An engineer named Rob Webb has been inspired by Ken Ham to write a book about space and the Bible. It doesn’t seem to have been written yet — he keeps posting articles on AiG to tease the book, and he uses the future tense, that the book ‘will include’ stuff that he doesn’t actually explain yet.
He promises that his book will be unique.
No doubt, there have been many books written on rocket science—with just about all of them from a secular view. But how many of them are written from a biblical view? As of writing this, there likely aren’t many (in fact, none that I know of) that address the field of rocket science through a truly biblical worldview (i.e., through the “lens” of Scripture).
The Bible says nothing about rockets. The authors did not have any concept of space, or of vacuums, or of Newton’s laws. To them, the stars and planets were small bright lights in the sky. Webb has literally nothing to spin a story from, but that doesn’t stop him from dumping multiple long articles telling us what he’s going to say in this astounding book on the AiG website.
The faint glimmerings of an argument that emerge in his ongoing promissory notes are not encouraging.
And yet, one of the leading pioneers of rocket technology, Werner von Braun, was a creationist! But I pray that trend changes soon . . . starting with this book! That said, the purpose of this book is to give you a starting point in understanding rocket science from a biblical perspective and how to defend your faith in a currently secular space industry—standing on the authority of God’s Word.
I don’t give a hypergolic-fueled flying fuck what Werner von Braun thought of evolution — he was not a biologist. He was an old Nazi who used slave labor to build flying bombs to rain down on civilian populations — is that Biblically OK?
I would hope the rocket industry was secular. They’re supposed to be building machines using reliable engineering principles, not some imaginary nonsense that some guy dreams are in the Bible.
His latest chapter is a lengthy discussion of how he came to Christ. It does not tell us where rocketry is discussed in the Bible, but it does tell us how he came to resign from engineering and embark on a new career as a Christian apologist. You won’t be shocked at his motivations, unless you think you have to be smart to be a rocket scientist.
But then, in 2020, everything changed. Not only was the world hit hard by the COVID pandemic, but also by the popular rise of social-justice (Marxist) ideologies, such as critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality, especially in the US. In particular, the space industry, in general, had gone completely “woke” by embracing—and even promoting—Marxist-led organizations and aggressively pushing the latest LGBT agenda.
I had no idea Marxism was synonymous with social justice! But then again, I should trust that a guy who can pull rocketry out of the Bible would be able to extract any old bug-a-boo he doesn’t like out of Karl Marx’s corpse. It’s a skill.
Many agencies were pushing these religious viewpoints—regardless of an individual’s convictions. There was a widespread concerted effort to make sure everyone had the same religious beliefs that were being promoted by the government and the culture at large.
Obviously, this was an attack against my Christian faith! Inevitably, this turn of events led me to start looking for other employment. At one point, someone even said, “You don’t have to actually agree with it, but at least pretend that you do.”
His Christian faith is being attacked by the idea that one should treat your neighbor as yourself! I guess his faith imagines Jesus as a white capitalist overlord. That’s no weirder than thinking that it prophesies satellites and escape velocities and moon landings, I guess.
He was also pissed off about NASA being unbiblical.
The main challenge I faced was NASA’s unbiblical motivation for each of its missions. Once you get past all the “fluff” from the media, the primary goals of every mission that I’ve worked on are based on evolutionary beliefs, which normally included the constant search for “evidence” of life in outer space and the attempt to explain the origin/evolution of our universe (without God). Of course, the reason is that the people I worked with, in general, follow a view of origins based on naturalism (meaning “nature is all that exists,” governed by natural laws, and thus no need for God).
Evolution, like wokeness, has taken over all the sciences. I think he confuses materialism and naturalism with being antithetical to Christianity…or does he? Maybe his version of Christianity is anti-science, but I don’t think that’s true of all versions of Christianity.
If ever he gets around to writing the damned thing, Rob Webb’s book will be a blast.
True.
The sky was a dome over the earth. The stars were just lights stuck on the dome. The dome had doors (the gates of heaven) so god could open them and pour water on us when he was mildly annoyed with us.
The moon was a self illuminating glow in the dark disk.
The earth was flat and the center of the universe, with the sun orbiting around us.
None of that is what the universe actually looks like.
