A Case of Christian
LYING: The NASA Spoof
2004
I recieved the following email one day, from a concerned relative. I have left all the puctuation and line breaks as they are.
>Subject: NASA Proves the Bible is true!
>
>For all you scientists out there and for all the students who have a
>hard time
>convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible...here's
>something
>that shows God's awesome creation and shows that He is still in control.
>
>Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been
>called "myth" in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of the
>Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore Maryland and a consultant in the
>space
>program, elates the following development:
>
>"I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today
>happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt,
>Maryland.
>
>They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in
>space, where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now. We have
>to know this so we won't send a satellite up and have it bump into
>something later on its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of
>the life
>of the satellite, and where the planets will be so the whole thing will
>not bog
>down.
>
>They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, and
>
>it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which
>meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed
>into it
>or with the results as compared to the standards.
>
>They called in the service department to check it out and they said,
>'What's wrong?' Well, they found there is a day missing in space in
>elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was
>no answer.
>
>Finally, a Christian man on the team said, 'You know, one time I was in
>Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still.'
>
>While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so
>they said, 'Show us.'
>
>He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a
>pretty ridiculous statement for anyone with 'common sense.' There they
>found
>the Lord saying to Joshua, 'Fear them not, I have delivered them into
>thy
>hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.'
>
>Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if
>darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to
>make the sun stand still! That's right-'The sun stood still and the moon
>
>stayed--and hasted not to go down about a whole day!'
>
>The astronauts and scientists said, 'There is the missing day!'
>
>They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and
>found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was
>missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes--not a whole
>day.
>
>They read the Bible and there it was 'about (approximately) a day'.
>These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in
>trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in
>trouble 1,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it
>can be multiplied many times over in orbits.
>
>As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in
>the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS.
>
>The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the
>Book and read these words in 2 Kings. 'Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was
>visited
>by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die.
>Hezekiah
>asked for a sign as proof.'
>
>"Isaiah said, 'Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees'?"
>
>"Hezekiah said, 'It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but
>let the Shadow return backward 10 degrees...'"
>
>'Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees
>BACKWARD!'
>
>Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty three hours and 20 minutes in
>Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the
>universe!
>
>Isn't it amazing? Our God is rubbing their noses in His Truth!
>
>References:
>Joshua 10:8, 12-13; 2 Kings 20:9-11NOW..... here is my rebuttal:
>Mr. Harold Hill, President of the
>Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore Maryland and a consultant in the
>space program, elates the following development:Harold Hill says that he was present at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center when the above events allegedly took place. NASA denies that this ever occurred, and Hill, the former president of the Curtis Engine Company of Baltimore, was involved in diesel engine operations at Goddard and had NO involvement with any computer operations. The story predates Hill's NASA version, and goes back to Charles A. L. Totten's _Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz: A Scientific Vindication_ (1890). Hill published his version in Harold Hill, as told to Irene Burk Harrell, _How to Live Like a King's Kid_, 1974, Logos International. (Logos International was a Christian publisher with no qualms about publishing phony testimonies--it also published Mike Warnke's _The Satan Seller_, Michael Esses' _Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?_, and Fernand Navarra's _Noah's Ark--I Touched It_, all of which have been debunked.)
>They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in
>space, where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now.Question: in terms of plotting out future satellite positions, why would NASA scientists be "checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in space, where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now."? It is an absurd statement. (Do satellites have a projected useful lifetime of 100 years? Of course not. The technology outgrows the equipment in a decade or two.)
That passage makes no sense at all, and sounds like it was written by someone with absolutely no knowledge of astronomy. Did the NASA scientists think that the satellites would crash into the sun, or moon, or planets?? It is an absurd statement. "They checked the position of the sun"? Are you kidding? Does the writer of this story think that the sun rotates around the earth? And satellites do not, under any circumstances, leave the earth's orbit. The space shuttles cannot even do that. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
Furthermore, WHY ON EARTH would they extrapolate the data back 5000 years or so to the time of Joshua? Why would they waste valuable compute time on such a worthless task? This reveals entire story is a fabrication.
