Transcription
Christ said in response to what was the greatest command that it was to love God with all that you are. And he also, being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it. And that is to love your neighbor as yourself.
And to all of you down there on Earth, we love you from the Moon. No matter, uh, your faith or religion, um, for me, the teachings of Jesus were, were always a very simple truth of love. Universal love. Love yourself and love others. And something for us, being up here and looking back at all of you through one tiny window, is that just resonates 100% true. And, uh, our, our goal as humanity should be to just follow in that example. There were many examples in the past, but that's one example of love that we can just all follow in those footsteps, and it'll serve us well.
And as we are so far from Earth and looking back at, you know, the beauty of creation, I think, uh, for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing. And, you know, when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us, who were created, it's, you, you have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth. But you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos. Think maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special.
Whether you believe in God or not, um, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we've got to get through this together.
You just heard two different members of the Artemis 2 crew invoke Christianity in some of their many messages to Earth from their trip to the Moon. And I have some thoughts about that particular choice. But first, I want to talk about the conservatives who are boosting that message because they very clearly missed the point entirely. Nonetheless, I will give the astronauts credit for getting conservatives at least somewhat interested in space travel, for perhaps the first time ever.
But to show you what I mean, alleged homosexual Benny Johnson, for example, tweeted out Victor Glover's comments about loving God with all that you are. But as you'll notice, he conspicuously didn't include the part where he said to love your neighbor. Very, very interesting choice. Now, after that, Benny Johnson shared Trump's threat of genocide to Iran with no commentary, no condemnation whatsoever. I guess that the, uh, Artemis crew's message of humanity being in this together didn't resonate with Benny Johnson enough for him to condemn the leader of the cult that he's in.
But Benny wasn't alone, because the MAGAVoice account, which is a massive pro-Trump account on Twitter, shared the same exact quote while also omitting the "love your neighbor" part and then went on to tweet support for Trump's illegal and offensive war with Iran. Very interesting. But to his credit, Eric Doerty actually did share the entire quote, including the "love your neighbor" part, before he went on to giddily tweet about Iran [ __ ] around and finding out after Trump threatened to end civilization there. So, he heard the "love your neighbor" message, but it went in one ear and right out the other, because I feel like you can't hear "love your neighbor" and then giddily tweet about B-52 bombers going to a country to destroy said country, because like, you would acknowledge that Iranians are also our neighbors as well. They're part of our planet and our species. Therefore, "love your neighbor" includes them. So you wouldn't say, "Yeah, love your neighbor. Cool." And then go on to talk about blowing up your neighbor. It just makes no sense.
Now, other conservatives, as well as fundamentalist accounts, also tweeted about the invocation of Christ on the Moon. And they very clearly also did not listen to the actual message of the astronauts, because their underlying point was that humanity and our planet as a whole is a precious creation that we need to protect and value. But these baboon-brained [ __ ] heard Jesus Christ, and they only appreciated that message in so far as their own religiosity was validated, and they probably thought the libs were triggered. So it was a win for them in that regard. But they went right back to supporting the rapist pedophile in the White House's war crimes in a country that posed no threat to us. So they hear "love your neighbor" and thought, "Yeah, that's awesome. Jesus is cool. Yeah, [ __ ] Iran." I mean, how does their brain not find that contradiction? Is like, there's a disconnect there. Something's not working. The wires aren't connecting in their [ __ ] heads.
But I, I guess like, I don't know why they would even bother to subscribe to Christianity at all if they're just going to disregard the teachings that they don't like. What's the point? Like, it seems like they really don't care about the message of Jesus, and they only feign support for him because they think it's some sort of afterlife insurance, and they want to make sure that they don't go to hell in the event it exists. But in actuality, they very obviously couldn't give a [ __ ] about the teachings of Jesus, because their entire political project is antithetical to what he talked about. Jesus hung around with sex workers and fed the poor and commanded us to welcome the strangers, aka immigrants. And yet Republicans make their life's mission to make the lives of all of these types of individuals as miserable as possible.
So they're missing the [ __ ] point of the message that's being shared by the Artemis 2 crew. Which is why I think that it was important that they chose to invoke Jesus in the first place, because all it did was embolden the worst people in this country and make the rest of humanity feel excluded. But from a human perspective, I understand why they did it. They probably wanted to send a message to Americans to give them a much-needed new perspective on terms that they would be more receptive to. I get that. Not to mention, you know, if the astronauts really are religious, they're probably clinging to their Bibles extra closely because they are in a tin can floating around the Moon, after all, and they want to make sure that their souls are saved in the event they blow up. So I get it, even as an atheist.
But with that being said, even though this crew consists of three Americans and one Canadian, they weren't just speaking to North Americans. They were speaking to all of humanity, 8 billion people. There are more than 4,000 different religions and a half a billion non-believers. And it is incredibly tone-deaf, in my opinion, to give one religion preferential treatment. It makes the atheists and the Muslims and the Buddhists and the thousands of other religious and non-religious people feel left out, which ultimately undermines their message of togetherness.
And just imagine for a moment if the astronauts were Muslim and they did the same thing. We already know what Republicans would say. Not to mention, you're invoking a religion that's being used right now to justify crimes against humanity in Iran. Our defense secretary literally believes that this is a holy war that's necessary to bring about the apocalypse. And perhaps the individuals on the receiving end of said war right now would be a little bit put off by these comments, because you're doing it for them, too.
