(Admittedly, a less charitable explanation I've heard for Biblical literalism is that it's the only real justification that many people have left for certain racist beliefs and policies, such as American antebellum slavery. That certainly exists, but I doubt that most people who believe in Biblical literalism are that heartless.)

And, of course, anyone who fully subscribes to flat Earth is not going to believe that the Moon landings were real, since in the flat Earth cosmological model, both the Sun and the Moon are very small, and the firmament prevents physical access to either of them.

I do think there's other reasons people have for not believing in the Moon landings, some of which are much less good than others. The "gullible like a fox" concept that Idiomtrotting recently posted about is honestly another great explanation for this - people believe in the Moon landing conspiracy theory because it feels like forbidden knowledge, something that makes you smarter than the believing masses. That's certainly the sort of reasoning I've tended to hear from the handful of people I've actually met face-to-face who don't believe the Moon landings happened.

(And for the record, I do believe the Moon landings happened, and that the Earth is spherical. Ironically enough, it's for the same reason I believe that people could disbelieve in the Moon landings or spherical Earth because of sincere cosmological beliefs: I believe that, generally, people are sincere, and they tell you what they believe to be true, and there are simply too many people from too many disparate backgrounds with sincere observations of genuine Moon landings or a spherical Earth for me to have much doubt for either.)