For once the media cannot contain a non-Hollywood movie from causing a stir in America. For those of you have not seen zeitgeist available for free at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/, take the time to watch it. For all of the movies flaws, and lack of citations it does bring up some pretty good points, particularly in the first act on Christianity that is provocative. The sequel will hopefully be a little more clean than the first and include some better evidence. Even so, without any citations at all, the movie still brings up some pretty good points, and with a little of your own research you can make your own conclusions. What stings me about the typical reviews of the film is the lack of open-mindedness that a typical viewer approaches the film with. It seems like an appropriate analogy is someone renting a German movie and then being upset that it was not in English. The vast majority of the reviews seem to bash the movie for every mistake, being very critical of minor errors, all in an effort to conceal the fact that the movie directly brushes up against a faith that they are unwilling to even for a moment scrutinize. I found a post pretty typical of supposed problems with the movie. So ive reposted it here with responses to this persons blog. Once again - I'm not saying the movie is perfect, but lets give it a chance, and for once stop defending the faith simply because we have been instilled with this idea that it is our responsibility to protect no matter how logical the other side may seem or how illogical it becomes. For if we continue to interpret it literally, if we continue to follow blindly, we will be stuck in our own ignorance forever. Below is the original post, and then my responses which will hopefully answer some of these same questions in the other forums. I think I am even a little surprised I would be on the other fence on the issue -- maybe I'm just fed up with christian ight-wingers and their propaganda for the 2008 election.
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*original post*
1st off, the 1st part of the zeitgeist movie is completely fictional and made up. It all stems from Ms Murdock, who calls herself Acharya S, which means guru or teacher. There are 100s of references you can search out that discredit her work, but for starters you can check out answeringinfidels.com.
I only need to point out a few facts , which basically make the whole first part of the movie fall apart:
* Jesus was not born on December 25th! This date was assigned by the Roman Catholic Church and is widely known to NOT be the actual date that he was born, and by the way neither were any of the gods that were mentioned in zeitgeist, part 1. So, just from this point, you would have to be a complete dumb-ass to think that anything else that was presented is even true.
* Not one of the gods presented in the zeitgeist movie was ever born of a virgin or crucified. Crucification wasn't even invented, first of all, until the Roman Empire came into place. Hmm... I guess someone forgot to learn about history... I guess Ms. Murdock likes to dream up her own history in her mind.
* As far as astrology goes, the borders between the constellations are a completely 100% modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping, and therefore never had any astrological significance in ancient times
* The Bible absolutely condones the worship of stars, moon, or sun and states that people were to put to death for such an act in the Old Testament.
* There are plenty of sources outside the bible that point to Jesus actually living and being crucified... There is more physical evidence for Jesus living than any other person in history
* On a final note, all the verses Ms. Murdock quotes in the bible as reference to her claims actually discredit her. One verse she speaks of in the Bible isn't even there. All other verses she quotes either condone the act of worshiping anything other than God or plainly have nothing to do with what Ms. Murdock states!
I could write more, but what's the point. If you actually want to learn something, you need to research it yourself to learn something factual and come to your own conclusions based on reality and not someone’s imagination.
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*my responses
Just want to follow up on the previous post and play devils advocate. By the way I have faith too, but faith does not mean that you must follow blindly. If we did the earth would still be the center of the universe, and we would still be hunting witches.
"Jesus was not born on December 25th! This date was assigned by the Roman Catholic Church and is widely known to NOT be the actual date that he was born,"
-That is the whole point the director is trying to make. The Christian church (at the time the Holy Roman Church) has taken elements of a "Christ figure" from various other religions and intertwined them with the emerging Christian faith. This is not a radical concept. A simple example is the Irish/Celtic cross which Saint Patrick is reported to have made. In order to help facilitate the islanders from worshiping pagan gods (like the sun) the cross was intertwined with the sun making the cross we now know of that has an circle outlining the four points, representing the sun, and thus making it easier for pagans to accept the Christian faith. The director is not trying to assert Jesus was born on this day, he is trying to show you the same conclusion that you yourself came to, the whole thing is made up.
*"Not one of the gods presented in the zeitgeist movie was ever born of a virgin"
I am assuming you mean one of the sons of god presented in the film. I don't remember all the onces the director presented but here is one I know off of the top of my head. Although there are likely many others, and perhaps some even further back the the Greeks the myth of Danae and Zeus comes to mind. In simplicity the story is about an oracle who foresees a fathers daughter giving birth to a son who will grow to kill his grandfather. In order to prevent this from happening the father locks his daughter in an underground prison to prevent her with ever coming into contact with a man and thus having an opportunity to become pregnant. Of course Zeus, the adulteress that he was finds a way into the prison and "with a shower of gold" impregnates her. In short a virgin was now pregnant with the son of god...
"Crucification wasn't even invented, first of all, until the Roman Empire came into place. Hmm... I guess someone forgot to learn about history... I guess Ms. Murdock likes to dream up her own history in her mind."
While I am no expert at when crucifixions started taking place, I fail to see any point that would validate the existence of Jesus. As you yourself had come to the conclusion of earlier, the church likes to make up its own history, like the date Jesus was born on, and in this case how he was killed. But even so, I fail to see any connection that proves he existed because of how he was killed. For instance if Jesus were to be killed in our time, I might write that he was given a lethal injection. Now obviously I just took a "christ figure" from 2000 years ago and implanted my own modern variation into the story. In the same way it is certainly possible someone living 2000 years ago took a christ figure from another story that perhaps died of a thunderbolt, changed a thunderbolt to something more common to their time (like a crucifixion) and tudah! But like I said, the manner in which he died doesn't prove he existed.