This is a trip for humanity. It is the furthest that humankind has ever gone. And you have to keep these kinds of things in mind. This is supposed to be a celebration of human ingenuity, not religious dogma, because religion and supernatural beliefs didn't get them to the Moon. Scientists and engineers and the most brilliant minds in the country did. So even though I genuinely think that their hearts were in the right place, using one religion, especially one that's been weaponized for wars and oppression and is being weaponized as we speak for that very purpose, it isn't necessarily a good choice if your goal really was to unite the species, which I, I believe that that was their goal.
And I've got to say it, it's downright offensive for a [ __ ] scientist to promote creation. Not only because it's objectively wrong, but because it tacitly furthers this idea that we're somehow special. We're not special. And I want to explain why that is. But these images shared by the Artemis crew. These images are absolutely stunning. I mean, the picture of the other side of the Moon is so damn cool. But really, it's the pictures of the Earth that I find truly breathtaking. And I'm just, I'm struck by how small and profoundly insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Especially when you see the image of Earth from the Moon. It almost makes me emotional to look at this picture because that's our home. This tiny little marble orbiting a random star in a random galaxy in an incomprehensibly large universe is just, that's everything we know. It's right there, right? Everything that we know of to ever exist in the past, present, and future exists right there on that tiny little marble.
And Carl Sagan's words about the pale blue dot come to mind when I look at these images, which I want to read to you because I think that this paragraph sums it up perfectly. "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering. Thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."
And so when you see the planet from that perspective, it's obvious that this planet is actually very tiny, not to mention insignificant and extremely fragile. And it's important to shift to that perspective because it gives you this inclination to want to protect this fragile thing that's just suspended in space that's orbiting the sun. It shifts accountability to us instead of some god. Because there's this idea that we're special, and you know, we're the main characters in a plot written by God, and you know, this tiny little marble that was put here in space. It was put there by him, and there's a purpose, and he's not going to let anything happen to us or it because he made it just for us. So why would he? So, you know, when you have that mentality, you think, I don't have to preserve or take care of this precious resource because God's got it.
But in actuality, it's not that deep. Earth is one of probably trillions of planets that exist throughout the universe, and this one just so happens to support life. But if we don't cherish it and take care of it, that may no longer actually be the case. Because believe it or not, we're not destined to have this home forever because some god put us here. At least, you know, there's no proof of that. We exist by pure [ __ ] chance in a random solar system. And that could change if we continue to destroy the only home that we have. So that's why I was taken aback by talk of creation, because if a god created us, he very clearly isn't going to let his creation expire. Therefore, we don't have to do anything to protect his creation. When that's just, that's not the case.
Now, to be clear, I don't think that Victor Glover was trying to be malicious when he said that, you know, but I think that the people he's trying to speak to who believe in creationism are going to interpret it in that way. Like, I've had conversations with fundamentalist family members who don't believe in climate change specifically because they think that our species cannot go extinct unless God decides to make it go extinct. But we're just not that special. There are so many species that once existed that went extinct. All of them were also God's creation. So we're not shielded from that same fate because we're God's special little chosen ones. Our fate is in our own [ __ ] hands. And we risk losing everything if we don't protect that blue marble.
And the people who are celebrating these comments also support Donald Trump, who's committing ecocide in Iran and is threatening genocide at the time that I record this video. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the president who's accelerating the decline of our species through endless wars and ecocide and gutting of the climate protections that we had in place that weren't enough, nonetheless, they were something, he's getting credit for one of humanity's greatest accomplishments at the same time that he's trying to cut NASA's budget. It is infuriating.
Although, I will say it's kind of funny that, you know, you can't escape this [ __ ] even when you go to the Moon, literally, because the Artemis crew had a call with the president. And I don't really know what happened. They kind of just stopped talking to him, and there was probably some kind of a delay, I'm guessing. But either way, it was extremely cringeworthy because Trump waited on the line for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Just watch.
>> You have a lot of courage doing what you're doing. A lot of bravery and a lot of a lot of genius. But they're very, very proud of you.
>> Administrator Alexman, just get a quick com check. Make sure you guys are still on the line and we didn't have a handover.
>> I am. Yes, I am.
>> Yeah, that was rough.
Now, I'm not going to force you to sit through more of that painful conversation, but Trump had the audacity to actually tell the crew of Artemis 2 that he saved NASA, even though his new budget cuts their funding by billions of dollars all so we can have more money for the military. And you know, maybe this is an unreasonable request by me, but would it have been bad if the astronauts made the case as to why more funding for NASA as opposed to war was a good thing? Maybe just like mention it a little bit. I mean, if I had the president's ear, regardless of the circumstances, I would challenge him and call him out for the crimes against humanity that he is perpetuating. But with that being said, I understand it's not the responsibility. These are scientists doing a very specific mission. I just, I don't know, maybe I wouldn't have taken the call in the first place since he opposes literally everything that they stand for as scientists.
But either way, their mission is incredibly cool, and it kind of renewed my love for astronomy. I just wish that maybe, you know, more people could learn from what they were doing, or at least have a new perspective on on things, on the world, on on life, on humanity as a species. But in America, the best we get is a rocket ship. Go and this crew quoted Christ, face, base, lips triggered. Like, that's the best that we can get. So what are you going to do?