>We have
>to know this so we won't send a satellite up and have it bump into
>something later on its orbits.You calculate a satellite's orbit with other orbiting satellites, not planetary bodies millions and billions of miles away.
>We have to lay out the orbits in terms of
>the life
>of the satellite, and where the planets will be so the whole thing will
>not bog down."Lay out the orbits"... "where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down"? Are you *!&%$! kidding me? Again, this kind of nonscientific gobbledygook is a sure sign that someone is pulling your chain.
>They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, and
>it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which
>meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed
>into it
>or with the results as compared to the standards.This thing was written by someone who is unfamiliar with how computers work-- i.e. computers "stopping" and "putting up red signals", running a "measurement back and forth over the centuries".
>
>They called in the service department to check it out and they said,
>'What's wrong?' Well, they found there is a day missing in space in
>elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was
>no answer.
>
>Finally, a Christian man on the team said, 'You know, one time I was in
>Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still.'
>
>While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so
>they said, 'Show us.'
>
>He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a
>pretty ridiculous statement for anyone with 'common sense.' There they
>found
>the Lord saying to Joshua, 'Fear them not, I have delivered them into
>thy
>hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.'
How likely is it that NONE of the other scientists in the room had heard of the widely-known biblical fable of the "sun standing still", as this story suggests? That also is utterly unbelievable.
>Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if
>darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to
>make the sun stand still! That's right-'The sun stood still and the moon
>
>stayed--and hasted not to go down about a whole day!'
>
>The astronauts and scientists said, 'There is the missing day!'It is utterly inconceivable that reputable scientists would jump to a supernatural explanation so immediately without investigating other options. There's no way. They don't work like that. To the author of this story, science is like a foreign language that he does not understand.
And what are "astronauts" doing in the room? Are they going to ride on the satellites?
>
>They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and
>found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was
>missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes--not a whole
>day.This passage alone discredits the entire story. A day is not 24 hours, as this passage says. The sidereal day, the length's of the earth's daily rotation, is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds, which we will round to 23:56. Therefore there cannot be a discrepancy of the "missing 40 minutes".
>
>They read the Bible and there it was 'about (approximately) a day'.
>These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in
>trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in
>trouble 1,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it
>can be multiplied many times over in orbits.What's more pertenent to this story is the missing 4 minutes from the caculations of these so-called scientists. The day is 23 hours, 56 minutes. That 4 minute discrepancy adds up to 1460 minutes per year, and multiplied by, say, 5000 years, is 7,300,000 minutes. That's quite a lot for NASA scientists to overlook, as they clearly have done in this ficticious story.
>As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in
>the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS.
>
>The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the
>Book and read these words in 2 Kings. 'Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was
>visited
>by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die.
>Hezekiah
>asked for a sign as proof.'It also says, in verse 6, that God said He WOULD cure Hezekaih of his boil, and then in verse 7 it says that Hezekiah WAS healed. Then, despite all this, Hezekiah appears doubtful, and demands proof from God in the form of a sign.... I thought that God does not provide proof to those that demand it... If God does perform on command like that, why can't he appear when I ask for proof?
>
>"Isaiah said, 'Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees'?"
>
>"Hezekiah said, 'It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but
>let the Shadow return backward 10 degrees...'"
>
>'Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees
>BACKWARD!'Of course no one talks about the geological implications of stopping the earth (it is rotating at more than a thousand miles an hour) and making it rotate backwards.
>
>Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty three hours and 20 minutes in
>Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the
>universe!Conclusion... utter fabrication to deceive the gullible.
>Isn't it amazing? Our God is rubbing their noses in His Truth!
I think my nose has been rubbed in something, but it wasn't the truth. More like bullshit.
People actually believe this story?While searching on the net, I found the story, nearly verbatim as it was sent to me, on several websites.
Here are some things I found while searching on the net...
