Reflecting on Moon Denialism on the Anniversary of Apollo
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time… when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
– Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark, 1995.
Fifty-six years ago, humanity touched the Moon. Today, some deny we ever left Earth. Moon landing denialism becomes not just a rejection of history, but a collapse of imagination – and a signpost into dangerous territory.
Such cultural amnesia is not uncommon – from the forgetting of China’s naval achievements under Admiral Zheng He between 1405 and 1433 after his successors suppressed all record of his achievements – to the denialism among colonial regimes as they seek to eliminate and ethnically cleanse the local history of indigenous cultures and technologies. The infamous destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, along with Spanish conquistadors and missionaries who burned thousands of Mayan texts, were committing acts of generational terrorism, like Hitler when he burnt the books of Magnus Hirschfeld (and everything else he did), and Pol Pot when he turned his country into killing fields. Not all generational forgetfulness is intentional – I have seen it first hand as a younger generation of LGBT+ adults grows up with no understanding or knowledge of the generation of their queer forebears who fought, suffered and died of AIDS.
But the current trajectory of the USA in particular – and western societies in general – is significant because it reveals itself to be a voluntary case of generational forgetfulness: a culture internally breaking down due to loss of trust in doctors (vaccine and fluoride denialism); scientists (Moon landing and NASA denialism, creationism, flat earthers, climate science denialism); civil rights (“wokeism”, anti-equality, TERFs, opposition to women’s rights and civil rights); historians (“slavery wasn’t so bad”, Holocaust denialism, aliens built the pyramids, etc); academics (creationist museums, anti-intellectualism, “reality TV”); and politicians (JFK and 911 conspiracies, “birtherism”, Brexit, the rise of Trump).
Moon denialists did more than question a rocket launch. They not only denied the expertise of the rocket scientists, they denied the human capacity for greatness – to literally aim for the Moon and reach it. They rejected not only the astronaut heroes of Apollo, but denied the very existence of their heroism.
The lives of denialists became a rejection of awe and wonder; a repudiation of pride; a renunciation of their own fullest human potential. They became content with mediocrity, filled with the hubris of believing that their ignorance trumped the expertise of others – and they culturally promoted their disrespect as virtue.
They represent a cohort who are dismantling the intellectual infratructure of their own society, but seek to blame others. I would feel sorry for them, except for the fact that they are damaging a lot more than simply their own lives.
This bespeaks of the causes behind this rise of wilful, collective mass forgetfulness: including the rise of religious home schooling wherein parents think that teaching their children to read only the Bible is adequate preparation for informed, empowered, critically thinking life – or who replace facts with Fox News, “Sesame Street” with soaps, or gnosis with googling. An entitled segment of a generation, swept up in a cult of narcissism, believing that knowledge and expertise come without study or hard work; who have access to data via their phones but have never learnt the difference between information and wisdom. They believe that their uninformed, ignorant opinion is worthy of the same respect as that of real experts. They live a pampered life without doing the hard yards.
US President George W Bush unintentionally précised the collapse of critical thinking and informed enquiry in 2005 when he equated creationism with evolution: “I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught… so people can understand what the debate is about.” In popularising a false equivalence between science and superstition, between expertise and ignorance, between fact and fraud, he contributed one small part in preparing the path from Moon landings to MAGA, from Apollo to Alligator Alcatraz.
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after.”
— George Orwell, 1945
Herein lies the main problem: a cohort among the current generation doesn’t want to admit that their parents’ generation was – in some ways – harder working, more educated and informed, more compassionate, more aspirational, more respectful of genuine experts, and more open to overcoming challenges. Some of today’s youngsters stand on the shoulders of giants – and piss in the wind.
They need to learn that nobody can “Make America Great Again” when the USA overflows with people who deny its greatness of science, of technology, of vision, of intellect, and of openness to diverse perspectives and opportunities for self correction. The empire is collapsing and the rot is coming from within. A country cannot be great when its people carry smart phones (space age technology they deny) containing AI that is smarter than they are at synthesising data and reaching critically informed conclusions.
The Apollo astronauts were heroes because they set foot into dangerous territory. But they were the tip of a proverbial iceberg: 500,000 scientists and engineers and computers and astronomers and technicians employed around the world to ensure success of the greatest non-military scientific venture in human history; billions of others beyond that who watched in awe and respected science and truth and critical thinking and civic leadership. Where are we now? We have lost social capital and intellectual territory, and must find them anew. Thats more than a small step for mankind.
©2025 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.