Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut – and now YEC

[Ruth Harris]

“God said he did it in six days.”

I find this very sad. This is not someone who had no education or bad education; this is a man who was very intelligent and well educated. He had the luck to be one of the few people who actually walked on another world.

And he wound up becoming a biblical literalist. I just can’t understand how someone with his life experience could come to that conclusion. There were many Christians among those who went to the moon (I remember watching the Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis on Christmas 1968, and I also read in later years about Buzz Aldrin taking communion on the moon) but none of them ever questioned the scientific consensus about the age of the universe until he did.

If someone this intelligent can be convinced that a literal reading of the Bible is the truth, it is possible that anyone could be. That is a frightening thought to me. Even though he does not take the stance that only those with his worldview are actually Christian – many YEC believers do. I suspect the majority of them consider it a defining characteristic of Christians given my experience with them.

Do you find this as surprising as I do?

Ruth

 

[Politesse]

Happens! I've known plenty of highly intelligent people who've fallen into some mental trap or another and couldn't get out. Indeed, sometimes intelligence is part of the problem. Someone who is accustomed to being the "smartest kid in the class" can be very hard to talk out of a flawed idea, as they are able to outfox their potential interlocutors, or have spent so much of their life doing so that they inherently trust their own rationalizations over anyone else's input. All you need to turn an intelligent person into a "fundy" is the right conspiracy theory at the right time - their magnificent brain will happily reason the rest of them the rest of the way into the mental alley it creates, and assist them in fending of rational critique from that point onward.

 

[steve_bank]

I think the Apollo astronaughts were all scientifically grounded, many or all had a masters degree.

We all compartmentalize to some degree as a matter of mental sanity and stability. We all have escapes of some sort from music to food to TV.

I do not condenser it sad, people are welcome to beliefs. If it helps them then good for them.

As I said in another thread I worked with a few creationists who were very good engineers. They compartmentalize beliefs and the application of science.

Given the history of myths and religion going back to the beginning of civilization and the vast array of modern beliefs the question may be why you and I do not have myths or religion.

 

[abaddon]

the question may be why you and I do not have myths

But don't you have myths? Isn't 'the progress of humanity' a contemporary myth? It's a story replete with heroes and monsters. Our culture wants technology to solve illness and, if possible, even death. It's very much about subduing and ruling over the earth. It wants technology to take us to the stars. The list of heroes are the scientists and explorers, the list of monsters are the dictators, inquisitors, luddites.

That's the story and ethos of modern civilization. It tells us what is meaningful and good, what our place is in the cosmos. Isn't that what myth is?

Maybe it's invisible because it's hard to see the story one is in from the inside. Also, the secondary definition of myth as "false idea" makes it something people will want to disown.

 

[Elixir]

the question may be why you and I do not have myths

But don't you have myths? Isn't 'the progress of humanity' an example of a modern myth? It's a story replete with heroes and monsters. Our culture wants technology to solve illness and, if possible, even death. It's very much about subduing and ruling over the earth. It wants technology to take us to the stars. The list of heroes are the scientists and explorers, the list of monsters are the dictators, inquisitors, luddites.

I suppose we all have myths. I'm sure I do - there are people whose heroism or insight or ability is so far beyond what I'd ever expect from myself that they are, to me, on the level of mythical heroes. There are some (e.g. Putin, Kim, Trump) who are so evil that I consider them to be epic villains of mythical proportion.
One difference between me and the YECs I've encountered is that I am willing - in fact eager - to dispel the myths to which I hold. I'd love to understand and find a little piece within myself, of Euclid or Schliemann, DaVinci or the autistic teen I met who could sculpt anatomically perfect statues of animals he had never seen, or to find something about Trump or Putin with which I could empathize.

Holders to religious myths OTOH, seem interested only in rationalizing those myths and attaching to them such importance as to make retaining their belief in the myths more important than any possible discovery could ever be, especially if it might challenge the verity of those myths.

 

[Ruth Harris]

Holders to religious myths OTOH, seem interested only in rationalizing those myths and attaching to them such importance as to make retaining their belief in the myths more important than any possible discovery could ever be, especially if it might challenge the verity of those myths.

That was kind of my point, in my opening post. This was an intelligent person who actually walked on another planet as an astronaut and somewhat accepted mainstream religious thought - and then all of a sudden went fundy years later. It just makes no sense to me. And I am a Christian.

Ruth

 

[bilby]

Of the dozen astronauts who walked on the Moon, only one (Geologist Harrison Schmitt) was explicitly selected for the Astronaut corps on the basis of his scientific education.

Many of the others did have advanced degrees in various fields, but the key criterion used in their selection was proficiency as test pilots or military jet pilots.

Schmitt was the only moon walker from NASA Astronaut Group 4.