==================================================
from http://www.urbanlegends.com/science/missing_day.html
: We understand from a magazine article that space scientists in America were
: checking the positions of sun, moon and planets both 100 years and 1000
: years from now. This information was necessary to plan the trajectories of
: satellities and other space vehicles to avoid the danger of collisions. The
: scientists ran computer measurements back and forth over the centuries but
: discovered something was wrong either with the information fed into the
: computers or with the results when compared with the calculated standards.
: The computers were checked for accuracy but they still showed that a day
: was missing. One of the team remembered the story in the book of Joshua
: (chapters 9 and 10) in the Bible which tells of Joshua coming to the rescue
: of Gibeon (?) and asking God to make the sun stand still. The space team
: checked the computer going back to the time of Joshua and found the elapsed
: time that was missing was 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day but as
: the Bible account states "about a whole day". This left a disparity of 40
: minutes. Again the Bible student came to the resuce remembering another
: occasion when Hezekiah, on his death bed, was visited by the prophet Isiah
: who told him God was going to heal him. Hezekiah asked for a sign and was
: given the choice of the sun going forward or backward 10 degrees. Ten
: degrees is exactly 40 minutes. Adding this to the 23 hours and 20 minutes
: in Joshua makes up the missing 24 hours.
:========================================
The story about the "missing day" of the Book of Joshua being proven by NASA researchers at the Goddard Spaceflight Center is an urban legend. The legend has its origins in the work of Charles A.L. Totten, a Yale military science instructor who came up with calculations allegedly proving "Joshua's missing day" in his 1890 book Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz. It was later turned into an urban legend about NASA and Goddard Spaceflight Center by Harold Hill, former president of the Curtis Engine Company of Baltimore, Maryland, now deceased.
Goddard Spaceflight Center, where this legend allegedly took place, denies it occurred and explains why the legend makes no sense in its "Ask A Scientist" Web page. See also Jim Lippard's discussion of the myth. Even the Creation Science Foundation states that this is story is an urban legend on their Christian Answers Web site.
Further research turned up the Answering Islam site, which has a discussion of this hoax on its hoaxes page. The evidence on this site lists the story as originally appearing in the Evening World of Spencer, Indiana, with the date of the story listed alternately as 1978, 1970, or 1969, perhaps on December 6 or October 10. (Additional information can be found on the Answering Islam site here and here.)
The Johnson Space Center's Space Educator's Handbook authored by Jerry Woodfill has a section on hoaxes with a page mentioning the story, citing it as appearing in the 1970 Evening World. [Ed: Perhaps someone near Spencer could research this? The Spencer Evening World is at 114 E. Franklin St., Spencer, IN 47460, (812) 829-2255. Spencer is about 15-20 miles northwest of Bloomington, Indiana, on Highway 46.]
Amazon.com shows the publication date (evidently a reprinting) of Totten's book to be in December of 1968. I suspect that Hill read Totten's book or heard an account of it and later transposed it in his mind onto the work he was doing as a NASA subcontractor.
A search on AltaVista for the "Curtis Engine Company" turned up about a dozen sites dealing with the legend. Scan through them and see how the myth changes and remains the same.
Sites that repeat the myth:
Scientific Proof
Christian Evidences by Richard Riss [Ed: Riss cites the discredited claims of Immanuel Velikovsky.]
The Outside Edje: A Fluid Management Newsletter for People Concerned About Coolant Waste, Wash Water Waste, and Mop Water Waste. [Ed: A fluid management newsletter?]
Praise and Worship
Wayne Way's Goodnews
Science and the Bible?
The Boquists' Neat Stuff on the Internet
The Sanctuary's Inspirational Pieces
Sites dispelling the myth:Goddard Spaceflight Center
NASA JSC Space Educator's Handbook
Answering Islam
Jim Lippard's post on Urban Legends
Christian Answers/Answers in Genesis
Melissa Ho's Christian pages [Ed: Even reporters can be fooled!]
The Christia Library
Steve Larson's Whuuuut?