thetonestarr on 15 March 2008
Don't take this from me as a Christian. Take this from me as a person that's studied and researched the topics on hand in Zeitgeist:
Do not believe what they try telling you in that video.
There are countless errors and assumptions made in that video, it's blatantly clear to anybody that's studied pretty much any of the topics in said video that he clearly didn't research the topic half as much as he claims.
Here's an excerpt from a discussion about Zeitgeist from another messageboard. I don't claim its infallibility, but it does demonstrate a great deal of why Zeitgeist shouldn't just be taken at face value.
The main ones being that none of the other gods (see: Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Attis, etc) ever lived, or at least can be proven to have lived (and I'd say that the vast likelihood's that they didn't). We know for a fact that the Man known as Jesus did indeed walk the earth. We have solid historical evidence.
Additionally, we know that Jesus did many of the things He did for the very reaction people would have to it. He did what He did for a reason - He always had a reason for every single thing He did. Since people in those days were surely familiar with the stories of Horus and Dionysus, if Jesus did things that reflected many of the legends of those characters, people would naturally understand the claims He was making. It's common sense - you call yourself the Good Shepherd or King of Kings, you become a respected teacher at age 12, you get baptized at age 30 and begin your ministry, you turn water into wine, you die for three days then come back to life, etc. All of it specifically defies the other faith systems. There's a reason Jesus was known as the greatest teacher of all time. It's not for the simple message behind his stories - any simpleton can teach those. It's how He applied His teachings to His audience and ensured that the people He was teaching would understand exactly what He was saying and doing. His birth, His death, His resurrection - they all were to bring an end to the days of old.
Also, another thing that easily explains many of these similarities is that most of what the Zeitgeist movie mentions as similarities were prophesied many centuries/millenniums* prior. I think it's safe to assume that some of those gods were adapted from Jewish prophecies, thanks to the Jewish Diaspora that spread followers of YHWH all across the world (very literally - there's evidence somewhere of ancient Jewish refugees going as far as Japan).
Then, when Jesus gained such an avid following, supporters of other faithsets tried combating Him by altering their faithset to be the "original". They took their vaguely similar stories and reinterpreted them to suggest that their teachings were the first to make these claims. As it turns out, I'm fairly certain that the only way you can suggest that Horus did all those things and whatnot is to put a heavy amount of interpretation into the stories. Sure, the stories existed far prior to Jesus' birth, but when those stories were outrageously vague, what do you expect? It's the exact reason that people don't give Nostradamus a second thought - every single one of his "predictions" that comes true is enormously vague in wording.
Lastly, the "December 25" thing is something that all educated Christians can understand is not the date of Christ's birth, but rather the day earlier Christians decided to celebrate His birth as a method of combating and suffocating the other faithsets that were trying to imitate Jesus. Make it seem more and more like they're worshiping Jesus anyways (by molding anything you can without denying the Biblical teachings), and eventually, their teachings hold less and less impact. People stop following the imitations and more and more decide instead to follow what they viewed to be the Real Thing.
Additionally, we know that Jesus did many of the things He did for the very reaction people would have to it. He did what He did for a reason - He always had a reason for every single thing He did. Since people in those days were surely familiar with the stories of Horus and Dionysus, if Jesus did things that reflected many of the legends of those characters, people would naturally understand the claims He was making. It's common sense - you call yourself the Good Shepherd or King of Kings, you become a respected teacher at age 12, you get baptized at age 30 and begin your ministry, you turn water into wine, you die for three days then come back to life, etc. All of it specifically defies the other faith systems. There's a reason Jesus was known as the greatest teacher of all time. It's not for the simple message behind his stories - any simpleton can teach those. It's how He applied His teachings to His audience and ensured that the people He was teaching would understand exactly what He was saying and doing. His birth, His death, His resurrection - they all were to bring an end to the days of old.
Also, another thing that easily explains many of these similarities is that most of what the Zeitgeist movie mentions as similarities were prophesied many centuries/millenniums* prior. I think it's safe to assume that some of those gods were adapted from Jewish prophecies, thanks to the Jewish Diaspora that spread followers of YHWH all across the world (very literally - there's evidence somewhere of ancient Jewish refugees going as far as Japan).
Then, when Jesus gained such an avid following, supporters of other faithsets tried combating Him by altering their faithset to be the "original". They took their vaguely similar stories and reinterpreted them to suggest that their teachings were the first to make these claims. As it turns out, I'm fairly certain that the only way you can suggest that Horus did all those things and whatnot is to put a heavy amount of interpretation into the stories. Sure, the stories existed far prior to Jesus' birth, but when those stories were outrageously vague, what do you expect? It's the exact reason that people don't give Nostradamus a second thought - every single one of his "predictions" that comes true is enormously vague in wording.
Lastly, the "December 25" thing is something that all educated Christians can understand is not the date of Christ's birth, but rather the day earlier Christians decided to celebrate His birth as a method of combating and suffocating the other faithsets that were trying to imitate Jesus. Make it seem more and more like they're worshiping Jesus anyways (by molding anything you can without denying the Biblical teachings), and eventually, their teachings hold less and less impact. People stop following the imitations and more and more decide instead to follow what they viewed to be the Real Thing.
One last point: He claims Jesus was talking about "the next age", when Pisces' "age" is over and the next age begins - the age of Aquarius. He conveniently leaves out the fact that the term "aeon" - the one used in every Biblical reference to an "age" - was also frequently used (particularly in that time period and that culture) to refer to "eternity", "the world", and "the universe".
He also puts the zodiac in reverse order with the ages, which casts a bit of suspicion as well. Looks awfully like a pretty significant spin on the evidence if you ask me. With how much we read about "spins" on this site, I'm sure you guys are all well aware of how that works.
Point is, Zeitgeist does bring up some interesting points. But it doesn't present its argument in a professional manner whatsoever, and it most obviously has a huge agenda that it really doesn't do a good job of defending.
I haven't seen the rest, because after seeing the bull in the religion section, I've debated whether the rest was even worth the time of day. Maybe sometime when I get bored.
SW-5120-1900-6153