NASA Astronaut Group 4 ("The Scientists") was a group of six astronauts selected by NASA in June 1965. While the astronauts of the first two groups were required to have an undergraduate degree or the professional equivalent in engineering or the sciences (with several holding advanced degrees), they were chosen for their experience as test pilots. Test pilot experience was waived as a requirement for the third group, and military jet fighter aircraft experience could be substituted. Group 4 was the first chosen on the basis of research and academic experience (an M.D. or Ph.D. in the natural sciences or engineering was a prerequisite for selection), with NASA providing pilot training as necessary. Initial screening of applicants was conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.

Charile Duke's Bachelors degree is in Naval Science, and his Masters is in Aeronautics, neither of which disciplines has anything to say about the age of the Earth or how it arrived at its present state.

If he were a geologist or biologist, I would be surprised; But there's nothing in his background that makes his YEC position particularly surprising.

 

[Hermit]

Do you find this as surprising as I do?

Not really. It's a statistical outlier. While higher educational levels make it less likely for people to become religious fundamentalists, it does not preclude them from becoming so. Compartmentalisation has been mentioned a couple of times already. It is an important feature of the human mind.

I'd be surprised if the the relationship between religiosity and educational levels were reversed.

 

[steve_bank]

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A news segment will show the horror in Ukraine with dramatic narration narrative and sorrowful background music. The next segment without pause is about ice cream where everybody is joking and smiling. Compartmentalization.

A book on propaganda written pre WWII Nazis made the claim that a complex modern society can not function without propaganda or indoctrination into a common image. There is no longer a common American identity of any kind and we see the results in the breakdown in politics and civil order. We are looking more like what we see in the third world.

American idenity used to be partly based in Christianity .

For me insisting that people be shown the evil ways of their myths and that they should give then m up is no different than evangelical Christianity. It is my way amd no way else.

When I go o bed I sometimes listen to Coast To Coast AM with George Norry on radio . It is pseudoscience, ET, and conspiracy theory central. It is not just the wacky people on the show, it is the callers.

Keep in mind the major European scinttists weer Chrtian. Newton and Galileo wwre both true belivers. In fact Mewton invoked god for the unexpaimed at times.

Cretionism and Christianity is benign compared to everything else today, IMO.

 

[Elixir]

We are looking more like what we see in the third world.

American identity used to be partly based in Christianity .

More, I think, based on "christian" behavior.
But we are definitely going 3rd World.

I'd be surprised if the the relationship between religiosity and educational levels were reversed.

You mean, if it turned out that Pentecostals were more than three times as likely as Jews to have college degrees?
Yeah, probably my bigotry, but that sounds wrong...

 

[bilby]

There is no longer a common American identity of any kind

Yes, there absolutely is.

and we see the results in the breakdown in politics and civil order

No, you really don't. Civil order is at an historically high point, and showing no signs whatsoever of reversing its gains.

Conservative old men have been bemoaning the breakdown in civil order since before the Ancient Greeks, and yet it has pretty much continually improved.

And parts of the USA have always been like what we see in the Third World.

 

[abaddon]

I'd just read this bit from Joseph Campbell a few days ago:

(the book says Apollo 10 but I'm pretty sure Ruth is right and it was Apollo 8)

One of the most bewildering experiences I ever had was during the Apollo 10 Moon flight... [In] honor of the holiday, they began reading from the first Book of Genesis. Here they were, reading these ancient words that had nothing to do with the cosmos they were flying through, describing a flat three-layer cake of a universe that had been created in seven days by a God who lived somewhere below the sphere that they were in at the time. They talked about the separating of the waters above and the waters below, when they had just pointed out how dry it was. The whole discontinuity between the religious tradition and the actual physical condition struck me very strongly that evening. What a calamity for our world that we do not yet have anything that can wake people’s hearts the way that those verses do and yet would make sense in terms of the actual, observable universe!

~Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss p. 29

 

[Ruth Harris]

Yep, it was Apollo 8. I remember it so well; I was enthralled with the idea of men being so close to the moon. I watched every bit of the television coverage that I could on them.

At that time, I was not involved in a church. The Genesis passage meant nothing to me. I did love the flow of the language but like most people I just thought it was complete nonsense and bore no resemblance to the reality of what they were doing. And today, I still hold the opinion that it bears no resemblance to reality; the creation chronicled in Genesis is mythical poetry, nothing more. Ask any educated Jew. They are, after all, the ones who wrote it.

Ruth

 

[steve_bank]

Genesis is good poetry. Imagine what the astronauts felt, a spiritual experience if there ever was one. Poetry expresses feelings.

 

[atrib]

Mewton invoked god for the unexpaimed at times

That would be a good name for a cat. Especially a really smart one.

 

[atrib]

Do you find this as surprising as I do?

