I am a Freemason. No one is invited to become a Freemason or trapped as you so ignorantly put it. A man must ask a Mason for a petition, which he will HAPPILY be given, and the following procedurs are followed. If the man is found to be an upright man, TRUST-WORTHY, among other noble characteristics proving himself to be a good man, the procedures are begun for him to become a Mason. I capitalize trust-worthy because of the accusations many make. No, a man can’t just walk into a lodge and magically beocme a Mason, but he can walk up to a Mason and ask for petiton and I repeat, it will be happily given. People who want to know what it takes to be a Mason, sit and talk to many other Masons, from the most educated to the country boy that I am, and you will find that they are willing to bend over backwards to help you; they’ll give you the shirts off their backs. Look at some of the many establishments built by Masons and Shriners that are to help the communities, underprivliged, etc. Example: the Shiners hospitals.

Interesting point about the contradictory statements of Masons, however. They do seem to be full of them.
In this post alone, one says “only three degrees” while the other claims to be 33°. So which is it, duplicitous double-talkers?

@ Phil: Amen, brother. They do seem quite adept at avoiding direct questions.

@ Ecliptic: For my part, I’m with you. Far, FAR too many unanswered and unacknowledged questions about how the Apollo missions could possibly have been successful. What about the so-called “air-conditioned” craft and spacesuits? Or, “the problem of heat exchange in the vacuum of space”? I don’t seem to remember an entire water tower’s worth of H2O being towed behind the capsule, which is probably how much it would have required in order to cool the craft for that long, or anything remotely adequate in the suit design to accommodate the required water.

Did Mythbusters address that? I didn’t see it, but I find it hard to see how a couple of guys in a garage could replicate the conditions necessary to even approximate a viable explanation for that elephant in the room.

UNLESS…the MASONIC-FILLED institution known as NASA - which is, quite laughably, still considered a “civilian” agency - LIED to us about an atmosphere on the Moon AND how they really got there, if in fact they did get there.

It must be one of the two…

@ Max: The last I checked, one must be invited (or “tapped”) to become a Freemason, and one cannot simply walk into the local Lodge and “join”, as you put it. Or, is that just “conspiracy theory”? Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Further, all other issues aside, perhaps a majority of the “profane” just simply don’t like the idea that an exclusive and secretive club, benign or not, is the sole representative of human interest in space (beyond near-Earth orbit, that is).

You can deny questionable ritual all you want, but you cannot escape the enduring and overwhelming impression of smug elitism, exclusionism, and arrogance. Never mind the constant lying, an example of which is illustrated in this post.

Maybe that’s quite enough to cause suspicion and distrust in the average taxpayer, don’t you think?

Wink. Nudge.