* "As far as astrology goes, the borders between the constellations are a completely 100% modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping, and therefore never had any astrological significance in ancient times"
While I certainly agree that our modern constellation charts could be way different than constellations our ancestors pointed to, the main constellations used for astrology have remained pretty much the same at least since the Greeks. Saint Benedict and Saint Johns University (yes, I am actually using a religious school that will prove my point) has an online article that reads quote" Our modern constellation system comes to us from the ancient Greeks. The oldest description of the constellations as we know them comes from a poem, called Phaenomena, written about 270 B.C. by the Greek poet Aratus. However, it is clear from the poem that the constellations mentioned originated long before Aratus' time. No one is sure exactly where, when, or by whom they were invented. And yet a little detective work reveals a plausible origin...150 A.D., the Greek scientist Ptolemy published a book, known by its Arabic name, The Almagest, which contained a summary of Greek astronomical knowledge, including a catalog of 1022 stars, with estimates of their brightness, arranged into 48 constellations. These 48 formed the basis for our modern constellation system." The article can be found here http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/
astro/asp/constellation.faq.html
In the same article it also mentions what you refer to saying the union "officially adopted the list of 88 constellations that we use today. Definitive boundaries between constellations, which extend out beyond the star figures, were set in 1930, so that every star, nebula, or galaxy, no matter how faint, now lies within the limits of one constellation. For today's astronomer, constellations refer not so much to the patterns of stars, but to precisely defined areas of the sky." However I think you missed the point that the film refers to the zodiac, which is a collection of 12 constellations that is indeed very old, at least as far back as the Greeks. The film is not referring to the "modern 88 constellations" set by the Astronomy convention.
* The Bible absolutely condones the worship of stars, moon, or sun and states that people were to put to death for such an act in the Old Testament.
-It is hard to make such a claim. While I think most modern Christian sects would agree with you about worshiping such things, the bible does provide a few gray areas that are hard to ignore. While I could start with the "star of Bethlehem" being a sign from god that something extraordinary was happening (I don't know how much closer we could get to a perfect example of astrology in th bible) we could also point to the 3 wise men who were magi, likely astrologers, who were heading toward the star precisely for the very reason of worshiping it. I dont want to stretch this argument out too long because no one will ever change their mind if astrology is condoned or practiced in the bible, for some reason it seems the bible gets to ride the fence on this one while having cake and eating it too. But I will offer 2 more versus of this practice and the bible not putting people to death for this belief. Gen. 1:14-15 states "And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as SIGNS to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth." And it was so. Also Luke 21:25 says "There shall be SIGNS in the sun, the moon, and the stars. But here again we are missing the point. The point the film was trying to make was not whether the bible was condoning astrology and the use of the zodiac, but rather trying to create connections between the two to show how many similar events and ideas the different faiths have. The fact is whether you want to believe the 2 are related at all, the director does provide some intriguing evidence into similarities between the 2 ideas and faiths. Once again the director is simply trying to poke holes in the traditional christian faith in this case by simply showing how easy it would have been for the Christian faith to have been adopted by ideas that came first from other religions like the pagan worship of the sun and stars.
* There are plenty of sources outside the bible that point to Jesus actually living and being crucified...
The problem here is the same one presented in the film. While I agree there are certainly more historians available than the ones the director presented in the film, he does have a point that for such a major historical figure there are relatively few sources of firsthand information on Jesus. Again the distinction here are historians who actually lived and wrote during the time that Jesus lived. There are some good books on the issue. The most known authors about it are G. A. Wells and R.T. France. Both point out pretty much what the movie does that historians who write about Jesus that actually lived in his time are few and far between. I will agree it is much easier to try and denounce Jesus based on the lack of evidence than it is to support his existence considering 2000 years have passed since his time, and that much evidence could have been lost during those years. However, like all arguments from a scientific standpoint, the burden of proof falls to the believer to provide evidence to the skeptic not the other way around.
There is more physical evidence for Jesus living than any other person in history
Wow, I really don't know where to even begin with this one. If you have ever traveled to Europe then you will already know that every church apparently has a piece of the cross, a nail from the cross, the shroud Jesus was wrapped in, blood stains, the spear, etc, etc. The amount of relics that are available from the crucifixion are immense. The point here being that if you added up all the pieces off wood from the cross that churches claim to have, you would have enough to make 10 crosses. If you added up all the nails they possess you would have enough to build a house. And of course, if there are even 2 supposed shrouds thats one too many. It is sad too, because perhaps there might actually be a genuine relic out there. The simple problem really is that there was money to be made in selling relics and now it is simply hard to distinguish between what might actually be a true relic and a hoax. Here again, the burden falls on the believer. There is simply no physical piece of evidence that proves he existed. The problem is that we don't have any evidence we know is true and not tainted, so as such there is nothing to compare it to. For example we may have blood on a nail, but that does not prove it is Jesus blood on the nail. It simply proves someone got blood on a nail. Relics are a touchy issue and you are simply not going to prove Jesus existence one way or the other based off of them.
-Like I said folks, I think we all agree the film has is problems. But I think at the same time it really can be an eye opener to the accepted conservative Christian faith. While you still certainly claim the Jesus is a unique figure, you must admit the similarities portrayed between him and other religious figures are astounding. The connections the director makes between astrology and the story of Jesus can be a bit unnerving. I agree with the previous poster - don't rely on the movie to make your own convictions. However, if even to affirm your own faith, follow the road to some of the controversies presented in the movie. Perhaps it will make your faith stronger than ever, perhaps it will test your faith, perhaps it will make you lose your faith. Regardless, you are at least no longer following blindly.
-Kazbob
