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07/20/2005 Entry: "Ha ha ha ha ha"

In commemmormanation of the first moon landing, I present to you irrefutable proof that the landing was faked. It'll blow your mind, man.
Here.
I mean, there ain't no stars!

The belief in something unprovable -- the existence of a higher power, for example, or the validity of some scientific notion that can't be proven in a clearly understandable empirical fashion -- stems almost invariably from an emotional need. In the case of the moon landings, I believe the emotional need is to reject the supremacy of a certain superpower.

It's not too surprising, either. Mistrust of a gigantic institution like the U.S. government was, and still is most certainly warranted. Those who might feel most at odds are probably the most susceptible for a notion such as a faked moon landing. That way, one might have the satisfaction on "knowing" that behind the stage it's just a puppetshow.

This phenomenon is of course not exclusive to the misinformed on the fringe of radical left; religious fundamentalism, for example, tends to base itself verbatim on wildly absurd notions. This is far more perilous than the former example; disproving to a fundamentalist, for example, the nature of the world's creation could topple for him the existence of God and thereby his own ethical compass. That sounds silly, but I've had countless lengthy theological discussions over that matter back when I went to bible college.

I think the light at the end of the tunnel was best said on a poster in Agent Mulder's office. Under a grainy photo of a UFO, the caption "I want to believe". It never hurts to ask oneself from time to time if the things -- the unknowable ones -- we believe in are there for good use or emotional strength, or maybe zugunst something or someone else.