I would say that legends are probably mostly true, i.e. 60-70%. Myth deals with ultimate realities, not facts in this world, so they are either true in their own terms or dangerously false and misleading.

Well the Flood has been defined here as a myth, despite all the supporting evidence. I think you'll find views on myth vary. Give me an example of a myth dealing with 'Ultimate Realities,' yet not containg facts. We are in danger of creating a fact-less reality. I don't think I've had enough to drink for that .

Please, once and for all, business_kid, list even one objective piece of evidence for a global flood, not "He Said, She Said". Essentially that is just superstitious, provincial gossip that over time gained mythical proportions. At best it is metaphor.

List one bit of objective evidence for anything that happened in the 3rd century BCE?

I think it very safe to say that the account of the Flood, which is also found in the historical tales of nearby areas but not those farther away, represented a disastrous but nonetheless regional event which was "the end of the world" to them.

It's wrong to say, "that's impossible!" with regards to a myth or legend that was very, very real to the people who experienced it. After all, when that bird flew back with whatever it had in its beak, that thing had to come from somewhere where things were still growing, having not been flooded out in "40 days" of being underwater. Furthermore, exactly where were the "receding floodwaters" receding to? Was the polar ice-cap, which presumably must have completely melted, re-freezing? And so on. No, that's not the right way to judge a legend or a myth. People recorded what they thought they saw, as they thought they saw it. (And, so do we.)

It was more than a local event. I've recently been on a tour of Oxford Museum's Geological evidence for the Flood (via Zoom). Over the Saturnalia this weekend, I plan to do some research on the notes I have. But for the moment: If you search for Flood leghends, you'll find numbers ranginng into the hundreds. Ireland has it's own Flood story, as do Australians, Inuit, Indigenous Americans, etc.
Isn't it curious that the people who experienced the Flood have their tradition in their tongue everywhere? And all the legends say the same thing? I chose my words carefully. I didn't offer proof; I mentioned 'supporting evidence.'

Let me please debunk the "moon landing was a hoax" garbage.

1. I was watching. There was a delay in the audio, and it matched the video so there was no mismatch as there might have been were it manufactured. I had just started working on a Physics BS, and was checking everything I could check.

2. "A secret is something one person knows, when two people know it is a rumor". How many people worked for NASA, the Federal government, the US Military, All other military organizations around the world with tracking radar, consider all of the associated contractors, who would all would have to have been in on the hoax, and have had YEARS to talk? How many with multiple PhDs and of good reputation were let go during the NASA downsizing? Do you really believe that they would not have gotten together and published the definitive inside story of the hoax had there been one?

To believe that it was a hoax you have to first believe hundreds of things about people, about politics, about available technology, and about Physics that are not now and have never been true and most can be PROVEN to be false. Someone totally ignorant about anything ALL of those areas MIGHT be convinced IF THEY DID NOT LIVE THROUGH THE EVENTS and knew of them only from books! Someone would have to be trying to KEEP them ignorant, and keep them convinced of the falsehood, but it could be done. Once you learn enough you cannot possibly reconcile the "hoax theory" with reality: it simply does not fit.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are lies, not myth, so there is no fit for the subject in this thread.

Please move on now.

PS: Re: flood event myths - the number and similarity of flood myths in religion is interesting, but they appear to be described in many cases as happening in different areas or among different people anywhere form dozens to thousands of years apart. this, even when those peoples lived in somewhat close vicinity to each other. This leads one to believe they might be a construct of religion or culture fiction for communicating concepts, not based upon a common historical event. That does not make them less interesting, rather more! Certainly examining only one such myth and ignoring the others is pretty lazy thinking and likely to lead to invalid conclusions.

@wpeckham:

"I was watching, too." I was only six years old at the time but ... I was watching, too. On that day in 1969, I was watching the black-and-white images on our black-and-white TV. Of course one would expect the video and the audio signal to be synchronized, but the conversations between the two parties did not contain delays which should have been three to five seconds or more each. Simply listen to the back-and-forth between Mission Control and the lunar lander on the very first mission, on the official NASA video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3or2fQ6wO4Q

0:28 "Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed."
0:29 "Roger, Tranquility ..."

See the problem yet? Mission Control said "roger" within one second of the astronaut's supposed announcement. It should have taken at least three seconds round-trip if not more. And this is not the only instance of this – not by any means – in the official recordings. The astronauts say something and get an answer in a back-and-forth conversation without delays. Mission Control reacts immediately to something that they "see" on the video feed, without delay, and then they respond without delay, and the astronauts rejoinder without delay. These parties are not 225,000 miles away from one another.

As a six-year old kid who knew a little something at this point in time about radio – partly because a neighbor was a HAM – I immediately "sensed" that "something was wrong," literally, "with this picture." I asked a few innocent questions but quickly realized that nobody wanted to answer them. This was the story, and everyone was sticking to it. They were all fully caught-up in it. So, I just shut up and put the next box of gas-station drinking glasses down on the car seat beside me.

