The Apollo program started in 1961, was a project initiated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as an exploration attempt to learn more about the moon. There were fourteen total Apollo missions. Apollo eight contained the first humans to ever orbit the moon. The event captured the attention of the whole world. On Christmas Eve 1968, they orbited the moon 10 times. During this orbit, the crew of the mission; Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders had a special broadcast for those on Earth. They said, “We were told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice and the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate.” The crew then proceeded to take turns reading from the first chapter of the book of Genesis.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1)
On this historic day for mankind, the crew did not boast about man, but about God and His creations.
Human interaction with the moon has taught us many things. There have been numerous interpretations in the span of history about what the moon is, how it moves, how it affects our earth, and if it’s possible for man to visit it. Mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists have pondered, studied, and calculated the moon as they have tried to understand these questions. On July 20, 1969, when Apollo eleven landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong said this famous quote: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.” The moon landing was unprecedented. Never before had people thought something like that was even possible. Centuries of proofs, equations, and discoveries made that historic event achievable. It was a great day for mankind. Today everyone knows what the moon is even though almost nobody has actually been there. We know where it is, how it works, and what it’s made of. Centuries ago when people first started asking questions about the moon they didn’t have the same luxury of knowing what we know today. The moon was not just a planet to them, but a celestial body sitting in the heavens.
Early Greek and Roman philosophers saw the moon in the sky and made assumptions about what it might be. Aristotle believed the Earth was a perfect sphere and that the moon, planets, and stars revolved around it. The Greeks believed this for many years. They also believed in sacred geometric shapes. This is why many also believed the moon was a perfect sphere. They referred to the planets and stars as celestial bodies and some believed they were actual deities. This is why the Romans named the planets after their gods. There was a clear distinction between the heavens and earth among the ancients. The earth was human’s domain and the heavens were the gods. One Greek philosopher named Anaxagoras made a discovery that perhaps the moon was not a God, but an object. He believed that the moon was a rock, similar to Earth. He also believed that the moon reflected the light of the sun writing that, “it is the sun which puts brightness into the moon.” All of these new discoveries about the moon made the heavens seem significantly less godlike which was why Anaxagoras was eventually exiled for his beliefs.
Galileo, born in 1564, was one of the first to create the telescope. This tool provided him with the ability to observe the heavens and make discoveries about the moon. Many during his time still held the belief that the moon was a perfect sphere. Galileo, using his telescope, noticed that it had many similarities to Earth with mountains and valleys. He also noticed that there were no clouds on the moon and determined that the atmosphere of the moon was not the same as the Earth. Not only did he learn more about the moon, he learned that the other planets had moons that orbited them as well. This created a great shift in thinking about the moon. When Galileo determined that first, the moon was similar to Earth and second that it was not in a perfect sphere, he was not only questioning many philosophers who had come before him but questioning the heavens themselves. He was interpreting God’s domain and making it possible for others to make observations about sacred things. Galileo was put on house arrest for the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun. His thoughts about the heavens shook the very foundation and structure that many people had built their lives on.
Johannes Kepler, born only a few years after Galileo, was a German mathematician and astronomer. He discovered that the Earth and planets orbit around the sun in elliptical orbits, not circular. He discovered that the moon was the cause of tides on the Earth. Rene Descartes born during the same time believed in the vortex theory of planetary motion. He thought that planets orbited around the sun in a giant vortex and that’s what caused them to move. He also believed that stars had their own vortexes as well so that space was full of vertices. Many philosophers at this point had theories on what the moon was, but less so on what force kept it in the sky. Dana Densmore writes in her commentary on Newton’s Principia stating that: “Descartes and Kepler each saw the matter of the moon and the earth as similar and so were in that sense closer to seeing things in the revolutionary way Newton did. But in both cases, their ideas of gravity were significantly different from Newton’s. Kepler understood terrestrial heaviness as a tendency for like matter to clump together, and he saw the moon (but nothing beyond) as matter like the earths. However, for Kepler, the moon was retained in its orbit, not by that tendency of like matter to clump together but because that’s where God told it to be: it was given its proper distance from the earth according to archetypal principles, and it was given a velocity such that it plays its part in a harmonious whole with other motions in the universe.”
