Does Neil Armstrong´s refusal to swear on the Bible that he landed on the moon mean that the landing did not happen? No, that's not true: The author of the claim is a conspiracy theorist who spreads that the moon landing was faked, despite plenty of evidence from NASA and other parties that the astronauts from the Apollo missions walked on the moon.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) which was published by TikTok on August 8 with captions in Czech, translated by Lead Stories' staff. It's a conversation between Bart Sibrel, a known conspiracy adherent, and Neil Armstrong, one of the astronauts who first landed on the moon in 1969. Sibrel speaking in the video says to Armstrong:
I want to give you an opportunity to swear on the bible that you walked on the moon. Will you put your left hand on the bible and swear to God that you walked on the moon?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Aug 23 06:32:25 2023 UTC)
There is countless scientific evidence that the Apollo landings on the moon were not staged, provided by NASA and other parties. NASA provided pictures, hours of video footage, transcripts and audio recordings of various Apollo missions, involving thousands of personnel. The astronauts brought back samples of lunar rocks and soil during their missions that are still being studied. NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the landing sites of Apollo 11 and other missions in 2009.
Other countries' lunar orbital spacecraft captured landing sites, including Japanese Selene, which imaged a halo left on the moon's surface by the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. In addition, the astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong left a lunar laser retro-reflector on the surface, to help accurately measure the lunar distance from the earth, which is still in use today.
NASA´s only comment on the claims that the moon landings were faked was a brief statement in 2001 answering the question of whether astronauts walked on the moon: "Yes, we did," CNN reported. Claims of alleged evidence proving that the landings were a hoax have also been debunked many times by scientists outside of NASA. Examples can be found here or here. Lead Stories also debunked the claim several times for example here and here.
Bart Sibrel, the person challenging Armstrong in the video, is a conspiracy theorist who believes the moon landing in 1969 was staged by NASA and controlled by the CIA. He has produced several documents claiming this and harassed several astronauts from various NASA Apollo missions regarding their moon landings. In 2002, Buzz Aldrin, a pilot who landed on the moon with Armstrong in 1969, punched Sibrel in the face, when he confronted him with the claim of a fake landing. Authorities did not charge Aldrin, saying that he was provoked by Sibrel, the LA Times reported at the time.
According to the book A Reluctant Icon: Letters to Neil Armstrong of the author James R. Hansen astronaut Armstrong was not a religious man in "any doctrinal sense at all". Rather, the book describes him as a "deist", a person who believes in God through reason and an understanding of the natural laws. In the video Armstrong responds to Sibrel when he asks him to swear on the bible: "Mr. Sibrel, knowing you, it is probably a fake bible" and Armstrong says that Sibrel "has made a fool of himself in front of the world."