To this day, tens of millions of xians still believe all or most of that. 20% of the US population are Geocentrists who can’t diagram the solar system, a task I learned in the first grade. The Flat Earth theory is making a come back.
The bible has very little to offer modern people but myths, lies, and obsolete morality.
There is nothing in the bible that wasn’t known to the writers of the time.
Scholars, mostly xian scholars at that, have looked carefully through the bible for anything that might indicate something not known to the writers who actually wrote the bible.
They haven’t found anything.
It is full of failed prophecies, contradictions, made up history such as the Exodus from Egypt and the Canaanite genocide, and factual claims that are just wrong.
The laws and morality of the OT are what we today would call pointless evil. There are death penalty offenses for things that today aren’t even crimes. Adultery, being a disobedient child, nonvirgin bride, working on the Sabbath, worshiping foreign gods, blasphemy, being gay. It’s estimated that under biblical law, 99% of the US population would end up dead under a pile of rocks
The right conflates everything they don’t like with “Marxism.” Business regulations are “Marxist” because it’s government telling businesses what they can do. Civil rights and social justice are “Marxist” because the commies said they want everyone to be equal. Atheism and scientific naturalism are “Marxist” because Karl said some nasty things about religion.
Of course, the right has been saying shit like this since the French Revolution, only they called the left “Jacobins” back then. It’s generally a scare word for ant sort of progress that challenges the economic and cultural hierarchy and diminishes the power of those on top of it. Christianity, like all religions, have always endorsed said power structure.
[1] Wernher von Braun was not a creationist. He was a theistic evolutionist, which is poor science and philosophy but not as virulently antagonistic to evidence as YEC.
Never expect creationists to be honest in their representations of people with a little cachet, even Nazis speaking outside their field of expertise.
[2] In that quote about unbiblical motivation, Webb is attacking NASA scientists for the grave sin of testing hypotheses.
Always funny when the god botherers bring up Werner the old Nazi as a shining example of a Christian “scientist”.
And yes, raining death and fire down on innocent people is very biblicaly OK, as would have been enslaving the survivors if Werner’s side had won. At least if you got God on your side, and as my grandfather often pointed out (when someone claimed the German churches were opposed to the Nazis), the soldiers were told by the priests that God was on their side and would bring the victory.
I think the Book of Tsiolkovsky is in the Apocrypha.
This guy Rob Webb comes across as a delusional idiot. I’m guessing he resigned because he was forced to work with women and nonwhites who were every bit as educated and competent as he was. Or more so.
At the Universities in the 1980s, I occasionally saw male students scream at female science professors and then drop their classes. They were fundie xians who could not deal with the idea of a female scientist professor teaching their class. Fast forward 40 years and I’m sure this still happens especially in Red states like Utah and Texas.
Rob Webb also seems to be not very bright.
The Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the origin and evolution of our universe. It’s a biological theory about life changing through time and how and why.
The theories about our universe are the subjects of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. It’s physics, chemistry, and astronomy not biology.
He doesn’t know the difference between biology and astronomy and clearly has no idea what the theory of evolution says anyway.
If we didn’t look for life on other planets and moons and if we didn’t study the universe beyond the earth, that would reduce the need for rocket scientists like Rob Webb.
And what is wrong with asking questions about the natural world?
That activity, also known as science, got us all the way from the stone age to the space age. It was and is a major factor in producing our modern age.
“the reason is that the people I worked with, in general, follow a view of origins based on naturalism (meaning “nature is all that exists,” governed by natural laws, and thus no need for God).”
Natural laws 1 and the need for God zero. Love that picture of Jesus blasting off to heaven. Almost makes me want to believe.
“..used slave labor to build flying bombs to rain down on civilian populations — is that Biblically OK?”
Why yes, yes it is. I mean, have you read the Old Testament?
Tim TeBow to Jesus Christ. This was the first thing I thought of when reading Rob’s quotes.
How stupid can creationists get?
