I just finished reading the comment section of a recent youtube video where someone comments Rogozin’s skeptical claims regarding American Moon landings, and it was a profoundly depressing experience which left me with a belief that stupid people should never attempt being skeptical. They should just believe what the authorities tell them, because whatever that is, they have at least some probability of being on a right trajectory in life. If they try to think for themselves, they are absolutely certain to get it wrong and destroy not only their own lives, but also throw the world into chaos. That’s how we got materialism and atheism, when stupid people tried to think critically based on “reason and evidence”, and everything they ended up with was absolutely wrong in every conceivable way, and resulted in mass slaughters and chaos, from the French revolution onwards.

Stupid people don’t know how physics works, they don’t know how rockets work, they don’t know how gyroscopes and inertial guidance works, they heard something about radiation but don’t really distinguish between alpha, gamma and beta kinds, they heard that Van Allen belts are bad but they don’t really know what they look like and what’s the actual problem with them, they don’t know how computers work but it’s intuitive to them that you can’t do shit if you don’t have an iPhone, and they don’t know how photography works but they look at the pictures from the Moon and think they can see all kinds of issues. They think that if they can’t get a good cell coverage, it’s obvious that NASA couldn’t communicate with Apollo all the way to the Moon. I read all this and it makes me feel sick, not because I couldn’t answer any of those supposed issues, but exactly because I can, and I understand what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t even that those people are scientifically ignorant. That’s actually expected – it takes quite a bit of work to become scientifically and technologically proficient in various disciplines, to the point where you can actually understand how a microwave transceiver works, how a computer works (in a sense that you understand how to build a microprocessor with NOR gates alone, because that’s all you have), how you can integrate data from accelerometers into knowing your position and speed, what miracles you can do with very weak computers if you code everything directly in machine code and design the user interface so that you actually have to know what you’re doing to use it, instead of wasting a supercomputer on making something that chimps and cats can use. No, the problem is not that ordinary people don’t have the ability to understand the technological and scientific intricacies of space travel. The problem is that ordinary people have been trained to think that all men are equal, and if they can’t understand something, nobody can. They are trained to be inherently arrogant, they are trained to believe in democracy and rights, and they are trained to be skeptical.

Skepticism is a terribly destructive thing, and even the sharpest minds should use it very sparingly. This might sound strange until you see all the conspiracy theorists who completely lost not only their minds, but also every connection to reality, just because they were skeptical of everything. Not everything – they are never skeptical of their own ability to understand things. This is the difference between them and me. I am always skeptical of myself and my own abilities first, and I always started with faith first, using skepticism extremely sparingly and carefully – if you can imagine a prayer to God for guidance, keeping God and the truth that He is constantly in my mind as I carefully questioned, explored and eventually revised my views. If skepticism is combined with arrogance (of thinking you’re the measure of truth and knowledge, for instance), you’re lost. You’ll start believing that the Earth is flat, that men didn’t go to the Moon, that there are no satellites in orbit, and eventually you’ll go so crazy you’ll question reality of gender and thinking men can be women if they feel like it, or something equally insane.

You can now respond by stating that blind faith in authorities is not a good thing either, and that all those people, who got vaccinated with American bioweapons four times just because they unquestionably believed the authorities, are now about to taste the consequences of that, and I will agree. However, it’s not their fault that they believed the authorities. They can hardly do much else. It is the sin of those in power who mislead them. You see, St. Augustine would describe civilization with an image of a flock of sheep guided by shepherds, who are assisted by sheep dogs, who guard the flock against the wolves. The sheep are normal people who mind their own business baking bread, milling wheat, fixing roads and plumbing, making cars and computers, and so on, and simply have neither the interest, ability or time for other matters. The shepherds are the priests, philosophers and scientists who devote their time to understanding God, righteousness and truth to the best of their ability, and guide the people in the right direction, so that they can live a life that will be grounded in truth and reality, and have a trajectory towards God. The guard dogs are the worldly powers – the army, police, courts and administration, as well as healthcare, fire departments and so on, who take care that the crimes are punished, that those in need are taken care of, that the sick are healed, that the fires are put out, and that the foreign invaders are stopped and fought. The wolves are evil people who want to disrupt, seduce and destroy. If the wolves infiltrate the system to pose as guard dogs and shepherds, you can hardly blame the sheep for being confused, or victimized for following them. You can’t expect a baker or a plumber to be an expert in theology and science, and to see fault in something that requires a PhD in biochemistry. No – if the shepherds and guard dogs fail in their duties and are compromised, the flock will be lost. If the sheep don’t understand that they are sheep, and try to skeptically question the shepherds, they are lost, because they don’t even understand what it takes to be able to understand that stuff. The problem with stupid people is that they think hard stuff is actually easy. I think it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. I think the media actually encourages this in people, by oversimplifying issues so that everybody thinks they understand them, and encouraging everybody to have an opinion about everything, under the assumption that everybody can do it. Sure, you can have an opinion, but you are all but guaranteed to be wrong. You can’t integrate acceleration across time but you think you can have an opinion about spaceflight? You can’t differentiate between gamma and beta radiation but you heard radiation is bad and you think the astronauts couldn’t cross the Van Allen belts? You heard that lightning is caused by electricity and now you no longer believe in God because God doesn’t make lightning? As I said, skepticism is dangerous and even the smartest people should first be skeptical of their ability to exercise skepticism safely and without losing the grip on reality, but for stupid people skepticism is absolutely fatal. The only thing a stupid person – and by that I mean you – should be doing, is making a choice on which expert to believe, based on their inner feeling of reality obtained from prayer to God. If you follow this diligently, at some point you might actually evolve to the point of being one of the experts, very gradually, and at some point you might carve out a new, yet unknown path to a greater truth than what was previously revealed. However, the “I don’t understand this so it must be wrong and stupid” kind of skepticism, that ends your journey towards the truth then and there. And if your inner response was “I’m nobody’s sheep”, you’re either a wolf, or you were indoctrinated by them. You see, the wolves define sheep as stupid followers who are exploited by the shepherds. God defines sheep as good beings that follow the voice of God that leads them from space and time into salvation and eternity.

Don’t be a sheep if that’s your choice, but those, who don’t follow His voice into eternity, shall perish in time.