No.
(a) He is probably growing senile as he ages, and
(b) drawing closer to the end of his life probably makes him more susceptible to believing in stories of magical saviors who have reserved him a special seat on the interstellar ark.

 

[thebeave]

Edgar Mitchell is another Apollo moon walker who, like Charlie Duke, had some pretty kooky beliefs, regarding the paranormal and UFOs. George Nouri on Coast to Coast AM frequently cites his work:

Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Dean Mitchell (September 17, 1930 – February 4, 2016) was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region, making him the sixth person to walk on the Moon.

Mitchell's interests included consciousness and paranormal phenomena. On his way back to Earth during the Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful savikalpa samādhi experience,[22] and also claimed to have conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth.[23] The results of these experiments were published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1971.[24]

He retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy with the rank of Captain in October 1972.[12] Immediately thereafter, he founded Edgar D. Mitchell & Associates of Monterey, California, a "commercial organization promoting ecologically-pure products and services designed to alleviate planetary problems."[25]

After moving to Atherton, California, he became founding chairman of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Palo Alto, California in 1973 for the purpose of consciousness research and other "related phenomena".[26][18] "Science and religion have lived on opposite sides of the street now for hundreds of years," Mitchell said toward the end of his life. "So here we are, in the twenty-first century, trying to put two faces of reality—the existence face and the intelligence or conscious face—into the same understanding. Body and mind, physicality and consciousness belong to the same side of reality.[27]

Annie Jacobsen has asserted that Mitchell's Mind Science Institute (a Los Angeles, California-based organization ultimately subsumed by the Institute of Noetic Sciences) was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a surreptitious conduit for payments to Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller while the latter was evaluated by an SRI International research group (led by Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ) in 1972.[28] In 1976, Mitchell attempted to secure additional funding for the SRI group's remote viewing research in a private meeting with Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush. Although Bush demurred (citing post-Watergate investigations of the intelligence community), he suggested the pursuit of military sponsorship, leading to the formation of the Stargate Project in 1978.[29]

My older brother is a big believer in paranormal stuff, and frequently scoffs at James Randi and cites Edgar Mitchell as an "argument from authority" for his beliefs.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Do you find this as surprising as I do?

No.
(a) He is probably growing senile as he ages, and
(b) drawing closer to the end of his life probably makes him more susceptible to believing in stories of magical saviors who have reserved him a special seat on the interstellar ark.

Pretty close to the truth. In actuality his brain changed and so his behavior changed.

 

[bilby]

As far as I can tell, he spent his entire early life putting everything into his career as a pilot, and then as an astronaut.

Then he reached the absolute pinnacle of his work - he became one of just a dozen men to walk on the Moon. And having reached the goal, he looked around himself and realised that his focus had ruined his life.

His wife and children had been effectively abandoned, and his wife's reaction to this had been to throw herself into religion.

His response was to follow her lead.

None of this is particularly surprising, particularly for residents of the Bible Belt.

The whole point of becoming a Born Again Christian is that it gives people licence to start over, without having to justify their earlier poor decisions that got them into trouble to begin with. For people who bought the idea hook, line, and sinker, that there's one 'American Way', a mythical 1950s US lifestyle of the devoted wife and homemaker supporting a husband (whose employment is his primary focus), and yet who is completely happy to play second fiddle to her husband's boss and her husband's devotion to his career success.

It was a recipe for disaster for many families, and remains one to this day. People talk about 'work-life balance', as though it's a strange but possibly not entirely bad idea to give at least some priority, sometimes, to family rather than career.

Charlie Duke is the epitome of the mid-20th century career man, who subordinated everything good in his life to success at his career, only to find that even the highest level of success and acclaim from his employers and the public at large cannot substitute for the respect and love of his family.

He decided that he wanted a do-over. And for a man of his time and place, that almost inevitably meant being 'born again'.

YEC just falls out of his choice of new community. It's probably not something he gave a lot of thought to. He wants to start over, with Jesus's help, and rebuild the broken bridges between himself and his family. Being a YEC is just one of many things that are included in the package, and he likes the overall result enough not to want to consider whether it's true - of course it is, it's part of the new, joyous, loving life he let slip until it was almost too late. Everything about it is true. His self image depends upon it.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

“So I’m sitting there, and my mind is thinking millions of years, billions of years, and this is saying six days. And I can’t say I heard a voice, but an impression in my heart asked me: Which are you going to believe?

“I think within a year I’d made up my mind that I was going to believe the Bible. The more I read, the more convinced I became that it was true.”

Charlie is seeking and finding emotional comfort. All those years of stress obviously played a major part in weakening the control his prefontal cortex had over his decision-making, which does happen. Obviously we have evolved to take this path when our survival is threatened. Those emotional centers are the stronger.