And I would not care about any of this if not for the fact that they want to use their quaint mythology as the basis for a legal system. If they want to believe the world was created by pink unicorns, let them. But they’re not content with that; they want to impose it on the rest of us. Just have a look at this:
https://warhornmedia.com/2024/07/10/christian-nationalist-party-a-simple-biblical-platform/
“Here are five planks to be published broadly by Christian Nationalist Party members. As the Christian Nationalist Party seeks to establish the reign of God and codification of His law at the center of our nation and states’ governmental authority, let it state the fundamentals of that rule and law established by God at Creation:
“First, we call for the renewed criminalization of contraception and birth control. God’s Creation Mandate to man1 is to “be fruitful and multiply,” and this was the basis of the universal condemnation of birth control across Christendom until well into the last century. Christendom’s former criminalization of all artificial forms of pregnancy prevention must be restored.
“Second, we call for the repeal of all laws which place man and animal on a level, whether implicitly or explicitly. God’s Creation Mandate is that man alone was created in His Image and likeness, and thus God brought animals to man to be named, commanding him to take dominion, to “rule over” them. Any assessment of environmental impacts must start with the good of man, and proceed from there to other living beings.
“Third, we call for the criminalization of sodomy and sodomite marriage. God’s Creation Mandate is that sex is permitted only within heterosexual marriage, and thus this sin is an abomination before God. Jesus reiterated this when He Himself said, “He Who created from the beginning made them male and female.”
“Fourth, we call for the removal of the female sex from holding and exercising civil authority over men. God’s Creation Order and Mandate is Adam first, then Eve. Reiterating this Creation Mandate, the Apostolic command was given that woman is not to be allowed to exercise authority over man.
“Fifth, we call for the repeal of all no-fault divorce laws. God’s Creation Mandate is that marriage is one-man and one-woman, and life-long. We call for the criminalization of all betrayals of marriage as God established it in the state of perfection, universally binding on man for all time.
“Announcing such a simple Biblical platform for the Christian Nationalist Party will make it clear to all men that Christian Nationalists do not seek the political establishment of any church or denomination, but merely the return of man and nations’ obedience to God’s Creation Mandates which He Himself applied to all men in all places across all time.
“By definition God’s Creation Mandates are non-sectarian. Commanded by God before the Fall while man was in the Garden of Eden in the state of perfection, they have never been, nor can they ever be, abrogated. Zeal for God’s Creation Mandates will permeate the foundations of our movement governmentally. We seek to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and therefore will not stop with the establishment of these laws and their authority over just our own United States, but will pursue their establishment and authority across the entire world.
“Christian Nationalism is really a misnomer. In fact, our work establishing the Kingdom of God on earth is at its heart transnationalist. God’s Creation Mandates were given prior to God’s Moral Law, and therefore their codification is mandatory to any beginning attempt to reinstate the authority and rule of God over all His Creation.”
Houston, we have a nut job!
If you actually look at what Marx and Engels wrote it’s not hard to suspect there was a Christian influence on their ideas. Historically inevitable Marxist revolution sounds a lot like the idea of the Second Coming. The proletariat could be considered the meek of the Earth.
I wonder if the Webb fellow has heard of attempts to use Hindu scripture as evidence for aliens visiting Earth, or at the very least that some super civilisation with missiles and nuclear bombs once existed on Earth.
“Christian Nationalism is really a misnomer.”
Christian Nationalism is NOT a misnomer but an actual fascist movement to established an Orwellian-style society that’s just as hard and oppressive as what you see in Afghanistan and North Korea, where women are sex slaves and baby poopers, people die from preventable diseases, blacks and browns are stripped of all their rights and freedoms and put back into slavery, nearly all of the people are poor, hungry and stupid, (except for only the stingy higher ups who revel in wealth, power, and splendor), the animals are ruthlessly exploited, hunted, destroyed for personal gain.
Do I want to live in such a society? NO! Absolutely NOT!
#We’reNotGoingBack
The Bible – it’s not rocket science!
The way that Dumb Idiot Ham and his cronies go after social justice is what convinces me that Young Earth Creationism is entirely a White Supremacist Ideology that only regards the White Man is the highest form of God’s Creation while the blacks and the browns and the reds are the inferior races that were only created to served the White Man.
Now that’s toxic Christianity right here.
My late wife spent some time working through the internal UC Berkeley temp agency. One stint was spent working at the Space Sciences Lab. One of the staff came to her to ask a question about how to do something in Word for Windows. The staff member said, “I know it’s not rocket science. I’m a rocket scientist.”
timgueguen@14,
Bertrand Russell says (A History of Western Philosophy 2nd edition (1961) p.361, oddly enough in the chapter on “St. Augustine’s Philosophy and Theology” rather than that on Marx!):
One might add:
The Garden of Eden = Primitive Communism
And note also the tendency of Marxists, like Christians, to undergo continual splits into rival sects, often over obscure points of doctrine – and the frequency with which such sects are led by charismatic patriarchs who sexually exploit young (usually female) believers.
