Zeitgeist the Movie: Slick Propaganda

Zeitgeist the Movie is a conspiracy genre documentary made in 2007 which shows, among other things, that Jesus never existed (he was supposedly copied from archetypes found in ancient pagan religions), that 911 was an inside job by the US government, and that a group of elite financial bankers hold the reigns of global power. 

I was shown the first 25 minute portion (over religion) here at Nir Oz because several people thought I would find it interesting – and I did. 

Let me say that I like to think of myself as a truth-seeker:  I’m not afraid of the truth, or of facts.  If someone can show me what I believe to be false, I’ll change my beliefs because I don’t want to believe something that is not true.  Who does?

But about the religious segment of Zeitgeist, here is my opinion: it was total hogwash – But wait! let me explain that statement….

I didn’t know it was hogwash before I watched it, I went into the viewing with an open mind, saying I was willing to have my beliefs questioned (and I am).  I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared to face serious allegations against my faith. 

There are serious allegations that can be leveled against Christianity, such as the problem of evil in this world, among others.  These issues are ones which – I believe – must be wrestled with by every believer.  I believe these hard issues have answers, but they aren’t necessarily easy answers.

SO, after I was done watching the 25 minute movie, I still didn’t know it was total hogwash (though I was beginning to suspect it).

Here was what I thought after watching Zeitgeist, “Hmmm, I didn’t know there were so many similarities between ancient pagan deities and Jesus.  I’ll look into this.”

Honestly, the only deity I had knowledge of that they mentioned in the movie was Krishna (because I’ve studied Hinduism at a cursory level) and I knew they were taking some things out of context with him, because Krishna isn’t much like Jesus at all.  For starters, he’s mythical, whereas Jesus is historical.  And Krishna had serious moral issues – that are embarrassing to even read about – that don’t fit Jesus in the least.

But anyways, I went online and began looking into the claims of Zeitgeist and found out their information was misleading at best, and openly deceptive at worst.  The more I looked into it, the angrier I got. 

Turns out the religious segment from Zeitgeist was not even a serious attack against Christianity, but merely propaganda for the masses.  I went into watching it with a serious mindset, but instead of giving me something of substance to chew on, it was simply a litany of untrue statements, easily shown false.

What’s crazy is that it works: people watch this film and think, “Oh, so that’s the deal with Jesus, he’s just the most recent copy in a long list of ancient pagan gods that were all the same,” and move on with their life, swallowing the message.  Pretty sad.

So if you want, you can watch the religious portion of Zeitgeist online here.

But more importantly, watch the movie below, which is a reasoned rebuttal to the claims made in Zeitgeist, put together by Chris White.  I highly recommend it.

Begin listening at minute 31:00 for Chris’s refutation of the material.  The first 31 minutes are about the history of the Jesus Myth and not so much about Zeitgeist. However, the content after that point is quite interesting, especially Chris’s discussion on whether Jesus existed or not (which starts at minute 31).

If you want to watch the movie directly to see it in full screen, go here.

The second part of Zeitgeist, about 911, is also pretty controversial, but since you can find most their claims debunked at the million and one September 11th websites, I won’t touch on that here.

I tried watching the third part about banking while at the same time reading a more reasoned commentary over what I was hearing, but after awhile it became evident nearly every statement Zeitgeist was making was either a twisting of the truth or an open mis-representation, so I just began skimming the the online transcript with embedded rebuttal.  You can read that here.