With the arrival of Newton, he sought to prove universal gravitation. He answered the age-old question of what force kept the moon in the sky. Newton combined the thoughts and calculations of the mathematicians before him. Using the proofs from Euclid, Apollonius, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and many others, he was able to prove universal gravitation. His proofs about the moon are particularly interesting when you see how much debate and thought has gone into determining what the moon is, and how it moves. Newton did not claim that the moon, or any of the planets, moved because God told them to. He did not use God to determine any of his proofs. In the third book of his Principia, he proves that the moon is held back in its orbit by terrestrial heaviness which is gravity. This was a thrilling discovery because he was suggesting that the force that keeps people grounded on the Earth was the same force keeping the moon in orbit. The understanding of gravity in Newton’s time was that if you drop a rock it will fall. Today we have a deeper understanding of what gravity really means and that is because of not only Newton but the thoughts and calculations of many mathematicians and philosophers. Newton proved that the moon, (considered a celestial body) moves not necessarily because God tells it to, but because it is acting under the force of gravity.
All of these mathematicians were extraordinary in their time for their discoveries. They changed the way people thought about the world. Today the majority of the population doesn’t spend much time thinking about the moon. So many things are understood about the moon that new discoveries have lost their novelty. What was significant to the average person centuries ago is not as interesting today. However, the importance of the early discoveries of the moon cannot be forgotten. Early proofs about the planets and the moon showed that there was no longer a clear defining line between man’s domain and God’s domain. These proofs changed the way people thought about God and the universe. This is why discoveries about the moon were so life-changing. Today it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to have no concept of space. There is still much to discover about the universe, but even young children know what space looks like. Movies, pictures, and videos show us what the surface of the moon looks like, how the planets move, and how space operates. Because science has merged the space between heaven and earth, many scientists and individuals have forgotten their need for God in their explanations.
The early Greek and Roman philosophers believed so much in the gods, that they felt they couldn’t question any aspect of the universal domain. Today people believe so much in man that they question everything and refuse to see God as any kind of answer. The history of the moon reflects mankind’s relationship with the heavens. Much was learned by Newton when he removed God as an explanation for gravity. Without those questions, man could not have landed on the moon in 1969. However, Newton acknowledged that he did not have the answers to all of his questions about the universe and that in large part the way things worked was because of something greater than man. He writes at the close of his Principia,
“This most elegant arrangement of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen but by the plan and rule of an intelligent and powerful being…He governs everything, not as the soul of the world, but as lord of all things… He reigns over everything, and knows everything that happens or can happen. He is not eternal and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration and space, but he endures and is present… Just as a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the ways in which God most wise perceives and understands everything.”
The story of the moon shows us both the great potential and great risk of thinking logically and rationally. The potential is that centuries of ideas and questions can lead to unprecedented moments similar to Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon. The risk is that in our search for knowledge, we face the possibility of thinking that mankind has all the answers and not God. Newton took the risk of asking questions about the universe without using the Divine as an explanation. However, at the finale of his magnificent proof, he acknowledged who and what was really responsible for the universe; God.
The moon today is something that is recognized by every single person. You can go outside and see it shining up in the sky as easily as you can see the sun. The moon is the light of the night, it’s romantic, spooky, and sentimental. Almost nobody has been to the moon, yet everyone understands what it is, how it moves, and most importantly how we can rely on the fact that it will be there night after night. We understand that the moon is not a God, not a perfect sphere, but a rock, a planet, orbiting around our earth. There are probably only a few people who think about how the knowledge of the moon affects them in their life. We know men have walked on it combining the knowledge of the past with the excitement of the future creating a purposeful present. The moon landing was a great step for mankind, but hopefully, we all recognize that the ability to see, understand, and travel to the moon was possible because of a divine omnipotent creator who, in the beginning, said: “Let there be light.”
Works Cited
“Apollo 8 Apollo 8: Christmas at the Moon.” NASA, 23 December 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/apollo_8.html. Accessed 18 April 2022.
“Genesis 1.” Church of Jesus Christ, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/1?lang=eng. Accessed 18 April 2022.
Warmflash, David. “An Ancient Greek Philosopher Was Exiled for Claiming the Moon Was a Rock, Not a God.” Smithsonian Magazine, 20 June 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-greek-philosopher-was-exiled-claiming-moon-was-rock-not-god-180972447/. Accessed 16 April 2022.
“Galileo’s Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun – NASA Solar System Exploration.” NASA Solar System Exploration, 24 February 2009, https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/307/galileos-observations-of-the-moon-jupiter-venus-and-the-sun/. Accessed 16 April 2022.Newton, Isaac, and Dana Densmore. Newton’s Principia: The Central Argument. Edited by Dana Densmore, translated by William H. Donahue, Green Lion Press, 2003.