Don’t forget Georges Lemaître, a catholic priest and scientist, came up with the idea of an expanding universe that was later disparagingly called “The Big Bang.”
some religious people like to point that out and say that since he was a catholic, that religion explains how the universe was created and bible this and bible that.
i think it shows that even if you are a religious person, you can do good science, in spite of your religious beliefs.
robb webb does not fall into that group.
@18, whheydt
that story made me laugh.
thank you!
I’m not clear on what he thinks the goal of NASA missions should be, since it’s blasphemous to seek “evidence” (love the scare quotes) of life or a deeper understanding of the universe.
@Owosso Harpist #11:
I’m not sure there is a lower bound. Creationists, however, seem quite driven to test this hypothesis.
Raven @ 1
“To this day, tens of millions of xians still believe all or most of that”
As do muslims.
Love this sentence: “In particular, the space industry, in general, had gone…”
Why does this smell like a scam, 1.release small bits that don’t really explain anything 2.Start collecting payments for the supposed book,3. escape with the cash and never deliver any product. Something like how religion operatives.
I had to laugh when seeing that last image and the first thing that went through my mind was the German for Christ’s Ascension, which is Christi Himmelfahrt. Oh, and Mariä (Mary) has one, too.
@22. Ridana : “I’m not clear on what he thinks the goal of NASA missions should be, since it’s blasphemous to seek “evidence” (love the scare quotes) of life or a deeper understanding of the universe.”
To beat
the Russkies to our MoonChina to Mars & show the werld we iz winningsz w the biggusst, bestetstsymbolic phallirockets evah!(W, y’know intimidating military implications.)
In his worldview anyhow guessing.
Doubt he’s a fan of the International Space Station somehow..
(Mark Kelly on Colbert here in Oz any sec..)
@27. Alan G. Humphrey : Mamma Mariia de queefenrishung!
W apologies to Deutsche und Italiano mais tres mal pardonnez moi..
(Occassionally I do mangle languages other than english..)
“I would hope the rocket industry was secular. They’re supposed to be building machines using reliable engineering principles, not some imaginary nonsense that some guy dreams are in the Bible.”
Maybe that explains Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.
Chariots of the God anyone?
whheydt @ 18
and adapted and inverted for telly by Mitchell and Webb:
https://youtu.be/THNPmhBl-8I
Owosso Harpist @ #15 —
Perhaps a better term would be “Christian Internationalism”, or as stated in the sentence following the quote, “Christian transnationalism”: “In fact, our work establishing the Kingdom of God on earth is at its heart transnationalist.”
In other words, their goal is not specific to a particular country but the entire world. That said, they have to start somewhere and the US is their best playground…so nationalist. (Russia is another fertile ground for those in Russia.)
It’s an ambitious goal given that 2/3s of the world isn’t Christian and a good 1/2 of that is just as vehemently opposed to being Christian as Christians are opposed to being Muslim.
[von Braun] was an old Nazi who used slave labor to build flying bombs …
Born in 1912, Frau von Braun’s little boy was a fairly young Nazi during his V-2 period.
[Little-known fact: one American POW died working in Germany’s underground missile factory. That inconvenient fact was more easily overlooked in the US because this particular casualty was a Black man.]
Only by the time Wernher vB worked for NASA could we accurately call him an old Nazi.
Shorter Robert Webb: “I gave up my job because my colleagues weren’t homophobic enough”.
Admittedly, while some Marxists do not see a link between Marxism and social justice, In my own case my appreciation of the thought of Marx and my appreciation of the value of social justice very much are linked. Marx’s analysis of the consequences of a capitalist mode of social organization emphasizes chiefly the inequality that a capitalist system inevitably generates, followed by the instability of such a system, which affects the least fortunate the most harshly. Marx reveals many of the systemic underpinnings of social injustice, underpinnings which any attempt to achieve social justice must dismantle.
