@Sethnintendo

CATHOLICISM is mostly pagan gods renamed as saints and the sun plays a major part over the heads of the saints.
As for the program you saw "Zeitgeist" that's probably as non-factual as the bible.

As a critique of the Christian religion, Zeitgeist has been found to be a lot of nonsense:

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/

PERHAPS THE WORST ASPECT of “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” Part I of Peter Joseph’s Internet film, Zeitgeist, is that some of what it asserts is true. Unfortunately, this material is liberally — and sloppily — mixed with material that is only partially true and much that is plainly and simply bogus. Joseph’s main argument is that Jesus never existed and is in fact a mythical character based on earlier sun gods. He sees all the motifs and characters of the New Testament as coded astrological or solar references. The argument that Jesus was a mythical construct has been made before — for example by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their 1999 book, The Jesus Mysteries, though Freke and Gandy made their argument with a far greater level of scholarship. In reducing Jesus to a sun god, Joseph ignores — as Freke and Gandy did before him — the powerful current of messianic apocalypticism prevalent in first century Judea. The fact that there were references back to earlier dying and rising gods in the Christ myth can lend an air of spurious scholarship to Zeitgeist, as long as one ignores the equally important messianic myth and the fact that there is a viable basis for an actual historical Jesus. Joseph totally ignores the messianic/apocalyptic aspects of the New Testament writings and erroneously asserts that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus. I will return to this issue later. For now, let us consider Joseph’s solar deity argument.

Now, if you have need for your disbelieve to have its own mythos to justify it, then it is fine to go with Zeitgeist.  However, if you want to be factually accurate, you need to look elsewhere.  A problem with material like Zeitgeist is that it attempts to paint a very large scale conspiracy that is vulnerable at every single point it makes a large-scale claim, of being false.

The halo is not a sun.  The halo represents the glory of God manifesting out of a person.  

What is important to understand regarding Catholicism, and other of the apostolic forms of the Christian religion, connected with the Roman Empire, is what to do with the art and culture of society.  You can follow what is often seen with evangelican and fundamental Protestants, where they will denounce any form of the culture of the world as Pagan, and end up avoiding it.  Or, the other approach is to take the culture of the world, gut it of its meaning and put in the meaning of one's own religion.  The Catholic church was particularly noted for doing this, so art style and so on was borrowed, as were holidays.  The Catholic Church, for convenience, took the Pagan holidays and redefined them, and kept the dates.  Date of Jesus's birth being celebrated was put on December 25th, because that is what the culture did.  You just change the meaning.

You can see similar about Valentine's Day, where the date was kept, but the meaning was changed.

happydolphin said: Thank heavens I had the spam placed in this thread. Good stuff guys, keep doo-dooing on the bible thread.

And now, it looks like your thread died.  I am not sure people want to get into discussing the mean of particular Bible verses on here.

"Joseph totally ignores the messianic/apocalyptic aspects of the New Testament writings and erroneously asserts that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus."

I assume this is the sentence I should be paying most attention to but I don't see anything in this that warrants the documentary false (I am having difficulty even understanding the paragraph fully) .  How is the documentary proven wrong by avoiding the New Testament apocalyptic end of times (if anything many religions and cultures viewed or discussed a possible end of times/rebirth, I'm thinking Hinduism for one since they believe the world has been destroyed/reborn multiple times)? 

Also, it was stated in the documentary that there were dozens of well known historians that lived in the area where Jesus would have roamed/lived.  He states not one of these historians recorded anything dealing with Jesus.  It wasn't until 100 A.D. or so later that Jesus was first brought up.

Did you read the website page i posted?

 I will once I finish this movie on Netflix.  I'll report back once I read it.

Zeitgeist happens to end up proposing not only did Jesus not exist, but also that 9/11 was an inside job.  It is one giant pile of conspiracy theory.  You are free to pick and choose what you like, for your own purposes, but do not presume that you are doing such in the name of truth.  So, do you want to go into arguing that 9/11 was an inside job, or is it only the part about Jesus not existing you find agreeable?

Chesterton on the Paradoxes of Christianity...

Part 1 of 5:

Part 2 of 5:

Part 3 of 5:

Part 4 of 5:

Part 5 of 5:

I read most of the link that player provided which shows holes in a decent amount of what the documentary covered.  Also, I was the one that made the 9/11 was a conspiracy not a conspiracy theory thread (I believe they at least knew and let it happen but that is for another discussion). 

Seems like everyone has an agenda and that one must check all the facts if possible.  Problems is that the Bible and Christianity have about as much facts supporting it as the movie Zeitgeist.  I have no problem with someone believing in the religion of choice.  I tend to question everything but I should have done more research into the documentary before taking most of it for granted.

 I myself just believe in nature and what humans do to this planet isn't respecting the only place we can call home.  I know Christians are supposed to look out for nature but it seems like capitalism has made them turn a blind eye towards it.  Christians are basically taught that nature is god yet greed along with the end of the world mentality prevents most for actually giving a damn.  Most Christians believe that the resurrection will happen in their lifetime.  What kind of thinking is this?  This will only lead to exploitation because it doesn't really matter since they will all be gone soon.  The end of the world mentality bothers me most about Christianity.  Also, an afterlife that all non believers go to hell.  I don't care for that vision.  Divides it into a us vs them where there really just isn't a line between good and evil anymore.  Who is to say that all other followers of religion are damned to hell?  Christianity does