And, as for "how many other people might have known about it in the government and played along," I would very quickly answer, "everybody," because everybody had a stake in it and NASA and its contractors were making a ton of money. Everybody in America wanted to believe that JFK's promise was about to come true on-schedule, and it was their job to make that happen. After all, couldn't The United States of America(!) do anything that it wanted?

---

As far as the Flood is concerned, "there isn't enough water." The only place where "enough water" could come from is the fairly-instantaneous total melting of the polar ice caps, followed by their just-as-quick re-freezing. And I'm not sure that even that amount of water would have been enough. Therefore, as I said above, it isn't appropriate to try to subject this myth/legend against what we understand about the planet today. For the people who experienced a sudden and catastrophic flood event, it really was "the entire world." Their entire world. They could not have been expected to know anything more.

The recording is made from the ground, so of course from the perspective of Mission Control, they answer immediately. The astronaut sent the message already ~1.5 seconds ago, and will hear the response 1.5 seconds later. I'm not personally familiar with HAM radio, but assuming it can reach far enough to have noticeable delays; if you are in the room listening to the operator, you notice that the people he is talking to respond only after a pause, but he doesn't sit waiting silently for a second before answering them, right? (although from their perspective it would seem like he does)

I don't believe you will find actual examples of this, except when the astronauts are talking to each other (unless there are recordings made from the Moon? Those ones, if they exist, should have Mission Control responses with delays).


P.S. regarding off-topicness of the moon-landing, sundialsvcs is the OP; as long as he's willing to discuss the specifics of a myth/hoax/history/whatever I don't see why anyone else should refrain.

Yes. Thousands of years is not a problem especially for major widespread events. Archaeology, fossils, ice cores, and radiometric dating are just a few tools available. I'm not asking for 100% certainty, just some reasonable odds of likelihood.

@ sundialsvcs - It seems you didn't click the link I provided in my response #268, so here is the raw footage (Got a stopwatch?)

https://vimeo.com/34066647

It doesn't matter where the recording was made. The fundamental problem –*and you can find countless examples of this throughout the official record – is that: "It takes 1.3 seconds for the Moon signal to get to Earth, and an additional 1.3 seconds for it to get back. Plus additional seconds for the conversants to decide what next to say." But the necessary delays, very simply, are not there. It happens time and time again. Those people were not "225,000-250,000 miles away from each other!"

And did I mention? Where are all the stars?" Space station occupants have endlessly looked out their windows and remarked that the sky was stuffed with stars. But, in your "classic picture of Earth from space," there are no stars!"

I truly cannot understand how you could possibly believe that. You do understand that the delay is due to relative location of the participants (i.e., where they are)?

What about the HAM radio operator? Did you see him sitting silently for a second before answering??

See my link immediately preceding your quoted post as well as #268 that noted the use of editing for public broadcast (they edit out pauses to minimize boredom for the attention span challenged).The immediately above link is raw footage.

I am extremely sad to see the above lines, sundialsvcs. Some denials are at least cogent and based in fact such as the existence of sometimes severe radiation in the Van Allen Belts since it is understandable that not everyone knows we skirted the belts and chose times when we knew solar activity levels were low but EVERYONE knows what happens when some idiot in a car behind or in front of you with super LED headlights on high beam does to eyes and film. The albedo of the darkest spots on the Moon are many times brighter than high beam headlights in your face. Now imagine what you could and couldn't see if, to stop the headlight glare, you put on a welders mask. Do you think you could see stars in the night sky?

I am actually shocked you didn't suss that out even if you are taking the judgment of a 6 year old too seriously. FWIW when I watched the first Apollo Landing on "Live" TV in July of 1969 I was a college graduate heavy in Science. I had been accepted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but didn't go because we couldn't afford the tuition even with my scholarship. Since Apollo started in 1961 and I was taking Physics in High School in 1963 we did many Math exercises on a multitude of questions and proposals from Apollo throughout the year. By then, 1963, my Physics teacher accepted my invitation to one of my amateur rocketry club's launches based on his expressing desire after he saw photos of a launch in one of my term papers. All I'm trying to say with all that is I was in a good position to judge if anything was faked because I knew the science as it happened and read everything I could get my hands or eyes on about all of the Space Race.

An interesting anecdote to mention is that while every other nation in the world with an active rocket program was hush hush about any and all failures, in the US we saw Bomarc, Atlas, Jupiter C, Redstone, and especially Vanguard explosive failures repeatedly and open to the world. NASA has had their share of screw ups but they surely didn't act anyway but open and truthful to a fault even during the ultimate stakes atmosphere of the Cold war. That has to count for something.

Regarding myths being merely "imaginative" and not lies, I think Time plays a big part for the progression of oft repeated lies that gain mythological proportions, like kings that ruled for thousands of years, triumphant generals in battles that never took place, global floods, and people swallowed by whales that lived to tell the story, not to mention angels, demons, sorcerers and witches.