Month: August 2007

Zeitgeist

A friend of mine asked me to watch the first sec­tion of Zeit­geist (a movie you can watch for free on the inter­net at http://zeitgeistmovie.com/) and give him some per­spec­tive on it.

Here goes:

I don’t recall ever hav­ing run across so many fac­tu­al inac­cu­ra­cies in such a short span of time. I doubt I even caught them all — they were fly­ing fast and furi­ous.

I’ll start with a few that are easy for an untrained layper­son to see right away. There’s some oth­er stuff he said that I know is false, but demon­strat­ing it is less easy. It becomes “my expert you’ve nev­er heard of” ver­sus “his expert you’ve nev­er heard of” with me say­ing “my expert is bet­ter than his expert — trust me.” So I’ll keep this list focused on stuff any­one can eas­i­ly ver­i­fy on their own.

One eas­i­ly-checked fact that he builds his argu­ment on is that the South­ern Cross is the real inspi­ra­tion for the cross of Jesus (watch from 17:35 through 19:03). Three prob­lems with this:
a) The South­ern Cross is a mod­ern inven­tion — not an ancient con­stel­la­tion. Check http://www.windows.ucar.edu/the_universe/crux.html and http://www.fillingthesky.com/constellationhistory.html
b) The South­ern Cross is not vis­i­ble from where the New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten. In the North­ern Hemi­sphere you have to be below 30 degrees lat­i­tude to see it. The New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten from Jerusalem on north.
c) It’s hard to see how a con­stel­la­tion that did­n’t exist and could­n’t be seen inspired the sto­ry of Jesus when Romans actu­al­ly killed peo­ple on cross­es all the time. Is he seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that the Romans did­n’t actu­al­ly cru­ci­fy peo­ple?

Miss­ing such a basic fact does­n’t inspire con­fi­dence in the more eso­teric, less eas­i­ly-checked facts he uses to make his entire case. There are oth­er eas­i­ly-checked facts he dis­torts. Two from the Bible struck me.

In the time range 23:38 — 25:20 the movie claims that Jesus is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the astro­log­i­cal sign of Pisces. Towards the end of this sec­tion, the nar­ra­tor states that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples asked him when he would cel­e­brate the next passover with them him after he is gone and that Jesus’ answer in Luke 22:10 was code lan­guage for Aquar­ius (the next age of the Zodi­ac). This is easy enough to check — and it turns out to be a lie. Luke 22:10 is about the passover they are cel­e­brat­ing that night, not the next meal they will share after his res­ur­rec­tion. That isn’t a minor dif­fer­ence — it under­mines his entire inter­pre­ta­tion.

Anoth­er exam­ple of his will­ing­ness to dis­tort the Bible to make his point occurs around time mark­er 21:10, when he says that the Bible teach­es that Jesus comes from heav­en wear­ing a crown of thorns, which rep­re­sent the rays of the sun. He quotes John 19:5 to sup­port this point. Look it up. There’s not even a hint of Jesus descend­ing from heav­en any­where in this pas­sage. He’s walk­ing from one place to anoth­er — not descend­ing from the clouds as the nar­ra­tor claims.

These two instances aren’t nit­pick­ing — these are very eas­i­ly checked state­ments in the best­selling book of all time which is always avail­able for instant fact-check­ing on the inter­net at places such as Bible Gate­way. If he did­n’t even check these ref­er­ences that key parts of his argu­ment rely on, then how much stock can we place in his ref­er­ences to obscure ancient Egypt­ian texts that only schol­ars have ready access to?

He’s evi­dent­ly received crit­i­cism along this line, because he felt com­pelled to give some doc­u­men­ta­tion for his use of ancient texts at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/GMappendix.htm

Just look through it. Pay atten­tion to the sto­ries of Jesus in the right col­umn (you are pre­sum­ably more famil­iar with them). I think you’ll be sur­prised at how flaky that list is.

Bot­tom line: Zeit­geist is very imag­i­na­tive, but that’s about it.

UPDATE 2/24/2008: This post is still gen­er­at­ing com­ments. It’s been six months since I wrote this post, and since then a help­ful review by Ben With­er­ing­ton has been post­ed — The Zeit­geist of the ‘Zeit­geist Movie’. Look to it for a more detailed rebut­tal of the movie’s claims.

Congratulations, George O. Wood

While I was busy tour­ing Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um with my fam­i­ly and eat­ing duri­an, most of the rest of the Assem­blies of God was in Indi­anapo­lis for our bien­ni­al min­is­te­r­i­al gath­er­ing.

George Wood has been elect­ed Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God. I hon­est­ly did­n’t think he had a chance — our move­ment is still pret­ty anti-intel­lec­tu­al and he has two earned doc­tor­ates. In addi­tion, I thought he might be per­ceived as part of the “old guard” in a time of great change. I’m delight­ed that I was wrong — he’ll be a great leader. He’s a very flex­i­ble thinker and sees both the strengths and weak­ness­es of our move­ment pret­ty clear­ly.

Alton Gar­ri­son was elect­ed the new Assis­tant Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent (I expect­ed he would take one of the two top spots) — and he’s a very savvy leader. He’s much more well-read and inno­v­a­tive than most peo­ple expect an evan­ge­list from Arkansas to be. He’ll be a great voice to have at the table.

John Palmer is the new Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary — I had expect­ed him to become the exec­u­tive direc­tor of AG US Mis­sions instead. I’ve nev­er met him, but I’ve heard noth­ing but good things. Tim and Julie Smith in par­tic­u­lar have giv­en me very encour­ag­ing reports about him. He seems like a great addi­tion to the team.

Zol­lie Smith was the most sur­pris­ing elec­tion. He’s my new boss’s boss (direc­tor of US Mis­sions, tak­ing the posi­tion I expect­ed John Palmer to land), and I’ve been hear­ing good things about him for years. His elec­tion was a mile­stone for the Assem­blies of God — he’s our first non-Cau­casian exec­u­tive offi­cer.

I’m very excit­ed about the lead­er­ship team that came out of this Gen­er­al Coun­cil. It bodes well for our future as a move­ment. We picked some extreme­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple.

Oh — and the busi­ness ses­sions were feisty this year. If you’re into that sort of thing, you might want to check them out

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