Webb is dealing with inferior technology. He should take a lesson from the Book or Mormon, and talk about building large working submarines in 600 BC, for the Jews to come to the western hemisphere then, to have the authentic Christ experience in Missouri and the metal swords battle in Central America and bury the gold plates in New York. With no evidence left behind. Now that’s super stealth technology.
It’s not in the bible, but “rocket’s red glare” is right there in the National Anthem which Jesus wrote, along with the Constitution.
If Christians acquired anything close to “rocket science,” they didn’t get it from the Bible, they got it from Pagan Greeks, who — as St. Augustine admitted long ago — were getting a pretty good idea about what those lights in the sky were long before Jesus was born; and possibly before the Old Testament was written.
These Christian hacks are absolutely pathetic and disgraceful in their attempts to “prove” that their Bible is the source of all knowledge. They’re nothing but idiots giving themselves an excuse not to listen or learn from anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.
Also, weren’t the Chinese making rockets long before anyone told them about Jesus or the Bible?
#33.
Makes clear sense. Obviously this is their ultimate goal: World conquest. Conquer the entire world and forcefully impose toxic Christian ideologies down the throats of all peoples whether they like it or not. It’s exactly what Hitler wanted to do when he went out to invade European countries starting with Poland in Nov. of 1939. Glad he and his regime failed. So will the Christian Zealots if they ever tried to go out and conquer the world in God’s name.
Alan G. Humphrey@27:
the German for Christ’s Ascension, which is Christi Himmelfahrt
Yeah ascension is Himmelfahrt and space flight is Raumfahrt. ;-)
@42
But, as we are finding out, Raumfahrt is not immaculate…
I am a naturalist, and the above is not a bad definition of naturalism. It’s not an ideology so much as a useful hypothesis which could in theory be overturned. And within nature we have morality, but that doesn’t have to be fully based on “survival of the fittest” or some such. There are clearly other significant human values that also inform our morality.
“The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.”
Yeah, seems to fit. Using slave labour wouldn’t rate a mention in the Bible, it was understood as just normal.
@2 raven: wrote: The laws and morality of the OT are what we today would call pointless evil. There are death penalty offenses for things that today aren’t even crimes.
I reply: my organization has an answer to all that. The 10 commandments are atrocious. I would like to offer our alternative to anyone interested:
http://omnigma.org/precepts.htm
At the time, von Braun probably had little influence over the conditions at Mittelbau Dora. The guilty nazis probably saved themselves through the various ‘rat lines’.
Goddammit, I can’t believe I am defending a high-ranking professional from Nazi Germany.
By contrast, Rommel did commit crimes against jews in Libya and Speer
knew about the holocaust. Fuck them.
numerobis beat me to the punch.
Just remember that this IS the genocidal, fire-and-brimstone Abrahamic Gawd we’re talking about here.
Obvious right wing grift scam is obvious. Though one wants to ask this Christoholic homophobe a few questions, besides where the Bible ever mentioned rockets. For instance, what the Hittite opinion was of trying to run Windoze 11 on only 8 gigabytes of RAM — doable or just an all-around bad idea? Also, which page of the Hammurabic code specified “a copyright infringement for a copyright infringement”? Plus, in which verse of the Quran does Mohammad definitively answer whether daylight savings time is halal or haram?
raven@7:
Oh, that’s easy to answer. Asking questions about the natural world carries the danger that you’ll find somewhere where God contradicts the Bible, of course.
More generally, middlemen hate it when the underlings go over their heads and engage with their bosses. :)
awoman@12, citing a wackjob at Warhorn Media:
Nuh-uh. First is “Congress shall pass no law respecting a particular establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech, or of the press…”
Which renders the rest of that chucklefuck’s prescription moot.
Oh, come on, you can do better than that. Give it some flair. You know, like this: “First, the United States, and then the world! Muahahahahahaha!”
That’s the part where you twirl your moustache. You do have a moustache, right?
Aaargh! You’ve got to learn the basics of dramatic presentation if you ever hope to be a credible supervillain, Mr. Warhorn! If you don’t up your game everyone will just laugh at you and your pathetic schemes for world domination, and you won’t be able to recruit enough minions to succeed. You need to brush up on this area. I suggest reading a few comic books and maybe a few of the James Bond films. Those will teach you the ropes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go off somewhere and spend some time laughing at you …